Bacon’s writings are conventionally classified as the professional (mainly legal), the literary, and the philosophical. We shall be concerned with only a small sample from the latter. As with other philosophers of the period, the term ‘philosophical’ covers science as well as philosophy in the modern sense.

Bacon’s earliest publication on philosophy was the Advancement of Learning, which was written in English, and published in 1605, eight years after the first edition of his famous Essays. It is in two books, of which Book 1 was translated into Latin (not by Bacon himself), and published in 1623 as Book 1 of the Increase of the Sciences. Book 2 was greatly expanded to form the remaining books of the Increase — however, many passages are straight translations (I don’t know whether by Bacon himself) of passages from Book 2 of the Advancement.

Moving on from the Advancement, Bacon conceived a grandiose plan for a multi-volume work covering the whole of philosophy and science, which he called the Great Restoration (Instauratio Magna). He drafted many bits and pieces of it (or associated works) which were not published during his lifetime. The most famous of these is the unfinished New Atlantis, in which he put forward a Utopian vision of a scientific research academy. It is no doubt one of the reasons why Bacon was hero-worshipped by the founders of the Royal Society, which was eventually incorporated in 1662.

The Great Restoration was to consist of six divisions:

Only the first two divisions cover philosophy in the modern sense, as including (among many other things) the nature of being in general (metaphysics), and how we are to know about it (epistemology). They are also the only two of which he published even only partly complete versions in his lifetime.

The first to be published, in 1620, was the work covering Division 2, or the Interpretation of Nature. He called it the New Logic, or the True Secrets of the Interpretation of Nature (Novum Organum, seu indicia vera de interpretatione naturae). As he himself said on the title page, the work was not yet complete, and he was publishing it in summary form, as a series of ‘aphorisms’. The translation of organon as ‘logic’ is slightly contentious, but its literal meaning of ‘organ’ or ‘instrument’ means little out of context. The context is that Aristotle’s logic, which was almost universal at the time, was often called the organon, or instrument of reasoning. Bacon’s intention was to show that Aristotle’s organ was impotent to generate new scientific discoveries (yes he does use this sexual metaphor), and that we need a new tool for the intellect, just as technology cannot make progress without tools. The new tool would be his own method, based on a blend of systematic empirical observation, and application of the intellect.

To the shame of the British nation, there is no modern edition of Bacon’s works. The best we have is that by R.L. Ellis, J. Spedding, and D.D. Heath: The Works of Francis Bacon (London, 1857–1874); and this is the edition I have used for my translation (Volume 1). Ellis translated both the New Logic and the Increase of the Sciences (not wholly accurately, and in English which was archaic even by Victorian standards) in Volume 4. As far as I am aware, this is the translation used in all more recent English editions of Bacon’s works.

The second division of the Great Restoration to be published was the first in logical order, namely the Division of the Sciences. This is the Increase of the Sciences, published in 1623. As I have already said, Bacon cheated a bit, and cobbled it together out of a friend’s Latin translation of Book 1 of the Advancement of Learning, and an expansion of Book 2. The extract I have translated into modern English is concerned mainly with the distinction between metaphysics and science, and with the Aristotelian theory of four causes.