WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.759 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are doing something 00:00:02.759 --> 00:00:04.879 a little different today. We're looking at a 00:00:04.879 --> 00:00:09.359 man who is essentially the operating system for 00:00:09.359 --> 00:00:11.160 the modern world. That's a great way to put it. 00:00:11.259 --> 00:00:13.759 You know how we obsess over data, how we say 00:00:13.759 --> 00:00:16.239 trust the science, how we all just sort of believe 00:00:16.239 --> 00:00:18.800 that if you break a problem down into small enough 00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:21.199 parts, you can solve it. Yeah, that entire method. 00:00:21.440 --> 00:00:23.480 That framework, you know, that entire way of 00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:26.210 interacting with reality. It didn't just appear 00:00:26.210 --> 00:00:28.469 out of nowhere. It had an architect. It absolutely 00:00:28.469 --> 00:00:31.850 did. And that architect is Francis Bacon. But 00:00:31.850 --> 00:00:34.670 the deeper we got into these sources, the biographies, 00:00:34.670 --> 00:00:37.570 the court records, the letters, the more I realized 00:00:37.570 --> 00:00:40.390 that the father of science title is actually 00:00:40.390 --> 00:00:44.310 the boring part of the story. Really? The boring 00:00:44.310 --> 00:00:46.329 part? I think so. Because the man himself, he 00:00:46.329 --> 00:00:49.810 is a mess. A brilliant, catastrophic, just... 00:00:50.600 --> 00:00:53.000 A fascinating mess. That is exactly what struck 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:55.460 me. We are talking about a massive contradiction 00:00:55.460 --> 00:00:58.240 wrapped up in an Elizabethan rough. On one side 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:00.399 you have the light. The highlight reel. The highlight 00:01:00.399 --> 00:01:02.799 reel, exactly. This is the guy who coined the 00:01:02.799 --> 00:01:05.299 phrase, knowledge is power. The guy who basically 00:01:05.299 --> 00:01:07.719 stood up and told all of humanity, stop guessing 00:01:07.719 --> 00:01:10.319 and start looking. I mean, he dismantled the 00:01:10.319 --> 00:01:13.159 way people have thought for 2 ,000 years. 2 ,000 00:01:13.159 --> 00:01:16.599 years of dogma. Just boom. Gone. But then you 00:01:16.599 --> 00:01:18.780 flip the record over and you get the dark side. 00:01:19.040 --> 00:01:21.269 And it is dark. We're not just talking about 00:01:21.269 --> 00:01:24.769 a guy with, you know, a bad temper or a few skeletons 00:01:24.769 --> 00:01:26.849 in his closet. No. We're talking about a Lord 00:01:26.849 --> 00:01:30.090 Chancellor of England, the highest legal officer 00:01:30.090 --> 00:01:33.349 in the kingdom, convicted of corruption and bribery. 00:01:33.450 --> 00:01:36.310 A man who arguably sent his best friend, his 00:01:36.310 --> 00:01:38.409 patron, the guy who gave him land and supported 00:01:38.409 --> 00:01:41.469 him, to the executioner to save his own career. 00:01:41.650 --> 00:01:44.590 To save his own skin. And a figure whose private 00:01:44.590 --> 00:01:47.390 life was, well... It was rife with rumors of 00:01:47.390 --> 00:01:49.989 masculine love in an era where that could get 00:01:49.989 --> 00:01:52.510 you killed. It's a lot to unpack. And our mission 00:01:52.510 --> 00:01:54.969 for this deep dive is really to try and reconcile 00:01:54.969 --> 00:01:57.709 these two versions of the man. How can you be 00:01:57.709 --> 00:02:00.450 the justice judge in England, as he called himself, 00:02:00.709 --> 00:02:03.810 and yet accept bribes? Right. How do those two 00:02:03.810 --> 00:02:06.629 things exist in the same person? And how do you 00:02:06.629 --> 00:02:09.750 have a man who preaches clean hands in science? 00:02:10.129 --> 00:02:12.610 I mean, his whole thing is strip away your biases, 00:02:12.669 --> 00:02:15.240 be pure in your observation. But gets his own 00:02:15.240 --> 00:02:17.840 hands incredibly dirty in politics. That is the 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:20.840 central paradox. Bacon isn't just some historical 00:02:20.840 --> 00:02:23.479 footnote. He is the bridge between the medieval 00:02:23.479 --> 00:02:26.979 mind and the modern world. But to understand 00:02:26.979 --> 00:02:29.439 how he built that bridge, you have to look at 00:02:29.439 --> 00:02:31.900 the mud he was standing in. So we have to look 00:02:31.900 --> 00:02:34.319 at the biographical records, his major works 00:02:34.319 --> 00:02:36.960 like the Nova Morganum and New Atlantis, and 00:02:36.960 --> 00:02:40.319 some very gossipy, very revealing historical 00:02:40.319 --> 00:02:42.939 accounts from contemporaries like John Aubrey. 00:02:43.310 --> 00:02:45.289 So let's rewind. We need to set the scene. We're 00:02:45.289 --> 00:02:48.069 in London. It's 1561. Queen Elizabeth I is on 00:02:48.069 --> 00:02:50.650 the throne. And Francis Bacon is born at York 00:02:50.650 --> 00:02:52.729 House. Right. Now, usually when we talk about 00:02:52.729 --> 00:02:54.710 disruptors or revolutionaries, you expect an 00:02:54.710 --> 00:02:56.870 underdog story, right? Someone scraping by on 00:02:56.870 --> 00:02:58.729 the streets, fighting the system from the outside. 00:02:59.050 --> 00:03:01.569 That is not this story, is it? Not even close. 00:03:01.750 --> 00:03:03.969 Francis Bacon is the ultimate insider. He is 00:03:03.969 --> 00:03:06.349 born into the absolute heart of the English political. 00:03:06.569 --> 00:03:08.509 The establishment. The establishment, exactly. 00:03:08.849 --> 00:03:11.909 His father is Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Lord Keeper 00:03:11.909 --> 00:03:14.129 of the Great Seal. Which, just to clarify for 00:03:14.129 --> 00:03:16.990 everyone, sounds like a wizard title from a fantasy 00:03:16.990 --> 00:03:19.030 novel. It really does. But it's actually one 00:03:19.030 --> 00:03:21.250 of the highest legal offices in the entire country. 00:03:21.430 --> 00:03:23.409 It means he's the top lawyer presiding over the 00:03:23.409 --> 00:03:25.669 Court of Chancery. He's the guy holding the stamp 00:03:25.669 --> 00:03:28.389 that makes laws official. And his mother, Anne 00:03:28.389 --> 00:03:31.650 Cook, is equally formidable. She's a noted humanist, 00:03:31.710 --> 00:03:35.729 a translator of complex theology, and a radical 00:03:35.729 --> 00:03:40.490 Puritan. So super smart and super intense. Terrifyingly 00:03:40.490 --> 00:03:43.430 smart and incredibly intense. She made sure her 00:03:43.430 --> 00:03:46.110 sons were educated to the highest possible standard. 00:03:46.330 --> 00:03:47.969 And the connections don't stop there because 00:03:47.969 --> 00:03:51.020 his uncle is Lord Burghley. William Cecil. Lord 00:03:51.020 --> 00:03:53.240 Burghley. For context, you have to understand 00:03:53.240 --> 00:03:56.539 Burghley is essentially the prime minister before 00:03:56.539 --> 00:03:59.740 that title even existed. He is Queen Elizabeth's 00:03:59.740 --> 00:04:03.039 right hand man. He runs the country. So Francis 00:04:03.039 --> 00:04:06.060 is the nephew of the most powerful non -royal 00:04:06.060 --> 00:04:07.759 in England. He's got the keys to the kingdom 00:04:07.759 --> 00:04:10.180 from birth. So he's got the pedigree. He's got 00:04:10.180 --> 00:04:13.080 the connections. And by all accounts, he's clearly 00:04:13.080 --> 00:04:15.969 a genius. I read in the notes that he was sent 00:04:15.969 --> 00:04:18.689 to Trinity College, Cambridge at age 12. 12. 00:04:18.790 --> 00:04:21.709 12 years old. I was, I don't know, barely figuring 00:04:21.709 --> 00:04:24.170 out how to organize my binder at 12. And he's 00:04:24.170 --> 00:04:26.490 off to university. It was unusual even for the 00:04:26.490 --> 00:04:28.949 time, though not totally unheard of for the high 00:04:28.949 --> 00:04:32.350 aristocracy. The queen herself noticed him early 00:04:32.350 --> 00:04:34.689 on. She loved talking to him. She used to call 00:04:34.689 --> 00:04:37.370 him the young lord keeper. She saw the potential. 00:04:38.050 --> 00:04:41.199 But this time at Cambridge is crucial. It's the 00:04:41.199 --> 00:04:43.480 first major pivot point we see in the sources. 00:04:43.600 --> 00:04:45.680 Because usually a kid that age, you go to school, 00:04:45.819 --> 00:04:47.759 you learn what the teachers tell you, you try 00:04:47.759 --> 00:04:49.680 to pass your exams, you try to fit in. You toe 00:04:49.680 --> 00:04:51.839 the line. You toe the line. Bacon looks at the 00:04:51.839 --> 00:04:53.819 entire curriculum and says, this is garbage. 00:04:54.100 --> 00:04:57.600 He hated it. He despised it. And we have to understand 00:04:57.600 --> 00:05:00.939 why. Because this teenage rebellion, this hatred, 00:05:01.079 --> 00:05:04.300 is what... eventually gives us modern science. 00:05:04.540 --> 00:05:07.839 At the time, the curriculum was entirely scholastic. 00:05:07.920 --> 00:05:11.579 It was medieval. It was completely dominated 00:05:11.579 --> 00:05:14.699 by the philosophy of Aristotle. But not the interesting 00:05:14.699 --> 00:05:17.480 Aristotle. Not the let's go out and look at nature 00:05:17.480 --> 00:05:19.639 Aristotle. No, no, no. This was a fossilized 00:05:19.639 --> 00:05:22.000 version of Aristotle. It was let's read what 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:24.600 Aristotle wrote about nature 2 ,000 years ago 00:05:24.600 --> 00:05:27.000 and argue about the precise definitions of his 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:29.939 words. So it's all theory? It was pure deduction. 00:05:30.600 --> 00:05:32.980 You start with a general premise that Aristotle 00:05:32.980 --> 00:05:35.660 claimed was true, like, say, that heavens are 00:05:35.660 --> 00:05:37.579 perfect and unchanging. And then you just debate 00:05:37.579 --> 00:05:39.319 the logic of it. You never actually look out 00:05:39.319 --> 00:05:41.360 the window. So if you want to know how many teeth 00:05:41.360 --> 00:05:43.860 the horse has. You don't open a horse's mouth 00:05:43.860 --> 00:05:47.759 and count. Yeah. That would be vulgar. You check 00:05:47.759 --> 00:05:50.500 the textbook. You check Aristotle. And if the 00:05:50.500 --> 00:05:52.920 textbook says 40 and the horse in front of you 00:05:52.920 --> 00:05:56.550 has 38, then the horse is wrong. Or you're counting 00:05:56.550 --> 00:05:58.329 wrong. Or you're counting wrong. The book is 00:05:58.329 --> 00:06:00.189 the truth, not your own eyes. That would drive 00:06:00.189 --> 00:06:02.569 a mind like Bacon's completely insane. He called 00:06:02.569 --> 00:06:06.149 it barren, right? Barren, argumentative, and 00:06:06.149 --> 00:06:09.490 wrong in its objectives. That is a scathing review 00:06:09.490 --> 00:06:12.470 from a 14 -year -old. He saw the smartest minds 00:06:12.470 --> 00:06:14.790 in Europe just spinning in circles, debating 00:06:14.790 --> 00:06:17.639 these abstract... Logic puzzles. While diseases 00:06:17.639 --> 00:06:19.980 were curing nothing, bridges were falling down, 00:06:20.040 --> 00:06:22.560 and agriculture wasn't improving. It was useless 00:06:22.560 --> 00:06:25.100 knowledge. It was just words about words. Even 00:06:25.100 --> 00:06:27.860 as a teenager, Bacon wanted knowledge that did 00:06:27.860 --> 00:06:30.360 something. He called it fruit. He wanted results. 00:06:30.759 --> 00:06:33.680 Practical application. Exactly. He revered Aristotle 00:06:33.680 --> 00:06:36.899 as a person. He respected his mind. But he thought 00:06:36.899 --> 00:06:39.629 the philosophy had become a dead end. This is 00:06:39.629 --> 00:06:42.050 the seed of the entire scientific revolution. 00:06:42.490 --> 00:06:44.970 It starts with a grumpy, brilliant teenager at 00:06:44.970 --> 00:06:46.990 Cambridge thinking his professors are wasting 00:06:46.990 --> 00:06:48.949 their time. So he has the ambition to change 00:06:48.949 --> 00:06:50.949 the world. He has the family name to get him 00:06:50.949 --> 00:06:52.750 into power. You'd think he's set for a smooth 00:06:52.750 --> 00:06:55.589 ride straight to the top. But then real life 00:06:55.589 --> 00:06:59.149 hits him in the face. 1579. What happens? He's 00:06:59.149 --> 00:07:02.310 18 years old. He's in France, part of the ambassador's 00:07:02.310 --> 00:07:03.990 entourage, getting some diplomatic experience, 00:07:04.230 --> 00:07:06.829 probably living the high life. And word arrives 00:07:06.829 --> 00:07:09.370 that his father, Sir Nicholas, has died suddenly. 00:07:09.569 --> 00:07:12.009 Now, typically, the Lord Keeper would leave his 00:07:12.009 --> 00:07:14.949 son a fortune. Sir Nicholas had actually set 00:07:14.949 --> 00:07:17.930 aside a massive sum of money to buy an estate 00:07:17.930 --> 00:07:21.009 specifically for Francis, his youngest son. But 00:07:21.009 --> 00:07:23.490 he didn't sign the papers. He died with the quill 00:07:23.490 --> 00:07:26.629 effectively in the air. Because the legal work 00:07:26.629 --> 00:07:29.310 wasn't finished, the money wasn't ring -fenced 00:07:29.310 --> 00:07:31.790 for Francis. So it all went into the general 00:07:31.790 --> 00:07:34.850 pot to be divided among all the children. Francis 00:07:34.850 --> 00:07:38.089 got a tiny fraction of what was intended, about 00:07:38.089 --> 00:07:40.470 a fifth. So he went from being the pampered son 00:07:40.470 --> 00:07:42.829 of the elite, expecting a life of leisure where 00:07:42.829 --> 00:07:44.990 he could sit around and study philosophy, to 00:07:44.990 --> 00:07:46.810 a young man who suddenly had to work to survive. 00:07:46.850 --> 00:07:50.129 He had debts, he had expensive tastes, and now 00:07:50.129 --> 00:07:53.480 no income. That is a brutal reality check. And 00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:55.939 this is where the hustle begins. I think this 00:07:55.939 --> 00:07:58.500 context is so important because it explains his 00:07:58.500 --> 00:08:00.899 desperation later on. He isn't just ambitious. 00:08:01.040 --> 00:08:04.019 He's panicked. He is terrified of poverty. He 00:08:04.019 --> 00:08:05.980 enters law school at Grey's End, not because 00:08:05.980 --> 00:08:08.399 he loves the law, he found it tedious, but because 00:08:08.399 --> 00:08:11.240 he needs a career. And he immediately starts 00:08:11.240 --> 00:08:13.579 leveraging those family connections. He writes 00:08:13.579 --> 00:08:15.300 to his uncle, Lord Burghley. The most powerful 00:08:15.300 --> 00:08:17.459 man in England. And he's basically saying, hey, 00:08:17.560 --> 00:08:20.170 Uncle William, it's me. Your brilliant nephew, 00:08:20.350 --> 00:08:22.509 Francis. Give me a government job with a good 00:08:22.509 --> 00:08:25.110 salary and lots of free time so I can fix all 00:08:25.110 --> 00:08:26.930 of human knowledge for the betterment of mankind. 00:08:27.370 --> 00:08:29.389 And what does Uncle Burgly say? You more or less 00:08:29.389 --> 00:08:33.210 ghosts him. Ouch, why? Well, Burgly was a pragmatist, 00:08:33.250 --> 00:08:37.289 a very cautious, steady administrator. Francis 00:08:37.289 --> 00:08:40.070 was flashy, arrogant, brilliant, and full of 00:08:40.070 --> 00:08:42.929 these grand theoretical schemes. Burgly probably 00:08:42.929 --> 00:08:46.000 saw him as unreliable. Plus, Burtley had his 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:49.440 own son, Robert Cecil, to promote. Oh, nepotism. 00:08:49.460 --> 00:08:51.259 He didn't want his brilliant nephew outshining 00:08:51.259 --> 00:08:54.100 his own kid. So for decades, Bacon is left on 00:08:54.100 --> 00:08:56.549 the outside looking in. He gets a seat in parliament, 00:08:56.750 --> 00:08:58.750 becomes an MP, and he makes a name for himself 00:08:58.750 --> 00:09:01.490 as a liberal -minded reformer. But the high office, 00:09:01.710 --> 00:09:04.009 the real power, keeps slipping through his fingers. 00:09:04.169 --> 00:09:06.330 And this constant rejection, this frustration, 00:09:06.429 --> 00:09:08.710 drives him into the arms of a different patron. 00:09:08.850 --> 00:09:10.789 It does. This brings us to the Earl of Essex. 00:09:10.830 --> 00:09:12.409 And honestly, this chapter feels like a movie 00:09:12.409 --> 00:09:14.809 script. It has everything. Friendship, power, 00:09:15.110 --> 00:09:19.549 loyalty, and a whole lot of betrayal. It really 00:09:19.549 --> 00:09:22.450 does. Since his uncle wouldn't help him, Bacon 00:09:22.450 --> 00:09:24.509 attached himself to the rising star of the court. 00:09:25.160 --> 00:09:28.059 Robert Devereaux, the second Earl of Essex. You 00:09:28.059 --> 00:09:30.539 have to picture Essex for us. Who was this guy? 00:09:30.659 --> 00:09:34.019 Essex is. He's everything Bacon isn't. He's dashing, 00:09:34.019 --> 00:09:36.919 military -minded, charismatic, impulsive, handsome. 00:09:37.220 --> 00:09:39.980 And most importantly, he is Queen Elizabeth's 00:09:39.980 --> 00:09:42.720 absolute favorite. The golden boy. He's the golden 00:09:42.720 --> 00:09:45.500 boy. She's old. He's young. There's this weird, 00:09:45.539 --> 00:09:47.940 intense, almost mother -son flirtatious energy 00:09:47.940 --> 00:09:50.889 between them. He has the queen's ear. And Bacon 00:09:50.889 --> 00:09:53.990 becomes his brain. Essentially, yes. Bacon becomes 00:09:53.990 --> 00:09:56.269 his advisor, his strategist, his speechwriter. 00:09:56.509 --> 00:09:59.549 And in return, Essex tries very, very hard to 00:09:59.549 --> 00:10:01.889 help Bacon. When the powerful job of attorney 00:10:01.889 --> 00:10:04.470 general opens up, Essex campaigns aggressively 00:10:04.470 --> 00:10:06.909 for Bacon to get it. He lobbies the queen. He 00:10:06.909 --> 00:10:08.830 makes a scene. He promises her anything. But 00:10:08.830 --> 00:10:11.450 Bacon loses. He loses to Edward Koch. And we 00:10:11.450 --> 00:10:13.789 need to put a giant pin in that name. Sir Edward 00:10:13.789 --> 00:10:16.809 Koch. The villain of the story. He's the antagonist, 00:10:16.830 --> 00:10:19.110 for sure. Koch was the greatest lawyer of the 00:10:19.110 --> 00:10:22.190 age, no question. A brilliant legal mind. But 00:10:22.190 --> 00:10:24.549 he was also rigid, aggressive, foul -tempered, 00:10:24.649 --> 00:10:28.370 and Bacon's lifelong rival. They hated each other. 00:10:28.610 --> 00:10:31.049 So Bacon loses the attorney general gig to Koch. 00:10:31.250 --> 00:10:33.509 Then he loses the solicitor general gig, too. 00:10:33.710 --> 00:10:37.049 He does. And Essex feels so guilty about his 00:10:37.049 --> 00:10:39.830 failure to help his friend that he gives Bacon 00:10:39.830 --> 00:10:42.309 a piece of land at Twickenham worth a small fortune. 00:10:42.529 --> 00:10:44.970 That is a good friend. Sorry you didn't get the 00:10:44.970 --> 00:10:47.299 job. Here's an estate. That creates a serious 00:10:47.299 --> 00:10:49.360 debt of loyalty, doesn't it? If my friend gives 00:10:49.360 --> 00:10:51.539 me a house, I feel like I owe him my back. It 00:10:51.539 --> 00:10:55.059 absolutely creates a debt. A massive one. And 00:10:55.059 --> 00:10:57.340 that is what makes the next part so shocking 00:10:57.340 --> 00:10:59.559 and so controversial. Because Essex was not a 00:10:59.559 --> 00:11:02.559 stable guy. Not at all. He was volatile. He was 00:11:02.559 --> 00:11:04.720 arrogant. He eventually fell out of favor with 00:11:04.720 --> 00:11:06.940 the Queen after a disastrous military campaign 00:11:06.940 --> 00:11:09.500 in Ireland. He came back against her orders. 00:11:10.220 --> 00:11:12.259 burst into her bedchamber before she had her 00:11:12.259 --> 00:11:15.340 wig on. A huge no -no. And then, in a moment 00:11:15.340 --> 00:11:17.559 of absolute madness, he attempted a coup. He 00:11:17.559 --> 00:11:19.580 tried to overthrow Queen Elizabeth. He tried 00:11:19.580 --> 00:11:21.539 to raise a rebellion in the streets of London. 00:11:21.720 --> 00:11:24.679 It was a complete shambles. It failed within 00:11:24.679 --> 00:11:27.480 hours. Essex is arrested and charged with high 00:11:27.480 --> 00:11:29.990 treason. So now Bacon is in the worst position 00:11:29.990 --> 00:11:32.929 imaginable. He is a lawyer for the crown. The 00:11:32.929 --> 00:11:35.649 queen is his ultimate boss. But the man in the 00:11:35.649 --> 00:11:39.009 cell is his patron, his benefactor, his best 00:11:39.009 --> 00:11:41.799 friend. And the queen knows this. She commands 00:11:41.799 --> 00:11:44.539 Bacon to be part of the legal team prosecuting 00:11:44.539 --> 00:11:47.700 Essex. She is testing his loyalty. She knows 00:11:47.700 --> 00:11:50.559 they were close. She wants to see in public where 00:11:50.559 --> 00:11:53.120 Bacon stands. And here's the choice. You defend 00:11:53.120 --> 00:11:54.600 your friend, or at least you recuse yourself, 00:11:54.860 --> 00:11:56.940 and you probably get destroyed politically. You 00:11:56.940 --> 00:11:59.000 might even be accused of being a co -conspirator. 00:11:59.159 --> 00:12:02.039 Or you prosecute your friend to save your own 00:12:02.039 --> 00:12:04.100 skin and get back in the Queen's good graces. 00:12:04.279 --> 00:12:06.799 Most people would understand staying silent. 00:12:07.289 --> 00:12:09.429 You know, finding an excuse to be sick that day, 00:12:09.529 --> 00:12:11.669 get out of town. But Bacon doesn't just do the 00:12:11.669 --> 00:12:14.590 bare minimum. The records show he went after 00:12:14.590 --> 00:12:17.809 Essex hard. He used his inside knowledge of Essex's 00:12:17.809 --> 00:12:20.789 plans against him. He did. He systematically 00:12:20.789 --> 00:12:24.549 dismantled Essex's defense. In his closing arguments, 00:12:24.690 --> 00:12:27.669 he compared his friend to Cain, the biblical 00:12:27.669 --> 00:12:30.850 murderer who killed his own brother. He was relentless 00:12:30.850 --> 00:12:33.350 in securing the conviction. Which led directly 00:12:33.350 --> 00:12:37.029 to Essex being executed, beheaded. Yep. That 00:12:37.029 --> 00:12:39.789 is cold. I mean, I understand self -preservation, 00:12:39.889 --> 00:12:42.149 but actively prosecuting the guy who gave you 00:12:42.149 --> 00:12:45.009 an estate, is there any defense for this? Or 00:12:45.009 --> 00:12:47.909 is he just a monster? Well, the Bacon apologists, 00:12:47.990 --> 00:12:50.870 and there are a few, would argue that Bacon believed 00:12:50.870 --> 00:12:53.190 in the stability of the state above all else. 00:12:53.470 --> 00:12:56.509 He genuinely saw Essex as a dangerous, reckless 00:12:56.509 --> 00:12:59.370 revolutionary who would plunge England into a 00:12:59.370 --> 00:13:01.559 bloody civil war. So in Bacon's mind, he was 00:13:01.559 --> 00:13:04.340 choosing the greater good over the private friendship. 00:13:04.440 --> 00:13:06.000 He was choosing the crown over the individual. 00:13:06.159 --> 00:13:08.240 That's the argument. He even wrote a pamphlet 00:13:08.240 --> 00:13:10.500 after the execution explaining his actions, trying 00:13:10.500 --> 00:13:12.679 to justify it. That sounds like a very convenient 00:13:12.679 --> 00:13:15.179 rationalization for saving your own neck. It 00:13:15.179 --> 00:13:19.019 does. And honestly, it didn't even work that 00:13:19.019 --> 00:13:21.399 well for him. He got the conviction Essex was 00:13:21.399 --> 00:13:24.360 beheaded, but the public hated Bacon for it. 00:13:28.950 --> 00:13:32.169 It sets up this pattern, doesn't it? Bacon is 00:13:32.169 --> 00:13:34.570 capable of these incredibly high -minded ideals, 00:13:34.929 --> 00:13:38.889 the state, the truth, human progress, but also 00:13:38.889 --> 00:13:41.509 this incredible moral flexibility when his own 00:13:41.509 --> 00:13:44.309 career is on the line. He's a master of compartmentalization. 00:13:44.629 --> 00:13:47.070 He can shut off the friend part of his brain 00:13:47.070 --> 00:13:49.409 and turn on the lawyer part. And that ability 00:13:49.409 --> 00:13:51.970 to separate things, to detach, is actually the 00:13:51.970 --> 00:13:54.450 key to his philosophy, isn't it? While all this 00:13:54.450 --> 00:13:56.490 political drama is happening, he's essentially 00:13:56.490 --> 00:13:58.710 rewriting the rule book on how human beings are 00:13:58.710 --> 00:14:00.970 supposed to think. Let's shift to the light side. 00:14:01.529 --> 00:14:04.190 The philosophy. Right. So keep in mind, while 00:14:04.190 --> 00:14:06.309 he's hustling for jobs and prosecuting friends, 00:14:06.509 --> 00:14:09.129 he is constantly writing. He publishes his masterpiece, 00:14:09.429 --> 00:14:12.350 the Novum Organum, in 1620. Which translates 00:14:12.350 --> 00:14:14.789 to the new instrument or the new tool. Which 00:14:14.789 --> 00:14:16.809 is a direct jab at Aristotle, whose collection 00:14:16.809 --> 00:14:19.190 of works on logic were known as the Organon or 00:14:19.190 --> 00:14:22.950 the instrument. Exactly. Bacon is saying, that 00:14:22.950 --> 00:14:25.429 was the old broken tool. Here is the new one. 00:14:26.110 --> 00:14:30.220 And the core of this new tool is induction. We 00:14:30.220 --> 00:14:32.100 touched on this with the horse teeth, but let's 00:14:32.100 --> 00:14:34.539 really clarify the difference for everyone. What 00:14:34.539 --> 00:14:37.179 is the fundamental difference between the old 00:14:37.179 --> 00:14:40.059 science and Bacon's new science? The old science, 00:14:40.179 --> 00:14:42.980 deduction, moves from the general to the specific. 00:14:43.360 --> 00:14:46.460 You start with a big assumed rule. All heavy 00:14:46.460 --> 00:14:48.940 objects fall faster than light objects because 00:14:48.940 --> 00:14:51.940 Aristotle said so, and you apply it. If you see 00:14:51.940 --> 00:14:53.960 a cannonball and a feather fall at the same rate 00:14:53.960 --> 00:14:56.120 in a vacuum, you assume your eyes are lying or 00:14:56.120 --> 00:14:57.919 it's some kind of trick. The theory is king. 00:14:58.120 --> 00:14:59.940 The theory is king. Bacon flipped it entirely. 00:15:00.159 --> 00:15:01.720 He said, start with the specifics. Start with 00:15:01.720 --> 00:15:03.679 the particulars. Forget what you think you know. 00:15:03.759 --> 00:15:06.200 Go out and gather the data first. Drop a thousand 00:15:06.200 --> 00:15:08.580 different rocks. Watch a thousand birds. Record 00:15:08.580 --> 00:15:10.820 the tides for a year. Collect, collect, collect. 00:15:11.179 --> 00:15:14.019 And only then, after you have mountains of data, 00:15:14.159 --> 00:15:16.639 can you carefully start to form a general rule. 00:15:17.419 --> 00:15:20.389 Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. That 00:15:20.389 --> 00:15:23.190 is the quote. And it's so profound. You can't 00:15:23.190 --> 00:15:25.830 force nature to fit your theories. You have to 00:15:25.830 --> 00:15:28.470 listen to nature first, be humble, and let it 00:15:28.470 --> 00:15:30.830 tell you how it works. And this is where his 00:15:30.830 --> 00:15:33.370 most famous and, I think, most useful concept 00:15:33.370 --> 00:15:36.129 comes in. To be a good scientist, Bacon said 00:15:36.129 --> 00:15:39.860 you have to first clear your mind of idols. The 00:15:39.860 --> 00:15:42.159 idols of the mind. This is my favorite part of 00:15:42.159 --> 00:15:44.779 his philosophy because it feels so startlingly 00:15:44.779 --> 00:15:47.080 modern. It's like he's a cognitive psychologist 00:15:47.080 --> 00:15:49.740 from the 21st century. It really is. He identified 00:15:49.740 --> 00:15:52.620 four mental blocks, four systemic biases that 00:15:52.620 --> 00:15:55.100 stop us from seeing the truth. These aren't golden 00:15:55.100 --> 00:15:57.620 statues. They are bugs in our mental software. 00:15:57.879 --> 00:16:00.159 There are systematic errors in how we process 00:16:00.159 --> 00:16:02.679 information. And he breaks them down into four 00:16:02.679 --> 00:16:04.860 brilliant categories, the idols of the tribe, 00:16:05.059 --> 00:16:08.299 the cave, the marketplace, and the theater. Let's 00:16:08.299 --> 00:16:09.799 walk through them because I think everyone listening 00:16:09.799 --> 00:16:11.720 is going to recognize these in their own lives, 00:16:11.799 --> 00:16:13.919 maybe even in their own social media feeds from 00:16:13.919 --> 00:16:16.879 this morning. First up, idols of the tribe, idola 00:16:16.879 --> 00:16:19.559 tribus. So this doesn't refer to a specific tribe. 00:16:19.840 --> 00:16:22.700 It refers to the tribe of humanity. These are 00:16:22.700 --> 00:16:25.179 errors inherent to being a human being. They're 00:16:25.179 --> 00:16:27.580 built into our biology, our hardware. Like what? 00:16:28.480 --> 00:16:31.490 Well, for one. Our senses are imperfect and they 00:16:31.490 --> 00:16:33.909 can deceive us. But more importantly, we are 00:16:33.909 --> 00:16:36.490 hardwired to see patterns where there aren't 00:16:36.490 --> 00:16:39.210 any. We see a face in the clouds. We think a 00:16:39.210 --> 00:16:41.610 sports player is on a hot streak when it's just 00:16:41.610 --> 00:16:45.049 random chance. We see conspiracies and coincidences. 00:16:45.230 --> 00:16:47.210 And confirmation bias, that's the big one from 00:16:47.210 --> 00:16:49.610 this category. That's the absolute killer. Bacon 00:16:49.610 --> 00:16:52.110 nailed this. He wrote, the human understanding, 00:16:52.330 --> 00:16:55.129 when it has once adopted an opinion, draws all 00:16:55.129 --> 00:16:58.100 things else to support and agree with it. If 00:16:58.100 --> 00:17:00.080 you believe something, you will actively look 00:17:00.080 --> 00:17:02.840 for evidence that supports it, and you will unconsciously 00:17:02.840 --> 00:17:06.039 ignore, dismiss, or forget evidence that contradicts 00:17:06.039 --> 00:17:08.819 it. He saw that 400 years before modern psychology 00:17:08.819 --> 00:17:11.240 gave it a name and ran experiments on it. It's 00:17:11.240 --> 00:17:13.579 astounding. Okay, so that's the tribe. Number 00:17:13.579 --> 00:17:17.539 two, idols of the cave, idolospicus. This is 00:17:17.539 --> 00:17:20.480 individual. Think of Plato's cave. Each of us 00:17:20.480 --> 00:17:22.599 lives in our own little private cave of personal 00:17:22.599 --> 00:17:25.559 experience. Your upbringing. Your education, 00:17:25.720 --> 00:17:27.799 the country you live in, the books you read, 00:17:27.880 --> 00:17:30.259 the friends you have. All of this shapes your 00:17:30.259 --> 00:17:33.420 unique perspective and creates specific biases. 00:17:33.799 --> 00:17:35.920 So if I'm a hammer, everything looks like a nail. 00:17:36.680 --> 00:17:39.579 Precisely. If you are a chemist. You might try 00:17:39.579 --> 00:17:42.180 to explain all of human behavior through chemical 00:17:42.180 --> 00:17:45.619 reactions, ignoring sociology or economics. If 00:17:45.619 --> 00:17:47.660 you grew up in a very religious household, you 00:17:47.660 --> 00:17:49.740 see the world through that lens. If you grew 00:17:49.740 --> 00:17:51.680 up in a very secular one, you see it through 00:17:51.680 --> 00:17:54.000 another. You are trapped in the cave of your 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:56.480 own limited experience. Today, we call this the 00:17:56.480 --> 00:17:59.319 echo chamber or the algorithmic bubble. The news 00:17:59.319 --> 00:18:01.299 feed that only shows you what you already like. 00:18:01.630 --> 00:18:03.769 The YouTube recommendations that pull you deeper 00:18:03.769 --> 00:18:07.089 down one rabbit hole, that is a digital idol 00:18:07.089 --> 00:18:09.349 of the cave. It's the perfect modern analogy. 00:18:09.549 --> 00:18:11.650 It's terrifyingly accurate. All right, number 00:18:11.650 --> 00:18:15.769 three, idols of the marketplace, idolafory. Bacon 00:18:15.769 --> 00:18:17.430 thought this was the most troublesome one of 00:18:17.430 --> 00:18:20.410 all. This idol arises from the exchange of words, 00:18:20.549 --> 00:18:22.730 the marketplace of communication and debate. 00:18:22.970 --> 00:18:25.430 It's about language. It's about the slipperiness 00:18:25.430 --> 00:18:29.130 of language. Words are imprecise. We use the 00:18:29.130 --> 00:18:31.460 same word to mean different things. We argue 00:18:31.460 --> 00:18:33.640 for hours without realizing we've defined our 00:18:33.640 --> 00:18:35.440 terms differently. It's more than just semantics, 00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:37.819 though, isn't it? It's much deeper. It's when 00:18:37.819 --> 00:18:41.220 language actively distorts reality. We create 00:18:41.220 --> 00:18:43.759 words for things that don't really exist, like 00:18:43.759 --> 00:18:46.559 luck or fortune, and then we start treating them 00:18:46.559 --> 00:18:49.440 as real forces. Or we lack words for things that 00:18:49.440 --> 00:18:52.000 do exist. Look at any heated political debate. 00:18:52.140 --> 00:18:54.720 Someone says freedom. Oh, boy. One side means 00:18:54.720 --> 00:18:56.640 freedom from government regulation. The other 00:18:56.640 --> 00:18:59.369 means freedom from poverty and want. They get 00:18:59.369 --> 00:19:01.210 red in the face shouting at each other, assuming 00:19:01.210 --> 00:19:03.190 they're talking about the same thing, but they 00:19:03.190 --> 00:19:05.230 aren't. They're just throwing words, these idols, 00:19:05.349 --> 00:19:12.190 at each other. These are the false dogmas of 00:19:12.190 --> 00:19:15.789 grand philosophical or ideological systems. Bacon 00:19:15.789 --> 00:19:18.390 called them theater because he said these systems, 00:19:18.410 --> 00:19:21.970 like Aristotle's or alchemy or astrology, were 00:19:21.970 --> 00:19:24.690 like stage plays. They created these elaborate 00:19:24.690 --> 00:19:28.339 fictional worlds. that looked coherent internally 00:19:28.339 --> 00:19:31.240 they had their own script their own characters 00:19:31.240 --> 00:19:33.900 their own rules of logic But they had no relation 00:19:33.900 --> 00:19:36.519 to reality. It was just performances. This is 00:19:36.519 --> 00:19:39.579 ideology. When you buy into a system so completely, 00:19:39.819 --> 00:19:42.180 whether it's Marxism or libertarianism or any 00:19:42.180 --> 00:19:44.539 -o -ism, that you stop checking if it actually 00:19:44.539 --> 00:19:46.519 works in the real world. You're just living inside 00:19:46.519 --> 00:19:49.759 the play. Exactly. So Bacon's solution, his scientific 00:19:49.759 --> 00:19:52.740 method, was essentially a mental hygiene routine. 00:19:52.819 --> 00:19:55.500 It was a way to debug the human mind. He wanted 00:19:55.500 --> 00:19:58.079 us to constantly ask ourselves, am I believing 00:19:58.079 --> 00:20:00.740 this because it's true? Or is it because my tribe 00:20:00.740 --> 00:20:03.180 is hardwired to believe it? Or because my cave 00:20:03.180 --> 00:20:05.119 has reinforced it? Or because the words in the 00:20:05.119 --> 00:20:07.619 marketplace have confused me? Or am I just watching 00:20:07.619 --> 00:20:10.440 a very convincing theater play? It's an incredible 00:20:10.440 --> 00:20:13.200 checklist for critical thinking. And his goal 00:20:13.200 --> 00:20:15.059 with all this wasn't just to be smart for the 00:20:15.059 --> 00:20:17.700 sake of it. It was part of a grand plan he called 00:20:17.700 --> 00:20:20.460 the Great Instauration. He wanted to rebuild 00:20:20.460 --> 00:20:23.000 all human knowledge from the ground up. He had 00:20:23.000 --> 00:20:25.680 a six -part plan to basically reboot civilization. 00:20:26.019 --> 00:20:28.549 He categorized everything. History. which relies 00:20:28.549 --> 00:20:31.329 on memory, poetry, which relies on imagination, 00:20:31.650 --> 00:20:34.730 and philosophy, which for him included science, 00:20:35.009 --> 00:20:37.630 which relies on reason. He wanted to build a 00:20:37.630 --> 00:20:40.309 foundation so solid that humanity could regain 00:20:40.309 --> 00:20:42.130 the dominion over nature that was lost in the 00:20:42.130 --> 00:20:44.190 Garden of Eden. He saw it as a religious duty, 00:20:44.349 --> 00:20:47.210 didn't he? Deeply. He believed science was a 00:20:47.210 --> 00:20:49.549 way to serve God by relieving the suffering of 00:20:49.549 --> 00:20:52.950 mankind. He wanted to cure diseases, stop famines, 00:20:52.950 --> 00:20:55.410 build better cities. His goal was always practical. 00:20:56.230 --> 00:20:59.450 So on one hand, we have this noble, almost saintly 00:20:59.450 --> 00:21:02.549 vision of serving humanity through pure, unbiased 00:21:02.549 --> 00:21:05.309 reason. And then we have to go back to the man 00:21:05.309 --> 00:21:07.630 himself, because while he is writing about clearing 00:21:07.630 --> 00:21:10.230 the mind of idols, he is also climbing the greasy 00:21:10.230 --> 00:21:13.369 pole of politics under King James I. And he is 00:21:13.369 --> 00:21:15.769 about to have a very, very big fall. The rise 00:21:15.769 --> 00:21:17.990 under James is spectacular. Queen Elizabeth dies 00:21:17.990 --> 00:21:21.049 in 1603. James I of England comes down from Scotland. 00:21:21.190 --> 00:21:24.069 And Bacon knows exactly how to play him. James 00:21:24.069 --> 00:21:26.069 fancies himself a great scholar, a philosopher 00:21:26.069 --> 00:21:28.490 king. So Bacon butters him up. Oh, absolutely. 00:21:28.710 --> 00:21:31.390 He flatters him, writes philosophical tracts 00:21:31.390 --> 00:21:33.849 dedicated to him, and it works. He gets knighted. 00:21:33.869 --> 00:21:36.049 He becomes solicitor general. Then finally, he 00:21:36.049 --> 00:21:38.069 gets the job he always wanted, attorney general. 00:21:38.210 --> 00:21:40.950 He beat Coke to it this time. And then in 1618, 00:21:41.190 --> 00:21:43.430 he reaches the absolute summit. He becomes Lord 00:21:43.430 --> 00:21:45.569 Chancellor. The job his father had. The job his 00:21:45.569 --> 00:21:48.930 father had, but with even more prestige. He's 00:21:48.930 --> 00:21:52.319 given titles. Baron Verulam, the Viscount St. 00:21:52.420 --> 00:21:55.799 Alban. He is, for a time, the most powerful and 00:21:55.799 --> 00:21:58.160 influential man in England next to the king in 00:21:58.160 --> 00:22:00.220 his favorite. And he starts living like it. Oh, 00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:04.019 the spending. Bacon was notoriously, catastrophically 00:22:04.019 --> 00:22:06.500 bad with money. He had a retinue of servants. 00:22:06.619 --> 00:22:08.579 There was basically a small army, all dressed 00:22:08.579 --> 00:22:11.019 in lavish livery. He threw parties. There were 00:22:11.019 --> 00:22:13.279 the talk of London. He was constantly building 00:22:13.279 --> 00:22:15.200 and renovating his house. It was always in debt. 00:22:15.380 --> 00:22:17.619 Always. Even when he was earning a fortune, he 00:22:17.619 --> 00:22:20.390 spent more. And that... Constant desperate need 00:22:20.390 --> 00:22:22.730 for cash, combined with the way business was 00:22:22.730 --> 00:22:24.910 done back then, set the stage for the crash. 00:22:25.509 --> 00:22:28.690 1621. The crash, it happens fast, isn't it? It's 00:22:28.690 --> 00:22:32.069 instantaneous, like a lightning strike. A parliamentary 00:22:32.069 --> 00:22:34.569 committee starts investigating corruption in 00:22:34.569 --> 00:22:37.210 the courts. And guess who is in parliament leading 00:22:37.210 --> 00:22:39.930 the charge? We say it's Koch. It is Sir Edward 00:22:39.930 --> 00:22:43.430 Koch, his old rival. He has been waiting decades 00:22:43.430 --> 00:22:45.730 for this moment. He's now in the House of Commons, 00:22:45.809 --> 00:22:50.049 and he smells blood. He finds witnesses, disgruntled 00:22:50.049 --> 00:22:52.750 litigants who are willing to testify that Bacon 00:22:52.750 --> 00:22:55.430 accepted gifts while their cases were pending 00:22:55.430 --> 00:22:57.509 before him at the court of chancery. Let's get 00:22:57.509 --> 00:22:59.349 specific. What are we talking about here? Is 00:22:59.349 --> 00:23:01.769 this like brown envelopes of cash? Essentially, 00:23:01.950 --> 00:23:04.569 yes. In one case, a set of expensive gold buttons. 00:23:04.849 --> 00:23:07.250 In another, a cabinet worth hundreds of pounds. 00:23:07.369 --> 00:23:10.349 In another, just hard currency. The charge sheet 00:23:10.349 --> 00:23:12.730 eventually listed 23 separate counts of corruption. 00:23:12.990 --> 00:23:15.849 So he's caught red -handed. Now, usually a politician... 00:23:16.279 --> 00:23:19.220 in this spot would deny, deny, deny. It was a 00:23:19.220 --> 00:23:21.099 loan. It was a gift from a friend. I never saw 00:23:21.099 --> 00:23:24.000 that money. What does Bacon do? He collapses. 00:23:24.039 --> 00:23:27.019 He confesses. But, and here are the new ones 00:23:27.019 --> 00:23:29.359 that just makes your brain melt. He makes a very 00:23:29.359 --> 00:23:33.160 specific, very Baconian defense. He writes a 00:23:33.160 --> 00:23:35.619 statement, and in it is this incredible quote. 00:23:36.579 --> 00:23:39.759 I was the justice judge that was in England these 00:23:39.759 --> 00:23:42.819 50 years, but it was the justice censure in Parliament 00:23:42.819 --> 00:23:45.200 that was these 200 years. Translate that for 00:23:45.200 --> 00:23:47.569 me. I'm the best judge there ever was, but I 00:23:47.569 --> 00:23:50.210 totally deserve to be fired. How does that work? 00:23:50.430 --> 00:23:52.609 It's his compartmentalization again. He was admitting 00:23:52.609 --> 00:23:54.950 that, yes, he took the money. He acknowledged 00:23:54.950 --> 00:23:56.950 that taking gifts was technically against the 00:23:56.950 --> 00:23:58.410 rules that gave the appearance of corruption, 00:23:58.630 --> 00:24:00.410 even though it was common custom at the time. 00:24:00.569 --> 00:24:03.369 So the censure from Parliament was just. Okay. 00:24:03.609 --> 00:24:06.369 But his defense was that he never let it influence 00:24:06.369 --> 00:24:08.630 his judgment. How can you take money from a guy 00:24:08.630 --> 00:24:10.210 who has a case in front of you and say it didn't 00:24:10.210 --> 00:24:12.630 influence you? That's impossible. Bacon pointed 00:24:12.630 --> 00:24:15.880 out. and the record seems to back this up, that 00:24:15.880 --> 00:24:18.380 in several cases he took the bribe and then ruled 00:24:18.380 --> 00:24:20.480 against the person who paid him. That's his. 00:24:21.359 --> 00:24:23.700 That's wild. I took his money, but I still made 00:24:23.700 --> 00:24:26.539 him lose, so that proves I'm honest. In Bacon's 00:24:26.539 --> 00:24:29.400 mind, his intellect was so pure, so detached, 00:24:29.680 --> 00:24:32.440 so free of idols, that he could separate the 00:24:32.440 --> 00:24:35.160 gift from the legal merits of the case. He thought, 00:24:35.220 --> 00:24:37.380 I can take this cash because I need it for my 00:24:37.380 --> 00:24:40.039 servants and my fancy house, but I will still 00:24:40.039 --> 00:24:42.309 judge the law according to the truth. It's the 00:24:42.309 --> 00:24:44.750 ultimate intellectual arrogance. He thought he 00:24:44.750 --> 00:24:47.589 was above human nature. He forgot the most basic 00:24:47.589 --> 00:24:49.990 idol of the tribe, that he was human too. And 00:24:49.990 --> 00:24:53.329 Parliament didn't buy it. Or at least, they couldn't 00:24:53.329 --> 00:24:55.789 afford to ignore it publicly. He was fined an 00:24:55.789 --> 00:24:59.250 astronomical 40 ,000 pounds, sentenced to imprisonment 00:24:59.250 --> 00:25:01.329 in the Tower of London, though the king let him 00:25:01.329 --> 00:25:04.450 out after just a few days, and most devastatingly, 00:25:04.450 --> 00:25:06.430 banned from holding public office ever again. 00:25:06.549 --> 00:25:09.640 His career was over. Dead. No, there is a theory 00:25:09.640 --> 00:25:11.180 that he was a scapegoat. We should mention that. 00:25:11.319 --> 00:25:13.960 Yes, this is important. The king's favorite at 00:25:13.960 --> 00:25:16.380 the time was the Duke of Buckingham, George Villiers. 00:25:16.660 --> 00:25:20.099 And Buckingham was deeply, openly corrupt. Way 00:25:20.099 --> 00:25:22.880 more than Bacon. Many historians believe Parliament 00:25:22.880 --> 00:25:25.119 was really aiming for Buckingham, and the king 00:25:25.119 --> 00:25:27.539 sacrificed Bacon to satisfy their bloodlust. 00:25:27.680 --> 00:25:29.640 Here, take the Lord Chancellor and leave my favorite 00:25:29.640 --> 00:25:32.740 alone. Exactly. Bacon took the fall. But there 00:25:32.740 --> 00:25:34.720 might be another reason he folded so quickly. 00:25:35.150 --> 00:25:37.410 Another reason he didn't fight the charges more 00:25:37.410 --> 00:25:41.990 vaguely. And this brings us into his private 00:25:41.990 --> 00:25:45.210 life, because if bribery got you fired, there 00:25:45.210 --> 00:25:47.710 was something else in his closet that could get 00:25:47.710 --> 00:25:50.130 him killed. We have to talk about his sexuality. 00:25:50.529 --> 00:25:53.230 This is an area of intense historical debate, 00:25:53.369 --> 00:25:57.250 but the primary sources are quite loud about 00:25:57.250 --> 00:25:59.299 it. They are. First, let's look at his marriage. 00:25:59.460 --> 00:26:02.180 He did eventually marry a woman named Alice Barnum 00:26:02.180 --> 00:26:05.220 when he was 45 and she was 14. Which is, yikes. 00:26:05.380 --> 00:26:07.460 Even for the time, that was a very wide gap. 00:26:07.640 --> 00:26:09.980 And while some sources say it started with much 00:26:09.980 --> 00:26:12.839 conjugal love, he designed a robe of honor for 00:26:12.839 --> 00:26:15.720 her that she supposedly wore for 20 years. It 00:26:15.720 --> 00:26:18.660 disintegrated over time. Why? Bacon was difficult, 00:26:18.859 --> 00:26:21.500 obsessive with his work, and always broke. He 00:26:21.500 --> 00:26:23.920 was probably not an easy man to live with. Alice 00:26:23.920 --> 00:26:26.119 eventually sought affection elsewhere. She had 00:26:26.119 --> 00:26:28.440 an affair with a Sir John Underhill. And Bacon's 00:26:28.440 --> 00:26:31.559 reaction when he found out was ruthless. Completely. 00:26:31.619 --> 00:26:34.839 He immediately wrote her out of his will, disinherited 00:26:34.839 --> 00:26:36.859 her, revoked everything he'd planned to leave 00:26:36.859 --> 00:26:39.980 her. He left her with nothing. But the marriage 00:26:39.980 --> 00:26:42.660 itself might have been, for him, an attempt to 00:26:42.660 --> 00:26:45.920 conform, to put up a conventional front. Because 00:26:45.920 --> 00:26:48.140 the rumors about Bacon and men were constant 00:26:48.140 --> 00:26:50.779 throughout his life. What do the sources actually 00:26:50.779 --> 00:26:52.819 say? Because often history books just sort of 00:26:52.819 --> 00:26:54.900 say he never married until late and leave it 00:26:54.900 --> 00:26:57.069 at that. Well, John Aubrey, who wrote the famous 00:26:57.069 --> 00:26:59.589 Brief Lives a few decades after Bacon's death, 00:26:59.809 --> 00:27:03.390 didn't minch words. He called Bacon a pederast. 00:27:03.730 --> 00:27:06.269 He noted that Bacon's Ganymedes and favorites 00:27:06.269 --> 00:27:09.740 took bribes. Ganymedes refers to Ganymede, the 00:27:09.740 --> 00:27:11.920 beautiful young cupbearer to Zeus in Greek myth. 00:27:12.099 --> 00:27:14.519 It was common code for young male lovers. And 00:27:14.519 --> 00:27:16.799 there are diaries too, right? Contemporary accounts. 00:27:17.039 --> 00:27:19.819 Yes. A Puritan diarist named Sir Simons Dewes 00:27:19.819 --> 00:27:21.880 wrote about Bacon's downfall and mentioned his 00:27:21.880 --> 00:27:24.299 catamite and bedfellow, a Welsh servant named 00:27:24.299 --> 00:27:27.559 Henry Godric. Even Bacon's own mother, the formidable 00:27:27.559 --> 00:27:30.059 Lady Anne, wrote letters to his brother complaining 00:27:30.059 --> 00:27:32.799 about Francis's bed companion named Percy. She 00:27:32.799 --> 00:27:35.119 was distraught. She said he was keeping unsuitable 00:27:35.119 --> 00:27:37.859 company in his bedchamber. And in Jacobean England, 00:27:38.119 --> 00:27:41.160 sodomy wasn't just a sin, it was a felony. It 00:27:41.160 --> 00:27:43.119 was a capital offense. You could be hanged for 00:27:43.119 --> 00:27:46.660 it. It was called the unspeakable crime. Bacon's 00:27:46.660 --> 00:27:49.059 own older brother, Anthony, had been charged 00:27:49.059 --> 00:27:51.859 with sodomy in France years earlier and had to 00:27:51.859 --> 00:27:55.220 flee. It was a terrifying prospect. So this leads 00:27:55.220 --> 00:27:58.420 to the blackmail theory. Exactly. Some historians 00:27:58.420 --> 00:28:01.000 speculate that the real reason Bacon confessed 00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:03.839 to bribery so quickly The reason he didn't put 00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:06.559 up a fight and drag it out was that his enemies, 00:28:06.720 --> 00:28:09.059 like Koch, were holding the sodomy charge in 00:28:09.059 --> 00:28:12.460 reserve. The implied threat was, confess to the 00:28:12.460 --> 00:28:14.700 corruption or we start talking about your bedfellows. 00:28:14.759 --> 00:28:16.839 A bribery charge gets you fired and disgraced. 00:28:16.859 --> 00:28:19.400 A sodomy charge gets you executed and damned 00:28:19.400 --> 00:28:22.700 for eternity. So he took the lesser fall. It 00:28:22.700 --> 00:28:24.920 adds a whole new layer of tragedy and complexity 00:28:24.920 --> 00:28:27.930 to the story. He was a man trapped by the laws 00:28:27.930 --> 00:28:30.789 and prejudices of his time, even as his mind 00:28:30.789 --> 00:28:33.029 was trying to free all of humanity from prejudice. 00:28:33.210 --> 00:28:35.650 So he's disgraced. He's out of office. He's broke. 00:28:35.789 --> 00:28:37.869 He's vulnerable. What does he do with his final 00:28:37.869 --> 00:28:39.970 years? He does what he always wanted to do his 00:28:39.970 --> 00:28:42.569 whole life. He's finally free from the hustle. 00:28:42.670 --> 00:28:46.009 He spends his final five years revising his famous 00:28:46.009 --> 00:28:48.410 essays, working on a history of King Henry VII, 00:28:48.630 --> 00:28:51.710 and writing his utopian book, New Atlantis. New 00:28:51.710 --> 00:28:54.609 Atlantis is his vision for a perfect society. 00:28:55.009 --> 00:28:57.869 It is. It depicts a lost island called Ben Salem. 00:28:58.430 --> 00:29:00.589 And the center of this island isn't a palace 00:29:00.589 --> 00:29:03.170 or a church. It's a massive research institute 00:29:03.170 --> 00:29:06.250 called Solomon's House. What's it like? It's 00:29:06.250 --> 00:29:08.690 basically the dream of a modern scientist. They 00:29:08.690 --> 00:29:10.829 have labs for every conceivable purpose. They 00:29:10.829 --> 00:29:12.950 have experiments running constantly. They have 00:29:12.950 --> 00:29:14.950 teams of scientists who collaborate and share 00:29:14.950 --> 00:29:17.710 information. It is the blueprint for the modern 00:29:17.710 --> 00:29:20.690 research university or for institutions like 00:29:20.690 --> 00:29:23.009 the Royal Society, which was founded a few decades 00:29:23.009 --> 00:29:26.250 later and was explicitly inspired by Bacon's 00:29:26.250 --> 00:29:28.710 vision. So even in disgrace, he's still dreaming 00:29:28.710 --> 00:29:31.299 of the future. But we have to talk about how 00:29:31.299 --> 00:29:34.180 he died because it is possibly the most Francis 00:29:34.180 --> 00:29:36.680 Bacon death imaginable. It's almost too perfect. 00:29:36.819 --> 00:29:41.160 It's mythic. It is the perfect end to his story. 00:29:41.900 --> 00:29:46.140 It's April 1626. Bacon is 65. He's riding in 00:29:46.140 --> 00:29:49.319 a carriage near Highgate in North London. There's 00:29:49.319 --> 00:29:52.200 snow on the ground, an unusual spring snowstorm. 00:29:52.660 --> 00:29:55.440 He's with the king's physician. And suddenly, 00:29:55.559 --> 00:29:58.420 Bacon's brain kicks in. He has a hypothesis. 00:29:58.799 --> 00:30:00.819 He starts thinking about preservation. Right. 00:30:01.059 --> 00:30:03.339 He knows that salt is used to preserve meat. 00:30:03.740 --> 00:30:05.559 And he looks out at the snow and he wonders, 00:30:05.759 --> 00:30:08.180 does snow preserve flesh in the same way salt 00:30:08.180 --> 00:30:11.859 does? Can cold halt the process of decay? He's 00:30:11.859 --> 00:30:14.140 thinking about refrigeration centuries before 00:30:14.140 --> 00:30:16.519 Frigidaire. And unlike the Aristotelians who 00:30:16.519 --> 00:30:17.900 would just sit in the carriage and have a nice 00:30:17.900 --> 00:30:20.880 long debate about it, Bacon acts. He yells, stop 00:30:20.880 --> 00:30:22.799 the carriage. They get out. They go to a poor 00:30:22.799 --> 00:30:24.559 woman's cottage at the bottom of Highgate Hill. 00:30:24.640 --> 00:30:27.430 They buy a hen. They have the woman gut it. And 00:30:27.430 --> 00:30:29.569 then Francis Bacon, the former Lord Chancellor 00:30:29.569 --> 00:30:31.890 of England, the Viscount of St. Alban, stands 00:30:31.890 --> 00:30:34.150 in the snow and stuffs this chicken carcass with 00:30:34.150 --> 00:30:36.269 snow with his own bare hands. He is literally 00:30:36.269 --> 00:30:38.269 conducting an experiment on the side of the road 00:30:38.269 --> 00:30:41.150 in the freezing cold. And it kills him. He catches 00:30:41.150 --> 00:30:44.269 a sudden, violent chill, almost certainly pneumonia. 00:30:44.849 --> 00:30:47.349 He's immediately too sick to travel back home. 00:30:47.710 --> 00:30:50.009 So they take him to the nearby house of the Earl 00:30:50.009 --> 00:30:52.250 of Arundel. And here is the dark comedy of it 00:30:52.250 --> 00:30:55.829 all. The Earl is away. The Earl is actually imprisoned 00:30:55.829 --> 00:30:58.509 in the Tower of London at the time. So the servants 00:30:58.509 --> 00:31:00.509 don't quite know what to do with this great man 00:31:00.509 --> 00:31:02.569 who has shown up on their doorstep, shivering. 00:31:03.089 --> 00:31:06.549 They put Bacon in the grandest guest room. But 00:31:06.549 --> 00:31:08.650 the bed hasn't been slept in for a year. It is 00:31:08.650 --> 00:31:11.589 damp. It is cold. So he goes from the freezing 00:31:11.589 --> 00:31:14.150 snow to a wet, freezing bed. Which is the worst 00:31:14.150 --> 00:31:16.569 possible thing for pneumonia. And he dies a few 00:31:16.569 --> 00:31:19.269 days later. But not before one last act. But, 00:31:19.269 --> 00:31:21.470 and this is why you have to love him, in a way, 00:31:21.470 --> 00:31:24.170 on his deathbed. He dictates one last letter. 00:31:24.549 --> 00:31:26.549 He writes to his friend, the Earl of Arundel. 00:31:26.630 --> 00:31:28.609 He apologizes for being such an inconvenient 00:31:28.609 --> 00:31:31.349 house guest and dying in his house. And he compares 00:31:31.349 --> 00:31:33.869 himself to Pliny the Elder, the great Roman naturalist 00:31:33.869 --> 00:31:35.690 who died trying to observe the eruption of Mount 00:31:35.690 --> 00:31:37.890 Vesuvius. And then he writes his final triumphant 00:31:37.890 --> 00:31:41.009 line. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded 00:31:41.009 --> 00:31:43.609 excellently well. He wanted to make sure everyone 00:31:43.609 --> 00:31:46.670 knew the chicken was preserved, the data was 00:31:46.670 --> 00:31:49.880 good. He died for the data. A martyr to experimental 00:31:49.880 --> 00:31:53.480 science. That is just an incredible story. So 00:31:53.480 --> 00:31:56.259 let's widen the lens as we wrap up. What is the 00:31:56.259 --> 00:31:58.640 legacy here? Obviously, the scientific method 00:31:58.640 --> 00:32:00.400 is the big one. If you're a scientist today, 00:32:00.480 --> 00:32:02.480 you're a Baconian, whether you know it or not. 00:32:02.640 --> 00:32:06.009 Absolutely. That's the headline. His influence 00:32:06.009 --> 00:32:09.230 goes beyond the lab. He was a guiding spirit 00:32:09.230 --> 00:32:12.029 in the colonization of the New World. He wrote 00:32:12.029 --> 00:32:14.150 reports on the Virginia colony on Newfoundland. 00:32:14.329 --> 00:32:17.069 He believed in expanding the English reach and 00:32:17.069 --> 00:32:19.589 using the new lands for discovery. There's actually 00:32:19.589 --> 00:32:22.369 a Newfoundland postage stamp that commemorates 00:32:22.369 --> 00:32:24.250 him. And the American founding fathers were obsessed 00:32:24.250 --> 00:32:26.329 with him. Thomas Jefferson commissioned portraits 00:32:26.329 --> 00:32:28.990 of three men to hang in his office at Monticello. 00:32:29.579 --> 00:32:32.259 John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon. 00:32:32.420 --> 00:32:34.740 He called them the three greatest men that have 00:32:34.740 --> 00:32:37.319 ever lived. He believed Bacon laid the foundation 00:32:37.319 --> 00:32:40.000 for the rational, evidence -based thinking that 00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:42.160 made the American Republic possible. We should 00:32:42.160 --> 00:32:43.799 probably briefly mention the Shakespeare thing 00:32:43.799 --> 00:32:46.119 just because people will ask. The Baconian theory. 00:32:46.359 --> 00:32:49.900 Right. The idea that Bacon secretly wrote Shakespeare's 00:32:49.900 --> 00:32:53.279 plays. It started in the mid -19th century. People 00:32:53.279 --> 00:32:56.220 looked at Bacon's towering genius, his legal 00:32:56.220 --> 00:33:06.289 knowledge, his court experience, and said, But 00:33:06.289 --> 00:33:10.390 what's the verdict from serious historians? It's 00:33:10.390 --> 00:33:13.089 a fringe theory. There's no real concrete evidence 00:33:13.089 --> 00:33:16.089 for it. But the fact that the theory even exists 00:33:16.089 --> 00:33:18.809 shows you how highly people rate Bacon's intellect. 00:33:19.190 --> 00:33:21.630 They think if anyone could have secretly been 00:33:21.630 --> 00:33:24.309 Shakespeare, it's him. It's a testament to his 00:33:24.309 --> 00:33:26.839 reputation. And the Rosicrucians. The secret 00:33:26.839 --> 00:33:29.119 societies. That's a bit stickier. His book, New 00:33:29.119 --> 00:33:31.759 Atlantis, looks very Rosicrucian. This idea of 00:33:31.759 --> 00:33:33.319 a secret brotherhood of enlightened scholars 00:33:33.319 --> 00:33:36.099 guiding humanity from behind the scenes. Some 00:33:36.099 --> 00:33:37.920 people claim Bacon was a secret master of the 00:33:37.920 --> 00:33:40.119 order. Whether he's an actual card -carrying 00:33:40.119 --> 00:33:42.140 member or not is impossible to prove, but he 00:33:42.140 --> 00:33:43.880 certainly influenced their ideals of scientific 00:33:43.880 --> 00:33:47.039 progress and secret knowledge. So we have covered 00:33:47.039 --> 00:33:49.480 the hustle, the betrayal, the science, the corruption, 00:33:49.720 --> 00:33:52.500 the secrets, and the foes and chicken. When you 00:33:52.500 --> 00:33:55.099 step back and look at the whole life of Francis 00:33:55.099 --> 00:33:57.960 Bacon, What is the synthesis? What do we take 00:33:57.960 --> 00:34:00.059 away from all this? I think Bacon is the ultimate 00:34:00.059 --> 00:34:02.480 proof that intellect and character are two completely 00:34:02.480 --> 00:34:04.839 different things. You can have a mind that sees 00:34:04.839 --> 00:34:06.720 the universe more clearly than anyone else in 00:34:06.720 --> 00:34:09.260 history. You can map out the future of the human 00:34:09.260 --> 00:34:11.860 species. You can identify the idols that cloud 00:34:11.860 --> 00:34:14.380 our judgment. And you can still be a petty, ambitious, 00:34:14.599 --> 00:34:17.639 corrupt, and deeply flawed human being. He emphasized 00:34:17.639 --> 00:34:20.159 clean hands in science. Don't let your biases 00:34:20.159 --> 00:34:22.599 corrupt the data. But he could not keep his own 00:34:22.599 --> 00:34:25.480 hands clean in politics. And yet, without him. 00:34:25.929 --> 00:34:28.730 Where are we without his relentless push for 00:34:28.730 --> 00:34:31.289 utility, for practical results, for knowledge 00:34:31.289 --> 00:34:33.469 that works? Do we get the Industrial Revolution? 00:34:33.690 --> 00:34:35.610 Do we get antibiotics? Do we get the Internet? 00:34:35.789 --> 00:34:37.969 He broke the 2000 year old spell of Aristotle. 00:34:38.170 --> 00:34:40.349 He taught us to look at the world as it is, not 00:34:40.349 --> 00:34:42.710 as we wish it to be. It brings us right back 00:34:42.710 --> 00:34:45.909 to the idols. Bacon argued that we must clear 00:34:45.909 --> 00:34:48.510 our minds of idols to see the truth. But today, 00:34:48.710 --> 00:34:51.050 we live in a world that is practically built 00:34:51.050 --> 00:34:54.889 to generate idols on an industrial scale. Algorithms, 00:34:54.969 --> 00:34:58.949 echo chambers, 24 -hour news cycles, social media. 00:34:59.190 --> 00:35:02.510 We are drowning in idols of the cave and idols 00:35:02.510 --> 00:35:05.250 of the marketplace. It raises the really provocative 00:35:05.250 --> 00:35:07.130 question, the one I think he'd want us to ask. 00:35:07.230 --> 00:35:10.210 Are we actually capable? of the kind of clear, 00:35:10.329 --> 00:35:13.269 objective thinking that Bacon demanded? Or have 00:35:13.269 --> 00:35:16.369 we just traded the old idols, Aristotle and superstition, 00:35:16.389 --> 00:35:19.150 for new, more powerful digital ones? Are we just 00:35:19.150 --> 00:35:21.510 worshiping different statues in a different theater? 00:35:21.750 --> 00:35:23.929 That is a thought to chew on. Maybe the next 00:35:23.929 --> 00:35:26.090 time you see a hot take on the Internet or you 00:35:26.090 --> 00:35:28.150 feel that rush of I'm right and they are wrong, 00:35:28.250 --> 00:35:30.730 stop for a second and ask yourself, is this an 00:35:30.730 --> 00:35:33.210 idol of my tribe speaking or is this actually 00:35:33.210 --> 00:35:35.210 the truth? And remember, if you're going to test 00:35:35.210 --> 00:35:38.389 a hypothesis involving snow and poultry. Wear 00:35:38.389 --> 00:35:41.690 a warm coat. Solid advice. Thanks for listening 00:35:41.690 --> 00:35:43.929 to this deep dive into the messy, brilliant life 00:35:43.929 --> 00:35:45.769 of Francis Bacon. We'll catch you on the next 00:35:45.769 --> 00:35:45.949 one.