Francis Bacon
Bacon is the author of all the works in this volume. Most of Bacon's major works are written from a distant first-person perspective that acknowledges his role as the narrator but also speaks generally about the human condition. Like other philosophers on which Bacon based his work, he often attempts to eliminate the sense of a personal perspective, writing instead from a third-person and at times seemingly omniscient, authoritative point of view. The exception to this style are Bacon's various letters written to friends and colleagues, in which he offers advice and guidance. The essays are largely written from a collective first-person perspective, using pronouns like "we" and "us" to emphasize how universal Bacon perceives his ideas to be.
King James I
King James I was on the English throne during the majority of Bacon's career. Bacon's well-known prose work The Advancement of Learning is dedicated to King James, and Bacon praises the monarch throughout a number of the other works in the collection. While Bacon had served in Parliament for James's predecessor, Elizabeth I, his merits were more quickly recognized under James, and he was awarded a number of titles and positions during James's reign. These titles included: King's Counsel (1604), Solicitor-General (1607), Attorney-General (1613), Privy Counselor (1616), Lord Keeper (1617), and Lord Chancellor (1618).
Ancient Philosophers
Bacon, as an early modern philosopher, was heavily influenced by those from antiquity, including Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato. By far, Plato seems to have had the largest impact on Bacon's own work, and indeed many of the concepts from Bacon's essays seem to be lifted nearly verbatim from Plato's own tracts. By contrast, Bacon takes issue with Aristotle for his involvement in what Bacon calls "contentious learning," or argumentation around minute and inconsequential details based on one's allegiances to a particular discipline.
The Tribe
Bacon explains various limitations to the human perception of reality, ultimately leading him to his idea of natural science through the scientific method. The tribe is a cast of characters in human life who inform each person's ideas through subconscious programming. He says that one can rarely help being programmed by the ideas commonly shared among one's tribe. The tribe is the group of people that a person trusts to help inform ideas.
The Philosopher
Not every person is called out of the commonly shared beliefs of one's culture, but some are called to leave the commonly shared beliefs to depart into the wilderness of actual truth. These people are represented in Bacon's writings as "the philosopher." The name is also a nod to Plato, who was commonly called "the philosopher" and whose writings clearly inform Bacon's own. For instance, his essay about the cave of limited perception is essentially lifted out of Plato's Republic.
The Market
The market is another aspect of human community. Instead of populating young people's minds with ideas and beliefs, like the tribe, the market informs people's understanding of how to pursue one's desire. The object of the market is to profit through business. The game of money and exchange is a dangerous obstacle to the perception of truth, because marketplace dictates the cultural virtues of a population.
The Theater
Through representations of reality found in art, a person could become misinformed about reality. This is another element of Bacon's Platonic influence, because Plato wrote about this first, centuries earlier. Basically, Plato and Bacon argue that the theater is at risk of infecting the populace with subpar ideas about reality, especially if people decide to be entertained rather than informed. The theater represents a great temptation to the philosopher, because philosophers tend to be artistically oriented, but the philosopher must remain clean of the theater's idol worship.
King Solamon
Bacon refers frequently to the biblical figure of King Solomon in his works, specifically in The Advancement of Learning. In this text in particular, Bacon disagrees with King Solomon, who argued that knowledge only increases man's anxiety and doubt because it reveals one's ignorance to himself. Bacon's response to this assertion is to distinguish between "pure knowledge" and "proud knowledge," the latter of which is the one responsible for man's fall from grace.
God
Readers may likely wonder how God figures into Bacon's writings, which are largely dedicated to science and the understanding of the human mind. Bacon envisions knowledge acquisition as fundamentally guided by God, and as such remains loyal to the Church in the majority of his texts. In The New Atlantis, Bacon's utopian novel, his narrator details a society in which Christ consecrates the land's rigorous pursuit of knowledge and learning. For Bacon, God and science are inextricable.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne was an influential philosopher of the French Renaissance. His influence in Bacon's work cannot be understated, as Montaigne is credited with popularizing the essay as a serious literary genre. Montaigne's Essais (1580) contain some of the most influential ideas of the period. They feature a blend of personal anecdotes and intellectual insight, characteristics that have become associated with the essay form over the last four centuries. While Bacon's essays are markedly less personal, it is clear that Montaigne's work spoke to Bacon as a way to speak intellectually about a number of interconnected ideas.
