Francis Bacon’s revolution wasn’t about solving the old puzzles of knowledge, but about changing the very rules of inquiry — turning epistemology outward, toward the world.Topics discussed: The Aristotelian worldview once made the world feel intelligible, but its central pieces began to collapse under new observations and conceptual pressures. Around 1600, linguistic, technological, and cultural shifts gave rise to a new meaning of “experiment”: not trying something, but deliberately manipulating nature to reveal hidden causes. Early experimentalists were seen as eccentric outliers whose strange new practices challenged tradition and authority. Francis Bacon argued that knowledge begins with experience, requires purging our “idols,” and aims at prediction, control, and the relief of human suffering. Bacon introduced ideas that anticipate empiricism, pragmatism, and positivism—each redefining what it means to know and what counts as meaningful inquiry. Though powerful, Bacon’s model faces the challenge that predictive and explanatory success can still come from false theories (e.g., Ptolemy, alchemy). The lesson closes by placing Bacon’s “knowledge is power” view beside Plato’s JTB theory, raising the question: What is knowledge, really?

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