Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
have planted in his mind. Rhetorical learning fulfilled this goal by enabling
those equipped with the broad range of knowledge required for wise politi-
cal leadership also to integrate this knowledge into public life. As suggested
by the icon of the “open hand” that commonly represented rhetoric in the
Middle Ages, we might say that a rhetorical philosophy prizes the social
qualities of messages as much as it prizes their truth value. Thus conceived,
science's promotion required that it should be couched in symbols already
meaningful to the polity.
Once we understand the influence that a rhetorical perspective might
have had in shaping Bacon's approach to the advancement of science, we
also gain a more mature understanding of the importance attributed to him
a generation after his death when he was celebrated as one of the visionaries
responsible for the formal charting of the Royal Society of London. Bacon's
connection to this institutional triumph is signaled by the inclusion of his
image, among those of Charles II and William Brouckner, the society's first
president, on the cover of its official history, Thomas Sprat's
History of the
Royal Society
(1667) (figure 4).
Figure 4
