- Sir Francis Bacon was born in 1561 in England and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and Gray's Inn, London. He later became Lord Chancellor under King James I but was impeached in 1621. Bacon died of pneumonia in 1626 while studying meat preservation.
- Bacon's major work was The Great Instauration, published in 1620, which outlined his ideas for reforming philosophy and science through empirical inquiry and induction. He believed that inductive reasoning could help overcome human biases and reveal the true nature of reality through close observation of natural phenomena.
- Bacon developed the concept of "idols" or faulty beliefs that can mislead the human mind, and argued that scientific inquiry should be guided by