ABSTRACT
In 1605, Francis Bacon wrote the following in his renowned The Advancement of Learning:
Bacon addressed this book to the king of his time in an attempt to persuade him (thereby outline an agenda of learning) to engage his people and his kingdom in scientific inquiry based on the new methodology Bacon himself advanced. Carrying on the profound interest in nature manifest at least since Greek antiquity, Bacon emphasized five essential ideas: (a) Inquiry is an enterprise on which human beings are destined to embark; (b) the human
mind is supreme in carrying out this inquiry; (c) scientific discovery requires active engagement of the learner; (d) one derives intrinsic enjoyment and pleasure by participating in this process; and (e) knowledge as produced by such learning must be put to ethical use. It does not require a stretch of imagination to find affinity between Bacon’s vision of learning and modern principles of academic learning and intellectual functioning in the West. In Peltonen’s (1996) evaluation, “there remains today much that Bacon would recognize as part of the [scientific] program he inaugurated” (pp. 23-24).
