ABSTRACT
Francis Bacon understood that ancient atomism offered its own explanation of perception–that the perceiver's atomic structures would record yet also reshape the filmy simulacra pouring from the object of perception. But in his critical histories of philosophy, Bacon knew more–that the very theory of atomic particles threw off its own ideological simulacra, and that these in turn would be received and refashioned by the distorting mirror of the observing mind. One such vexed moment occurs in The Advancement of Learning, in which Bacon seeks to separate the philosophical truth and legitimate utility of Epicureanism from its replacement of superstition with profane impostures. Bacon's works are filled with admiration for Democritus, about whom Bacon would have learned mainly from a Latin translation of Diogenes Laertius. Bacon revived and assessed atomic theory in the wake of Giordano Bruno's influential philosophical writings, the tendency of which was to celebrate the mythic, cosmic, spiritual, and ethical registers of the atom.
