Francis Bacon’S Qualification as The Father of Modern Philosophy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to determine if there is any basis for regarding Francis Bacon as the father of Modern Philosophy. This involves effort to determine what constitutes, in essence, Modern Philosophy and the goal of Modern Philosophy. Are there criteria that qualify one as the father of Modern Philosophy? Proceeding with this inquiry, our paper examines, on the one hand, the views of those who argue in defence of Bacon’s qualification as the father of Modern Philosophy. Here it is argued that “if Modern Philosophy is, however, understood as beginning from the Renaissance period, it seems more appropriate to regard Francis Bacon as the father of Modern Philosophy” (Omoregbe, 1991, p.v). On the part of those opposed to Bacon’s qualification as the father of Modern Philosophy, it is argued that “Descartes is called the father of Modern Philosophy…. This title of the father of Modern Philosophy has been disputed in favour of Francis Bacon. As Descartes’ reputation rose, that of Bacon fell” (Ozumba 2005, p.146). After a critical examination of the above views, amongst others, we discovered that the major task of Modern Philosophy is getting certainty in knowledge. Bacon did not tackle this question of certainty in knowledge. Perhaps Bacon equated knowledge with certainty. But Descartes tackled this question of certainty in knowledge and reached a foundation (foundationalism) for certainty. And it was on this foundation that Modern Philosophy was built. The above views, among others, strongly question Bacon’s qualification as the father of Modern Philosophy. Our paper, therefore, argues that it is more appropriate to regard Descartes as the father of Modern Philosophy. Key words: Father; Modern Philosophy; Certainty inKnowledge
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.021 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".