Episode Details

Francis Bacon laid the foundations of the scientific method, served as Lord Chancellor of England, and died from pneumonia contracted while stuffing a chicken with snow. His life was a collision of towering intellect and spectacular personal failure.

This episode tells the story of how Bacon's Novum Organum changed the way humanity investigates nature, even as bribery charges destroyed his political career and left him disgraced.

• How his inductive method broke with centuries of Aristotelian logic
• The corruption scandal that ended his career as Lord Chancellor
• His vision of science as a collective institutional enterprise
• The bizarre frozen chicken experiment that killed him