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The most important thing to note about this collection is that it contains a major article on Francis Bacon and his 'method' by Sophie Weeks, under the unassuming title 'The role of mechanics in Francis Bacon's Great Instauration'. This seems to me the most interesting and accomplished piece on Bacon that I have read in years, and it deserves to be widely noticed. By 'mechanics', Weeks means here artifice in general, and her quite lengthy essay attempts to restructure our understanding of Bacon's experientia literata, associated with the famous tables of presence, absence and so on, and its relation to his new 'organon', the means to the 'interpretation of nature' properly speaking. The result is a wonderfully persuasive and strongly argued account of a Bacon who was more of a true natural magician than many of us had fully appreciated.
The collection as a whole relates...