„Creating life in the laboratory: Francis Bacon’s journey from living spirits to animate bodies”, articol publicat de colega noastră Conf. univ. dr. Dana Jalobeanu în revista Notes and Records of the Royal Society
Abstract
This article aims to reconstruct a complex inquiry into the nature of life delineated in Francis Bacon’s ‘last writings’, a series of manuscripts discovered at the end of the twentieth century. I show that these fragmentary texts can be understood if we place them in the larger context of Bacon’s posthumous works: the Sylva Sylvarum and the Historia densi et rari. Taken together, these texts unveil Bacon’s last bold project of a History and inquisition into the nature of animate and inanimate [Historia et inquisitio de animato et inanimato], an investigation focusing on the possibility of creating life in the laboratory. I show that Bacon’s last project marks a revaluation of earlier definitions and explanations regarding the nature of life, as well as a change in the vocabulary. I suggest that some of these changes might have originated in practice; and I show how various recipes, observations and experiments recorded in Bacon’s late writings can illuminate and justify some of his new terminology.
The article is available here https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rsnr.2023.0037
