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08840_Field_TCGG T605.txt
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applied knowledge than anybody else except Rabelais. The
entire Middle Ages had regarded Nature as a Book to be
scanned for the vestigia dei . Bacon took the lesson of print to
be that we could now literally get Nature out in a new and
improved edition. An encyclopedia is envisaged. It is his
complete acceptance of the idea of the Book of Nature that
makes Bacon so very medieval and so very modern. But the gap
is this. The medieval Book of Nature was for contemplatio like
the Bible. The Renaissance Book of Nature was for applicatio
and use like movable types. A closer look at Francis Bacon will
resolve this problem and elucidate the transition from the
medieval to the modern world.
Another view of the book as bridge between the medieval
and the modern is given by Erasmus. His new Latin version of
the New Testament in 1516 was entitled Novum Organum in