Plus ultra

For the frontispiece of his Instauratio Magna (London, 1620), Francis Bacon chose the picture of a ship returning from the Atlantic and crossing the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar, a symbolic representation of going beyond the limits of what medieval Europe regarded as the known world. At the bottom of the illustration, the phrase ‘Multi pertransibunt and augebitur Scientia’ stood out, a quotation from the Biblical Book of Daniel (12:4), which means ‘many shall run to and for, and knowledge shall increase’. The choice of this saying from the Bible seemed highly appropriate as a motto for his great work of philosophy, which dealt with the foundations of a new and powerful science since, by means of science, it would be possible ‘to extend human power over the universe’ in a new world in which ‘nothing will be impossible for mankind’. Those powerful galleons are the emblem of the power of human arts and that picture clearly represents the English philosopher's view of the sixteenth-century voyages of exploration and their relation to the history of modern science. The idea of associating the increase of knowledge with voyages and the exploration of the unknown perfectly complemented Bacon's philosophical approach to science because, from his standpoint, the advance of knowledge was the result of new experiences.