"Who questions much，shall learn much，and remember much."-Francis Bacon (1561－1626)

　　It seems obvious now how we acquire knowledge and understanding①. To start with，you need questions.Then，to find answers，you observe the world around you and study the facts.After that you consider possible answers and test each to find the right ones.Although today we are more accustomed to typing a few key words into a search engine and waiting for the Internet to spit the answer out for us，modern scientists and thinkers are still solving the world's problems with this type of analysis-luckily for us.

　　However，in the 17th century when Francis Bacon suggested that this type of thinking was the way to gain knowledge②， he was going against the views of the day.Bacon held an important rank under King James (1566－1625) of England but his true interest was not the day to day bureaucratic details of the government，but the worthy search for knowledge.This was certainly not the interest of most people in his day.At that time，people believed more in religion than in facts and people like Galileo Galilei (1564－1642)，who proved scientific ideas such as "the Earth is not the centre of the universe"，were often punished by the church with no one coming to their defence.The church and many people tended to ignore the facts and were unwilling to challenge what they had always comfortably believed③.They preferred to make assumptions about the world based on the experience of others.In fact，when Galilei proved that the Earth was not the centre of the universe，instead of believing him，people chose to believe views that were almost 2000 years old！

　　"勤于提问的人学到更多，并且记忆更多。"--弗兰西斯·培根 (1561－1626)

　　我们如何获取知识以及如何理解现在似乎很显而易见。首先，你需要问题。然后为了找到答案你观察自己周围的世界，并且研究事实之后你考虑可能的答案，并且加以测试来找出正确的答案。尽管我们现在更习惯于在搜索引擎敲进几个关键词，等待互联网吐出答案，现代的科学家和思想家们仍然在用这种分析方法来解决世界的问题对我们来说很幸运。

然而，在17世纪，当弗兰西斯·培根提出这种思考方式是获取知识的方式时，他背离了当时的观念。在英国詹姆士(1566－1625)统治时期，培根是一位身居