David Ng is a geneticist, writer, and creator of The Candy Hierarchy. Read more by him at McSweeneys and right here.

Lately, I’ve been writing about the philosophy of science and thereby finding myself pondering the plight of Bacon. Not the food, but rather Sir Francis Bacon, the renowned writer and gentlemen of the 16th and 17th centuries—famous for being a member of Parliament, friend to the British Monarchy, and (most important to me) often referred to as the “Father of the Scientific Method.”

Such thinking then naturally led to Kevin Bacon, who in turn, reminded me of the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” Inevitably, I landed at entertaining the specifics of the “Six Degrees of Sir Francis Bacon.” Read the rest