Francis Bacon is associated with a move toward practical philosophy, repudiating what he took to be the ancients’ lack of concern for public utility. He conceived of natural philosophy as a practice oriented toward the task of mastering nature by directing its energies and tendencies toward ends chosen by human beings. Baconian natural philosophy (hereafter natural science) was thus a technological pursuit, laying the moral and epistemological foundations for the proliferation of labor-saving and pain-reducing devices. This chapter will elaborate on the following points in the context of a philosophical reflection on the meaning and role of work in human affairs. First: Natural science is a form of work, with standardized methods, expected results, and requisite modes of social organization. “We,” he writes, “conquer nature by work” (Great Instauration). Second: The purpose of natural science is to alleviate the toil and suffering associated with nature’s resistance to human concerns—that is, to reduce the amount of effort (or work) required to meet human needs. Bacon’s Great Instauration speaks of increasing man’s right over nature “so that (despite our humanity and subjection to death) the understanding may be raised and enlarged in its ability to overcome the difficult and dark things of nature.” Somewhat paradoxically, we could say that the work of natural science is to alleviate the burden of work. Third: Bacon explicitly conceived of the work of natural science as a remedy for the Fall of Man as described in Genesis 3. Part of the curse, as Bacon understands it, is that Man lost his kingdom, or dominion, over creation. Science, understood as a technological activity, restores Man’s kingdom over the natural world. Bacon thus ends The New Organon with these words: “man, by manifold labours…compels the creation, in time and in part, to provide him with bread, that is to serve the purposes of human life” (II.LII). It is by pursuing the work of natural science that the burden and toil previously associated with work can be reduced, thus restoring mankind’s rightful mastery and authority over the natural world.