Following the Renaissance, two forerunners of a scientific, experienced-based philosophy were Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes. Empiricism (which comes from a Greek word emperia, meaning “experience”), especially as it developed over the subsequent centuries with major figures like John Locke, David Hume, and Bishop George Berkeley, was a philosophy that stated all philosophy begins with experience. Comparing himself to Christopher Columbus, Francis Bacon felt the excitement of this new philosophy, and talked of “the breath of new hope which blows on us from the new continent.”