The story of Francis Bacon's contributions to philosophy is a mixed one. While he was a prime mover in the early empiricist movement in philosophy, he made no important scientific discoveries. Because of his attention given to induction and his rejection of Aristotelian science in its search for “final causes” in nature, he was one of the first thinkers to attempt to systematize the scientific method. Despite this hankering for method, he had no understanding of the role of theory in scientific discovery. In addition, he shows little appreciation for theory, imagination, and speculation in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. As a result, in his discussion of the great scientists he fails to mention Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Copernicus, or William Harvey's work on the blood. In time, the received opinion on Bacon was that his views on scientific method was too naive to produce great science.

Thomas Hobbes's reputation as an important thinker in many areas remains. His materialistic psychology of perception was a model for scientific thinkers to come. Despite his importance in developing a materialistic account of how people perceive and come to know things, Hobbes is no doubt most famous for his political doctrine. He has been referred to as the founder of modern political science. “Hobbes is the father of us all,” Karl Marx, the economist and author of the Communist Manifesto, said in the nineteenth century.

He was original in seeing the state as an artificial construct, but necessary because of the egoistic nature of human beings. Hobbes's ideas of the state of nature and the social contract influenced political thinkers over the next two centuries. The most prominent of those thinkers include John Locke (1632–1704) and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–78).