An important aspect of Bacon's “total reconstruction of sciences, arts, and all human knowledge” (IV, 8) was the organizational and institutional restructuring of natural philosophy. His rhetoric of a revolution in learning was similar to that employed by a number of his near contemporaries, but his vision of how it would be achieved differed. Unlike Descartes, for example, who retained the traditional philosophical emphasis upon the power of individual reasoning, Bacon sought to institute a new method for the investigation of nature, based upon the cooperative efforts of a large workforce.' Bacon's advocacy of cooperative research was in part responsible for his sharp criticism of traditional learning.