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In 1620 Francis Bacon called for a Great Instauration—‘instauration’ here means ‘founding’, and the term is suitably vague.

But, despite some abstruse Jamesianisms like “instauration,” “peculation,” “invigilator,” and — my favorite — an “inspissatedly expressed and barely scrutable conjecture,” he tempers his stylistic mimicry to appeal to modern tastes, with shorter paragraphs and heightened urgency.

We aimed at nothing less than to speak of the instauration of spirit, and its incarnation in a beautiful form.

The instauration of general anaesthesia came from experiments made on man alone.

Its aim was to realise in political institutions that great instauration of which Bacon dreamed in the world of intelligence.