The process of projecting textual models onto the phenomenal world began with the invention of writing and accelerated through the manuscript culture of classical antiquity and the Middle Ages into the age of print. In Francis Bacon's work, the book (a metaphor for the phenomenal world) adapted to the demands of the printed text and reflects the impact of this text on poetic structures. When Bacon begins to perceive nature as a text that can be studied, analyzed, manipulated, and finally collected as a sort of databank with secrets to be unlocked, the medieval notion of the book as God's creation is transformed. The combination of typography and rhetoric paves the way for the objectification of nature and the birth of what Bacon calls the new sciences. The literate person sees truth in the stability and certainty of the written word, while the rhetorical person sees knowledge as social, and therefore, problematic. Recent research on Bacon illuminates his attempts to further that combination of rhetoric and textuality called science in a print-dominated culture. Bacon's translation of rhetorical arts into experimental arts is a point of mediation between the socially defined world of the orator and the textually defined world of the scientist. In Bacon's works, the residual orality of the Middle Ages collides with the print literacy that was an enabling force behind the scientific revolution, and might well serve as the starting point for the study of a third sophistic that begins with the invention of the electronic media. (References are appended.) (NKA)