The New Organon forms part of the great renewal, or Instauratio magna, an ambitious practical and theoretical project to overhaul and reform the way in which man investigates nature. Bacon divides his project into six parts:

1) a summary of current knowledge;

2) The New Organon itself, which sets out the method to be followed and seeks to prepare the mind for investigation;

3) a complete natural history, that will provide the foundations for this investigation;

4) examples of the kind of investigation Bacon's method would produce;

5) specific practical discoveries that he has made, which serve as a kind of interest payment before the "capital" sum of the complete theory is known; and

6) the real philosophy, completely explained.

Bacon doubts his own ability to complete the project, particularly the last section; he calls for royal patronage to help realize the project. As he imagines it, however, the Great Renewal will reform both epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge) and practice. It will alter the way we think about truth in nature, and how we try to uncover that truth.