1605

The Advancement of Learning

Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

The polymathic English philosopher-statesman-scientist-jurist Francis Bacon—commonly referred to as the father of empiricism—would have been an odd fit for the modern age. But the world as we know it would not exist had he not produced such grand intellectual frameworks that encompassed science, literature, history, and religion simultaneously. In 1605, he wrote Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human in the form of a (long) letter to King James of England. Presenting an arrangement of all the fields of his day (generally divided into divine, natural, and human components), Bacon went beyond illuminating how the sciences relate to other fields of study and spoke about what (in his view) science was for. He also detailed how the goals of science were being realized and where they were falling short—themes he expanded on in his 1620 book, Novum organum scientiarum (The New Instrument of Science, commonly translated in English as The New Method).

Across his writings, the prevailing idea is that scientific discovery is something that will help humanity and is thus worth putting time and effort into. Earlier philosophies often emphasized some sort of spiritual duty to understand the works of God or the collection of knowledge for its own sake, but Bacon called for “a progeny of inventions” to “subdue our needs and miseries.” In his utopian novel The New Atlantis (1627), he proclaimed science as the “effecting of all things possible”—a perspective that took hold in Western civilization as the seventeenth century progressed. When the Royal Society was founded in 1660—becoming officially “royal” with King Charles II’s 1662 charter—its leaders often referred to “Baconian ideals.”

We live in the world that such thinking has brought us. It seems normal to us that “science marches on,” but it’s worth remembering that for long periods of human history it did nothing of the kind. Francis Bacon was one of the key figures who gave science its marching orders.

SEE ALSO The Sceptical Chymist (1661)

Francis Bacon, the world’s first highly placed science advisor.