The Advancement of Learning
The Advancement of Learning is a 1605 book by Francis Bacon which introduces and popularizes the scientific method of observation, skepticism and testability.
Origin
Bacon, a Protestant, lived during a period of great social turmoil as well as the expansion of scientific and social knowledge. In 1605, he sent a draft to his friend Tobie Matthew who was in Florence where he was baptized as a Roman Catholic. Two years later, in 1607, Matthew returned to England, where he was imprisoned for his alleged "Papist views".The book is addressed as a plea to King [James I of England|King James I] and is in two parts or books, each with separate chapters:
- Part I praises the king for his appreciation of knowledge and outlines Bacon's ideas as how strict bondage to the past was a hindrance to optimizing Christian values, which required not academic excellence but excellent practical education via the contemplation of nature conjoined with action for the benefit of society.
- Part II Bacon outlines Novum Organum which avers the benefit to scholars as less important than the benefit of their scholarship to society. He advocated a new discipline studying the effect of climate, geography and natural resources on the various human races, and suggested handbooks should be prepared for diplomacy, business and the new scientific disciplines. In theology he suggested exploring the limits of human reason in matters divine and setting limits thereto. He recommended improving medicine via vivisection of animals and the prior preparation of medicine.
Pure knowledge versus proud knowledge
- pure knowledge arising from the study of nature that leads to growth and grace
- proud knowledge is that of worldly values that lead to atheism
Consequences
The following passage from The Advancement of Learning was used as the foreword to a popular Cambridge textbook: