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WorkFrancis Bacon

The Advancement of Learning

A defense of learning laid before a bookish king in 1605, later swollen into the nine-book Latin encyclopedia that charted every science and named the gaps.

by Francis Bacon329 passages held

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First published
(aged 44)
Original language
English

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Overview

In 1605 Bacon addressed a treatise to James I, a king who wrote books himself, defending learning against three sets of enemies: theologians who thought it bred impiety, politicians who thought it softened men for the state, and scholars whose own pedantry had brought it into contempt. That was Book One. Book Two is the more consequential — a survey of the whole map of human knowledge that marks not what was already known but what was missing, cataloguing the deficiencies, subject by subject, that a reformed inquiry would have to fill. The English text of 1605 was only a beginning. Bacon expanded it enormously into Latin as De Augmentis Scientiarum in 1623, nine books now, recasting the classification of the sciences he had worked out in the years between. This is the first full statement of the program he spent the rest of his life on: that knowledge had stalled because its method was wrong, and that the cure was to organize inquiry, name its gaps, and pursue it in common rather than alone. It found little response among the Oxford and Cambridge men he had hoped to move; he turned instead to a younger generation, who took it up after his death.

Key concepts

Who was the book addressed to, and why?

Bacon addressed the 1605 treatise to James I, a king who was himself an author and prided himself on learning. The dedication was strategic: Bacon wanted royal backing for a reform of knowledge, and a bookish monarch was his natural patron. Casting the work as a defence of learning laid before a learned king let him argue that advancing knowledge served the crown rather than threatening it.

What are the three enemies of learning?

In Book One Bacon answers three groups who disparaged learning: theologians who feared it bred impiety and pride, politicians who thought it made men soft and unfit for public affairs, and scholars whose own pedantry — empty disputation and worship of words — had brought knowledge into disrepute. He rebuts the first two and largely agrees with the charge against the third, turning it into a critique of how learning had been practiced.

What does Book Two do?

Book Two surveys the entire map of human knowledge and marks its deficiencies — subject by subject, what is still missing rather than what is already possessed. This inventory of gaps is the book's most influential move: it treats the advancement of learning as a matter of identifying and filling blanks in an organized way. It is the first sketch of the classification of the sciences Bacon would later expand at length.

How does it relate to De Augmentis Scientiarum?

The English Advancement of Learning of 1605 was only a beginning. Bacon expanded it enormously into Latin as De Augmentis Scientiarum in 1623 — now nine books — recasting and extending the classification of the sciences he had worked out in the intervening years. The two are versions of one project: the English text is the compact first statement, the Latin the mature, greatly enlarged edition meant for an international readership.

What is Bacon's core diagnosis of knowledge?

Bacon holds that knowledge had stalled not for lack of effort but because its method was wrong — too much disputation, too little patient inquiry into nature. The cure is to reform the method, name the gaps in what is known, and pursue learning in common rather than in isolation. This diagnosis frames the whole book and launches the lifelong program he carried forward in the Novum Organum.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Learning and its enemies

Is the pursuit of knowledge dangerous — to faith, to the state, to character? Bacon takes the accusation head on, and turns part of it back on the scholars themselves.

Book One answers three sets of enemies: theologians who thought learning bred impiety, politicians who thought it softened men for the state, and scholars whose own pedantry had brought knowledge into contempt. Bacon defends learning against the first two and concedes the third, blaming vain, word-bound scholarship for discrediting the thing he wants to advance. The defence is addressed to James I, a king who wrote books himself, and it reframes learning not as a threat to piety or civic order but as their support — provided it is real inquiry into things rather than the empty disputation Bacon holds responsible for its bad name.

  • education
  • authority
  • theology
  • political philosophy
  • human nature
  • rhetoric
  • intellectual history
  • virtue

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Charting knowledge by its gaps

How do you advance learning as a whole? Bacon surveys the entire map of what humans know and marks, subject by subject, not what is filled in but what is still missing.

Book Two, the more consequential half, lays out the whole territory of human knowledge and catalogues its deficiencies — the places a reformed inquiry would have to fill. Where an encyclopedia gathers what is known, Bacon does the opposite: he names the blanks. This survey-by-deficiency treats ignorance as something that can be organized and targeted rather than merely lamented. He carried the classification much further when he expanded the English text into the nine-book Latin De Augmentis Scientiarum of 1623. The method assumes the honest first step in advancing knowledge is an inventory of what is not yet known.

  • epistemology
  • methodology
  • philosophy of science
  • natural philosophy
  • historiography
  • logic
  • metaphysics
  • science
  • philosophy

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Inquiry organized and shared

Why had learning stalled, and what would restart it? Bacon's answer is that knowledge had gone wrong in its method and its solitude — the cure is to organize inquiry and pursue it together.

This is the first full statement of the program Bacon spent the rest of his life on: knowledge had stalled because its method was wrong, and the remedy is to reform that method, name the gaps, and pursue inquiry in common rather than alone. He imagines learning as a collective, cumulative enterprise, not the achievement of isolated genius — an ancestor of organized science. It found little response among the Oxford and Cambridge men he hoped to move, so he turned to a younger generation, who took the vision up after his death and built institutions on it.

  • methodology
  • philosophy of science
  • science
  • natural philosophy
  • reason
  • education
  • practical wisdom

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Within this work

passages held
329
distinct concepts
643
by passages held, corpus-wide
#230

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “education” and “political philosophy”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 22 pairings. 88 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
educationpolitical philosophy13
educationrhetoric8
educationepistemology7
human naturepractical wisdom5
political philosophypractical wisdom5
political philosophyrhetoric5
educationpractical wisdom4
epistemologynatural philosophy4
human naturepolitical philosophy4
moral psychologyrhetoric4
educationhuman nature3
human naturenatural philosophy3
educationmoral psychology2
epistemologyhuman nature2
human naturerhetoric2
moral psychologypolitical philosophy2
practical wisdomrhetoric2
epistemologypractical wisdom1
epistemologyrhetoric1
human naturemoral psychology1
moral psychologypractical wisdom1
natural philosophypolitical philosophy1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1597 The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral

    The book Bacon grew across three editions and thirty years, and the one that kept his name in ordinary readers' hands while his philosophy waited for a later age to take it up.

     EN
  2. 1605 The Advancement of Learning you are here EN
  3. 1620 Novum Organum, or True Suggestions for the Interpretation of Nature

    Part Two of the unfinished Instauratio Magna, and the piece of that grand design Bacon brought nearest to completion — the core of his case for a new method.

     EN
  4. 1625 Of Gardens: An essay

    One of the essays Bacon added only in the final 1625 collection, and the one place in that worldly book where he sets practical counsel aside for the pleasure of a thing well made.

     EN
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