The Advancement of LearningFrancis BaconOmniClassics · Literature
The Advancement of Learning
Francis BaconBacon surveys human knowledge and argues for a more fruitful culture of inquiry.
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About the book
Addressed to James I, The Advancement of Learning defends the value of knowledge and asks how its institutions and methods might be improved. Bacon first answers objections to learning and examines the habits that have made scholarship sterile or ostentatious. He then maps the fields of knowledge, connecting history with memory, poetry with imagination, and philosophy with reason. Within that survey he identifies neglected questions and incomplete disciplines rather than treating inherited authorities as a finished storehouse of truth. Theology, natural inquiry, medicine, ethics, and civil affairs all enter his account. The book's energy comes from its double ambition: to take stock of what people know and to make that inventory a program for further work.
- Classification of knowledge
- Intellectual reform
- Inquiry and usefulness
Why read it
Read Bacon's expansive statement of why learning should grow and how its gaps might be recognized.
English text in the 1893 Cassell edition
Contents and reading sections
- Section 1
- Section 2
- Section 3
- Section 4
- Section 5
- Section 6
- Section 7
- Section 8
- Section 9
- Section 10
- Section 11
- Section 12
- Section 13
- Section 14
- Section 15
- Section 16
- Section 17
- Section 18
- Section 19
- Section 20
- Section 21
- Section 22
- Section 23
- Section 24
- Section 25
- Section 26
- Section 27
- Section 28
- Section 29
- Section 30
- Section 31
- Section 32
- Section 33
- Section 34
- Section 35
- Section 36
- Section 37
- Section 38
- Section 39
- Section 40
- Section 41
- Section 42