Advancement of Learning (Partition of Sciences)

"For the Glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate" – Advancement of Learning of Proficience and Advancement of Learning Divine and Human was published in 1605, and is written in the form of a letter to King James.

This book would be considered the first step in the Great Instauration scale, of "partitions of the sciences".

In this work, which is divided into two books, Bacon starts giving philosophical, civic and religious arguments for the engaging in the aim of advancing learning. In the second book, Bacon analyses the state of the sciences of his day, stating what was being done incorrectly, what should be bettered, in which way should they be advanced.

Among his arguments in the first book, he considered learned kingdoms and rulers to be higher than the unlearned, evoked as example King Solomon, the biblical king who had established a school of natural research, and gave discourses on how knowledge should be used for the "glory of the Creator" and "the relief of man's estate", if only it was governed by charity.

In the second book, he divided human understanding into three parts: history, related to man's faculty of memory; poetry, related to man's faculty of imagination; and philosophy, pertaining to man's faculty of reason. Then he considers the three aspects with which each branch of understanding can relate itself to a divine, human and natural. From the combination of the three branches (history, poetry, and philosophy) and three aspects (divine, human and natural) a series of different sciences are deduced.