It has been claimed for him that he announced the idea of Progress; he has even been compared to Condorcet or Comte.

Such claims are based on passages taken out of their context and indulgently interpreted in the light of later theories.

They are not borne out by an examination of his general conception of the universe and the aim of his writings.
His aim was to reform higher education and introduce into the universities a wide, liberal, and scientific programme of secular studies.

His chief work, the "Opus Majus," was written for this purpose, to which his exposition of his own discoveries was subordinate.

It was addressed and sent to Pope Clement IV., who had asked Bacon to give him an account of his researches, and was designed to persuade the Pontiff of the utility of science from an ecclesiastical point of view, and to induce him to sanction an intellectual reform, which without the approbation of the Church would at that time have been impossible.