"The Advancement of Learning" is a 1605 book by Francis Bacon in which Bacon's biographer-essayist Catherine Drinker Bowen is credited with being a pioneering essay supporting empirical philosophy. Here's the most famous quote from the book: "So that as Tennis is a game of no use in itself, but of great use in respect it maketh a quick eye, and a body ready to put itself in all positions, so, in the Mathematics the use which is collateral, an intervenient, is no less worthy, than that which is principle and intended."