Antiquitas saeculi juventus mundi. These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves.

This remark is associated with Bacon’s early program for the “advancement of learning,” where he challenges the habitual reverence for classical antiquity and argues that later ages may possess greater accumulated knowledge. Writing at the turn of the seventeenth century—amid rapid developments in navigation, printing, and experimental inquiry—Bacon repeatedly insists that what people call “ancient times” (Greece and Rome) were in fact the world’s youth, while the present is the world’s true old age, enriched by the experience of many generations. The Latin tag “Antiquitas saeculi juventus mundi” encapsulates this reversal of perspective, aimed at loosening the authority of tradition over new investigation.

Bacon overturns a common bias: we label remote periods “ancient” simply because they are far behind us, but in the life of the world they were comparatively early and inexperienced. The present, by contrast, is “ancient” in the sense of being later, more mature, and potentially wiser because it inherits the cumulative record of prior ages. The point is polemical as well as philosophical: it undermines the automatic prestige of antiquity and supports Bacon’s case that modern inquiry—especially methodical observation and experiment—can surpass the ancients. “Ordine retrogrado” highlights the error of measuring antiquity only by looking backward from ourselves rather than by considering the world’s total historical development.