man's estate

[Itasan]

http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~lyman/engl ... cartes.htm

"And indeed, one of the remarkable things about both Bacon and Descartes is that each clearly conceived of the possibility of humankind's being able (through science) to shape the world on behalf of an improvement of "man's estate" well before the science had progressed so far as to be able to point to any technological discoveries owing to it that made a difference in the quality of life."



I wonder what 'man's estate' means in the above passage.

Thank you.

[sbourque]

man's estate = quality of life, the human condition

("Man" was used to mean "human being").

[Itasan]

Thank you very much, sbourque.