Roger Bacon

Statue of Roger Bacon in the Oxford University Museum

Roger Bacon, O.F.M. (c. 1214–1294), also known as Doctor Mirabilis (Latin: "wonderful teacher"), was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on empirical methods. He is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method^[1] inspired by the works of Plato and Aristotle via early Islamic scientists such as Avicenna and Averroes.^[2][3][4]

Roger Bacon was born in Ilchester in Somerset, possibly in 1213 or 1214 at the Ilchester Friary.^[5] The only source for his date of birth is his statement in the Opus Tertium, written in 1267, that "forty years have passed since I first learned the alphabet". The 1214 birth date assumes he was not being literal, and may have meant 40 years had passed since he matriculated at Oxford at the age of 13. If he had been literal, his birth date was more likely to have been around 1220/1222. In the same passage he reports that for all but two of those forty years he had always been engaged in study.^[6] His family appears to have been well-off, but, during the stormy reign of Henry III of England, their property was despoiled and several members of the family were driven into exile.

Bacon studied and later became a Master at Oxford, lecturing on Aristotle. There is no evidence he was ever awarded a doctorate — the title Doctor Mirabilis was posthumous and figurative. Sometime between 1237 and 1245, he began to lecture at the university of Paris, then the center of intellectual life in Europe. His whereabouts between 1247 and 1256 are uncertain, but about 1256 he became a Friar in the Franciscan Order. As a Franciscan Friar, Bacon no longer held a teaching post, and after 1260 his activities were further restricted by a Franciscan statute forbidding Friars from publishing books or pamphlets without specific approval.^[7]

Bacon circumvented this restriction through his acquaintance with Cardinal Guy le Gros de Foulques, who became Pope Clement IV in 1265. The new Pope issued a mandate ordering Bacon to write to him concerning the place of philosophy within theology. As a result Bacon sent the Pope his Opus Majus, which presented his views on how the philosophy of Aristotle and the new science could be incorporated into a new Theology. Besides the Opus maius Bacon also sent his Opus minus, De multiplicatione specierum, and, perhaps, other works on alchemy and astrology.^[8]

Pope Clement died in 1268, and sometime between 1277 and 1279, Bacon was placed under house arrest by Jerome of Ascoli, the Minister-General of the Franciscan Order. Bacon's difficulties are probably related to the Condemnations of 1277, which banned the teaching of certain philosophical doctrines, including deterministic astrology. Sometime after 1278 Bacon returned to the Franciscan House at Oxford, where he continued his studies.^[9]

Changing interpretations of Bacon

Bacon performed and described various experiments, which were for a time claimed as the first instances of true experimental science, several hundred years before the rise of science in the West. This widely held interpretation of Bacon as a modern experimental scientist, emerging before his time, originated in the nineteenth century. This image reflected the emphasis, dominant at that time, upon experiment as the principal form of scientific activity and the general acceptance of the characterization of the Middle Ages as the "Dark Ages".^[10] Some writers of this period, such as Andrew Dickson White, carried the account further by describing a concerted opposition to Bacon's ideas in which he was repeatedly persecuted and imprisoned as part of a medieval "Warfare of Science with Theology".^[11] In this view Bacon would be an advocate of modern experimental science who somehow emerged as an isolated figure in an age supposed to be hostile toward scientific ideas.

In the course of the twentieth century, the philosophical understanding of the role of experiment in the sciences has been substantially modified. New historical research has shown not only that medieval Christians were not generally opposed to science,^[12][13] but also revealed the extent and variety of medieval scientific activity. Consequently, the picture of Bacon has changed. His advocacy of scientia experimentalis has been argued to differ from modern experimental science,^[14] and many medieval sources of and influences on his scientific activity have been identified.^[15] In relation to this, one recent study summarized that: "Bacon was not a modern, out of step with his age, or a harbinger of things to come, but a brilliant, combative, and somewhat eccentric schoolman of the thirteenth century, endeavoring to take advantage of the new learning just becoming available while remaining true to traditional notions... of the importance to be attached to philosophical knowledge".^[16]

Bacon described in 1267 how the Franciscans kept him in isolated confinement in a small cell in Paris for many years, and prevented him from teaching his scientific views: "...for my superiors and brothers, disciplining me with hunger, kept me under close guard and would not permit anyone to come to me, fearing that my writings would be divulged to others [rather] than to the chief pontiff and themselves," and that they treated him with "unspeakable violence" and "for ten years had been exiled from former University fame." ^[17] Though the late-fourteenth century Chronicle of the Twenty-four Generals reports this imprisonment, ^[18] some modern accounts of his life dispute the existence or length of his period of imprisonment,^[19] or suggest that it resulted from his sympathies for radical Franciscans^[20] or interest in astrology.^[21]

A recent review of the variety of visions that each age has held about Roger Bacon says contemporary scholarship still neglects one of the most important aspects of Bacon's life and thought: his commitment to the Franciscan order. "His Opus maius was a plea for reform addressed to the supreme spiritual head of the Christian faith, written against a background of apocalyptic expectation and informed by the driving concerns of the friars. It was designed to improve training for missionaries and to provide new skills to be employed in the defence of the Christian world against the enmity of non-Christians and of the Antichrist. It cannot usefully be read solely in the context of the history of science and philosophy."^[22]

His works

Optic studies by Bacon

His view of the past

The scientific training Bacon had received showed him the rare defects in existing academic debate. Aristotle was known only through translations, as none of the professors would learn Greek; the same was true of Scripture and many of the other auctores ("authorities") referenced in traditional education. In contrast to Aristotle's argument that facts be collected before deducing scientific truths, physical science was not carried out by observations from the natural world, but by arguments based solely on tradition and prescribed authorities (see Scholasticism).

Bacon withdrew from the scholastic routine and devoted himself to languages and experimental research. The mathematicians whom he considered perfect were Peter of Maricourt^[23] and John of London, and two were adequate: Campanus of Novara and a Master Nicholas. Peter was the author of a manuscript treatise, "De Magnete," and Campanus wrote several important works on astronomy, astrology, and the calendar.^[24] Bacon often mentioned his debt to the work of Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh, as well as to other lesser figures. He was clearly not an isolated scholar in the thirteenth century.^[25]

A new approach

In his writings, Bacon calls for a reform of theological study. Less emphasis should be placed on minor philosophical distinctions than had been the case in scholasticism. Instead, the Bible itself should return to the centre of attention and theologians should thoroughly study the languages in which their original sources were composed. He was fluent in several languages and lamented the corruption of the holy texts and the works of the Greek philosophers by numerous mistranslations and misinterpretations. Furthermore, he urged all theologians to study all sciences closely, and to add them to the normal university curriculum. With regard to the obtaining of knowledge, he strongly championed experimental study over reliance on authority, arguing that "thence cometh quiet to the mind". Bacon did not restrict this approach to theological studies. He rejected the blind following of prior authorities, both in theological and scientific study, which was the accepted method of undertaking study in his day.

In the Opus Minus he criticizes his contemporaries Alexander of Hales and Albertus Magnus who, he says, had not studied the philosophy of Aristotle but only acquired their learning during their life as preachers.^[26] Albert was received at Paris as an authority equal to Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes^[27], leading Bacon to proclaim that "never in the world [had] such monstrosity occurred before."^[28] Bacon was always an outspoken man who stated what he believed to be true and attacked those with whom he disagreed, which repeatedly caused him great trouble.

Legacy

Bacon made many discoveries while coming near to many others, despite many disadvantages and discouragements. His Opus Majus contains treatments of mathematics and optics, alchemy and the manufacture of gunpowder, the positions and sizes of the celestial bodies, and anticipates later inventions such as microscopes, telescopes, spectacles, flying machines, hydraulics and steam ships. Bacon studied astrology and believed that the celestial bodies had an influence on the fate and mind of humans. The study of optics in part five of Opus Majus seems to draw on the works of the Muslim scientists, Alkindus (al-Kindi) and Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham), including a discussion of the physiology of eyesight, the anatomy of the eye and the brain, and considers light, distance, position, and size, direct vision, reflected vision, and refraction, mirrors and lenses. His research in optics was primarily oriented by the legacy of Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham; d. 1041) through a Latin translation of the latter's monumental Kitab al-manazir (De aspectibus; Perspectivae; The Optics), while the impact of the tradition of al-Kindi (Alkindus) was principally mediated through the influence that this Arabic scholar had on the optics of Robert Grosseteste. Moreover, Bacon's investigations of the properties of the magnifying glass partly rested on the handed down legacy of Arab opticians; mainly Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), who was in his turn influenced by Ibn Sahl's 10th century legacy in dioptrics^[29].

Drawing on the recently discovered Greco-Arabic astronomy and on the calendaric writings of Robert Grosseteste, Bacon criticized the Julian calendar, describing it as intolerable, horrible and laughable. He proposed to correct its errors by deleting a day from the calendar every 125 or 130 days.^[30] Bacon was an enthusiastic proponent and practitioner of the experimental method of acquiring knowledge about the world. He advocated the study of mathematics to facilitate the grounding of the scientific method in quantitative techniques. Further, Bacon predicted the invention of the submarine, automobile, and airplane.^[31] He planned to publish a comprehensive encyclopedia, but only fragments ever appeared. The American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce said of him that "To Roger Bacon, that remarkable mind who in the middle of the thirteenth century was almost a scientific man, the schoolmen's conception of reasoning appeared only an obstacle to truth. He saw that experience alone teaches anything.... Of all kinds of experience, the best, he thought, was interior illumination, which teaches many things about Nature which the external senses could never discover, such as the transubstantiation of bread."^[32]

Other attributed works

Roger Bacon is considered by some to be the author of the Voynich Manuscript, because of his studies in the fields of alchemy, astrology, and languages. Bacon is also the ascribed author of the alchemical manual Speculum Alchemiae, which was translated into English as The Mirror of Alchimy in 1597.

Commemoration

To commemorate Bacon's seven hundredth anniversary, Professor John Erskine wrote A Pageant of the Thirteenth Century, a biographical play which was produced at Columbia University and published as a book by Columbia University Press in 1914.

In fiction

Probably the most comprehensive and accessible description of Roger Bacon's life and times to a modern reader is contained in the book Doctor Mirabilis, written in 1964 by the science fiction author James Blish. This is the second book in Blish's quasi-religious trilogy After Such Knowledge, and is a complete, at times biographical recounting of Bacon's life and struggle to develop a 'Universal Science'. Though thoroughly academically researched, with a host of accurate references, including extensive use of Bacon's own writings, frequently in the original Latin, the book is written in the style of a novel, and Blish himself referred to it as 'fiction' or 'a vision'.

Blish's view of Bacon is uncompromisingly that he was the first scientist, and he provides a postscript to the novel in which he sets forth these views. Central to his depiction of Roger Bacon is that 'He was not an inventor, an Edison or Luther Burbank, holding up a test tube with a shout of Eureka!' He was instead a theoretical scientist probing fundamental realities, and his visions of modern technology were just by-products of "...the way he normally thought — the theory of theories as tools..." Blish indicates where Bacon's writings, for example, consider Newtonian metrical frameworks for space, then reject these for something which reads remarkably like Einsteinian Relativity, and all '...breathtakingly without pause or hiccup, breezily moving without any recourse through over 800 years of physics'.

Many writers of earlier times have been attracted to Roger Bacon as the epitome of a wise and subtle possessor of forbidden knowledge, similar to Faustus. A succession of legends and unverifiable stories has grown up about him, for example, that he created a brazen talking head which could answer any question. This has a central role in the play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay written by Robert Greene in about 1589.

Bacon also appears as first scientist in The Black Rose, the most commercially successful book by Thomas Costain, written in 1945. The Black Rose is set in the Middle Ages. Bacon's personal presence in the narrative is brief, but includes a demonstration of gunpowder and a few sentences outlining a philosophy of science which might as easily be attributed to Francis Bacon centuries later. The novel's Roger Bacon serves to motivate Costain's protagonist, a fictional Englishman who journeys to China during the reigns of Edward I and Kublai Khan. Costain's narration includes technology such as the compass, the telescope, rockets and the manufacture of paper, all described by his young adventurer with an eye toward bringing these marvels back to Bacon for analysis. Returning to England to find Bacon gone and under house arrest, the traveller begs King Edward to intercede with the pope for the Franciscan's release, arguing that with Bacon's imprisonment a great light of the world is in danger of being put out. Costain's character also comes to argue for emancipation of the Saxon villeins (serfs), linking political with intellectual enlightenment under the fictional Bacon's influence.

John Cowper Powys wrote 'The Brazen Head' in 1956, a complex romantic fantasy with Roger Bacon as a major character.

Bacon has more recently appeared as a significant character in Stephen Baxter's Navigator, the third book in his Time's Tapestry alternate history science fiction series. Baxter makes use of the mysterious unknown whereabouts of Bacon during the later 1240s to involve him in an investigation of prophesies from the future and plans for weapons of mass destruction.

Roger Bacon also appears in the Shadow Hearts videogame series, in which he is an alchemist who has lived for around 700 years.

See also

• Roger Bacon: On Experimental Science, 1268
• Roger Bacon High School
• Oxford Franciscan school
• History of the scientific method
• History of science in the Middle Ages
• Witelo
• Baco (crater) on the Moon

Notes

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Bacon, Roger". Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
•  John William Cousin, “Bacon, Roger,” in A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1910.
• Clegg, Brian (2003). The First Scientist: A Life of Roger Bacon. Constable & Robinson. ISBN 0-7867-1358-5. 
• Easton, Stewart C. Roger Bacon and his Search for a Universal Science, New York: Columbia Univ. Pr., 1952.
• Hackett, Jeremiah, ed. Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 57, Leiden: Brill, 1997. ISBN 90-04-10015-6
• Lindberg, David C. "Science as Handmaiden: Roger Bacon and the Patristic Tradition," Isis, 78 (1987): 518–36; reprinted in Michael H. Shank, ed., The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2000. ISBN 0-226-74951-7
• Blish, James "Doctor Mirabilis : A Vision", New English Library, 1964
• Roger Bacon The Art and Science of Logic (Mediaeval Sources in Translation), Toronto, PIMS 2009

External links

• "Roger Bacon" in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.
• 1901-1906 Jewish Encyclopedia: Bacon, Roger
• Feynman got it wrong article on Roger Bacon's place in the history of science
• Roger Bacon Quotes at Convergence
• Roger Bacon entry by Jeremiah Hackett in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera quaedam hactenus Inedita. Vol. I at Google Books. Contains the Opus Tertium, Opus Minus, and Compendium Philosophiae.