Bacon, Roger

Bacon, Roger (1210/14–after 1292), ‘Doctor Mirabilis’, philosopher, studied at Oxford and Paris, and joined the Franciscan order. He produced at the request of his friend Pope Clement IV (1265–8) Latin treatises on the sciences (grammar, logic, mathematics, physics, and modern philosophy); his great work is the Opus Maius; he also completed an Opus Minus and an Opus Tertium. He was in confinement for his heretical propositions c.1257 and again c.1278–92. He has been described as the founder of English philosophy. A conservative in theology, he advocated support for it from an appeal to experience rather than from the Scholastic method of argument employed in the Summa of Albertus Magnus and Alexander of Hales. He begins by stating the chief causes of error to be ignorance of languages, especially Greek, bad Latin translations, and lack of knowledge of the natural sciences, especially mathematics. At the same time, his outlook remained partly mystical. He was also a practical scientist; he invented spectacles and indicated the method by which a telescope might be constructed. He was vulgarly regarded as a necromancer in the Middle Ages because of his interest in the new sciences, especially chemistry and alchemy.