Brief biography of Roger Bacon, 13th century English Franciscan medieval thinker. He is known for his 'Opus Maius' and as 'Doctor Mirabilis.'
Roger Bacon (c.1214-1292) was a medieval thinker known for his major work Opus Maius ('Greater Work') and as Doctor Mirabilis ('Wonderful Teacher'). He was an English teacher, philosopher and scientist who tried to balance 'all the works of experimental science (scientia experimentalis) and other wonders (mirabilia)' carefully against magical arts.
Bacon's Life
Born in England, Roger Bacon studied first at Oxford and in Paris. Around 1245, in Paris, he was a teacher and became one of the pioneers of the teaching of the 'new' Aristotle, the works of science and metaphysics. He also devoted himself to experimental science and later joined the Franciscan order. Bacon had a reputation for his unconventional learning in philosophy, magic and alchemy.
Works and Ideas
Roger Bacon's great work, the Opus Maius ('Greater Work'), was written in Paris around 1267 and, like later works, he sent it to Pope Clement IV in the hope that his blessing and patronage would assist it to make its mark. The Pope's view of the 'Great Work' was not recorded. The 'Third Work' (Opus Tertium) was described by Bacon as the third work he had sent to the pope. The 'Compendium of the Study of Theology' ('Compendium Studii Theologiae') was written in 1292 in the last years of his life, forming a summary of what he felt he had spent a lifetime trying to convey.
The Systematic Teacher
Bacon was a systematiser. He wanted to write an encyclopaedic book for beginners in philosophy (Opus Tertium, p.56). He was greatly interested in the methods of learning and said in the Opus Tertium that "it is in the nature of the human mind to move from the general to the particular, that it needs the wider setting in which to lodge its knowledge of specific issues."
The Advanced Thinker
Roger Bacon recognised a number of things in the same basic working material which others of his days did not notice.
Like Aquinas, Bacon was concerned at the number of ways in which people could go astray in their faith; and deplored the proliferation of 'disputed questions.' He conjured with a related idea about 'Christian evidences,' proofs which proved truths of faith (the probation fidei Christianae). While Aquinas set about putting them into an orderly framework, Bacon suggested abandoning the whole exercise altogether, and, instead, returning to the scripture study and those which contain moral teaching, rather than learning first classical poets as Ovid.
Bacon the Scientist
Bacon also published some remarkable speculations about lighter-than-air flying machines, mechanical land transport, globe circumnavigation, and construction of microscopes and telescopes.
He was also interested in experimental verification. He identified a scientia experimentalis, that arguments prove nothing unless they are supported by the results of experiments (in Opus Tertium, p.43). At that time, it was an astonishing claim. His views of the primacy of mathematical proof and on experimentalism were strikingly modern, and despite censorship from the Franciscans, he published many works on mathematics, logic and philosophy, whose importance were only recognized in later centuries.
Sources:
Chambers Biographical Dictionary, edited bu Una McGovern, Chambers ((2003)
Fifty Key Medieval Thinkers by G.R. Evans, Routledge (2002)
