Roger Bacon

Roger Bacon, known as Doctor Mirabilis (Wonderful Teacher), was an English philosopher and educational reformer, as well as a major medieval proponent of experimental science. Bacon studied mathematics, astronomy, optics, alchemy, and languages. He displayed a prodigious energy and zeal in the pursuit of experimental science. Beginning in about 1247, Bacon spent much time and energy and huge sums of money in experimental research, in acquiring “secret” books, in the construction of instruments and of tables,and in the training of assistants. Roger Bacon was the first European to describe in detail the process of making gunpowder, and he proposed flying machines and motorized ships and carriages. Bacon’s studies on the nature of light and on the rainbow are especially noteworthy, and he seems to have planned and interpreted these experiments carefully. Bacon also elucidated the principles of reflection, refraction, and spherical aberration. He used a camera obscura, which projects an image through a pinhole, to observe eclipses of the Sun. He sought reform of the calendar and was interested in astronomy. Roger Bacon was a staunch critic of the learning system prevailing in his time. Many of Roger Bacon’s reflections on the physical world were presented in the context of his extensive critique of university learning of the 13th century. Apart from the papal opera (Opus Maius, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium), his most important works on mathematical and physical topics were the De Multiplicatione Specierum (‘On the Multiplication of Species’; dated prior to the papal opera), the Communia Naturalium, and the Communia Mathematica, both dated after 1267. Roger Bacon known as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method. Bacon applied the empirical method of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) to observations in texts attributed to Aristotle. Bacon discovered the importance of empirical testing when the results he obtained were different than those that would have been predicted by Aristotle.