Roger Bacon Overview

Wikipedia

Roger Bacon:

• born: c. 1219/20, near Ilchester England (birth date is questionable)
• died: c. 1292, near Oxford, England (age 72/73)
• other names: Doctor Mirabilis
• interests: natural philosophy, natural sciences, chemistry, biology, engineering, mathematics, astronomy
• notable ideas: experimental science
• major work: Opus Majus

In the early modern era he was regarded as a wizard.

He was one of the earliest European advocates of the scientific method (along with Robert Grosseteste).

He applied the empirical method of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) to observations in texts attributed to Aristotle.

His linguistic work has been said to be an early exposition of a universal grammar.

He studied and taught at Oxford. He also taught at the University of Paris (c. 1237).

In 1256 or 1257 he became a Franciscan friar.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Source: Roger Bacon Author: Pia Antolic-Piper

Life

The primary source for information about Bacon’s life is his own Opus Tertium (c. 1267).

He was born in 1210, 1214, 1215, or as late as 1220. He died in 1292 (or soon after) in Oxford.

He was probably from a well-to-do family. That’s based on his freedom to pursue private research.

He attended the University of Oxford and then the University of Paris. He (probably) earned his Master of Arts around 1240. He lectured in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris in the 1240s. He probably returned to Oxford in 1247.

In around 1257 he joined the Franciscan Order. Possibly with the hope that the Franciscans would support his scholarly interests — they had supported Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253) and Adam Marsh.

In the beginning of the 1260s he was back in Paris. Possibly transferred there by the Franciscans due to suspicion about his studies. In Paris, he finished Opus Maius, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium. The exact details of what he did between this time and his death are unknown. He returned to Oxford sometime after 1278. Between 1277 and 1279 he was (supposedly) condemned to hous arrest by the Franciscans’ Master General Jerome of Ascoli. The charge against him was that some of his doctrines contained “certain suspect novelties”.

Experimental science

Bacon held that “all humans by nature desire to know” and are naturally drawn towards the beauty of wisdom and carried away by their love for it.

Bacon distinguished between three ways of acquiring knowledge — knowledge through authority, reason, and experience…. the only way for the human mind to arrive at the full truth, and to reset in the contemplation of truth, is through experience, a subjective comprehension based on sense perception.

Experience and Experiment

In his concept of scientia experimentalis, Bacon did not only consider experience through external senses, through vision, for example. His understanding was firmly grounded within the Augustinian tradition in affirming another kind of experience next to those provided by the external senses. Experience that consists in “internal illumination” (OM VI, vol. e, 169). For Bacon, experience through the external senses does not completely suffice to provide certainty in regard to physical bodies, “because of its difficulty,” and it does not achieve anything in the realm of spiritual things. The ancient patriarchs and prophets received their scientific knowledge by way of this divinely granted internal illumination. Thus, experienced-based knowledge according to Bacon was twofold: philosophical and divine. The philosophical was rooted in external senses and the divine was rooted in divine inspiration occurring internally (OM VI, vol.2, 169-172).

The three dignities

(Extracted from chapter Experimental Science / Experience and Experiment / The Three Prerogatives of Experimental Science.)

The sixth part of Opus Maius outlines three prerogatives or “dignities” of scientia experimentalis:

• first dignity: experientially confirms or refutes the theoretical conclusions of other sciences
• second dignity: provides observations and instruments needed for empirical practice
• third dignity: actively investigates the secrets of nature

The first dignity puts universal theoretical claims to the text. It completes science’s search for truth and certitude. Certitude is the state in which the human mind has a direct intuition of an experiential object.

(Scientia experimentalis seems to be something that stands outside of other forms of science. I’m not sure how much sense this makes in the modern concept of science.)

The second dignity “situates scientia experimentalis as an instrument within the other sciences”. Experimental knowledge serves to develop other sciences to their fullest potential. (Note that “science” didn’t mean the same thing as it does now.)

The third dignity gave scientia experimentalis the status of a science within its own right, independent of other sciences. “Experimental science investigates the secrets of nature by its own power. Its function includes the acquisition of knowledge of the future, past, and present in which it even exceeds astrology, and the accomplishment of marvelous works such as the manufacturing of antidotes against animal poisons or technologies that could be used in warfare. (OM VI, vol. 2, 215-219)”

Alchemy and Medicine

Alchemy: the science of the “generation of things” from the four elements (fire, air, water, earth).

His “alchemical manifesto” (Newman, 1997, 319) is in Opus Tertium and at the end of Opus Minus.

Because alchemy was on the blacklist of ecclesiastical authorities, it was necessary for Bacon to carefully qualify his understanding of alchemy and to thoroughly differentiate it from magic…. Bacon argued that alchemy relied on the powers of science, which operated in accordance with nature by artificially employing and directing the potential latent in nature….In effect Bacon clained that alchemical theory would provide the necessary naturalization of seemingly magical natural processes (Epistola de Decretis Operibus, 523).