roger bacon biography

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Roger bacon.

I have laboured diligently in sciences and languages, and forty years have passed since I first learned the alphabet. I have always been studious and for all but two of these forty years I have been in study.

[ Peregrinus ] gains knowledge of matters of nature, medicine, and alchemy through experiment, and all that is in the heaven and in the earth beneath. ... Moreover, he has considered the experiments and the fortune-telling of the old witches, and their spells and those of all magicians. And so too the illusions and wiles of all conjurors; and this so that nothing may escape him which ought to be known, and that he may perceive how far to reprove all that is false and magical.

Mathematics is the door and the key to the sciences.

... contrived or artificial experiments, casual everyday experience, reports of the experiences of other observers, the spiritual experience of divine illumination, and what I [ Lindberg ] call geometrical experiments.

They forced me with unspeakable violence to obey their will.

For we can so shape transparent bodies, and arrange them in such a way with respect to our sight and objects of vision, that the rays will be reflected and bent in any direction we desire, and under any angle we wish, we may see the object near or at a distance ... So we might also cause the Sun, Moon and stars in appearance to descend here below...

... did sometimes use in the night season to ascend this place ( his study on Folly Bridge, on an eyot midstream in the Thames ) environed with waters and there to take the altitude and distance of stars and make use of it for his own convenience...

References ( show )

• A C Crombie, J D North, Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography ( New York 1970 - 1990) . See THIS LINK .
• Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/biography/Roger-Bacon
• J H Bridges, The life and work of Roger Bacon : an introduction to the Opus majus ( London, 1914) .
• R S Brumbaugh, The most mysterious manuscript : The Voynich 'Roger Bacon' cipher manuscript ( Carbondale, 1978) .
• B Clegg, Light years (2001) .
• B Clegg, The first scientist : A life of Roger Bacon ( London, 2003) .
• T Crowley, Roger Bacon: The problem of the soul in his philosophical commentaries ( Louvain-Dublin, 1950) .
• S C Easton, Roger Bacon and his search for a universal science : a reconsideration of the life and work of Roger Bacon in the light of his own stated purposes ( Oxford, 1952) .
• J Hackett ( ed. ) , Roger Bacon and the sciences : Commemorative essays ( Leiden, 1997)
• D C Lindberg, Roger Bacon's Philosophy of Nature: A Critical Edition (1983) .
• D C Lindberg, Roger Bacon and the origins of perspectiva in the middle ages ( Oxford, 1996) .
• A G Little ( ed. ) , Roger Bacon essays : Essays contributed by various writers on the occasion of the commemoration of the seventh centenary if his birth ( Oxford, 1914) .
• H S Redgrove, Roger Bacon (1995) .
• E Westacott, Roger Bacon in life and legend (1993) .
• H L L Busard, Ein mittelalterlicher Euklid-Kommentar, der Roger Bacon zugeschrieben werden kann, Arch. Internat. Hist. Sci. 24 (95) (1974) , 199 - 218 .
• A De Libera, Roger Bacon et la logique, in J Hackett ( ed. ) , Roger Bacon and the sciences : Commemorative essays ( Leiden, 1997) , 103 - 132 .
• J Hackett, Roger Bacon: his life, career and works, in J Hackett ( ed. ) , Roger Bacon and the sciences : Commemorative essays ( Leiden, 1997) , 9 - 23 .
• J Hackett, Roger Bacon and the sciences: introduction, in J Hackett ( ed. ) , Roger Bacon and the sciences : Commemorative essays ( Leiden, 1997) , 1 - 8 .
• J Hackett, Roger Bacon on astronomy-astrology: the sources of the scientia experimentalis, in J Hackett ( ed. ) , Roger Bacon and the sciences : Commemorative essays ( Leiden, 1997) , 175 - 198 .
• J Hackett, Roger Bacon on the classification of the sciences, in J Hackett ( ed. ) , Roger Bacon and the sciences : Commemorative essays ( Leiden, 1997) , 49 - 65 .
• D C Lindberg, On the applicability of mathematics to nature : Roger Bacon and his predecessors, British J. Hist. Sci. 15 (49) (1982) , 3 - 25 .
• D C Lindberg, Science as handmaiden : Roger Bacon and the patristic tradition, Isis 78 (294) (1987) , 518 - 536 .
• D C Lindberg, Roger Bacon and the origins of perspectiva in the West, in Mathematics and its applications to science and natural philosophy in the Middle Ages ( Cambridge-New York, 1987) , 249 - 268 .
• G Molland, Roger Bacon's 'Geometria speculativa', in Vestigia mathematica ( Amsterdam, 1993) , 265 - 303 .
• G A Molland, Roger Bacon's appropriation of past mathematics, in Tradition, transmission, transformation, Norman, OK, 1992 / 1993 ( Leiden, 1996) , 347 - 365 .
• G Molland, Roger Bacon's knowledge of mathematics, in J Hackett ( ed. ) , Roger Bacon and the sciences : Commemorative essays ( Leiden, 1997) , 151 - 174 .
• R Lemay, Roger Bacon's attitude toward the Latin translations and translators of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in J Hackett ( ed. ) , Roger Bacon and the sciences : Commemorative essays ( Leiden, 1997) , 25 - 47 .
• G Simon, Roger Bacon et Kepler lecteurs d'Alhazen, Arch. Internat. Hist. Sci. 51 (146) (2001) , 38 - 54 .
• J M M H Thijssen, Roger Bacon (1214 - 1292 / 1297) : a neglected source in the medieval continuum debate, Arch. Internat. Hist. Sci. 34 (112) (1984) , 25 - 34 .
• T S Maloney, A Roger Bacon bibliography (1985 - 1995) , in J Hackett ( ed. ) , Roger Bacon and the sciences : Commemorative essays ( Leiden, 1997) , 395 - 403 .
• N van Deusen, Roger Bacon on music, in J Hackett ( ed. ) , Roger Bacon and the sciences : Commemorative essays ( Leiden, 1997) , 223 - 241 .

Additional Resources ( show )

Other pages about Roger Bacon:

• See Roger Bacon on a timeline
• The cover of Babbage's Economy of Manufacturers and Machinery (1832) showing a medallion of Roger Bacon
• Multiple entries in The Mathematical Gazetteer of the British Isles ,

Other websites about Roger Bacon:

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography
• Dictionary of National Biography
• Encyclopaedia Britannica
• The Catholic Encyclopedia
• Bacon's tower in Oxford

Honours ( show )

Honours awarded to Roger Bacon

• Lunar features Crater Bacon

Cross-references ( show )

• History Topics: Light through the ages: Ancient Greece to Maxwell
• History Topics: Science in the 17 th century: From Europe to St Andrews
• Other: Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics (G)
• Other: Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics (P)
• Other: London Learned Societies
• Other: On Growth and Form
• Other: Other London Institutions outside the centre
• Other: Oxford Institutions and Colleges
• Other: Oxford individuals

Roger Bacon

• Reference work entry
• First Online: 01 January 2020
• pp 1722–1727
• Cite this reference work entry

• Yael Kedar 2  

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Roger Bacon was born in Ilchester in either 1214 or 1220. After his matriculation at Oxford, he was one of the pioneers to teach Aristotle at the University of Paris. His return to Oxford in the late 1240s marked a turning point in his career. He joined the Franciscans in 1257, and in 1267/1268, he sent three works, comprising a plan for the reorganization of Christian studies, to the Pope. In his Parisian phase of career, he developed the idea of the utmost significance of the speaker’s intention and original theories of imposition and equivocation. He affirmed that universals are extramental, believed in innate confused knowledge, and held to the theory of universal hylomorphism. In his mature phase of thought, he proposed an order of sciences in which the practical sciences received precedence, advocated the use of experimental method, developed the theory of the multiplication of species, and combined it with Alhacen’s ideas on light and vision. By this move, he initiated the tradition of the science of Perspectiva in the West. Bacon viewed nature as a coherent system governed by laws and formulated some of them. He stressed the importance of mathematics in providing scientific explanations and drew geometrical diagrams exemplifying various optical phenomena. Bacon described the details of the workings of the sensitive soul and ascribed complex cognitive capacities to animals. He presented an original classification of signs and reversed the linguistic triangle prescribed by Aristotle and Boethius. His view of matter as positive and worthy of investigation found expression in his strong notion of representation, advocating the need to portray both formal and material aspects in cognitive contents and language.

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Bibliography

Primary sources.

Bacon, R. (1859). Opera quaedam hactenus inedita (=Opus tertium, Opus minus, Compendium studii philosophiae, Epistola de secretis operibus Artis et Naturae, et de nullitate Magiae) (ed.: Brewer, J. S.). London (repr. Kraus, Nendeln, Lichtenstein, 1965).

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Bacon, R. (1897–1900). Opus majus (ed.: Bridges, J. H.). Oxford/Edinburgh: Wiliam & Norgate (repr. Frankfurt am Main, Minerva, 1964).

Bacon, R. (1902). Grammatica Graeca (ed.: Nolan, E., & Hirsch, S. A.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bacon, R. (1905–1940). Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi , 16 fascs (eds.: Steele, R., & Delorme, F. M.). Oxford: Clarendon.

Bacon, R. (1928). De retardatione accidentium senectutis cum aliis opusculis de rebus medicinalibus (ed.: Little, A. G., & Withington, E.). Oxford: Clarendon.

Bacon, R. (1978). An unedited part of Roger Bacon’s Opus majus: De signis (eds.: Fredborg, K. M., Nielsen, L., et al.). Traditio , 34 , 75–136.

Bacon, R. (1983). De multiplicatione specierum and De speculis comburentibus (ed. & trans.: Lindberg, D. C.). Oxford: Clarendon.

Bacon, R. (1988). Compendium studii theologiae (ed. & trans.: Maloney, T. S.). Leiden: Brill.

Bacon, R. (1996). Perspectiva (ed. & trans.: Lindberg, D. C.). Oxford: Clarendon.

Bacon, R. (2013). On signs (ed. & trans.: Maloney, T. S.). Toronto: PIMS.

Secondary Sources

Crowley, T. (1950). Roger Bacon: The problem of the soul in his philosophical commentaries . Louvain/Dublin: Éditions de l’Institut Supérieur de Philosophie.

Easton, S. C. (1952). Roger Bacon and his search for a universal science: A reconsideration of the life and work of Roger Bacon in the light of his own stated purposes . Westport: Greenwood Press.

Hackett, J. M. G. (1997). Roger Bacon: His life, career and works. In J. M. G. Hackett (Ed.), Roger Bacon and the sciences: Commemorative essays (pp. 9–24). Leiden: Brill.

Hackett, J. M. G. (2006). Experience and demonstration in Roger Bacon: A critical review of some modern interpretations. In A. Fidora & M. Lutz-Bachmann (Eds.), Erfahrung und Beweis: Die Wissenschaften von der Natur im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert / Experience and demonstration: The sciences of nature in the 13th and 14th centuries (Wissenkultur und gesellschaftlicher Wandel 14, pp. 41–58). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Hackett, J. M. G. (2008–2009). Roger Bacon’s concept of experience: A new beginning in medieval philosophy? The Modern Schoolman , 86 , 123–146.

Hackett, J. M. G. (2013). Roger Bacon on animal knowledge in the Perspectiva . In L. X. Lòpez-Farjeat & J. A. Tellkamp (Eds.), Philosophical psychology in Arabic thought and the Latin Aristotelianism of the 13th century (pp. 23–42). Paris: Vrin.

Kedar, Y., & Hon, G. (2018). Roger Bacon (c. 1220–1292) and his system of laws of nature: Classification, hierarchy and significance. Perspectives on Science, 25 (6), 719–745.

Lindberg, D. C. (1966). Roger Bacon’s theory of the rainbow: Progress or regress. Isis, 57 , 235–249.

Lindberg, D. C. (1982). On the applicability of mathematics to nature: Roger Bacon and his predecessors. British Journal for the History of Science, 15 , 3–25.

Lindberg, D. C. (1987). Science as a handmaiden – Roger Bacon and the patristic tradition. Isis, 78 , 518–536.

Lindberg, D. C., & Tachau, K. H. (2013). The science of light and color, seeing and knowing. In D. C. Lindberg & M. H. Shank (Eds.), The Cambridge history of science (Medieval science, Vol. 2, pp. 485–511). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Maloney, T. S. (1983). The semiotics of Roger Bacon. Medieval Studies, 65 , 120–154.

Maloney, T. S. (1984). Roger Bacon on equivocation. Vivarium, 22 , 85–112.

Maloney, T. S. (1985). The extreme realism of Roger Bacon. The Review of Metaphysics, 38 , 807–837.

Newman, W. R. (1997). An overview of Roger Bacon’s alchemy. In J. M. G. Hackett (Ed.), Roger Bacon and the sciences: Commemorative essays (pp. 317–336). Leiden: Brill.

Power, A. (2013). Roger Bacon and the defense of Christendom . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Raizman-Kedar, Y. (2009). The intellect naturalized: Roger Bacon on the existence of corporeal species within the intellect. Early Science and Medicine, 14 , 131–157.

Rosier-Catach, I. (1997). Roger Bacon and grammar. In J. M. G. Hackett (Ed.), Roger Bacon and the sciences: Commemorative essays (pp. 67–102). Leiden: Brill.

Sharp, D. E. (1930). Franciscan philosophy at Oxford in the thirteenth century . London: Oxford University Press.

Smith, A. M. (2015). From sight to light – The passage from ancient to modern optics . Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.

Williams, S. J. (1994). Roger Bacon and his edition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian, Secretum secretorum . Speculum, 69 , 57–73.

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Kedar, Y. (2020). Roger Bacon. In: Lagerlund, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1665-7_449

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James Lind Library Illustrating the development of fair tests of treatments in health care

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Sidebottom E (2012). Roger Bacon and the beginnings of experimental science in Britain.

© eric sidebottom, dunn school of pathology, oxford ox1 3re. email: [email protected], cite as: sidebottom e (2012). roger bacon and the beginnings of experimental science in britain. jll bulletin: commentaries on the history of treatment evaluation ( https://www.jameslindlibrary.org/articles/roger-bacon-and-the-beginnings-of-experimental-science-in-britain/ ), introduction.

Roger Bacon is something of an enigma. He has been called many things – ‘Britain’s first scientist’, ‘wonderful doctor’, ‘conjurer’, and ‘magician’. Many of the details of his life are uncertain and they have been discussed and argued about by scholars for centuries. He is generally thought to have been born in Ilchester, Somerset, around 1214, although some authors have put his date of birth as late as 1220. There is good evidence that he was in Paris in 1245 and 1251, but it is uncertain if he ever actually studied in Oxford.  If he did, he would have met Robert Grosseteste, often described as Oxford University’s first Chancellor (although his role is better described as ‘master of students’ ( magister scholarium ).

Bacon’s entry into the Franciscan order, plausibly in 1257, is also conjectural; but it is clear that his relationship with the Franciscan hierarchy was, at times, rather stormy (Molland 2004). He was openly critical of some of their values and beliefs and it was not surprising that they sometimes tried to muzzle him. Again the details of his alleged ‘imprisonment’ are unclear.

It is likely that Bacon spent the last years of his life in the Franciscan House in Oxford, where he died and was buried in 1292.

Bacon’s writings

Although Bacon is often celebrated as the first true experimental scientist in Britain, this accolade may more properly be accorded to Robert Grosseteste, (c 1170-1253). Grosseteste definitely influenced Bacon and may well have taught him. Although much is now known about Bacon’s extensive writings – and they are rightly admired for their scholarship and lucidity – it is not clear how far they are original or the extent to which they were derived from contact with contemporary scholars such as Grosseteste, Adam Marsh, Thomas Wallensis and others. I am puzzled that RW Southern’s biography of Grosseteste does not mention Roger Bacon (Southern 2004), despite the Preface in AC Crombie’s Robert Grosseteste and the origins of experimental science, published half a century earlier, which states: ‘In the 13thC, the Oxford school, with Robert Grosseteste as its founder, assumes a paramount importance: the work of this school in fact marks the beginning of the modern tradition of experimental science’ (Crombie 1953).

What is clear is that Roger Bacon was an innovative thinker and a courageous scholar, not afraid to challenge current beliefs about philosophy, science and religion. His writings were extensive and have probably been more intensively studied than those of Grosseteste.

It was possibly Bacon’s acquaintance with Guy Foulquois, formerly a lawyer and military man who became a cardinal in 1261 and Pope Clement IV in 1264, which stimulated Bacon’s most famous writings. Indeed, as Pope Clement, Foulquois  commanded Bacon to send, ‘as quickly as possible and in a fair hand’ his written works on philosophy, science and religion. There must have been some misunderstanding because Bacon was asking the Pope at that time to bless his intention to write a comprehensive ‘encyclopaedia of current knowledge’. The Pope’s request provoked a flurry of activity on Bacon’s part, which resulted in the completion of his Opus maius in 1266. This was intended to be a summary (somewhat lengthy) of knowledge about the natural world, and was divided into seven parts:

I  The causes of human ignorance II The relation of the sciences to theology III Grammar and the power of languages IV Mathematics, including astronomy and astrology V  Optics (perspectiva) VI Experimental science VII Moral philosophy.

Part VI of Bacon’s Opus maius – Experimental Science – contains the passages for which he is principally remembered. The various abbreviations used by scribes make it hard for non-medievalists to recognise the key passages ( Bacon 1266 ).

P 389 of the 15 th Century Digby manuscript in the Bodleian Library in Oxford states:

Positis radicibus sapientiae Latinorum penes Linguas et Mathematicam et Perspectivam, nunc volo revolvere radices a parte Scientiae Experimentalis, quia sine experiential nihil sufficientia sciri potest [my emphasis] Having laid down fundamental principles of the wisdom of the Latins so far as they are found in language, mathematics, and optics, I now wish to unfold the principles of experimental science, since without experiment nothing can be sufficiently known. There are two ways of acquiring knowledge, one through reason, the other by experiment. Argument reaches a conclusion and compels us to admit it, but it neither makes us certain nor so annihilates doubt that the mind rests calm in the intuition of truth, unless it finds this certitude by way of experience. Thus many have arguments toward attainable facts, but because they have not experienced them, they overlook them and neither avoid a harmful nor follow a beneficial course.  Even if a man that has never seen fire, proves by good reasoning that fire burns, and devours and destroys things, nevertheless the mind of one hearing his arguments would never be convinced, nor would he avoid fire until he puts his hand or some combustible thing into it in order to prove by experiment what the argument taught. But after the fact of combustion is experienced, the mind is satisfied and lies calm in the certainty of truth. Hence argument is not enough, but experience is.

Bacon is making a point that brings to mind a passage in Ibn Sina’s Qanun , written two centuries earlier, namely:

If it is said that some parts of medicine are theoretical and other parts are practical, this does not mean that one part teaches medicine and the other puts it into practice…both parts of medicine are science, but one part is the science dealing with the principles of medicine, and the other with how to put those principles into practice. ( Ibn Sina c. 1012 CE; c. 402 AH) .

After dispatching his Opus maius to Rome, Bacon apparently worried that it may not have reached the Pope, or that it might have been too long for a busy Pope to read, and that it was incomplete. Accordingly he rapidly wrote his Opus minus , to summarise and supplement the Opus maius . This was despatched by ‘special courier’ – a favourite pupil of Bacon’s named John. Bacon then worked on his Opus tertium , a much expanded volume. Unfortunately the Pope died in 1268 without apparently ever communicating his opinions on Bacon’s works.

Oxford ’s celebrations of Roger Bacon

There are several visible reminders of Roger Bacon’s link with Oxford in the 13th century. Around the corner from Roger Bacon Lane, there is a memorial plaque on the south wall of the Westgate Centre (nearly opposite the street-level entrance to the car-park, and overlooking a litter-strewn area of waste land). The plaque marks the site of Greyfriars Church, which stood there from about 1246 until 1538, when Franciscan houses were closed by Henry VIII. The inscription on the plaque records in English and Latin the life of one of England’s most distinguished Franciscans:

The great philosopher, Roger Bacon, known as the wonderful doctor who by the Experimental Method extended marvellously the realm of science, after a long life of untiring activity near this place, in the home of his Franciscan brethren, fell asleep in Christ. AD 1292.

Words from Bacon’s Opus maius are inscribed above the entrance to the Daubeny Building of Oxford’s Botanic Garden:

Sine experientia nihil sufficienter sciri potest [Without experiment nothing can be properly known]

Finally, in the court of the University’s Museum of Natural History, there is a statue of Roger Bacon carved in Caen stone by Henry Hope Pinker. Bacon is depicted holding an astrolabe and callipers – the former representing his scientific studies, the latter suggesting an aspiration to harmony. The statue was unveiled at a lavish celebration in 1914, on the 700 th anniversary of Bacon’s birth. The event was reported at length in Nature (Nature 1914).

After the statue had been unveiled at the museum, eulogies were given (‘Bacon was the most important phenomenon of the Middle Ages’ – Humboldt) and graciously accepted by the University Chancellor, Lord Curzon.  A lunch was then served at Merton College, at which Sir William Osler thanked visitors from the Vatican, the French Academy, the Franciscans and Cambridge University for their contributions. Delegates were then offered the choice of going either to the Sheldonian Theatre to hear a Romanes Lecture on ‘Atomic Theory’ given by Sir JJ Thompson; or to the Bodleian Library to view an exhibition of Baconian books, manuscripts and prints. The celebration ended with a garden party at Wadham College.

Sir Archibald Giekie – President of the Royal Society – summed up the rationale for such an extensive celebration:

Dispensing with the futile disputational subtleties of the schoolmen of his day, [Bacon] strove to concentrate attention on things rather than words. He led the way towards the conception of science as the inductive study of nature, based on and tested by experiment. 

I wonder whether the 800 th anniversary in 2014 will be celebrated in such style!

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Eva Oledzka and Bruce Barker-Benfield, of the Bodleian Library, for their invaluable help in locating, translating and commenting on manuscripts for me; to Gillian Lewis for talking to me about medieval philosophy and science and directing my reading; and to the Bodleian Library for permission to use in the James Lind Library images from pages in the 15 th century manuscript of Bacon’s Opus maius.

This James Lind Library commentary has been republished in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 2013;106:243-245. Print PDF

Bacon R (1266). Opus maius . MS Digby 325, 15 th century manuscript. Bodleian Library, Oxford. [translations consulted: Bridges JH (1897). Oxford: Oxford University Press and Burke RB (1928). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press]

Crombie AC (1953). Robert Grosseteste and the origins of experimental science. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Ibn Sina (c. 1012 CE; c. 402 AH). Kitab al-Qanun fi al-tibb [Avicenna’s The Canon of Medicine].

Molland G (2004). Bacon, Roger (c. 1214-1292), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edn, Sept 2010.

Nature (1914). The commemoration of Roger Bacon at Oxford. Nature 93:405-6.

Southern RW (2004). Grosseteste, Robert ( c. 1170–1253). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edn, Sept 2010 [http://ezproxy.ouls.ox.ac.uk:2117/view/article/11665]

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Roger Bacon Research Society

Roger Bacon

Life and works of roger bacon.

by Yael Kedar

A cloud of uncertainty envelops many details of Bacon’s life. His date of birth is but one example. The disagreement between scholars  concerning that date revolves around a passage from the Opus tertium (written in 1267), in which Bacon reports that 40 years had passed since he had first learned the alphabet, and that except for two years he had been in studio ever since ( Opus tertium 20, 65). The various estimated dates result from the different interpretations attached to the phrases didici primo alphabetum and in studio . If in studio is taken to be “in a University”, then Bacon’s date of birth should be set to 1214 (This is the view held by Sharp, 1930, 12; Easton, 1952, 1–12; Maloney, 1988, 2; and Hackett, 1997, 11).  However, if the phrase “learned the alphabet” should be interpreted literally, then the forty-years-period should be counted from the beginning of Bacon’s primary education. Accordingly, his date of birth should be set in 1219 or 1220 (This is the opinion of Crowley, 1950, 18; Crombie and North, 1970, 377; Lindberg, 1983, xvi; and Clegg, 2003, 8).

The details of Bacon’s education are, again, doubtful. He was probably matriculated first at Oxford. The date of his M.A. degree would be about 1240, assuming that he was born in 1220 and that a scholar typically earned the M.A. at the age of 20 (Lindberg, 1983, xvii).

Bacon went to Paris in the early 1240s – surely before 1245, since he reports to have seen Alexander of Hales ( ca . 1183–1245), who died in that year ( Opus minus , 325). Easton (1952, 34) thinks he first taught at Oxford for a few years, thereby deepening his knowledge of Aristotle and the commentators, and perhaps gaining some reputation. He suggests that, on the strength this reputation, Bacon was invited to Paris when the faculty of arts in that university needed a man to teach Aristotle. Little and Steele (1914, 4; 1921, 129) make a similar point, suggesting that Bacon’s reputation was good enough for him to be taken up by the Chancellor of Paris, Philip (1160s–1236), and recommended to pursue further studies in medicine. The outcome of these studies was the Epistola de accidentibus senectutis , dedicated and sent to Innocent IV.

Since Philip died in 1236, Steele holds to the view that Bacon came to Paris in the late 1230s rather than the early 1240s and explains the gap between Bacon’s arrival in Paris and the dates of his recorded lectures (from 1244 to 1247), by the assumption that he spent the interval studying medicine. Crowley (1950, 24–25), however, claims that the Epistola was wrongly attributed to Bacon. He argues that the entire case for Bacon’s authorship rests on a reference to the Opus majus which it contains, which is clearly a later addition, since the Epistola was dedicated to Pope Innocent IV, who died in 1254, about thirteen years before the composition of the Opus majus .  Moreover, in the Opus majus and in several other works Bacon refers to the Epistola , and in none of these passages does he suggest that he himself was the author. Crowley concludes that since the Epistola is the only alleged evidence of Bacon’s early arrival to Paris, there is no reason left to assume that this arrival occurred in the 1230s.

In Paris Bacon heard William of Auverge ( d . 1249) disputing on the agent intellect ( Opus majus 2.5) and John of Garlandia (1190–1255) denouncing the ignorant etymologists ( Compendium studii philosophiae , 453). He may have become acquainted there with Albertus Magnus ( ca . 1200–1280), who was in Paris at the same time (Crombie and North, 1970, 377), and he may have been Robert’s Kilwardby’s student (Weisheipl, 1965, 79). During the 1240s Bacon was lecturing in the faculty of arts at Paris. His lectures covered Aristotle’s Metaphysics , Physic s, De sensu et sensato , probably De generatione et corroptione , De animalibus and De anima perhaps also De Caelo et mundo , De causis and De plantis (Easton, 1952, 49). It thus appears that Bacon was one of the early lecturers, perhaps indeed a pioneer, on Aristotle’s libri naturales in Paris after the bans of 1210, 1215, 1233 (Crombie and North, 1970, 7; Lindberg, 1983, xvii; Weisheipl, e, 454; Maloney, 1988, 4). His Quaestiones were probably the lectures he gave in class, copied down much as he gave them in Paris. Besides those, Easton (1952, 27) thinks that there are reasons to suppose that Bacon also gave courses on logic and grammar at the time. He therefore dates the Summa grammatica , the Sumulae dialectics and the Summa de sophismatibus et destructionibus to Bacon’s first Parisian period.  

About 1247, or perhaps as late as 1250, Bacon gave up his membership in the arts faculty at Paris and returned to Oxford. The evidences for such a return are his reported encounter with Adam Marsh ( ca . 1200–1259), who lectured in Oxford between the years 1247 and 1250, and with Thomas of Wales, who lectured to the Franciscans at Oxford from 1240 to 1247 (Sharp, 1930, 115; Crowley, 1950, 27–29). Hackett (1997, 14) suggests the possibility that Bacon had met with Adam Marsh at Paris in 1245 or at a later date such as 1259.

The move to Oxford has been assumed to mark the turning point in Bacon’s interests. This turn involved an escape from the confines of the Aristotelian tradition and a dramatic broadening of his outlook in the direction of Robert Grosseteste’s philosophy and the contents of various Arabic sources. It supposedly marked the beginning of his campaign on behalf of mathematics and experimental science. According to Crowley (1950, 29) this turn occurred following Bacon’s acquaintance with Robert Grosseteste (1168–1252), after his return to Oxford. Easton (1952, 78), however, ascribes the turn in Bacon’s interests not to his return to England but to his reading of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets . He read this book toward the end of his life in Paris, and Easton (1952, 86) believes that “His whole later life and the emotional intensity with which he pursued it can be traced to the impact of this book”. When Bacon decided to undertake his study of science, he probably returned to England – a home to many of the older generation of scientists so highly praised by him – at once. His return was, according to Easton (1952, 87), the outcome of the turn, not its cause.

Right after returning to England, Bacon had sat down to write the glosses for the Secret of secrets . We also know that he heard Richard Rufus of Cornwall ( d . after 1259) lecture on the Sentences at Oxford about the year 1250 ( Compendium studii theologiae 4.86, 87).

There is a controversy among scholars concerning Bacon’s theological education. Crowley and Kuper (1950, 26; 1996, 30) believe that Bacon studied theology both in Paris while he was teaching and later on in Oxford under Adam Marsh. Crowley (1950, 27–28) adduces two references from the Opus tertium in which Bacon reports to have heard Adam Marsh. These references – so Crowley believes – indicate a relation of pupil and master. Crowley’s other rationale is that Bacon would not have taken upon himself to expose the vices in the theological teachings of his time had he never been an auditor in the faculty of theology.

Easton, Lindberg and Hackett (1952, 94; 1983, xix; 1997, 15), on the other hand, found no evidence that Bacon was lecturing or studying theology at Oxford. They all agree that Bacon never became a Master of Theology. Little (1914, 6, n. 1) notes that no thirteenth century manuscript refers to him as doctor or master of theology and that Bartholomew of Pisa ( d. ca . 1401), who was very careful to distinguish between friars who were masters of theology and those who were not, always refers to him as frater , never as magister .  Easton (1952, 20-21) adds that no commentary on the Sentences by Bacon has been found, nor does he once quote from the Sentences . Since every student of theology at Paris and Oxford had to learn to comment on the Sentences of Peter Lombard as part of their training, such a commentary would surely exist had Bacon studied theology. Likewise, Bacon shows no familiarity with the writings of Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) – the theologians of his time.

Another controversy involves the nature of Bacon’s relations with Robert Grosseteste. Steele and Kuper (1921, 128; 1996, 22) think Bacon was Grosseteste’s student in the 1230’s, that is, before he went to Paris. Little and Crowley (1917, 97; 1950, 29–31) argue that on returning to Oxford Bacon became Grosseteste’s disciple, perhaps even his assistant. Little even finds traces of Bacon’s influence in the treaties De impressione aeris , written by Grosseteste in 1249, and Crowley concurs. Lindberg (1983, xix) opposes such a contention, since from 1235 Grosseteste was no longer in Oxford. From that year on he was serving as the bishop of Lincoln, whose episcopal duties must have precluded heavy work in natural philosophy. Moreover, Bacon makes no claim to have met Grosseteste. Lindberg concludes that Bacon surely had felt Grosseteste’s influence, but only through the written word. Crombie (1953, 139) reaches a similar conclusion, stating that even though it is improbable that Bacon heard Grosseteste’s lectures at Oxford, he seems to have become a member of Grosseteste’s ‘circle’ by 1249 and there is no doubt he had access to his manuscripts. Hackett (1997, 11) thinks it likely that Bacon had seen Grosseteste. Bacon’s use of nam vidimus of Grosseteste implies that he had seen him and was clearly influenced by his example. Crombie (1953, 139) believes that Bacon could have visited Lincoln, especially in view of his interest in logic and the presence there of William of Sherwood (1190–1249), whom Bacon ranked as the best representative of the philosophia communis . Another possibility raised by Hackett (1997, 15) is that Bacon met both Grosseteste and Marsh in France when the two came to prepare for the Council of Lyon in January 1245.

Bacon joined the Franciscans in the mid-1250s or later (1257 is widely held to be the likely date), probably because he thought that it would somehow further his studies and his grand designs for the reform of Christendom (Lindberg, 1983, xx). A contributing factor could have been Grosseteste’s library, which he bequeathed to the Franciscan convent at Oxford (Easton, 1952, 91).

In many descriptions of Bacon’s course of life we find that the first ten years of his life as a Franciscan are characterized by severe illness, which kept him from study. Lindberg (1983, xxl), however, reminds us that: “Everything we know about this period of Bacon’s life comes from excuses offered to explain to the Pope why he had put so little on paper, and we must surely take these excuses with a grain of salt.”

It is not quite clear whether Bacon’s superiors and brothers supported or obstructed his studies, although the picture Bacon paints in his complaints to the pope is gloomy. He accuses them of burdening him with other duties and punishing him with isolation, hunger and “unspeakable violence” ( Opus tertium 3, 15). Bacon’s trouble in the order could have had any of several causes, but the most likely was his apocalyptic leanings. Bacon had identified himself with the radical elements of his order, including Joachim of Fiore ( ca . 1132–1202) and the “spirituals”, and thus opened himself to the same discipline to which they were subject (Easton, 1952, 126–37; Lindberg, 1983, xxiv). The Joachites and Spirituals were accused of provoking a schism within the order. Easton (1952, 137) claims that Bacon was “… steeped in the Joachitic and apocalyptic literature of his time, and is greatly influenced by it in his own work and his attitude to life, and he is especially impressed by the idea of the imminent approach of Antichrist.”

He is thought to have been displaced to the parent convent in Paris and ordered to undertake menial duties, without being allowed any contact with the outside world (Easton, 1952, 134–5; Clegg, 2003, 76).

The restrictions inflicted upon Bacon may have stemmed from the general chapter of Narbonne, which extended to the whole order and not have been directed specifically against him. The Chapter of Narbonne was issued in 1260 against Gerard of Borgo San Donnino ( d . 1276/7), whose apocalyptic work Introduction to the Everlasting Gospel was declared heretical (Witzel, 1912).

Thorndike (1923, 627–628) offers a different picture of Bacon’s first years as a Franciscan. He thinks that the task of providing the Pope with a Magnum opus which Bacon had taken upon himself was beyond the powers of any one man. The fault of Bacon’s superiors, according to Thorndike, lay in not providing him with the expensive equipment he required for his experiments and continuing to require of him to perform the usual duties of a friar. Their attitude therefore, in Thorndike’s view, should not be described as one of persecution or hostility.

In those first years as a Franciscan (until 1266) Bacon wrote the De mirabilis potestate artis et naturae , and the De computo naturali (Little, 1914, 9–10). This was the period of his most intense occupation with optics, and in the late 1250s or the early 1260s he wrote the De multiplicatione specierum – his most fully thought-out piece, which he himself also thought was his best – and the De speculis comburentibus (Easton, 1952, 104; Lindberg, 1983, xxxiil).

Bacon presumably had sent out a steady stream of requests for external sponsors, asking permission to return to Oxford. One of the people he wrote to in 1263–4 was the cardinal-bishop of Sabina, Guy de Foulques (Lindberg, 1983, xxii; Clegg, 2003, 92). The Cardinal responded by asking Bacon to send him his writings, but Bacon had nothing yet to send. In February 1265 Guy de Foulques was elected Pope as Clement IV, and Bacon then sent him another letter, which was partly an apology that nothing had yet been done and partly a request for financial aid with his scientific study (Easton, 1953, 146; Hackett, 1997, 17; Clegg, 2003, 95). In June 1266 the Pope replied, directing Bacon to send the work previously requested “notwithstanding any prohibitions of his order”, but to keep the commission a secret (Steele, 1921, 140; Easton, 1952, 148; Hackett, 1997, 17). This statement released Bacon from the censorship imposed by the Chapter of Narbonne, which forbade issuing books outside the Order, and even their composition, without the license of the Minister-General of the Franciscan Order. However, it did not provide him with any funds, and so left him empty-handed before an extremely demanding task. (Lindberg, 1983, xxiii; Clegg, 2003, 80).

Bacon replied with three works: the Opus majus , Opus minus and Opus tertium . The Opus majus , along with the De multiplicatione specierum , was sent to the Pope in 1267, followed by the Opus minus and possibly by some works on astrology and alchemy, perhaps even the De speculum comburentibus (Crombie and North, 1970, 378; Lindberg, 1983, xxv; Hackett, 1997, 22). There is considerable disagreement over the order and manner of writing the three works and whether the Opus tertium was ever sent. Thorndike (1923, 624) thinks that Bacon prepared the Opus minus and the Opus tertium in case the Opus majus did not arrive or the Pope found it too long to read. Mandonnet (1913), on the other hand, thinks that the Opus minus and Opus tertium were composed before or at the same time with the Opus majus and that they were eventually not sent at all but incorporated instead in the major work. Crowley (1950, 43–46) strongly objects to this theoretical sequence of events; he thinks the Opus tertium was written only after the Opus majus and the Opus minus had been sent to the pope. To support this chronology he relies in this contention on Bacon’s explicit statement at the beginning of the Opus tertium that he had already sent two kinds of writings to the Pope: one, the major work, divided into four parts because of its size; the other, a kind of compendium and supplement to the first ( Opus tertium 1, 1965, 3). He further alludes to the innumerable expressions in the latter work implying that the Opus majus was no longer in his possession: for example, Bacon cannot recall how many reasons he had given for the necessity of studying languages, nor can he remember in what order he had given them ( Opus tertium 11, 1965, 38). In some places, Bacon seems to be correcting in the Opus tertium mistakes that have crept to the Opus majus (For example, Opus tertium 67, 273–274). Crowley (1950, 48) believes the three works were written within eighteen months, that is, Bacon had begun writing only upon receiving the papal mandate.

Easton (1953, 151–54) agrees with Thorndike and Crowley that most of the Opus tertium consists of afterthoughts to the Opus majus and it was written after the latter work’s completion. Furthermore, he believes it was never sent to the Pope, nor ever completed, since the Pope had died in the meantime. He suggests the following sequence: three years after the first mandate, Bacon had completed the Opus majus and sent it off to the copyists. This would take some time, for the work was of considerable length. Meanwhile Bacon began to think of all the things he had omitted from the great work; so he started to work at once on another text. To ensure that this new work would be of some use if the major work were lost, Bacon gave in it the digest of the most important material in the Opus majus . This new work is the Opus minus . Having written it, Bacon cannot bear not to send it; so off it goes, too, to the copyists to be put into good script. Now Bacon begins what should have been an introduction to both works, and in the Opus tertium he gives a long and moving account of his “impediments”. Yet along with that he states that he has “gained the remedies for his former impediments” and is now able to add some necessary things which he could not put in before ( Opus tertium 1, 5). Easton (1952, 164) assumes that at this point, when financial troubles were threatening to overwhelm him, he finally gave up the attempt to dispatch the works secretly and turned to his superiors for support. When the Opus majus returned from the copyists, Bacon was no longer satisfied with it. He then revised it by inserting extracts from the Opus tertium . Later he wrote a brief introduction, including a recommendation for his student John, who was to carry the works to the Pope; this letter is the Gasquet fragment (Easton, 1952, 165–166). Hackett (2018) suggests that the abovementioned John was no other than Peter John Olivi (1248–1298). Once the works were on their way, probably early in 1268, Bacon started to work once more on the Opus tertium , many passages of which are superior to the similar parts of the Opus majus . However, it was never finished or sent. The Pope died in the same year, and his successor was not elected until 1271; so Bacon received no answer, and no result had followed from his writings (Steele, 1921, 141; Easton, 1952, 166).

Tradition has it that after completing the three works, Bacon returned to England. Little (1914, 20) argues that the fact that the glosses to the Secret of secrets were written in England is an evidence for Bacon’s return. Easton (1952, 187), however, thinks the glosses were written long before the introduction to the same work; so the introduction itself, written much later, cannot serve as definite evidence. On the other hand, he believes that the fact that Bacon’s manuscripts have been found scattered through English libraries, along with the many stories and legends told about him around England, could serve as evidence for such a return. Steele (1921, 141) too notes the many legends of how Bacon constructed magical mirrors and perspective glasses. Easton (1952, 188) further suggests that if Bacon had indeed made peace with his superiors in Paris –  by showing them that he was not writing anything subversive, and if indeed the Pope’s mandate had increased his prestige and importance within the order, then the reasons for keeping him in France would be at an end.

Most scholars agree that perhaps at this time (the late 1260s and early 1270s) Bacon wrote his Communia naturalium and Communia mathematica , mature expressions of many of his theories (Easton, 1952, 111, 158, 186; Crombie and North, 1970, 378; Lindberg, 1983, xxv; Hackett, 1997, 22). Crowley (1950, 64–5) places these two works after the Compendium studii philosophiae from 1271-2 and sets the Communica mathematica before the Comminia naturalium . Hackett (1997b, 284–285) argues that the fourth part of the first book of the Communia naturalium is in fact a section of the Opus tertium . The Communia naturalium may have been composed over a long period of time and was only revised and enlarged after Bacon completed his works for the Pope (Easton, 1952, 42(. Both Little (1914, 11) and Sharp (1930, 116) believe that it was the Communia naturalium that Bacon had begun writing upon receiving the first request from Guy de Foulques. It was meant to present an exhaustive account of the various branches of knowledge; but when Bacon realized the enormity of the task, he laid it aside in January 1267 and turned to the less ambitious introduction which he named Opus majus . This is why Bacon sometimes calls the latter Tractatus praeambulus , thereby distinguishing it from the great systematic work on all the sciences he had hoped to write (Little, 1914, 11–12). Little and Sharp therefore identify the Communia with the scriptum principale of Crowley.

Now comes the period – a period beginning, in fact with the Opus majus – of Bacon’s intense occupation with language. The Greek and Hebrew grammars belong to the phase immediately following the Opus majus (Easton, 1952, 186).

These were followed in 1271 or 1272 by the polemical Compendium studii philosophiae , in which Bacon abuses the Franciscan and Dominican orders for their educational practices. This work, which was written within the turbulent period of a struggle between the seculars and the orders, accompanied by a rivalry between the two orders, shows Bacon’s despair at the condition of society (Easton, 1952, 189–190). We know the approximate date of its composition, because Bacon refers in it to the interregnum preceding the election of Gregory X in September 1271 ( Compendium studii philosophiae 1, 399).

A chronicle from about 1370 reports that Bacon was condemned and imprisoned by his order for “certain suspected novelties”. The chronicle further tells us that Bacon’s works and doctrines were to be avoided by all, since the order had rejected them ( Chronica XXIV Generalium Ordinis Minorum . Reprinted in Crowley, 1950, 67). Although this account was written a hundred years after the event and identifies Bacon as a “master of sacred theology”, which he probably never was, most recent biographers accept it as reliable (Lindberg, 1983, xxv-xxvi; Crowley, 1950, 67–72; Easton, 1952,  192–202; Crombie and North, 1970, 378). Crowley (1950, 69–71) dates the event to between 1277 and 1279 and notes that the imprisonment cannot have been too rigorous nor of very long duration. He rather thinks of some form of “correction” imposed on Bacon. We know that his works were condemned and that he himself was supposedly confined to the Paris convent, perhaps until 1292, by Jerome of Ascoli ( d . 1292), the Franciscan minister-general, who later became Pope Nicholas IV (Sharp, 1930, 117).

The reason for this condemnation is unknown. Little (1914, 26) links it with a meeting in Paris in 1277 between John of Vercelli (1205–1283), the Dominican master-general, and Jerome of Ascoli, a meeting whose purpose was to device measures against the quarrels between the two orders. Among other things, they have decided to decree that the friars of both orders should abstain from mutual detractions. In the Compendium studii philosophiae Bacon had clearly violated that decree.

Bridges (1914, 29–32) and Easton (Easton, 1952, 191) attributes this imprisonment to repercussions resulting from the Compendium studii philosophiae . They believe that whether it was published or not, Bacon’s views were well known to his fellow-friars. The Compendium was a political tract, likely to give offence both to the more conservative members of his own order and to the Dominicans. It was soaked with the spirit of the prophetic literature of the day, favoured by the spirituals, at a time when the most urgent problem the Franciscan authorities had to deal with of the schism within the order (Easton, 1952, 197). In the same spirit, Sharp (1930, 117) ascribes the condemnation to Bacon’s “obnoxious attack on his contemporaries, Franciscans as well as Dominicans and seculars.” Her examples of such attacks are all taken from the Opus tertium and the Compendium . Add all this to Bacon’s general attitude toward authority, and there is no need to find offending doctrines in his writings. More than any of his theories, it was his personality that was condemned. “Suspected novelties” then becomes then a convenient blanket term for all that (Easton, 1952, 200).  

Sidelko (1996, 70), however, suggests a different motive for the condemnation. He argues that the novelties referred to by the chronicle are certain points in Bacon’s astrological doctrine concerning the influence of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the human nature of Christ at his birth and the advent of Christianity. Bacon derived his ideas almost exclusively from pagan and occult sources, the same sources which the condemnation of 1277 and the resolution of the Spiritual Franciscan controversy were meant to eradicate (Sidelko, 1996, 80–81). Bridges (1914, 32) also ascribes the condemnation to this reliance on Pagan authorities. He notes the high esteem that Bacon gave to Seneca ( ca . 4 B.C.–65 A.D.) and the Stoics in moral matters, as well as the high ethical value that he set on the Muslim writers al-Farabi ( ca . 872–950/1), Avicenna (980–1037) and al-Gazali (1058–1111). Crombie and North (1970, 378) concur, assuming that Bacon’s condemnation was related to the censorship of heretical Averroist propositions by Tempier in 1277. Crowley (1950, 70) reminds us that the text of the chronicle refers not to Stephen Tempier as Bacon’s jailer but to Bacon’s superiors within the Franciscan order. He suggests that Tempier’s action encouraged the theologians at the Franciscan convent in Paris to take steps to ensure the purity of doctrine within the Order.

In 1292, at a chapter of the order held in Paris, just after Jerome of Ascoli’s death, certain prisoners condemned in 1277 were set free. Some writers (for example, Bridges, 1914, 35) think Bacon may have been one of them. Others (Easton, 1952, 201–202; Crowley, 1950, 71) think his house arrest was of a much shorter duration.

The last evidence of Bacon’s life is that in 1292 he wrote the Compendium studii theologie , which he left unfinished. This was a grammatical work, repeating many of the themes and ideas that had appeared long before in his De signis . It is reasonable to assume that he died in 1292 or soon thereafter (Easton, 1952, 205; Lindberg, 1983, xxvl).

Bibliography

Bacon, Roger, Compendium of the Study of Theology: Edition and Translation with Introduction and Notes . T. S. Maloney (ed. And trans.). (1988). Leiden: Brill.

Bacon, Roger, Opus majus . J. H. Bridges (ed.). (1964), 2 vols. Frankfurt/Main: Minerva, 1964.

Bacon, Roger, Opus tertium . In J. S. Brewer (ed.). ([1859]/1965). Fr. Rogeri Bacon – Opera quaedam hactenus inedita. London: Kraus Reprint.

Bacon, Roger, Compendium studii philosophiae. In J. S. Brewer (ed.). ([1859]/1965). Fr. Rogeri Bacon – Opera quaedam hactenus inedita.  London: Kraus Reprint.

Bridges, J. H.  (1914). The Life and Work of Roger Bacon – An Introduction to the Opus Majus . London: Williams & Norgate.

Clegg, B. (2003). The First Scientist – A Life of Roger Bacon . New York: Carrol & Graf Publishers.

Crombie, A. C. (1953). Robert Grossetetste and the Origins of Experimental science , 1100-1700 . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Crombie, A. C. and J. D. North (1970). “Bacon, Roger”. Dictionary of Scientific Biography, i. pp. 377-385. New York.

Crowley, T. (1950). Roger Bacon: The Problem of the Soul in His Philosophical Commentaries . Louvain/Dublin: Editions de l’Institut Supérieur de Philosophie.

Easton, S. C. ([1952]/1970). Roger Bacon and his Search for a Universal Science: A Reconsideration of the Life and Work of Roger Bacon in the Light of his own Stated Proposes . Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Hackett, J. M. G. (1997). “Roger Bacon: His Life, Career and Works”. In J. M. G. Hackett (ed.). Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays .  Leiden: Brill, pp. 9 – 24.

Hackett, J. M. G. (2018). “Roger Bacon and his First Interpreter: the Iuvenis Iohannes .” In C. Panti and N. Polloni (eds.). Vedere nell’ ombra: Studi su natura, spiritualitα e scienze offerti a Michela Pereira. Micrologus Library 90. Firenze: SISMEL, pp. 179–93.

Kuper, M. (1996). Roger Bacon – Der Mann, der Bruder Williams Lehrer war . Berlin: Zerling. 

Lindberg, D. C. (ed. and tr.) (1983). Roger Bacon’s Philosophy of Nature: A Critical Edition, with English Translation, Introduction and Notes, of De multiplicatione specierum and De speculis comburentibus. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Little A. G. (1914). “On Roger Bacon’s Life and Works”. In A. G. Little (ed.). Roger Bacon Essays – Contributed by Various Writers on the Occasion of the Commemoration of the Seventh Centenary of his Birth . Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 1–32.

Maloney, T. S. (ed. and tr.). (1988). Compendium of the Study of Theology – Edition and Translation with Introduction and Notes . Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Mandonnet, P. (1913). “Roger Bacon et la composition des troi opuscules”. Revue Neoscholastique 20: 52-68, 164–180.

Sharp, D. E. (1930). Franciscan Philosophy at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century . London: Oxford University Press.

Sidelko, P. L. (1996). “The Condemnation of Roger Bacon”. Journal of Medieval History 22: 68–81.

Steele, R. (1921). “Roger Bacon and the State of Science in the Thirteenth Century”. In C. J. Singer (ed.). Studies in the History and Method of Science II . London: Dawson, pp. 212 – 250.

Thorndike, L. (1929). A History of Magic and Experimental Science – During the first Thirteen Centuries of Our Era vol. 2.  The Macmillan Company: New York, NY.

Weisheipl, J. A. (1965). “Classification of the Sciences in Medieval Thought”, Mediaeval Studies 27: 54–90.

Weisheiple, J. A. (1984). “Science in the Thirteenth Century”. In J. I. Catto (ed.). The Early Oxford Schools [The History of the University of Oxford] . Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 435–469. 

Witzel, T. (1912). “Roger Bacon”. In The Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved November 3, 2008 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13111b.htm

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The First Scientist: A Life of Roger Bacon Hardcover – January 22, 2003

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Brian clegg.

Brian's latest science books, The Reality Frame and Are Numbers Real? are now available, joining his new murder mystery novels. Brian has written many other science titles, including the bestselling Inflight Science, The God Effect, Before the Big Bang, Ecologic, A Brief History of Infinity, Build Your Own Time Machine, The Universe Inside You, Gravity, Extra Sensory and Dice World, which was on the longlist for the 2014 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

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From Lancaster, he joined British Airways, where he formed a new department tasked with developing hi-tech solutions for the airline. His emphasis on innovation led to working with creativity guru Dr. Edward de Bono, and in 1994 he left BA to set up his own creativity consultancy, running courses on the development of ideas and the solution of business problems. His clients include the BBC, the Met Office, Sony, GlaxoSmithKline, the Treasury, Royal Bank of Scotland and many others.

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Author : Roger Bacon

English philosopher and priest

Works [ edit ]

• The Mirror of Alchimy , 1597 ( transcription project )
• The cure of old age, and preservation of youth, 1683 external scan
• Opus Majus vol 1 , vol 2 , vol 3
• De secretis operibus artis et naturae, et de nullitate magiae external scan
• The Greek grammar of Roger Bacon and a fragment of his Hebrew grammar, 1902 external scan
• Treaty of the Admirable Power of Art and Nature

Works about Bacon [ edit ]

• " Bacon, Roger ," in Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition (3) (1878)
• " Bacon, Roger ," in Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed., 1911)
• " Bacon, Roger ," in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 , London: Smith, Elder, & Co. (1885–1900) in 63 vols.
• " Bacon, Roger ," in The New Student's Reference Work , Chicago: F.E. Compton and Co. (1914)
• " Bacon, Roger ," in A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature , by John William Cousin , London: J. M. Dent & Sons (1910)
• The Famous History of the Learned Friar Bacon (1802) by Charles Sheppard
• The magician, or, Wonderful history of Friar Bacon (1823) by Robert Cruikshank ( external scan )
• " Roger Bacon ," in Catholic Encyclopedia , (ed.) by Charles G. Herbermann and others, New York: The Encyclopaedia Press (1913)
• Roger Bacon: Essays Contributed by Various Writers on the Occasion of the Commemoration of the Seventh Centenary of His Birth (1914), edited by Andrew George Little ( external scan )
• The Theory of Mind of Roger Bacon (1908), by Horace Craig Longwell . ( external scan )

Some or all works by this author were published before January 1, 1929, and are in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. Translations or editions published later may be copyrighted. Posthumous works may be copyrighted based on how long they have been published in certain countries and areas.

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Roger Bacon

Roger Bacon (1214/1220–1292), Master of Arts, University of Paris, later Franciscan Friar was one of the earliest witnesses to the reception of Aristotle at Paris soon after the lifting of the Condemnations of 1210, 1215, 1231. Trained in Logic and Natural Philosophy at Oxford he was a contemporary of Albert the Great and William of Auvergne at Paris in the 1240s. Sometime after 1247/8, he became an independent scholar with an interest in languages and experimental-scientific concerns. Between 1247 and 1267, Bacon mastered most of the Greek and Islamic texts on Optics. He had expected to get a teaching position on becoming a Franciscan friar ca. 1257. He was to be disappointed. Because he regarded the following ten years as an exile from teaching, he sought the Patronage of Cardinal Guy le Gros de Foulque (Pope Clement V, November 1265-1268). On the instruction of the Pope, June 22, 1266, Bacon quickly wrote “an introductory work,” the Opus maius and the related works Opus minus and Opus tertium. He set out his own new model for a system of philosophical studies that would incorporate language studies and science studies then unavailable at the Universities. He succeeded in setting out a model of an experimental science on the basis of his study of Optics ( Perspectiva ). He does this in a new context: the application of linguistic and scientific knowledge for a better understanding of Theology and in the service of the Res publica Christiana . It would appear that Bacon was condemned by his Order in 1278 “on account of certain suspected novelties.” This may have been due to his interests in astrology and alchemy. Bonaventure and John Pecham were among his first readers and the former in particular was critical of his interests in astrology and alchemy. Bacon, however, found a sympathetic reader and interpreter in the great scholar of the Sorbonne, Peter of Limoges (d. 1306). Through the latter, Bacon may have influenced Raymond Lull. Bacon returned to Oxford about 1280, where he completed his edition with introduction and notes of the Secretum secretorum , a Latin translation of the Arabic text on the education of the Prince, the Sirr-al-‘asrar . He believed it to be a work by Aristotle for Alexander the Great. He died at Oxford ca. 1292.

1. Modern Research on Roger Bacon

2. life and works, 3.1 summa grammatica, 3.2 summa de sophismatibus et distinctionibus (ssd), 3.3 sumulae dialectics (sd), 4.1 roger bacon and richard rufus: in physicam aristotelis, 4.2 bacon and grosseteste: knowledge, science and intuition, 4.3 bacon on matter, 4.4 bacon on universals and individuation, 4.5 bacon's realism: on the way to late medieval nominalism, 4.6 bacon on body, soul and mind: early works, 4.7 bacon on body, soul, mind: later works, 5.1 background, 5.2 opus maius /parts one and two, 5.2 opus maius /part three: on language, de signis and compendium studii philosophiae, 5.4 opus maius /parts four, five and six: mathematics and philosophy of nature ( de multiplicatione specierum , perspectiva , scientia experimentalis), 5.5 opus maius /part seven: moralis philosophia, 5.6 bacon's political philosophy: the secretum secretorum, 6. conclusion, primary sources, secondary sources, other internet resources, related entries.

Modern understanding of the Philosophy of Roger Bacon is largely conditioned by two distinct traditions of interpretation from the nineteenth century. The first is the study of the physical, metaphysical, and related works of Bacon. Discovered in 1848 by Victor Cousin in Amiens MS 406, these works were edited by Robert Steele and Ferdinand Delorme (OHI, 1905-1940) . With the exception, however, of the teaching on the soul, some aspects of Bacon's theory of matter and form, the doctrine of experientia/experimentum , and the doctrines of universals and individuation, the content of these works has remained largely unstudied until present times. One can argue that “critical” scholarly study of these works has just begun.

The second and more well-known interpretation of Roger Bacon as a scientist is found in nineteenth and twentieth century writers on science and has a solid basis in Bacon's own work, for example, the edition of the Opus tertium by J.S. Brewer [OQHI]. Bacon tells us that around 1247/8 he departed normal Arts teaching to devote himself to language study and the sciences. Bacon's Perspectiva (1267) [PRSP, 1996] presents a model for an experimental science that ushered in a new addition to the traditional Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music) in the new universities of the Latin West, namely, the study of Optics . There has been significant modern research on this aspect of Bacon's work. In fact, for the first time in the history of Bacon scholarship, we now have accurate texts, with adequate matching geometrical diagrams for the scientific works (post 1260). The early works (ca. 1240-1250) have need of new critical editions. .

In 1859, William Whewell set the tone for this modern account of “Roger Bacon and the Sciences” (Whewell, 1858, p.245). He viewed Bacon as an advocate of experiment ahead of his time. In the late nineteenth century, Robert Adamson and many others interpreted Bacon as a philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term This understanding of Roger Bacon did not begin in the nineteenth century. Already in the late Renaissance, Francis Bacon had characterized Roger Bacon as an exceptional figure among the schoolmen. [ 1 ] Francis Bacon held that Roger Bacon had set aside the scholastic disputations of his times and engaged in the mechanical understanding of the secrets of nature.

In the 1900s, Thorndike [LT1; LT2] and Duhem [LSDM, III, 442] asserted that the role of observation in Bacon's science was minimal and added nothing to his idea of a science. In the post-World War II years, A.C. Crombie (1953) argued that the “qualitative” aspects of modern science originated at Oxford in the early thirteenth century, specifically in the work of Grosseteste and Roger Bacon. This interpretation received a critical response from Alexander Koyré (1957) and others. It was argued that Crombie read back some aspects of modern scientific method into the works of Grosseteste and Bacon. Thomas S. Kuhn (1976), however, maintained that Crombie did identify a real methodological connection between medieval and early modern science. The studies and editorial work of David C. Lindberg on Bacon's natural philosophy, for example, De multiplicatione specierum (DMS) and Perspectiva [PRSP] emphasized the need to read Roger Bacon as a medieval scientist and not an early modern or modern scientist. Thus, it is as a medieval philosopher, scientist and theologian that he must be properly understood. Despite the obvious polarity generated by two separate traditions of interpretation, it should be noted that there is some continuity between the interests of Bacon the Aristotelian Commentator and Bacon the writer on Science.

Bacon remarks in the Opus tertium [OQHI] ca.1267 that he had devoted forty years to study since he had first learned the alphabetum and that no other scholar worked so much in the Arts and Sciences as he had done. Some scholars use this text to argue that Bacon was writing about his elementary education and was born ca. 1220 [Crowley (1950), Easton (1952), Lindberg (DMS, 1983); others hold that he was writing about his early university education ( Alphabetum philosophiae) and thus that he was born ca. 1214 Little (RBE, 1914), Maloney (CSTM, 1988), Hackett (1984, 1992, 1997a, 2005), Molland (2004). The text reads:

I have labored much in sciences and languages, and I have up to now devoted forty years [to them] after I first learned the Alphabetum ; and I was always studious. Apart from two of these forty years I was always [engaged] in study [or at a place of study], and I had many expenses just as others commonly have. Nevertheless, provided I had first composed a compendium, I am certain that within quarter or half a year I could directly teach a solicitous and confident person whatever I know of these sciences and languages. And it is known that no one worked in so many sciences and languages as I did, nor so much as I did. Indeed, when I was living in the other state of life [as a Magister ], people marveled that I survived the abundance of my work. And still, I was just as involved in studies afterwards, as I had been before. But I did not work all that much, since in the pursuit of Wisdom this was not required. ([OQHI], 65)

It would seem then that prior to his entry to the Franciscan Order c. 1256/7, he was very active in studies or at a studium and was known for his proficiency in sciences and languages. And yet, he himself tells us that around 1247/8 or so, he had set aside the common scholastic ways of teaching in order to devote time to languages and experimental concerns. Thus, we can see the period from c. 1240-48 as the time during which he lectured on Aristotle and on Grammar/Logic at Paris. And so, depending on the chosen year of birth, the chronology would be as follows:

(1) Bacon was born ca.1214, educated at Oxford ca. 1228-36, Master of Arts, Paris ca. 1237-47/8, Private Scholar 1248-56/7, returned to Oxford ca. 1248-51, was at Paris 1251, Franciscan Friar at Paris ca. 1256/7 to 1279, return to Oxford ca. 1280, died ca. 1292. (2) Bacon was born ca.1220 born, educated at Oxford ca. 1234-42; Master of Arts, Paris ca. 1242-47/8, return to Oxford, ca. 1248-51, Paris 1251, Paris 1256/7 to 1279, return to Oxford ca. 1280, died ca. 1292.

Further precision on the chronology will need to await a critical edition of all the works of Roger Bacon and careful scientific study of these works in relation to other thirteenth century scholars.

The Aristotelian Quaestiones are to be found in one single manuscript, Amiens MS Bibl. Mun. 406. The materials found in this manuscript include two sets of questions on the Physica and two sets of questions on the Metaphysica of Aristotle, the questions on the Liber de causis , and the Pseudo-Aristotelian De vegetabilibus . A new version of Bacon's second set of Questiones on the Physica inter-textually excerpted by another 13 th century author has recently been identified by Silvia Donati in Philadelphia MS Free Library, Lewis Europe, ff. 77ra-85rb [Donati, in Hackett, 1997b]. This is an important discovery that has enabled scholars for the first time to carry out a “critical-textual” study of Bacon's works on Aristotle's Physica in the context of the development of English natural philosophy in the period 1240-1300.

The early logical works consist of the Summa grammatica, Summa de sophismatibus et distinctionibus and the Summulae dialectics [=Summulae super totam logicam] . These works show that Bacon is indebted to the teaching of logic as Oxford and Paris in the 1230s and 1240s. These works in grammar and logic have received much critical study in recent years and show that Bacon was a mature philosopher of logic who is representative of terminist and pre-modist grammar and logic. These writings have a connection with the Oxford Logica cum sit nostra and with the works of William of Sherwood. The logical works are clearly influenced by the teaching in Paris of Robert Kilwardby. They give evidence of Bacon as a philosopher who connects the Logica modernorum with the new logical and philosophical issues based on the natural philosophy and metaphysics of Aristotle as commented on by Avicenna and Averroes.

Scholars have long held that Roger Bacon was a pioneer in the introduction of the study of Aristotle as interpreted by Averroes and Avicenna to the University of Paris ca.1240. During the past ten years or so, research has shown that two Erfurt manuscripts (Amplon. Q. 290 and Q. 312) ascribed to Walter Burley (1274/5-1344) by the Amplonius de Berka in the fifteenth century, actually belong to the first half of the thirteenth century. Rega Wood, the editor of the Physica from the Erfurt MS Amplon. Q 290, has attributed these questions on the Physica and most of the other works in these two Erfurt manuscripts to Richard Rufus of Cornwall, a contemporary and opponent of Roger Bacon [Wood in Hackett 1997b; Wood, IPA, 2003].

Recently, it has also been demonstrated that as Master of Arts at Paris (ca. 1240-48) during the period of the First Averroism, Bacon had confronted and reviewed some of the major issues concerning Latin Averroism that lead to a major crisis at Paris in the period 1266-1277. [ 2 ] And, as we will see below, Bacon, in his works from the 1260s, will revisit these topics. One can conclude that sometime in the late 1240s, Bacon ceased being a Master of Arts at Paris, became an independent scholar, and returned to England. Yet, there is evidence that he was back in Paris in 1251.

Bacon joined the Franciscan Order about 1256/7, whether at Oxford or Paris is not known. At any rate, he was probably in Paris in the late 1250s and was definitely there in the early 1260s. He had been attracted to the Order by the philosophical, theological and scientific example of Grosseteste, Adam Marsh and other English Franciscans. He had personally known Adam Marsh at Oxford and possibly Grosseteste at Lincoln ca.1247/8-51.

By 1266, he had come to regard the previous ten years as one of enforced absence from active teaching and scholarly work.

The Opus maius, minus, tertium , the related foundational work in Philosophy of Nature, De multiplictione specierum , and the work on burning mirrors, De speculis comburentibus , together with an optical lens, were sent to the Pope ca. 1267-68. They were seen as a preamble to a proposed major work on Philosophy. Together with these in the 1260s, he produced the Preface to the Works for the Pope , Communia naturalium, Communia mathematica, Epistola de secretis operibus naturae et de nullitate magiae . The Compendium studii philosophiae can be dated to about 1271. This latter is largely a work of polemic on the state of studies at Paris and an apology for his scholarly situation. It does, however, contain an important section on his theory of language and signs, which has enabled scholars to grasp the full range of Bacon's new semiotic interests. He completed the edition of the important work in medieval politics and statecraft, the Secretum secretorum at Oxford some time after 1280. It used to be the view of scholars [Easton, 1952] that Bacon had composed this work in the 1240s and was the main influence in his search for a “universal science.” He also produced an important work on the calendar, the Computus . The Compendium studii theologiae is usually dated to ca. 1292.

One must bear in mind that Roger Bacon in the 1260s is writing as an individual author for a patron, Cardinal Guy le Gros de Foulque (Pope Clement IV, 1265-68). A onetime Master of Arts, he was no longer a teaching Master at the University of Paris. This gave Bacon the freedom to address both philosophical (Aristotle) and theological (Augustine) issues in a manner denied to the teachers in the Faculty of Arts. They were limited for the most part to disputations on the text of Aristotle. He writes self-consciously as a representative of the text-based practices of Robert Grosseteste and in opposition to the new “sentence-methods” of the schools. His polemical writings ca. 1267/8 are centered on the struggles in the Arts and Theology at Paris. The Pope instructed Bacon in 1266 to ignore the rules of his Order and to send him his remedies about a matter of some importance. It would appear from the context of Bacon's works for the Pope that the remedies had to do with educational matters at Paris, which at this time was the main University of the Christian Commonwealth. Because of this instruction, Bacon's later works, written in haste, consist of short treatises united by a self-conscious rhetoric for the reformation of education in the early universities of the Latin West. They are fundamentally important for an understanding of the “struggle of the faculties” in the mid thirteenth century. The Compendium studii theologiae ca. 1292 reflects the concerns of the 1260s. It does not add new information.

The reception of the life and works of Roger Bacon is complex. Each generation has, as it were, found its own Roger Bacon. A recent study by Amanda Power has provided a thoughtful account of the complex reception of Roger Bacon in England and of the extent to which the image of the Doctor Mirabilis is often colored by the changing controversies of the present moment. [Power, 2006]

3. Bacon's early work on Grammar and Logic

Bacon has a complex concept of grammar. It ranges from the elementary teaching of Latin through “rational grammar” (linguistics) to a knowledge of the sacred “Wisdom” languages. It is also connected with a theory of signs and with the vis verborum , including the magical power of spoken language. One notices continuity between Bacon's early works on grammar and logic and his later works after 1260 on the theory of signs (De signis) .

In this work, Bacon draws directly from one of the important thirteenth century commentaries on Priscian ( Priscian minor ), that of Robert Kilwardby. It is a representative of early speculative grammar as it developed in Paris during the first half of the 13 th century. Bacon's approach to grammar and logic, like that of William of Sherwood, exhibits the influence of the early Oxford books on these topics such as the Logican cum sit nostra .

Part one of the SG sets out the rules governing both common constructions with subject and verb and rules governing figurative constructions. The latter include specific accounts of the five figures of construction: antithesis, synthesis, prolepsis, syllepsis, and zeugma. This is borrowed from Kilwardby ( Institutiones grammaticae, xvii , 153). In part two, Bacon analyses the more difficult non-figurative constructions such as impersonals, gerundives, ablative absolutes, interjections. In a third part, he examines sophisms in terms of their subject-matter and ranges from a cursory treatment to more extended treatments typical of a disputed question. In the last section, there is a cursory analysis of some short sentences including adverbial constructions [ lupus est in fabula ] and some liturgical formulae [ patris et filii et spiritus sancti, ita missa est ]. The latter are problematic due to their elliptical character. A complete account of Bacon's intellectual relationship as a student to Robert Kilwardby can be found in Irène Rosier (1994). [ 3 ]

As noted above, a main feature of this treatment of speculative grammar is the fact that the reasoning is closely linked to the Physica of Aristotle. The latter work had newly come into use at Paris. This reasoned grammar is based on the belief that “art imitates nature to the extent that it can” ( Physica II, 219 4a 21). Borrowing from Aristotle and Averroes and influenced by Robert Kilwardby, Bacon exploits the distinction between the permanent and the successive as the ground of the grammatical distinction between the noun/pronoun and the verb/adverb. He applies this to the definition of grammatical category.

As Irène Rosier-Catach has noted “The construction of words is conceived as a movement. The verb, the pivot of the sentence, signifies action and movement and needs for that reason two terms, a terminus a quo or principium and a terminus ad quem or terminus ( S.G . 66, 78). On one level, physical conceptualization is used to re-define certain notions. Cases are properties allowing an expression to function as a term of movement ( S.G . 34); in this way the accusative expresses the terminus ad quem . At a second level, Bacon's conceptualization allows him to state some very general rules for the combination of categories.” [ 4 ]

For example, Bacon argues that neither the participle nor the infinitive is by their verbal signification sufficiently stable to be a terminus of motion. This is based on the premise that “nothing which is in motion can come to rest in something in motion, no motion being able to complete itself in something in motion.” And, using the principle that “the action is in the patient as in a subject,” he tackles the issue of grammatical agreement. Further, the organizing principle for the organization of terms is the notion of dependence (dependencia) . Hence, the relation of natural dependence between the accident and the subject is reflected in the construction of the adjective with its substantive.

There are, however, limits to a kind of argument that depends on this parallelism of physics and grammar. Grammar is a function of reason and hence does not imitate nature in an absolute manner. Take the example, urbem quem statuo vestra est (the city which I found is yours, S.G . 33). Here, the subject is in the accusative. But the accusative which expresses dependency cannot be the terminus of the verb. Even if this is adjusted due to location or motion in generation, it still will not do since in physics the beginning or end point is accidental. In rational grammar, however, words in construction have definite functions, and the accusative holds an element of stability due to the priority of the nature of the thing it signifies. Thus the subject can be in the accusative with the infinite ( S.G . 14-40.3).

Grammatical reasoning, then, finds itself wedged between physical and logical reasoning. This can be seen in the analysis of the expression est dies . Why one term and not two; what is the function of dies ? In an analysis of motion there are two terms. But in reason, one can see that the one term has two functions that are necessarily present in every assertion. And whereas Logic requires that the subject be different from the predicate, Grammar as a positive science depends on the intellect and will.

The most significant aspect of Bacon's grammatical analysis is one that will be replicated in his logical works and in his later semiotic writings. This is his intentionalist analysis. The reasons connected to grammatical analysis cannot be discovered or applied mechanically: they are dependent on the signifying intention of the speaker ( intention proferentis ). This kind of analysis is found in Robert Kilwardby and in many similar texts on sophisms. As Rosier-Catach puts it, “The correctness of a statement does not depend solely on its conformity with the rules of grammar but equally on its adequateness with its signifying intention. Sometimes indeed, because the speaker wishes to signify some precise idea, he may legitimately distance himself from the normal rules (Hackett 1997a, 73). Still, this freedom is not absolute and it must be justified linguistically. Even elliptical expressions such as Ita missa est have within them the capacity to allow further application of the formula such as cantata, dicta etc. Thus, to quote Rosier-Catach, “The rule-governed nature of language- functions is to be found not only in the common usage but also in those “authorized” variations. It is precisely this principle that Bacon will put to work at the semantic level when he conducts his analysis of Signs [ca. 1267]. Beyond the ordinary usage of the sign, derivable from its institution, the speaker always has the liberty to use it in the translated way, the variation being in the majority of cases explainable and for this reason comprehensible by the listener. In the case of figurative constructions and of metaphorical meanings the variation arises from the signifying intention of the speaker. It is the speaker, who, knowing the rules of language, can decide consciously and knowingly to exempt himself from the rules, for the sake of some signifying intention, thus adapting the intellectus significatus to the intellectus intentus . As Bacon puts it nicely elsewhere, it is not the sign which signifies but rather the speaker by means of the language—in the same way that it is not the stick which hits but he who uses it. In other words, language is for man an instrument, a means. This voluntarist conception is to be seen likewise in the context of Bacon's treatment of the magical power of words” (Hackett 1997a, 73-74).

Bacon's Logic (1240s): Summa de sophismatibus et distinctionibus (SSD) Summula super totam logicam (= Sumulae dialectics ) (SD)

The late Jan Pinborg has described the terminist logic found in Bacon and his contemporaries as “semantical analysis of a natural language, viz. Latin, built on Aristotelian logic, especially the Sophistici elenchi and the Peri hermeneias , and on the development of grammar. This analysis stressed the truth value of propositions analyzed and its conditions, and therefore displayed what can be called a contextual approach , that is, it was based on the actual function and reference of the term in the proposition to be analyzed. A given word could be used differently, or according to different suppositions , and the rules for these different uses helped to avoid ambiguities. The doctrine of supposition was intended to solve both the relatively trivial ambiguities which arose from confusion of linguistic levels (man is white, man is a species, man is a noun) and ambiguities involved in quantification (or distribution) theory. These problems were primarily solved in terms of Reference , since different suppositiones picked out different ranges of individuals.” [ 5 ]

Alain de Libera has provided a very precise summary of Bacon's place in the history of logic and especially of the two early works just listed. He remarks:

“The SSD belongs to a literary genre found in Paris during the first half of the thirteenth century, the Distinctiones sophismatum . It compares with the Tractatus de distinctionibus communibus in sophismatibus accidentibus attributed to Matthew of Orleans, the Distinctiones “notandum,” the Abstractiones of Hervaeus Sophista, the tracts on Distinctiones sophismatum as well as “anonymous” treatises described by De Rijk and Braakhuis. Briefly, the Distinctiones have the task of listing the rules to be used in the practice of sophisms and setting out the context, while the syncategoremata set out the logical conditions for the proper use of syncategorematic words.” [ 6 ] (HRBS, 105-106).

Generally, the SSD deals with the problems of universal quantification, as for example the uses of the word Omnis . Bacon gives close attention to words that present philosophical difficulties such as ‘infinite,’ ‘whole,’ ‘negation.’ The common logical topics are covered. Still, Bacon shows some originality in his treatment of “inclusion” or “scope” in quantification. He also develops the outline of what will become his own contribution in the 1260s, that is, his analysis of a “production of speech” analysis. Bacon develops this analysis to deal with sentences such as “Every animal is either rational or irrational.” Here, his contemporaries invoked a theory of natural sense to account for the provision of semantic information on the basis of the order of the presentation of the terms. Bacon insists that one must take into account (a) the signifying intention of the speaker, (b) the linguistic expression, (c) the sense that the listener provides. Bacon presents two basic positions: an expression must have parts that enable the hearer to make an interpretation that will correspond with the intention of the speaker. Thus, the actual expression alone is a necessary but not sufficient for an account of the meaning. A linguistic analysis that involves speaker/hearer/ expression is required.

The expression of the proposition alone is accidental and thus contains only a relative sense. Further, the linear order of the expression does not provide the listener with enough information about the logical form. Knowledge of the logical form requires reference to the mental proposition. This implies that every mental proposition, for both speaker and listener, is an interpretation . The meaning of any statement is a function of the understanding. This presentation of the speech act prepared the ground for Bacon's mature theory in his later post 1260s works, the De signis (DS), Compendium studii philosophiae (CSP), Compendium studii theologiae (CST) .

De Libera has placed this work at Oxford ca. 1250 but notes the presence of Parisian teaching in the text. The title given in the Seville MS: Summulae super totam logicam , provides a better sense of the nature of the work. I will provide an outline of this long work below. To summarize De Libera, this is a mature work of a practiced teacher. It is not the work of a beginner. It is ahead of other works of the 1240s in the skillful manner in which it examines Aristotle and other works newly translated in philosophy and science. The work is important for two new semantic positions: (1) the doctrine of univocal appellation and (2) the doctrine of “empty classes” in predication. For Bacon, a word cannot be applied in a univocal manner to both an entity and a non-entity. This position will provide Bacon with a basis for his attack on Richard Rufus of Cornwall in his works after 1260, and especially in the Compendium studii theologiae (1292). This attack is not limited to Rufus; it is written in opposition to the common teaching of the time at Paris. For the latter, a word has a natural meaning and once the meaning is given, it remains a constant. For example, the term ‘Caesar’ can cover both the once living Caesar and the now dead Caesar. Bacon rejects this on the ground that for him terms are imposed on “present things” and there is nothing in common between an entity and non-entity or between past, present and future. Thus, terms have present appellation and reference to past and future is accidental. For Bacon, the name and signification is imposed on the present object, and is open to past and present on the basis of verbal tense. One might call it ”supposition through itself for present things.” Another important aspect of SD is the complex theory of determination found in the composition and division of the propositional sense.

The theory of imposition is fundamental to Bacon's approach. [ 7 ] It allows for explicit and tacit changes of imposition of meaning in communication and it points to the need for a linguistic analysis and the careful study of context in order to be strict about univocal meaning. The overcoming of equivocation and ambiguities will figure throughout Bacon's logical works. Words can, indeed, be extended ‘metaphorically’ to cover non-extant things. In this work of Bacon, one finds a combination of influences from both the Oxford ‘terminist logic’ and the Parisian pre-modist grammar of the 1240s.

Prologue: On Art and Science, Two Kinds of Arts, Logic as a Science, Logic as an Art, i.e. Dialectics, and why it is so called.

Part I: Terms

Part II: Statements:

Part III: Argumentation

The reader can easily see that this treatment of “all of logic” corresponds to a large extent to what is found in many ‘modern’ logic books prior to the treatment of predicate logic. It would be useful to show the extent to which Bacon's SD provides a template for later works on the totality of logic such as the Summa Logica of William of Ockham and subsequent texts up to modern times.

4. Bacon as an Aristotelian Commentator

The recent publication of Richard Rufus of Cornwall, In Physicam Aristotelis has made available what is certainly a very important text for an understanding of the influence of Aristotle's Physica on the early tradition of English natural philosophy in the thirteenth century (IPA. 2003). Richard Rouse has dated the text of the Physica questions as beginning “on the early side of the middle of the century” (Wood, IPA Introduction, 33). Silvia Donati and Cecilia Trifogli have mapped out the complex tradition of named and ‘anonymous’ commentaries on Aristotle's Physica in 13 th century England. (Del Punta, Donati & Trifogli (1996), Trifogli, Donati in Hackett, (1997b); Trifogli, 2000). As noted above, Rega Wood ascribes the text to Richard Rufus of Cornwall (died ca. 1260). She claims that “Richard Rufus was the earliest Western teacher of the new Aristotle whom we know. He taught Aristotelian physics and metaphysics as a Master of Arts at the University of Paris before 1238. His lectures are the earliest known surviving Western lectures on these subjects…Rufus flourished between 1230 and 1255, teaching philosophy and theology at Oxford and Paris in this crucial period. His philosophical career ended and his theological career began in 1238 when he became a Franciscan friar and left the Arts faculty at Paris” ([IPA], Introduction, 2). Wood in the apparatus of the edition notes that these comments on Aristotle's physics are later taken up by Roger Bacon in his Questiones on Aristotle's physics, and as a result, she sees Roger Bacon as Richard Rufus's successor as a Parisian Physics Professor.

One thing is clear: this is a very important Physics Commentary, which influenced not only Roger Bacon, but many ‘anonymous’ physics commentaries in the thirteenth century England. Whether the work was written by Richard Rufus is another matter. The best response at present is to state in the Scottish manner: not yet proven! The issue of ascription however, does not lessen the importance of this text for an understanding of English Natural Philosophy in the 13 th century. [ 8 ] As evidence for the influence of Rufus on Roger Bacon, Wood presents a discussion of three topics: (1) projectile motion, (2) heaven's Place, (3) the beginning of the world ([IPA], 12-28).

Bacon in the Questiones altere super libros prime philosophie Aristotelis (1240s) takes up and develops the well known treatment of knowledge, science and intuition as presented in Grosseteste's Commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics . [ 9 ] Bacon writes in response to explicit comments from newly available works on optics, perspectiva , that the knowledge of scientific principles is innate in us because “by nature we argue and demonstrate and prove without labor, but to argue (syllogize) and demonstrate are modes of knowledge.” This is a significant contact with Grosseteste, since he was the one who explicitly connected study in optics with the epistemic concepts found in the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle. It is also a sign that Bacon was concerned with perspectiva issues in the late 1240s, since it would appear that the quotation can be found in Alhacen's (Ibn al-Haytham's) Optics .

Bacon holds that scientific knowledge is twofold: first, there is “imperfect and confused knowledge” by which the mind is inclined to the love of the good and of truth. This implicit knowledge is innate. Second, there is explicit rational knowledge. One part of this has to do with the knowledge of the principles of science; the other is the knowledge of conclusions. This latter is complete knowledge but it is not exhaustive.

Bacon's account of sense, memory and experience is more extended than that found in Grosseteste's Commentary and reflects his own reading in Avicenna, the medical tradition and in works on optics. Bacon distinguishes experientia from experimentum . Experience ( experientia) is the distinct knowledge of singular things, and all animals have this distinct knowledge of singulars. But all animals do not have an experimentum , that is, a science of principles based on experience. As he puts it, “On the contrary, experience is the distinct reception of singulars under some aspect of universality, as is stated in the text [of Aristotle], but only the universal is grasped by the intellect. Therefore, only humans and not other animals have experience [ experimentum ] ([OHI, XI], 16). Many animals have an image ( imaginatio ) of singular things and live by innate art and industry, naturally knowing how to adapt to changing weather conditions. Human art, however, is acquired and is an experience of principles ( experimentum principium ).

One can express Bacon's position as follows: experimentum is the universal source for our discovery of scientific principles. Scientific knowledge, once established, proceeds by demonstration. Experientia designates the simple perception of singulars. Only in a very loose sense can it be used of scientific knowledge. Sometimes, however, these two terms about experience are used interchangeably. In this account, Bacon has not yet come to his later notion of a scientia experimentalis , and the experimental verification ( certificatio ) of the conclusions of demonstrative knowledge (ca. 1267). He is dealing only with experience as the source of the principles of our knowledge of art and science. [cf. 3.1.4 The Syllogism in Particular ]

In other words, at this stage, Bacon is mainly concerned with Aristotle's definition of experience in the Metaphysics and Posterior Analytics , although one already notices that he relates the Aristotelian subject-matter to the issues in Alhacen's Perspectiva .

In the later (post 1260) Communia naturalium , Bacon gives six meanings for the concept of matter. (1) Matter is the subject of action as when we say that wood is the matter for the action of the carpenter. (2) In the proper sense of the term, matter is that which with form constitutes the composite as in the case of every created substance. (3) Matter is the subject of generation and corruption and has the property of being an incomplete and imperfect thing in potency to a complete thing. (4) Matter is the subject of alteration since it receives contrary accidents. (5) Matter can be considered as an individual in relation to the universal, the latter being founded in its individual as in a material principle. (6) Matter is the name for that which is gross, as when we say that earth has more matter than fire. [ 10 ]

Form has a certain priority to matter as the end of generation and as the perfection of the material principle. It is the principle of action and of knowledge. In general, for Bacon, matter is not a mere potency. It is an incomplete something (substance) and so for him matter and form are two incomplete substances that integrate so that one has one individual substance. In this one notices a notion of matter as in some sense a positive thing. It is not a nullity.

In both early and later works, Bacon objects to the idea, found for example in David of Dinant, that matter is one in number in all things. To the contrary, he holds that matter “is not numerically one, but in itself and from itself it is numerically distinct in numerically different beings.” Still, he does not object to some unity of matter. For example, matter as potentiality is the original source of the being of contingent things. This is the non-being of the creature in contrast with the being of the Creator. Thus, Bacon will speak of the matter of both corporeal and spiritual beings, and hence of “spiritual matter,” a concept that Aquinas found to be contradictory.

In his later works, and specifically in his works on natural philosophy, Bacon presents nature as an active agent. The form or the species is the first effect of any natural agent. The power of the species educes the emergence of the thing from the potency of matter. It does not simply produce a form/species and impose it on the matter. Matter has an active potency , and this is actualized due to the action of the natural external agent.

Bacon has two distinct treatments of universals and individuation, his early works (1240s) and later in the Communia naturalium (1260s-70s).

In the works from the 1240s, Bacon distinguishes the real universal from the mental universal . Hence, the universal as the ultimate basis of predication is not the species as mental intention. Universals in the primary sense as the basis of scientific objectivity are extra-mental. Bacon's presentation of this issue is complex. Certainly, he is not a complete “Platonist” in regard to universals. To the objection that since form is individuated through its matter and whatever exists in things must exist in matter as individuated, but the universal is not such a thing, he responds: a universal is either in the mind or in things. If it is not in the former, therefore it has to be in the latter. A universal arises from common matter and common form and so has no need of being immediately individuated. “And because the common matter and common form exist along with the proper matter and form of individuals, the universal is present in this way in singulars ([OHI, VII], 242-243 = TTUM, 3.6). Hence, one cannot split apart the common matter from the particular matter or the common form from the particular form of a particular individual.

In one question, Bacon rejects the view that universals are constituted only by the mind. He holds that the universal in and of itself is prior to the knowledge process. “This follows because a universal is nothing other than a nature in which singulars of the same (nature) agree; but particulars agree in this manner in a common nature predicable of them, without any act of the mind ([OHI, VII], 242-243 = TTUM, 36). This sounds “Platonic,” but in factfor Bacon there are no Platonic universals in a separate world; rather, real universals do exist but they are found only in and with individual things. There is a mutual interpenetration of common form and matter and proper form and matter such that there is just one individual, and so the common nature is realized in this or that individual. Bacon's answer to the possibility of a universal being present in a singular is stated as follows: “Only three kinds of being are imaginable: either [being] in and of itself, [being] in the mind, or [being] in things, but a universal is not something that has being in and of itself and stands on its own, because then it would be a Platonic idea; neither [does it have being] in the mind, as we have seen…. Again, a universal is a common nature in which particulars agree; but Socrates and Plato and [others] of this sort cannot agree in a common nature which is in them unless the nature [be] in some way duplicated in them, because a universal is nothing other than a common nature extended into particulars and existing in them as duplicated, in which all things truly exist. And thus, without them [the particulars] there can be no universals…” ([OHI, VII, 243-244 = TTUM, 37). For Bacon, there are two kinds of particular, the determinate here and now particular and the indeterminate particular.

Bacon treats the problem of individuation in both the early Parisian lectures and in the later Communia naturalium . This has given rise to the issue of Bacon's realism or his proto-nominalism. It is addressed in the next section. Here, I will briefly review his account of individuation in the Parisian lectures. Some hold that accidents are the cause of individuation. The examples are taken from Boethius and from Al-Ghazali. Bacon raises objections and states that matter and form constitute the thing and are the causes of individuation. For Bacon, an individual is both a substance and an individual. As a substance, accident could not be the cause of individuation. As an individual, accident is “formally its perfection.” He holds that one can look at this issue from two positions. First, from the formal cause, accident could be the cause of individuation, but from the efficient cause the principles of substance (matter and form) are the efficient causes of the one substance. He devotes much space to whether matter alone or form alone or both are causes of individuation. He outlines the reasons why matter alone can be taken as the cause of individuation. He holds that matter is a cause of individuation and that form is a co-cause of individuation. The latter, however, is not the principal cause; it is an instrumental or formal cause.

In the light of the foregoing, a key issue arises: In his early works, Bacon, even if he disclaims being a “Platonist” in regard to universals, is clearly a strong external realist. This realism is continued in the Communia naturalium [OHI, 2-4] but with certain important qualifications. This polemical account of discussion of Aristotle in the 1260s is understood by Bacon as an aid for the study of theology. And now, it is clear that for Bacon, in the intention and execution of nature, the individual has definite ontological priority over genera and species . His account becomes an attack on contemporary positions influenced by Albertus Magnus that would subordinate the individual to the universal. Species and genera are there for the sake of the production of the individual. He states “In no other field are the authorities in such disagreement.” Aristotle himself seems to contradict himself. Bacon finds a correct answer in the Metaphysics of Avicenna. “There are two kinds of nature, universal and particular, Avicenna teaches in the sixth book of [his] Metaphysics .” Bacon adds: “Universal [nature] is the governing force of the universe [and is] diffused among the substances of the heavens [and] throughout all the bodies in the world; it is [that] in which all bodies agree and through which all are maintained at a certain general level of perfection and well being. This universal nature is the corporeal nature that is designated in the second genus, which is [that of] body, and this nature excludes all incompatible things which are abhorrent to the whole universe, such as a vacuum” ([OHI, II], 92 = TTUM, 85-86).

We see then that Bacon understands universal nature as supervening on a world of distinct individual natures such that corporeal action is contiguous and that a vacuum is excluded. The “particular nature” is the directing power of the species with its individuals, and is divisible into the directive power of the species and of the individual. The example he gives is from embryology: there is the directing power of the species intending the production of the human in general; it intends the production of the individual accidentally. And there is the directing power of the individual, which aims at the determinate human as such and mankind in general. As he puts it, “the universal is prior to the particular in [both] the work and execution of nature, but is posterior in intent ([OHI,II], 93 = TTUM, 87). He then states the ontological priority of the individual over universals as follows: “But if we would speak about the universal nature that is the directing power of the universe, [we should say that] it intends and brings about an individual first and principally , about which there is mention in the Book of the Six Principles . Nature operates in a hidden manner in things: once a determinate man is generated, man as such is generated. And the cause of this is that one individual excels all universals in the world, for a universal is nothing but the agreement of many individuals ” ([OHI,II], 94, = TTUM, 86). He distinguishes the absolute nature of an individual as something absolute, that is, “that which constitutes it and enters its essence.” This absolute nature of an individual is ontologically more important than that by which one individual has some agreement with another. One can notice that Bacon is now writing as a person with a theological interest: “And because all the things which I am treating are for the sake of theology, it is clear through theological reasons that a universal is not [favorably] compared to singulars. For God did not make this world for the sake of universal man, but for singular persons…Therefore, speaking plainly and absolutely, we must say that an individual is prior in nature [to a universal] both in operation and in intent,” and so “…it is necessary that the ranking according to prior and posterior be denominated absolutely and simply from the governing power of an individual…” ([OHI,II], 94-95 = TTUM, 88-89). Bacon knows that he is defending a position in rank opposition to the common view. “Since the whole rabble [at Paris] holds the contrary position, because of certain authorities, the views of the latter must be presented ([OHI,II], 96 =TTUM, 90).

This account has given rise to opposing interpretations. Theodore Crowley (1950) saw in these passages the beginnings of late medieval nominalism that would find its expression in William of Ockham. Thomas S. Maloney (1985) challenged this reading and argued that the later Roger Bacon, like the earlier Bacon, was not a nominalist but a moderate realist. Perhaps, we should hold that there are elements of proto-nominalism in this account in the Communia naturalium . Jorge J.E. Gracia (1991) in his important essay on individuation in the fourteenth century, argues coherently for seeing this text and others as the beginning of the strict tradition of late medieval nominalism.

Bacon understands the soul to be a spiritual substance in union with the Body. At this early stage, he does not hold the Avicennian notion of a separate agent intellect. In union with the body, the soul has two intellects, potential and agent. The former is directly connected with the sensitive powers and the object of this intellect is the singular material thing. The agent intellect is directed upward and knows spiritual beings in its own essence. For Bacon, there is a kind of confused innate knowledge in the soul. This is not a Platonic idea. It is more like a disposition that inclines the soul towards knowledge of the truth. Still, it is in some sense an innate knowledge of the first principles of knowledge. The agent intellect illuminates the images and frees them from specific material conditions. The universals are then impressed on the potential intellect.

Bacon in his second set of Questiones on Aristotle identifies the potential intellect with the intellective soul, and it is now both a spiritual substance and a form of the body. As a spiritual substance it has confused innate knowledge of spiritual substances. As united with the body, it has become an empty slate open to knowledge. It is helped towards new knowledge by means of impressed intelligible species given by the agent intellect, and this enables the potential intellect to proceed to new knowledge. [ 11 ]

In his Communia naturalium , Bacon explains that he wrote his account of sensation, the sensitive soul, and perception in the Perspectiva as a criticism of the common teaching of the Aristotelian teachers in the schools. Further, he comes to the conclusion in the Opus maius that the greater philosophers in Greek, Islamic and Christian traditions maintained that the Agent Intellect is God, the source and agent of illumination. He now makes this position his own, and attacks those teachers who hold that the agent and the potential intellects are parts of the soul.

Bacon's short treatise on the soul in CN is titled distinctio tertia de anima . It provides an interesting window on contemporary debates ca. 1267-70 at Paris. It belongs with Aquinas's masterful polemic, De unitate intellectus contra averroistas , Siger of Brabant on Aristotle's De anima, and Richard Rufus's treatise Contra averroistas (Hackett, 1997b) in the debates on Averroism.

He divides the work into seven chapters: (1) On the production of the parts of the soul, (2) On the Sensitive Soul, (3) On the Unity and Plurality of the Intellectual Soul, (4) On the Composition of the Rational Soul, (5) On the Powers of the Soul: whether they are parts of the soul?, (6) On the Vegetative Soul, (7) On the Parts of the Intellectual Soul.

The first chapter reviews the common teaching since 1250. He notes that “And still to this day the English theologians and all true lovers of wisdom ( philosophantes) uphold this position ([OHI, IV], 282), that is, that the intellectual soul alone is created by God while the vegetative and sensitive souls in the human are produced from the potency of matter in accordance with the laws of nature. He argues that those opposed to this position rely on the Pseudo-Augustine De spiritu et anima and on the De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus by Gennadius. Those who follow these sources, he states, hold that “the vegetative and sensitive souls are co-created with the intellectual soul…”. He describes this as a kind of “folk-psychology.” For Bacon and “all philosophers,” embryology shows that the embryo is nourished and grows prior to the infusion of the intellectual soul. Bacon states the problem as follows: “But if the vegetative and sensitive souls were co-created with the intellective soul, as many moderns teach publicly, then, they would not precede the intellective soul in being. And so these people are forced to claim that one needs a double vegetative and sensitive soul, one that is produced from the potency of matter through the power of nature; the other is created with the intellective soul…But no authorities hold this position, and experts in philosophy, therefore, dismiss it as nonsense ([OHI,IV], 283). Henry of Ghent among others advocated this doctrine of the co-creation of souls.

In the second chapter, Bacon attacks some of the leading philosophers at Paris as follows: “But the leaders of the common philosophers at Paris fall into other deadly errors, which the theologians contradict” ([OHI,IV], 284). For about ten years, the leader of the philosophers, “an erroneous and famous man,” held that “prior to the existence of the rational soul, one must presuppose a specific substantial difference educed from the potency of matter which places man in the species of animal, such that the intellective soul does not do so…This is contrary to the philosophy of Aristotle and to all authors” ([OHI,IV], 284-85). In the third chapter, Bacon makes explicit the object of his polemic. It is the view commonly ascribed to Siger of Brabant and the so-called Radical Aristotelians (Latin Averroists). Bacon states: “We are concerned with this second proposition on the unity and plurality of the intellective soul. Therefore, they [the Latin Averroists] argue that the intellective soul ( anima intellectiva ) is one in number among all human beings. Therefore, they cover their error when they are compelled [to respond] stating that ‘Through philosophy it is not possible to hold anything else, nor is it possible to have any other position through reason alone, but only through faith alone ” ([OHI,IV], 286-87). This is the proposition that is analyzed and critiqued by Thomas Aquinas in his De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas (1269) [TUIA]. It is also closely related to the celebrated doctrine of double truth imputed to the Latin Averroistsby their Franciscan opponents. Bacon's arguments, like those of Aquinas, deal specifically with philosophical reasons for the mistaken positions of the Averroists. The first two arguments are moral arguments. That is if there were one identical intellect in all humans, the same person would be both virtuous and vicious. The denial that “this individual human thinks” is contrary to both philosophy and faith. This is contrary to the Nicomachean Ethics and would lead to a destruction of moral philosophy.

The remaining arguments hold that the doctrine destroys “the laws of nature,” that is, of natural philosophy and psychology. First, he presents Aristotle's arguments against the transmigration of souls. Second, he argues that this intellect would be infinitized and be power equal to God. Third, he addresses the important issue of the connection between diverse imaginations and the intellective soul. This could lead to the same person being learned and ignorant at the same time in respect of the same things. Again, injury to the sensory organs can lead to a person becoming insane. If the sensory organs work, the existence of diverse imaginations will not differentiate the intellect in different persons. Fourth, there will be no unified object of knowledge. Bacon distinguishes between the single object of the intellect and the “ intelligible species ” by means of which we know that object. “For when it will be argued that the species will be multiplied in diverse persons, I concede that the diverse representations of the same thing can be present to present to diverse persons because the thing itself produces its species according to every diameter, as was proved in De multiplicatione specierum . And so, just as in the diverse parts of the air the species of the same thing are diverse, and come to the eyes of different perceivers, so it is the case with the intellects of different persons” ([OHI,IV], 289). Thus, he makes a basic distinction between the thing which is the object of knowledge and the representations (intelligible species) by which one knows them. Fifth, Bacon holds that the Averroists leave no room for new knowledge. Sixth, against the “Averroist” position that all logicians and grammarians must have the one same knowledge, Bacon holds that one must distinguish between the cognitive habit by which the soul knows anything knowable and the object of knowledge in the sense of “the object of knowledge,” which is a unity. Seventh, based on Aristotle's teaching on the passiones animae (species/concepts), he holds that just as the soul is multiplied so too will knowledge be multiplied. And so in a real sense, there is distinct and different knowledge in different human beings.

Chapters four to seven on the parts of the soul place Bacon in the context of the Franciscan and Dominican arguments on the parts of the soul.

This short treatise has the advantage of contextualizing Bacon's works in the 1260s in terms of the debates on Latin Averroism. It would appear that Bacon in agreement with Bonaventure and Pecham was an explicit opponent of the young teachers of the Arts at Paris, especially Siger of Brabant. And it would appear that Bacon's treatises such as the Perspectiva were written with this context in mind. Since as we have noted above, Bacon provided a “philosophical critique” of the issues concerning Latin Averroism already as a teacher at Paris in the 1240s, we should see this as a return to the university debates by the emeritus Professor of Philosophy who has now engaged himself with the arguments of the 1260s on the relation of philosophy to theology.

5. Bacon's Later Philosophy: Language Study and Science in the service of both Moral Philosophy and Theology

At the beginning of the Opus maius and related works, Bacon offers a structural critique of the scholastic practice in the universities. He favors both language study and science over “Sentence-Method” as a way of interpreting the texts of Scripture. And he advocates training in mathematics and the sciences as requirements for students in theology. Second, Bacon's later works on languages and sciences are written in the specific historical and political context of the Mongol invasion of Europe, and the sack of Baghdad in 1258 by the Mongols and the geo-political situation of a Europe hemmed in by both the Mongols and Islam. His sense of world-geography was aided by the travel reports of William of Roebruck [Southern, WVI].

The overall division of the Opus maius is Stoic: language study, natural philosophy/mathematics, morals. The general context is theological and Franciscan: the arts and sciences leading to human well being in this world and the next. It is also clear that Bacon is constructing a “new model” for medieval philosophy, one in which Aristotelian concerns are taken up and transcended in a Neo-Platonism adapted towards Moral Philosophy and Christian Theology. Metaphysics is subordinated to Moral Philosophy. The latter becomes the end or finis of linguistic and scientific study. Logic is reduced to Mathematics, and the applications of mathematics become central to an understanding of the sciences. The applications of mathematics can in turn be used in religion and theology. Therefore, in his later works, especially in the Perspectiva and Scientia experimentalis , Bacon will define experientia-experimentum in a distinctly new manner, one that takes up and but goes beyond the use of this term in Aristotle and his own Questiones from the 1240s. Peter King has recently claimed that Ockham was the first to create this new definition of experientia-experimentum (2003). He is correct that this definition is found in Ockham, but he is wrong to claim that this concept began with Ockham. The concept is formulated in these scientific works of Roger Bacon and is found in a number of Franciscan writers including John Pecham well before the age of Ockham.

Part one examines “the causes of error” in education and is critical of some theological limits on science. These causes are: belief in unworthy authority, long custom, uncritical popular opinion, concealment of academic ignorance in a display of rhetorical wisdom. The polemic is presented as one of conflict among the canon lawyers and theologians at Paris concerning the reception of Aristotle and the recent works on Greek and Arabic sciences, especially Astronomy/Astrology.

Part two contains the pre-Cartesian view of truth and wisdom as a result of a Universal Revelation to the Hebrews that was transmitted through the Greeks, Romans and Islam to Medieval Christianity. This view would be influential in Philosophy up to the age of Descartes. Bacon links it to a doctrine of illumination taken from Augustine, Avicenna and the Commentary on the Pseudo-Ptolemy: Centiloquium . He contrasts the tradition of the great philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle with the mythical traditions from ancient times.

Part three deals with language study, grammar, semantics and semiotics, and contains Bacon's general theory of signs. The discovery by the late Jan Pinborg and his colleagues of De Signis , a missing section of part three in 1978, led to very intense study of Bacon's semiotics and the philosophy of language in his later works. Bacon's proposals are radical.

Bacon's concerns with language in his later works transgress the disciplinary boundaries of the medieval university. First, he demands that the universities study the Wisdom languages, i.e. (Hebrew, Greek, Latin) in one list or (Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Chaldean) in another list. He wrote Greek and Hebrew Grammars (GGHG). Bacon takes Latin as a model for a natural language, the ‘mother language’ of the West. For Bacon, this language is dependent on Greek and Hebrew. He distinguishes the “vulgar language” or “language of the laity” from the “language of learning” of the clergy. For him, the vulgar language cannot be use in learning; it is does not have an adequate technical vocabulary.

Bacon's relative originality consists in the fact that he brings together the semantic and semiotic concerns of both the Arts and Theology or as one might say, Aristotle and Augustine. From these concerns, he develops his own novel theory of the sign. Indeed, Bacon uses the words signification and its cognates in a manner quite different from the traditional position.

The commonly used medieval definition of a sign was substitutional or representational: “A sign is that which shows itself to the senses and presents something else to the intellect.” This definition is similar to that of Augustine in De dialectica : “A sign is something which is itself sensed and which indicates something beyond the sign itself.” [ 12 ] In this case, the parts of our language are given by either God or the human so that the thoughts of the speaker can be communicated to the mind of the hearer. The expressions in language stand for the thoughts of the speaker and represent them to the hearer. In De signis , Bacon provides the following definition: “For the sign is that which offered to the senses or to the intellect represents itself to that intellect, since not every sign is offered to the senses as the common definition of sign supposes. However, on the testimony of Aristotle, another kind is offered only to the intellect. He states that the passiones anime (concepts/species) are signs of things, and such passions are a habit of the soul and species (representations/intentions) of the thing existing for the soul, and therefore they are offered only to the intellect so that they represent external things to that intellect ([DS], 82). Some interpreters claim that Bacon's definition of sign is close to that of to that of Augustine in De doctrina Christiana: “For a sign is something that apart from the impression it gives to the senses, also causes something else from itself to be present to the mind.” [ 13 ] Augustine gives the examples of animal tracks leading us to think of the animal, smoke leading us to think of fire, human expressions leading to our understanding the mood of a person, soldiers answering the call of the trumpet in battle and then knowing where to march.

One can see that Bacon in a manner uncommon for his times relates Augustine's definition of sign to the inferential notion of sign in the works of Aristotle. And so one can see how Bacon, influenced by Kilwardby and Fischacre, unites the different concerns of the philosopher and the theologian.

Bacon continues and states: “The sign is in the predicament of relation .” This may sound innocent, but in Bacon's account it will have the effect of transforming the traditional relation between a sign and its meaning, either a thing or a concept. The theologians were aware of a twofold relation: that of sign to thing signified and that of sign to the perceiver of the sign. For the majority of theologians, the first relation is an essential and permanent relation; the latter is accidental and non-permanent. Bacon reverses this position. He remarks: “The sign is in the predicament of relation and is spoken of essentially in reference to the one for whom it signifies . For it posits that thing in act when the sign itself is in act and in potency when the sign itself is in potency. But unless some were able to conceive by means of this sign, it would be void and vain. Indeed, it would not be a sign, but would have remained a sign only according to the substance of a sign. But it would not be a definition of the sign, just as the substance of the father remains when the son is dead, but the relation of paternity is lost” ([DS], 81).

And so it is not sufficient that a sign have reference to what it signifies (accusative) in order to be a sign; it is required that it have an interpreter (dative) for whom it signifies. In medieval theology, the thing signified (accusative) had priority, and was true even if there were no interpreters. The notion of this two-way relation is found in Bonaventure, Rufus and Fishacre among others, and the thing signified holds ontological priority to the relationship of sign to perceiver.

For Bacon, the communicative relation to a hearer is basic, and the relation to the thing signified is secondary. The common theological teaching held that the relation of sign to thing signified is fundamental and once a name has been instituted, it does not change. [ 14 ] And so, the name ‘Caesar’ can be used of both the living and the dead ‘Caesar.’ Against, the position of both Rufus and Bonaventure, Bacon held that it introduced ambiguity into language. Even in the case of ordinary signs such as that of a tavern sign, they remain only a sign potentially if there are no customers or staff.

Bacon's own classification of signs introduces distinctions that reflect an integration of both Augustine and Aristotle.

1. Natural Signs

2. Intentional Signs purposefully generated:

The distinction between 1 and 2 is taken from Augustine's De doctrina Christiana . Bacon himself claims that he worked out the typology himself prior to finding it in Augustine's great work on interpretation. Modern scholars, however, believe that he must in some way have borrowed it from Augustine. [ 16 ] The distinction between [2.1 and 2.2] is taken from the Aristotelian tradition as handed on by Boethius. Type 1 signs happen naturally as part of the agency of Nature. Type 2 are signs only because they have been willfully creates as such by deliberation and are include linguistic and non-linguistic signs. However, Type 2.2 are designated “natural” in a sense different from Type 1. These sounds and groans are products of nature and happen instinctively but in an “animate” action.

Interjections are a problem. They are parts of language, conventional signs, and so conceptual, yet they are emitted suddenly and often due to pain. They are similar in a way to groans of animals (Type 2.2). This discussion is common to writers on grammar and logic from the 1240s, especially in the works of Richard Kilwardby and other related works.

The signs in 1.1 on natural consequence indicate that Bacon has integrated not only Aristotle and Augustine but also the work of Averroes on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Thomas S. Maloney has argued that Aristotle's De anima plays an important role in Bacon's distinction between signs by nature and signs by intention. [ 17 ] Bacon's provides an analysis of ambiguity and equivocation in De signis and Compendium studii theologiae (Maloney 1984).

5.2.1 Bacon and the semiotic triangle

In the traditional semiotic triangle inherited from Plato and Aristotle the sign is a symbol and symptom of the passiones animae (concepts/species) in the soul and the latter in turn have a relation of similitude to the things. And so the relation of sign to thing is indirect. Bacon gets rid of the mediation of concepts/species and has the sign refer directly to the object. In this way, Bacon substitutes an extensional relation for an intentional. Words can directly refer to individual things be they single objects in the world, mental objects, or philosophical concepts. Primarily, then, words refer strictly to the present object. Reference to past or future objects will require the extension of univocal terms by means of analogy or metaphor. Simply because a sign exists, it will not follow from that alone that the object of the sign exists. As we saw above, without the interpreter of the sign, a sign is a sign in name only or potentially. Bacon does not deny the existence of the concept/species, but he notes that one requires a second imposition of meaning to name it. As U. Eco puts it, “Bacon definitely destroys the semiotic triangle that was formulated since Plato, by which the relationship between words and referents is mediated by the idea, or by the concept, or by the definition.” [ 18 ] The relation of sign to concept is reduced to that of a symptom and is no longer a symbol. Here one can see the preparation of the ground for the semiotics of William of Ockham and late medieval nominalism.

Parts four, five and six of the Opus maius present the main themes of Bacon's contribution to scientific education. It is important to see Bacon's main contribution to science as one who advocated “scientific education” in an Arts Faculty that was predominantly dedicated to the linguistic arts. Bacon had a very wide reading knowledge of most of the newly translated work from Greek, Jewish and Islamic Philosophy and Science. His major claim to fame in science is that he is the first Latin Western thinker to comprehend and write on most of the ancient sources of Optics. In brief, he initiates the tradition of Optics/ Perspectiva in the Latin world. This tradition would be formulated as teaching text by both Pecham and Witelo, his contemporaries, and would be taken up by the tradition leading to both Kepler and Descartes. In his Perspectiva and De scientia experimentali , Bacon outlines a sketch for a scientific method, one that takes Optics as the model for an experimental science. In fact, he succeeded in his endeavor in that Perespectiva was added to the four traditional ‘ quadrivium’ university subjects: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music.

Opus maius , Part four, deals with Mathematics and the applications of Mathematics. Bacon presents reasons for a reduction of logic to mathematics (a kind of reversal of modern logicism) and sees mathematics as the key to an understanding of nature. Clearly, he is proclaiming the “usefulness” of mathematics for knowledge; he is not doing mathematical theory. Following his abbreviation of the De multiplicatione specierum which shows how mathematics might be applied to physics, he deals with the application of astronomy/astrology to human affairs, the uses of mathematics in religious rites as in chronology, music, symbolism, calendar reform, geographical knowledge and a resume of astrology. It used to be thought that Bacon was a ‘Platonist’ in his view of the absolute priority of mathematics. More recently, that view has been seriously qualified. He does not reduce physics to mathematics. His explicit work on mathematics, the Communia mathematica , is not an exercise in mathematics; it is a presentation of the “common notions” that are important for a variety of mathematical practices. Bacon himself acknowledges those who were better mathematicians, namely, John of London, Pierre de Maricourt and Campanus of Novara (Molland in Hackett, 1997a). In general, Bacon is more interested in what mathematics can provide about knowledge of the world as an aid to missionary activity. He sent a map of the world to the Pope.

Bacon was very interested in the applications of Astronomy/astrology to human events. Although committed to a doctrine of freedom of the will, he held to a deterministic notion of causation in nature based on the Introductorium Maius in Astronomiam of the Islamic authority on Astrology, Abu Ma' Shar (Albumassar), on the De radiis of Al-Kindi, and on the Centiloquium by Pseudo-Ptolemy (Ahmed Ibn Yusuf). And since he held to a doctrine of universal radiation in nature, he had to account for the influence of the heavens on the human body and hence indirectly on the human mind. Much of the polemic in his later works consists of a justification of this interest in an astrologically necessitated universe in the face of traditional theological objections. These works play a big role as background for his natural philosophy in De multiplicatione specierum . He was also interested in alchemy. It was his determined interest in these areas of study that lead to disagreement with his superiors in the Franciscan Order, specifically, Bonaventure.

5.4.1 The Philosophy of Nature

Bacon's treatise De multiplicatione specierum , his major later work on physics, written before 1267, is closely related to the study of light, vision and perception in the Perspectiva . David C. Lindberg (PRSP, Introduction) has noted that Bacon takes Grosseteste's physics of light, a development of Al-Kindi's universal radiation of force, out of its metaphysical background and develops a universal doctrine of physical causation.

The use of ‘species’ in this account is not that of Porphyry's Logic or the perceptual notion of likeness. It is “the force or power by which any object acts on its surroundings.” It denotes “al-Kindi's universal force, radiating from everything in the world to produce effects.” As Bacon himself notes, “species [force, power] is the first effect of an agent….the agent sends forth a species into the matter of the recipient, so that, through the species first produced, it can bring forth out of the potentiality of matter [of the recipient] the complete effect that it intends ([DMS], 6-7). This is a universal theory of natural causation as the background for his philosophy of vision and perception. Most importantly, species is a univocal product of the agent . The first immediate effect of any natural action is definite, specific and uniform. This production is not the imparting of an external form. The species is brought “forth out of the active potency of the recipient matter .” (DMS, 6-7).

This is also a first attempt in the Latin world to provide separate domains for material and spiritual being. Natural causation occurs ‘naturally’ according to regular processes or laws of nature. There is no ‘spiritual being’ in the medium as was commonly taught by other Scholastic philosophers. No, for Bacon, universal causation is corporeal and material, and matter itself in not just pure potentiality but is rather something positive in itself. Hence, the general philosophy of nature prepares the theoretical ground for the specific application of mathematics to matters of vision and perception.

5.4.2 The Perspectiva and De speculum comburentibus (1266-67)

Bacon in his Perspectiva and related works presents his model for a careful and detailed application of mathematics to the study of nature and mind. In imitation of the De aspectibus of Alhacen (Ibn al-Haytham), he provided an application of geometry to vision that within the terms of reference of his times was successful. But he is critical of both Alhacen and Ptolemy. He sees himself as answering some of the optical problems not solved by each author.

Bacon's approach to vision and perception, however, is not an exercise in modern mathematical optics. It should be seen as the sketch of a physics of light as the basis for a philosophy of perception and mind. The account of visual perception in terms of natural philosophy, medicine and philosophy of mind is found in Part one and a section of Part two. The account of Perspectiva sets out a consideration of direct, reflected and refracted rays, and ends with the application of geometrical models for moral and religious considerations.

Part One and also distinctio one and two of Part Two, deal with the structure of the eye, problems of vision and visual errors. The aim is psychological and epistemological, that is, it sets out the conditions for certifiable/verifiable and certain perception. The theory of the eye is taken from the Galenic tradition handed on by Constantine the African's translation of Hunyan Ibn Isaq and from Avicenna and Alhacen (Ibn al-Haytham). For this tradition, vision occurs when the crystalline humor is altered by the intromission of visual species from the object. Vision is completed when the species proceeds through the vitreous humor to the optic nerve and through this to the common nerve. It is here that a common visual judgment is made. Bacon follows Ibn al-Haytham and imposes a geometrical model on the eye. Using this model, Bacon is able to give a geometrical account of radiation through the eye. How then does one avoid confusion in vision and gain verifiable clarity? For Bacon, the perpendicular ray is primary; the other rays are treated as cases of indirect vision. The latter rays are refracted in the rear surface of the crystalline humor.

Bacon then is concerned with “optical illusions,” whether inverted images, magnification, vision of distant objects, the moon illusion and such matters. He seeks in a rational and experimental manner to solve the puzzles found in Ptolemy, Alhacen (Ibn al-Haytham) and others. Still, he is a child of his sources. These sources do not provide him with the more advanced data and mathematical method that would be characteristic of the seventeenth century. But they do provide him with a functional qualitative geometry of the eye and vision based on the best Greek and Islamic science. Bacon is committed to an intromission theory of vision but he combines it with an extramission theory of vision that avoids the ‘anthropomorphisms’ of earlier extramission theories. He uses the latter theory mainly to emphasize the active role of the eye in vision.

In Parts Two and Three, he is to some extent successful in applying geometry to problems of direct, reflected and refracted vision. He moved the study of these matters to a new level. The geometrical arguments are worked out with careful diagrams and various appeals are made to “experimental” conditions. What are these conditions? Some of them are simple ‘thought-experiments’ or even reports of actual experiments from earlier writers. It seems clear, however, that Bacon himself did experimental work with pinhole images, lenses, and discrete observations. This does not lead to a pure geometrization of nature and he inevitably falls back on physical, perceptual and metaphysical arguments. One might argue that he lacks the notion of infinity that is present in modern geometry.

Bacon introduces another important item for science. He refers to the “laws of reflection and refraction” as leges communes nature. For Bacon in his account of nature in Communia naturalium and the later works in general, a general law of nature governs universal force. This universal law of nature is imposed on a world of Aristotelian natures. This notion would have a significant future in experimental science.

Bacon ends Part Three with an account of how a better understanding of the phenomena of nature could lead to a more accurate knowledge of natural phenomena mentioned in Scripture. He finds in visual phenomena significant metaphors and analogies for use in moral and religious teaching. Direct evidence of Bacon's influence here in making science available for an educated public is seen in the use of his work by Pierre de Limoges in his influential work De oculo morali (On the Moral Eye), written at Paris between 1275 and 1289. MS Paris, BN Lat. 7434 owned by Pierre de Limoges contains an early copy of Bacon's Perspectiva . All of this suggests Pierre de Limoges, (Magnus theologus et astronomus) as a very early reader of Bacon's works (Newhauser, 2001).

5.4.3 On the nature of Experimental Science: De scientia experimentali (1266–67)

Presupposing the Perspectiva , Bacon in De scientia experimentali and in related works on the halo and on burning mirrors situates this new scientific practice as a desired area of study in the medieval university. Starting from Aristotle's account of empeiria (experience) , Bacon argues that logical argument alone, even when it originates from experience, is not sufficient for the ‘verification of things.’ Even arguments that have their origins in experience will need to be verified by means of an intuition of the things in the world. He distinguishes ‘natural scientific argument’ from moral and religious mystical intuition, although he does allow for the notion of a revealed intuition in science.

His aim is to provide a method for science , one that is analogous to the use of Logic to test validity in arguments. This new practical method consists of a combination of mathematics and detailed experiential descriptions of discrete phenomena in nature. It would be distinguished from the conjurations of Magic and from Moral and Religious Belief. It would also be different from Philosophy of Nature and from broad Optical Knowledge. These two areas are important for experimental science but they constitute general principles and in themselves and without experiment, they do not provide access to minute, detailed experiments. Nevertheless, for his description of the first example of an experimental science, the study of the Rainbow, Bacon depends on the accounts handed on by Aristotle, Seneca and Avicenna. He is not uncritical of these accounts.

His own important contribution is to be found in his calculation of the measured value of 42 degrees for the maximum elevation of the rainbow. This was probably done with an astrolabe, and in this, Bacon advocates the skillful mathematical use of instruments for an experimental science. That Bacon had mathematical competence in this field can be seen in his account of the ‘Halo’ in Opus tertiium (OQHI) and in his complex arguments in De speculis comburentibus . Bacon takes up Grosseteste's theory of refraction and tries to work out the difficulties in the latter. It would appear at first glance that Bacon is rejecting the notion of refraction out of hand (Lindberg 1966). No. He is demonstrating that refraction as formulated by Grosseteste did not make experimental or rational sense. Bacon knew the rules governing the geometry of refraction. Important here is his emphasis on the role of individual drops of water for the process of reflection and refraction. A correct account of the rainbow would appear some forty years after Bacon in the De iride of Theodoric of Freiberg (d. ca. 1307) [TFT] with his account of a single reflection and double refraction in single drops of water.

A second task for experimental science is the discovery by ‘experience’ alone of instruments (armillary sphere), new medical cures, chemical discovery and military technologies. An important item here is the discovery of magnetism. It would seem that Bacon is reporting on the actual experimental work of Magister Petrus Peregrinus (fl. 1260-77), author of De magnete , who is lauded in the Opus tertium as the only worthwhile ‘experimentalist’ at Paris. Bacon has been lauded down the centuries for his medical learning, but recent scholarship has limited the number of works attributed to Bacon. Still, it is important here to note that he did draw on medical practice to set out rules and procedures that in a non-scholastic manner would lead to a more ‘experimental’ approach to nature. The third task is that of the prognostication of the future on the basis of astronomical/astrological knowledge.

The conclusion to the De scientia experimentali is important. Bacon presents the ideal of the ‘philosophical chancellor’ who will organize science and its technological products for the benefit of the Res publica Christiana . In this, he is influenced by the important “Mirror of Princes” from the Islamic World, the Sirr-al-‘asrar (Secretum secretorum) (OHI, V). Stewart C. Easton (1952) proposed that this work was the guiding vision for Bacon's reform of science. Williams (1994) has argued that Bacon completed the edition of this work after his return to Oxford ca. 1280. Still, there is much cross reference between this work and Bacon's writings in Paris ca. 1266-71.

David C. Lindberg (in Hackett, 1997a) has given a succinct summary of Bacon's model for an experimental science [RBS]. He sees four main aspects. First, Bacon's perspectival theories were not his own creation. He took the best available materials from Greek and Islamic scholars and produced his own synthesis. Second, there is much evidence that Bacon himself did mathematical work and experiments with visual phenomena such as pinhole images and the measurement of the visual field. Third, as seen above, Bacon correctly calculated the maximum degree of elevation for the rainbow. Fourth, the experiments in Bacon, especially in the Perspectiva served ‘theoretically significant functions.’ It supplied observational data that required explanation in terms of a given optical theory. The usual role of experiment in Bacon is to “confirm, refute or challenge theoretical claims.”

One might have expected Bacon to have given equal treatment to Astronomy, but in this field he was a child of his time. He reports on the accounts of Aristotle, Ptolemy and Alfraganus (OHI, IV). He discusses the pros and cons in a Scholastic manner but does not advance the field in the manner that he did for Perspectiva .

Bacon's Moralis philosophia (= Opus maius , VII = RBMP) comprises Philosophy of Religion, Social Philosophy, a theory of the Virtues, an astrological-sociology of religion and cultures, an account of argument and rhetoric.

Bacon describes the object of moral inquiry as follows: “This science is preeminently active, that is, operative, and deals with our actions in this life and the other life” ([RBMP], 3). It is focused on human action. Of course many human actions deal with issues that are the concern of the natural and linguistic sciences. Bacon notes that these sciences are active and operative but they are concerned “…with artificial and natural works which refer to the speculative intellect, and they are not concerned with those things which refer to the practical intellect, which is called practical because it exercises operations of good and evil ” ([RBMP], 3). These works of the human being ( operabilia) are “…more difficult to know than the objects of speculative knowledge.” These include “…the highest truths concerning God and divine worship, eternal life, the laws of Justice, the glory of peace and the sublimity of the virtues” ([RBMP], 247). For Bacon, the human ability to deal with these topics is affected by a certain corruption of the human will.

Moral science has two parts. The first part is speculative and deals with ultimate moral truths. The second deals with the process of moral persuasion. “The practical part is related to the first part as the curing of the sick and the conserving of health, which are treated in practical medicine, are related to that part of medicine which teaches what health is…” ([RBMP], 248).

Part one deals with the object and method of morals science and with an outline of a philosophical anthropology based on Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoic texts in which Bacon argues for an Augustinian view of the place of the human being in the world. This includes a section on metaphysical proof for God's existence. And the ancient source texts are treated as testimony for the universal religion of Christianity. Part two is a very brief outline of the structure of social life taken from Avicenna.

Part three, the most substantial in the book, is concerned with Virtue and Vice. Bacon's own text for this part of the Opus maius still exists and one can see his personal editorial remarks on the margins. He did not have time to write a formal treatise, and so he presents an anthology of texts from Seneca and excerpts from Cicero with comment. This is preceded by a brief resume of Aristotle on the virtues. But it is clear that Bacon favors the image of the Stoic wise person as his model for virtue. Above all, he is concerned with reproducing as much of the Stoic account of virtues as possible, and he is concerned with making the Dialogues of Seneca known to Pope Clement IV. In particular, he is most of all concerned with Seneca's De ira . He regards it as a fundamental text for the moral instruction of princes and prelates. Certainly, Bacon, as he does in the Secretum secretorum , presents himself as a moral advisor to Princes.

Part four provides an astrological sociology of human nations or “sects.” It relies on the moral/political account of al-Farabi and on the astrological views of Abu Ma'shar (Albumassar). Bacon had a wide knowledge of the world including the customs of the Mongols, and so he compares Mongol, Jewish, Arab, and Pagan civilizations.

Part five deals with the role of rhetoric in moral persuasion. Bacon is convinced that rhetoric is closely connected with logic, and believed that the university system failed by teaching only grammar and logic (linguistics). The omission of rhetoric and poetics, as found in Aristotle and as interpreted by al-Farabi and Averroes, from the university, was in Bacon's view a mistake. He knows the latest translations and remarks: “But al-Farabi has presented to us the meaning of this kind of argument, and Avicenna, al-Ghazali and Averroes have done likewise. Because of this, one ought to present an account of the nature of poetic argument, and it falls to logic alone to compose such a book, since the composition of argumentation pertains to logic alone… The appropriate presentation of this argument is found in [my] Moralis philosophia , and in its use, and likewise in theological proofs and doctrines; and in such moral matters, this kind of argument moves a [person] much more than does a demonstrative argument since it has much greater power. And I have already composed a treatise on this [rhetorical-poetic] argument in my works on logic , and I have shown there what is proper to this science.” [ 19 ] He continues and notes that according to Aristotle and al-Farabi, this argument makes use of appropriate language so that the self can be led to virtue and to the overcoming of vice. He then links up the Greek and Islamic sources with the regular sources in the Latin tradition such as Cicereo, Sencca and Augustine. And he distinguishes carefully between demonstrative, dialectical and rhetorical forms of argument.

Bacon devoted considerable time to the study of this work, the Latin translation of the Arabic work on statecraft in the tradition of Mirrors for Princes entitled Sirr-al-‘asrar . He worked on the text at Paris and completed the edition of this text with Introduction and Notes at Oxford after his return there from Paris ca. 1280. This is the most important text on government and the education of the Prince prior to the writing of The Prince by Machiavelli. The work is divided into four parts. Part one begins with the letter of Alexander to Aristotle and deals with the King's maintenance of the kingdom. It deals with virtues, largesse and gifts. It is an account of the behavior expected of a King. Part two deals with health care, medicine and the origins of the sciences. Part three deals with alchemy and with the human emotional structure. Part four deals with physiognomy and anthropology.

Bacon's introduction is substantial, consisting of seven chapters. It is closely connected with his account of astrology in Opus maius , part four, and with scientia experimentalis in part six. His sources are mostly Islamic and include the De radiis and De aspectibus of al-Kindi and the introduction to astrology of Abu Ma'shar. Bacon proposes a kind of statistical predictive astrology, and so has to deal explicitly with the issue of freedom and determinism. He objects to a kind of infallibilist necessitarianism and thinks that provided ‘possibility’ and ‘contingency’ can be guarded one can predict what can happen in nature and in human society (due to the effects of the elements on temperament) in a general manner. Thus, the ruler will have need of the astrologer who will function as a kind of doctor, psychologist, sociologist and political theorist. This is a far cry from a contemplative ethics. It is significant that in the work entitled Errores philosophorum ascribed to Giles of Rome, a contemporary of Bacon at Paris, many of Bacon's sources are severely criticized. Giles in the De regimine principum (1280s), unlike Bacon, provides a moral education for the prince that is entirely based on Greek and Latin sources, especially on Aristotle.

It will be clear from this account that Roger Bacon is an important teacher of the Arts at Paris in the 1240s. He was ahead of his time in the vigorous manner in which he integrated the New Aristotle with the traditional Latin traditions of Grammar and Logic. He taught for a long period in the Arts but seems to have become an independent scholar by about 1248. He then, it would seem, returned to England, where, under the influence of Adam Marsh, the friend of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, he was attracted to interests associated with both scholars. These interests included language study including the learning of ancient languages, experimental concerns such as Optics and Experimental Science, and a renewed critical study of the text of Scripture. When Bacon returned to Paris in the 1250s, he was to witness a profound change in the methodology of university learning, that is, the introduction of the “Sentence-Method” into the study of Theology. For Bacon, this was a destruction of the practices that he associated with Robert Grosseteste. Taking up the flag of the Bishop of Lincoln (d. 1253), he became the great critic of the Parisian mode of doing philosophy and theology.

As we saw above, Bacon already by 1266 is very concerned with the new heterodox interpretations of Aristotle found in the Faculty of Arts. His later works for Pope Clement IV must be read in the context of the Parisian Debates on Latin Averroism (1266-1277).

The later Roger Bacon has a good knowledge of the geography and history of the world and he has an awareness of geo-politics. In this context, he devoted much time to the important work on the education of the Prince, the Secretum secretorum . Following his Condemnation in the Franciscan Order in 1278, and his return to Oxford ca. 1280, he completed his edition, with notes and introduction, of this work. In his last work, the Compendium studii theologiae (thought to be ca. 1292), he repeats some of the main themes from the 1260s against Richard Rufus of Cornwall.

Roger Bacon set out themes in his philosophy of language and his philosophy of nature that would influence fourteenth century writers such as Duns Scotus and William of Ockham among others. His influence on the fourteenth century has been documented by Katherine H. Tachau (1988). He is much more important for the philosophy of the thirteenth century than has been recognized in past scholarship.

Bibliography

Roger bacon's work, modern critical editions, translations, richard rufus of cornwall.

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-->Al-Farabi --> | Al-Kindi | Aquinas, Saint Thomas | Aristotle | Aristotle, General Topics: ethics | Aristotle, Special Topics: natural philosophy | Augustine, Saint | -->Avicenna [Ibn Sina] --> | Bacon, Francis | -->Cicero --> | Duhem, Pierre | Duns Scotus, John | -->form vs. matter --> | Giles of Rome | Grosseteste, Robert | -->Ibn al-Haytham --> | -->Ibn Rushd --> | -->individuation --> | -->Kilwardby, Robert --> | logic: ancient | -->natural philosophy: in the Renaissance --> | -->nominalism: medieval versions of --> | Ockham [Occam], William | properties | realism | Richard the Sophister [ Ricardus Sophista, Magister abstractionum ] | semiotics: medieval | Seneca | soul, ancient theories of | substance | William of Auvergne