BACON, ROGER (c. 1214-1292), English philosopher and man of science, known to his successors as doctor mirabilis, was born near Ilchester in the county of Somerset. About 123o, he seems to have been at Oxford, though not, as tradition asserts, at Merton or at Brasenose, neither of which had then been found ed. Af ter taking the degree of M.A., he went to Paris probably before 1236. There he also received the M.A., but there is no evidence for supposing that he ever became a doctor of divinity.
At Paris, where he remained (perhaps not uninterruptedly) until shortly after 1251, Bacon lectured on the pseudo-Aristotel ian treatise De Plantis and wrote his Quaestiones on Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics—writings which bear the impress of an immature but vigorous mind. About 1247, his scientific and philological interests began to awaken and it was probably during the years 1256-66, when ill-health required him to re tire from academic activities, that he produced the De Speculis, De Mirabili Potestate Artis et Naturae, the Metaphysics, the De Multiplicatione Specierum, and certainly the De Computo Naturali which from internal evidence dates from 1263-64. On June 22, 1266, Guy de Foulques, who before his election as Pope Clement IV. had heard of Bacon's writings, wrote a second time to Bacon requesting him to send immediately a copy of his works, regardless of any forbidding Franciscan constitution (this is the first intimation that we have of Bacon being a Franciscan). Bacon's elation over the papal interest led him to begin the Communia Naturalium a proposed exhaustive account of the various branches of knowledge. He soon realized the size of the task which he had undertaken, and in Jan. 1267, laid aside the Communia Naturalium for the less pretentious encyclopaedia, the Opus Mains. In 1268, this latter work, together with the older De Multiplicatione Specierum, the Opus Minus, an alchem ical treatise, and possibly the Opus Tertium, was despatched to the Pope. Bacon then proceeded with the Communia Naturalium and also produced his introduction to the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum, the Greek and fragmentary Hebrew gram mars, and about 1272, the incomplete Compendium Studii Philosophiae.
In 1277, appeared Bishop Tempier's condemnation of 219 er roneous theories circulating in Paris. This seems to have stirred those in high office, for in the same year, we find Jerome de Ascoli, the Minister-General of the Franciscans, calling many of the Order to give an account of themselves, and among these was Bacon, summoned, according to the Chronicle of the Twenty-four Generals, because of certain suspected novelties. What these novelties were, we are not told. Certainly in the light of what we know about Grosseteste's interests, they could not have been of a scientific nature; and contrary to the common opinion, there seems to be nothing unique in the astrology or alchemy of Bacon. Again, his attack on the moral and intellectual standards of the Church could hardly have been the crux, for this was expressly written for the Pope, and moreover, the glorification of the Church was always Bacon's chief concern in promoting the study of languages, of mathematics, optics, geography and chronology. Judging from his works, there can be little doubt that one of the main reasons for his condemnation was his obnoxious attack on his contemporaries—Franciscans, as well as Dominicans and seculars. Thus he refers to Richard of Cornwall as "an absolute fool," to Alexander of Hales, whom he admits was one of the great promoters of the Order, as "ignorant of natural philosophy and metaphysics," to Albert the Great, or St. Thomas as a "teacher yet unschooled" and one whose works are full of "puerile vanity and voluminous superfluity," to William of Moerbecke as an ignorant man undermining philosophy by his false trans lations, to the Dominicans of Paris as the greatest corruptors of the biblical text, and lastly, to the seculars as neglecting theology and philosophy, and relying on the Orders. Such remarks were bound to bring him into disfavour, but whether or not they were the accusations laid against him, we know that his works were condemned and he himself imprisoned from 1277 to 1292 when the Minister-General died. On his release, Bacon began the Compendium Studii Theologiae, but owing to his death in the same year that work was never finished.
No doubt the condemnation of Bacon's works is responsible for the lack of any marked influence on his immediate successors; however, as Prof. Duhem (see infra) says, there are resemblances between his astronomy and that of the Franciscan, Bernard of Verdun, and between his perspective and that of Pecham and William of Saint-Cloud. About 1315, William of Herbert, a Franciscan master at Oxford, was able to secure some of his manuscripts for the friary at Hereford, and about the same time, Peter Dubois, a pupil of Siger de Brabant, became interested in his experimental and mathematical teaching. By the end of the century, Franciscan chroniclers placed Bacon among the famous natural philosophers of the Order, and by the 15th century, dis putants quoted him in the schools at Oxford, while an official letter of the university mentioned him among the "modern Oxonians" who had kept untarnished the brightness of Oxford's fame.
In estimating the importance of Bacon, it is well to state at once that it is foolish to regard him as a meteor, a rebel against the whole spirit of scholasticism, or an assertor of the freedom of thought. He is essentially the product of his day. During his residence in Paris, the famous teachers were Alexander of Hales who was attempting to correlate the old Augustinianism with the newly introduced philosophy of Aristotle, William of Au vergne, a great admirer of Aristotle and Avicebron, John de Gar landia, the zealous grammarian, Albert the Great whom Bacon refers to as "the first master of philosophy" and whose interests in science were considerable, Petrus Peregrinus of Maricourt, a mathematician, and Bonaventure. When he returned to Oxford, Grosseteste, Adam Marsh (de Marisco) and Thomas of York, had already established the claims of science and the freedom of thought. That Bacon simply took up the Oxford tradition is borne out by the late appearance of his scientific and philological interests, interests formed only in the works written after he had become a Franciscan and after he had access to the writings of the aforesaid men whom he calls "maiores clerici de mundo et perfecti in scientia divina et humana," and whom he ranks among the "anglicani qui satis inter alios homines sunt et fuerunt stu diosi," contrasting them with the "capita vulgi philosophancium Parisius." Between Bacon and Grosseteste, there are many striking simi larities, especially in their theories of the value of philological and linguistic studies, of calendar reform, of meteorology, of the propagation of force, of optics, and of the importance of mathe matics and experiment in natural science. In some of these spheres, however, Bacon makes a great advance on Grosseteste. Thus as far as the study of languages is concerned, apart from insisting on the necessity of linguistic science for the adequate comprehension of Scripture and philosophy, Bacon produced a Greek grammar, started a Hebrew one, and made a continual attack on the corrupt text of the Bible and the bad translations of Aristotle. As for optics, he had the advantage of enriching the theories of Grosseteste with those of Alkindi and Alhazen, advancing beyond all of them in his study of parabolic mirrors and in his theory of the agent's propagation of species as a force which is nothing other than the momentarily modified medium between the agent and the patient. His concern for mathematics and experiment, of ten regarded as his crowning glory, is not as remarkable as one might be led to suppose. It is true that he insists that the man who knows not mathematics cannot know other sciences, but his mathematical interest seems to be less in abstract than in applied mathematics. As far as experiment is concerned, Bacon may speak of it as the lord of all sciences, the door to knowledge, and the criterion of truth, but Mr. Thorn dike (Hist. of Magic and Experimental Science) has shown that Bacon's advances beyond the contemporary practical experiments made by artisans and alchemists, were largely of an imaginary kind consisting chiefly in testing the results of speculation by practical utility rather than in induction through regulated and purposive observation. Perhaps the really outstanding manifes tation of Bacon's scientific bent lies in that extraordinary f ore sight which led him to see the magnifying properties of convex lenses, the inherent power in gunpowder, and the possibility of flying machines and mechanically propelled boats, or of circum navigating the globe.
Nevertheless, this same ability, which shows itself in other spheres as a knack of correlating the sciences, of grasping the unity in history or of seizing upon the causes of human error, was Bacon's weak point as far as philosophy was concerned. United with his energetic but imperious temperament, it shows itself as a confidence in his own peculiar capacity to interpret Aristotle rightly, as a tendency to dismiss theories with which he disagrees and as an inability to consider calmly the implications and value of his own philosophical innovations. Thus, after proclaiming that the individual is the most real thing in the universe, he dismisses the problem of individuation as stupid; again, he posits in things both a materia prima universalis together with a forma universalis and a materia prima singularis together with a forma singularis with elaborate sub-divisions under each of them, and by denying that they are differentiations secundum modum loquendi leaves us with two unrelated sets of entities in things. Bacon's most valuable philosophical contributions are his adoption of the Augustinian theory of rationes seminales, his analysis of the process of becoming, his rejection of the mon istic doctrine of the numerical unity of matter in all things, his discussion as to whether generated forms appear instantaneously and as to what happens to the forms of elements which combine to produce mixtures, his assertion of a forma corporeitatis in man intended to preserve the independence of the rational soul, his emphasis on the activity of the soul in knowing, his support of the Divine illumination theory (he regards the active intellect not as a part of the soul but as God or an angel), his belief in innate exemplars for a knowledge of all spiritual beings including God, the angels and our own soul, and his views on the similarity between the knowledge of the angels and that of separated souls, and the divine knowledge of creatures.