{"id":545,"date":"2007-01-16T01:09:10","date_gmt":"2007-01-16T06:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=545"},"modified":"2018-08-19T08:32:40","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T12:32:40","slug":"14919-%c2%a0%c2%a0-brian-clegg-the-first-scientist-a-life-of-roger-bacon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=545","title":{"rendered":"14919. (Brian Clegg) The First Scientist, A Life of Roger Bacon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"07-01-16<\/a>This rounds off a lit\u00adtle project of mine to inves\u00adti\u00adgate Roger Bacon, the thir\u00adteenth cen\u00adtury Fran\u00adcis\u00adcan fri\u00adar who wrote about the pos\u00adsi\u00adbil\u00adi\u00adties of sci\u00aden\u00adtific inquiry. His work was sup\u00adpressed in his life\u00adtime, and he spent most of it impris\u00adoned by his reli\u00adgious order, and forced to bribe his keep\u00aders to smug\u00adgle in writ\u00ading paper. His large (for the time) col\u00adlec\u00adtion of books and exper\u00adi\u00admen\u00adtal appa\u00adra\u00adtus dis\u00adap\u00adpeared in the tur\u00admoil of war. Since then, his rep\u00adu\u00adta\u00adtion has suf\u00adfered extremes of inter\u00adpre\u00adta\u00adtion. <\/span>Renais\u00adsance pop\u00adu\u00adlar cul\u00adture saw him as an occultist and magi\u00adcian. It was claimed, among oth\u00ader absur\u00addi\u00adties, that he pos\u00adsessed a talk\u00ading head of brass. His unre\u00adlated name\u00adsake, Fran\u00adcis Bacon, expro\u00adpri\u00adated many of his ideas and received the cred\u00adit for them. Some nine\u00adteenth cen\u00adtury his\u00adto\u00adri\u00adans praised him, struck by his prophet\u00adic asser\u00adtions that inquiry into nature would make it pos\u00adsi\u00adble to observe the stars and very small things with prop\u00aderly arranged lens\u00ades, that we would some day cre\u00adate fly\u00ading machines and \u201ccars\u201d that move with\u00adout the help of ani\u00admals, that we would be able to record and replay sounds, and for his pre\u00adcise chem\u00adi\u00adcal for\u00admula for gun\u00adpow\u00adder. But twen\u00adti\u00adeth cen\u00adtury his\u00adto\u00adri\u00adans tend\u00aded to down\u00adgrade him to a \u201cpre-sci\u00aden\u00adtif\u00adic\u201d curiosity.<\/span><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help but think that this is the result of the absence of eas\u00adily avail\u00adable trans\u00adla\u00adtions of his work, com\u00adpared to the ready avail\u00adabil\u00adity of Fran\u00adcis Bacon\u2019s Advance\u00adment of Learn\u00ading<\/em> and Novum Organum<\/em>. There was noth\u00ading crude of occult about Roger\u2019s notions of a nat\u00adural sci\u00adence based on obser\u00adva\u00adtion and exper\u00adi\u00adment. In fact, he firm\u00adly reject\u00aded all super\u00adnat\u00adural inter\u00adpre\u00adta\u00adtions, and pre\u00adsented his ideas with greater con\u00adsis\u00adtency and clar\u00adity than Fran\u00adcis did. He also grasped the impor\u00adtance of math\u00ade\u00admat\u00adics for quan\u00adti\u00adfy\u00ading data, which Fran\u00adcis failed to do. Roger Bacon was just not lis\u00adtened to. His work fell on deaf ears because soci\u00adety was not suf\u00adfi\u00adciently advanced to make use of it. Fran\u00adcis Bacon pre\u00adsented a watered-down ver\u00adsion of it, at a time when Europe was ready to listen.<\/span><\/p>\n

My impres\u00adsion, after read\u00ading some of Roger Bacon\u2019s work, and what bio\u00adgraph\u00adi\u00adcal mate\u00adr\u00adial I could get hold of, is that he was one of the major intel\u00adlects of his time, per\u00adhaps smarter and more astute than his con\u00adtem\u00adpo\u00adrary rival, Thomas Aquinas. He was inspired, like Aquinas, by the Greeks and the bril\u00adliant Mus\u00adlim philoso\u00adphers and nat\u00adu\u00adral\u00adists. But, unlike Aquinas, he was far less inclined to jam these sources into a pre\u00adcon\u00adceived Chris\u00adt\u00adian ortho\u00addoxy. He com\u00adplained that Aquinas nev\u00ader proved any\u00adthing that he had not decid\u00aded he was going to prove before he start\u00aded. That was the dif\u00adfer\u00adence between them, and the dif\u00adfer\u00adence between a the\u00adolo\u00adgian and a sci\u00aden\u00adtist, in a nutshell.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This rounds off a lit\u00adtle project of mine to inves\u00adti\u00adgate Roger Bacon, the thir\u00adteenth cen\u00adtury Fran\u00adcis\u00adcan fri\u00adar who wrote about the pos\u00adsi\u00adbil\u00adi\u00adties of sci\u00aden\u00adtific inquiry. His work was sup\u00adpressed in his life\u00adtime, and he spent most of it impris\u00adoned by \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bt-reading-2007"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9295,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions\/9295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}