Monday, May 4, 2009

Bacon,Roger (1214?-1292?)


was an English philosopher and scientist, a major early sup-porter of experimental science. Bacon was known widely and popularly in his day and gained the title doctor mirabilis, which is Latin for "wonderful teacher." Bacon conducted studies in many fields, including mathematics, astronomy, optics, and alchemy, an early form of chemistry. Though he described spectacles and gave exact directions for making gunpowder, Bacon is most remembered today for his insistence on using the experimental method to confirm scientific theories. His scientific skepticism and commitment to method and experimentation were well known in his own day.

Bacon's own most significant researches, those in the field of optics, reveal careful experimentation and interpretation of results. Roger Bacon was born into a wealthy English family and enjoyed the educational advantages his social rank afforded. He was educated at Oxford University and later at the University of Fans, where he also taught. Around 1247, Bacon returned to Oxford, where he seems to have undergone a considerable change in his thinking, possibly due to the influence of the great scholar Robert Grosseteste. Thus began for Bacon an intensive, decade-long period of scientific research. The year 1257 marked another great change in Bacon's life, for the scientist-scholar joined the Franciscan religious order. From this time until his death in or around 1292, Bacon's career was enmeshed in politics of the pope and the Franciscan order. He was even imprisoned for a time by the Franciscans for controversial writings. Nevertheless, Bacon managed to produce a large volume of writings in the period from 1257 until his death. In his greatest treatise, the Opus Maius(Longer Work), Bacon urged the pope to undertake a program of educational reform in which new areas of scientific study would be opened in universities of the West. The death of the somewhat sympathetic Pope Clement IV in 1268 ended Bacon's hopes for these plans.

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