Roger Bacon, Letter to Pope Clement IV

Roger Bacon and the beginnings of experimental science in Britain.

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...

Adelard of Bath and Roger Bacon: early English natural philosophers and scientists.

The image of Roger Bacon as a 'modern' experimental scientist was propagated as historical truth in 19th century scientific historiography. Twentieth century criticisms attacked this tradition, arguing that Bacon was primarily a medieval philosopher with 'medieval' scientific interests. However, recent scholarship has provided a more careful and critical account of Bacon's science, and identifi...

Roger Bacon and the origins of Perspectiva in the Middle Ages

The bibliographic details will convince any well-educated historian that this book should be available in all good libraries. So indeed it should. The advent of microfilm has helped the editor to make full use of many more manuscripts than his predecessors, with consequent benefit to the authority of the resulting text. Roger Bacon's treatise, which David Lindberg, following a "guess" by Stewar...

Clement Kent

report, was the deep divergence of the rosada lineage at the base of the Conolophus clade. “The species alters the current thinking about the timing of diversification of land iguanas, which was previously supposed to have occurred in the Pleistocene era,” the researchers write. “In addition to the taxonomic implications, this form, which we recognise as a good species, is very important becaus...

Papal Responses to the Holocaust: Contrast between Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II