The First Scientist: A Life of Roger Bacon

by Brian Clegg

Legend may have transformed the thirteenth-century English friar Roger Bacon into the Faust-like sorcerer Doctor Mirabilis, but he stands today in high regard as Europe's first great pioneer in the field of science. Bypassing the vicissitudes of Bacon's reputation, this definitive new biography by science writer Brian Clegg places the medieval monastic firmly in the turbulent and contentious intellectual atmosphere of his day. It also finds in Bacon's attempt to reconcile, or at least acknowledge, the variant methods and means of science and theology a quest that places him well ahead of his intellectual times. For Bacon brought to his inquiry into the nature of things his gifts not only as a lucid observer of natural phenomena, rigorous experimenter, empirical thinker, and gifted mathematician but as a theologian and philosopher as well. In his search for truth he would, like Galileo, suffer imprisonment rather than sacrifice his intellectual integrity. From Bacon's popularity as a teacher at Oxford and Paris, through his innovations in calendar reform, his experiments in optics, his designs for a flying machine, and, most famously, his development of the principle of inductive experimental science, this illuminative volume unfolds the story of a brilliant career.

Genres: Science, Biography, History, Nonfiction, History Of Science, Philosophy

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Brian's latest books, Ten Billion Tomorrows and How Many Moons does the Earth Have are now available to pre-order. He has written a range of other science titles, including the bestselling Inflight Science, The God Effect, Before the Big Bang, A Brief History of Infinity, Build Your Own Time Machine and Dice World.

Along with appearances at the Royal Institution in London he has spoken at venues from Oxford and Cambridge Universities to Cheltenham Festival of Science, has contributed to radio and TV programmes, and is a popular speaker at schools. Brian is also editor of the successful www.popularscience.co.uk book review site and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Brian has Masters degrees from Cambridge University in Natural Sciences and from Lancaster University in Operational Research, a discipline originally developed during the Second World War to apply the power of mathematics to warfare. It has since been widely applied to problem solving and decision making in business.

Brian has also written regular columns, features and reviews for numerous publications, including Nature, The Guardian, PC Week, Computer Weekly, Personal Computer World, The Observer, Innovative Leader, Professional Manager, BBC History, Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful. His books have been translated into many languages, including German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, Norwegian, Thai and even Indonesian.

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clegg argues that Roger Bacon (not to be confused with Francis) is indeed the first true scientist? Why? Four reasons: he contended that math was foundational, he argued for openness to new ideas, he was committed to communication as a way for science to advance, and he pioneered experimental science. What is stunning is to discover that Bacon spent twenty years in prison as a result of sending his Opus Majus to the Pope, who inconveniently died before reading it, leaving it in the hands of intolerant leaders of his order. One can only wonder what he might have accomplished had he been at liberty for these years. As it is, he did major work in optics, calendar reform, and geography and predicted many inventions only achieved in modern times. All this in the thirteenth century.

[Leanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read on Roger Bacon. Wait. whose Roger Bacon? Well, he is not Francs Bacon. Some call him the first real scientist.... maybe. But I like him because he actually spent more money on books than I do. Yep, in today's terms some $10 million! Excellent. He was at Oxford when there were not halls or buildings there yet and then at Paris as Notre Dame was in the last stages of completion. There he supposedly met with Roger Rubruck--just back from the Khan's court in Mongolia. Also known as Doctor Mirabilis, he was John Dee's hero (that says a lot since Dee was one of the Renaissance's greatest quacks and geniuses.

Clegg's biography is a great read and he does a fantastic job in explaining medieval optics and the species--which is why I wanted to read the book since I am reading al-Kindi but it was Bacon who really unpacked al-Kindi's theories.

So, why is he known as the west's first true scientist? Well, scientists today like him because he insisted that all since have as its underpinning math and also experimental data (the latter was very radical). He is also noted for his insistence on objective information without bias (like Galileo and so many other famous early scientists he believed that science should be in the service of God because by knowing nature, we know God--as well as his commitment to communication and the dissemination of knowledge. For more, there is a great book called Baroque Science that I highly recommend.

Enjoyable read for sure.

[Kurdstan Planetarium · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roger Bacon, the first Scientist

Just finished reading this amazing book and learned more about lifestyle and the works of Roger Bacon.
The book is written in clear and easy language.
This remarkable man deserves the title given to him (the first scientist), yet during his lifetime, he was not recognized. Worse, he .struggled and suffered imprisonment twice each for a decade. He spent a huge sum of money in one instant he spent £2000, which could account for millions now a days, just to purchase papers and instruments to write and test his theories. In an age where everyone believed in the authority of Greek philosophers like Aristotle without questioning, he introduced a method of experimentation to testify validity of a scientific theory.
He wrote huge volumes on science philosophy, language, astronomy, and even alchemy.
This book gives explanations on each of its contents as to why and how it was written.
Roger Vacon was not recognized until the 19th and 20 century, for once he was ahead of his time, second his works were wrongly attributed to his namesake Frances Bacon.
To anyone who wants to know about Roger Bacon and his great works, I highly recommend this book.

[Nate Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, I definitely enjoyed reading this book, and really gives you a good slice of what 13th century academia was like in western Europe. Roger Bacon (not to be confused with Francis Bacon) is a very interesting figure, and Clegg does a great job at highlighting his life and attitudes towards learning, science, and the Church. The last chapter ties in his overall view of his otherwise chronological account of Bacon, and explains his four attributes of being a scientist that apply to Bacon and why he was the first scientist (according to Clegg, that is). Personally, I thought that this book was a pretty easy read (minus some detailed explanations of Bacon's scientific thought) and recommend this biography to anyone who is interested in Medieval history, or just wants to learn about an interesting figure in an interesting time period.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read something about Roger Bacon a month or so ago, so I got this book from Inter-Library Loan, and learned about him - a fascinating & strange character of the 13th Century in England, who also spent years in Paris and years in prison. As far as the author knows, Bacon was the first person since ancient times to have conceived of experimentation as a way to get to truth. His story is interesting but marked - and marred - by long periods of oppression, threats & failures to be understood ... in an age when a person who is misunderstood,, or who knows things that other people do not know, can be burned at the stake or imprisoned in horrible conditions for decades.

[Chris Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an informative read that, at times, seems like a Master's Degree dissertation and, at others, like a YA novel. Due to the 1800-year gap in dealing with the particulars of Bacon's life, there is a great deal of "he would have ... " in the writing. While this is understandable, it does affect the flow of the book. On the other hand, Mr. Clegg does an excellent job of explaining the milieu with which he is dealing, which makes for a clear and understandable siting of his subject. On page 204, Mr. Clegg claims success on his two goals: " ... that Bacon was a scientist and that he was the first." I agree with both propositions, but it left me wanting more specificity.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.5 stars
Overall I think Clegg did a good job giving us Bacon’s life story, and his contributions to science, but I wasn’t totally convinced that he was the “first scientist”. I think more examples of Bacon’s scientific work should have been given, but that seems to be more from a lack of original sources, than Clegg’s writing. Unfortunately, as it goes with many historical figures, record keeping during this time was spotty, leaving Clegg to make a lot of educated guess work.

[Kit · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roger Bacon may have been the first scientist, but you would never know from this book. Very unstructured and speculative, the author makes claims throughout the book with very little explanation or supporting evidence. I finished the book knowing little more about Roger Bacon than when I had started.

[John Badger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating subject, pretty well researched but poorly written. Read the first 7-8 chapters, tear the last 2-3 out as they’re repetitive or just feel like a dump of info the author crammed in. I like his other books much better for writing style

[Arianne X · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the First Modern Scientist

Casting Roger Bacon in the role of first scientist claims too much. The view of Roger Bacon as the first scientist, a protomodern thinker imprisoned in the Middle Ages, is a modern projection onto Bacon in order to find precedents for modernity. Our own doubts about the project that we are pleased to call modernity drives our need to find historical causal antecedents to justify where we are now. Roger Bacon was every inch the medieval man, one of the best and the brightest to be sure, but not modern and certainly not the first modern scientist. The author overstates the case for Bacon as the first modern scientist to confirm us in our modern assumptions; in our search to find coherence in the human experience of existence and identify a logical progression of progress. There is no reason to think, apart from our cognitive bias, that the Middle Ages was pointing toward any future period to which we choose to append a convenient label such the ‘Renaissance’, the ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘Modernity’.

Roger Bacon lived at a time, and worked in an environment, where magic, nascent science and theology were inseparable. Science and occultism were one as were natural philosophy and occult philosophy. To claim Bacon as a scientist, based on our modern understanding of the word, is gloss over this muddled and jumbled reality of the medieval period. Bacon’s work in what we might look back upon and recognize as scientific was in the service of advancing the Christian faith and strengthening the Church. Science, as such, was pursued in the service of theology. St Augustine declared that magic was a false deception. The medieval Church of Bacon’s time declared magic to be true but the tool of Satan to be avoided by Christians. Bacon claimed that magic could be harnessed for good in the service of advancing Christianity at a time when Christianity was beset with internal frictions and external threats. For Bacon, and the greatest thinkers of his time, science and magic were still one. For example, Bacon believed that alchemy could be used to produce endless supplies of gold to advantage of Christendom. What this would mean for the value of gold, Bacon did not consider. At least we have not tried to cast him as a modern economist. True, Bacon did a great deal of valuable work in optics and mathematics, but only as one of the brightest intellectuals of his time and place, thirteenth century Europe, not as a protomodern scientist. He was precocious much like Leonardo Da Vinci in his imaginative predictions. He was brilliant, yes, but isolated in his age, not a progenitor of our age. Observational science, experimentation, misunderstandings of natural phenomena, received beliefs in magic and the ‘truth’ of revelation were combined to create what we look back upon as the very curious period of medieval thought. With science and magic mixed-up, the Church’s prohibition on magic also acted to retard the advancement of science. It was difficult to separate science from magic. It would take several more centuries in the West to separate alchemy from chemistry, astrology from astronomy and basically unscramble science and magic, philosophy and theology. After all, Isaac Newton spent most of his time in the search for the bible code, an example of mathematics mixed with mysticism, that would unlock the secrets of the bible and the hidden ‘truths’ of revelation. It was until the early seventeenth century that midwives of modernity came along, Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.

I am not willing to give up on modernity, but I also do not think that we should project our values and assumptions onto selected people and events of the past to justify modernity in the sweep of history or provide us with a comfortable sense of coherence as to our progress, fitful at times though it is, when there is likely no such logic of progress or coherence of ‘truth’ to be found.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roger Bacon was the most important scientist of his time, his life spanned from 1214 to 1294. Though living in the darkness of the Middle Ages, he shed a tremendous amount of light on the understanding of science in his day, and spent over 20 years imprisoned for his writings which challengd much of the supersitition of the church at that time.

[Dan Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth a read, but not the most interesting or memorable of books of this kind. Roger Bacon was a pioneer and the material on his achievements was good, but I found myself less interested in the material on his later reputation.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more should be written on roger bacon.

[Snoakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting - I knew nothing of Roger Bacon before reading this. it gives you a good sense of what life must have been like in the thirteenth century too.