biography
| name: |
Bacon, Roger
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| |
known as Doctor Mirabilis (‘Wonderful Doctor’)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (c.1220–92)
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| biography:
| Philosopher and scientist, probably born in Ilchester, Somerset, SW England, UK. He studied at Oxford and Paris, and gained a reputation for diverse and unconventional learning in philosophy, magic, and alchemy. He seems to have returned to Oxford in 1247 to develop his interests in experimental science and, more surprisingly, to become a Franciscan. But he suffered censorship and eventually imprisonment from the Order for the heresy of his ‘suspected novelties’, and he died in Oxford soon after his eventual release from prison. He has been associated with scientific inventions such as the magnifying glass and gunpowder, and with speculations about lighter-than-air flying machines, microscopes, and telescopes. His views on experimentalism have often seemed strikingly modern, and despite surveillance and censorship from the Franciscans he published many works on mathematics, philosophy, and logic whose importance was recognized only in later centuries. |
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