The Life & Work of Roger Bacon

Physics, and Psychology of Aristotle.¹ Its two most prominent representatives at this time were Alexander of Hales and William of Auvergne. Bacon mastered the methods and controversies current at that time and received the title of doctor. To speak the language of the schools with authority was the primary condition for obtaining a hearing. However, he was quick to realize that the men who taught this philosophy were, for the most part, entirely devoid of actual knowledge. They knew no language but Latin. Beyond the meager basics of arithmetic, measurement, and astronomy taught in the manuals of the Quadrivium, they were ignorant of mathematics. They had no conception of the possibility of applying mathematical knowledge to the facts of nature. Their philosophy was a tangle of barren controversies that, for the most part, could be reduced to mere verbal disputes. It bore no relation to the facts of real life. It offered no hope of raising the Catholic Church to the position of intellectual dominance needed to establish its authority over the Asiatic world, from which dangers of appalling magnitude were looming.

It was in Paris that Bacon came into contact with a remarkable man of whom very little would be known to us were it not for Bacon’s praise: Peter of Maricourt.¹

¹ [See Note B (Aristotle and the Univ. of Paris) on p. 149.]