Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #548674 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
'In this extraordinary book... Clegg's accessible writing style manages to encapsulate the lives of light's disciples with humorous and interesting anecdotes... quite awesome.' - New Scientist

From the Author
I first came across Roger Bacon when writing Light Years, my earlier book on humanity’s fascination with light. I was amazed that a man with such a remarkable story was often forgotten or confused with the Elizabethan Francis Bacon.

Roger Bacon's life was a rollercoaster of triumph and disaster, risking all for knowledge. What shines through is his delight in what would become science. His was an amazing period with pinpoints of fact beginning to shine through the clouds of mysticism, and Bacon was determined that experiment should be put alongside the revered wisdom of the ancients to clarify what was truth and what was myth.

Finding the real Roger Bacon meant exploring the life of a student in the thirteenth century – riotous, dangerous and exciting – alongside the more subtle, but equally dangerous, struggles for power in the new Franciscan order he was to join.

I hope that you will find the mix of Roger’s story and the insight his writing gives us into medieval science as exciting as I did when researching this book.

About the Author
Brian Clegg read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, after which he spent a year doing a second MA in Operational Research. He pioneered the use of computers at British Airways, and later set up the Emerging Technologies Group, researching and trialling technologies such as fingerprint recognition and electronic cash. He now runs a creative consultancy and contributes to many publications. His most recent book is Light Years: An Exploration of Mankind's Enduring Fascination with Light.

Customer Reviews

Fabulous account of an absorbing period in history
I really loved this book. If you saw (or read!) Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose", you'll know that its hero, William of Baskerville, was a student of Roger Bacon. Well, here is the real-life story of this unjustly-nelgected genius. In Eco's book, William himself demonstrates a deductive ability reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and his celebrated scientific method... if you revel in Holmes and his epoch, I think you'll also find this extraordinary earlier period of history just your cup of tea!