Bacon, Roger(Between 1214 and 1220?–1292)
Roger Bacon, English philosopher and scientist, known as Doctor Mirabilis, was probably born between 1214 and 1220 and died in 1292, probably at Oxford. Bacon wrote in 1267 that he had learned the alphabet some forty years before and that his once wealthy brother had been ruined by his support of King Henry III during the barons' revolt. He studied arts at Oxford and then at Paris, where as regent master (c. 1237) he was among the first to lecture on the forbidden books of Aristotle when the ban was lifted. Here he wrote his Summa Grammatica, Summulae Dialectices, Summa de Sophismatibus et Distinctionibus, his Quaestiones on Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics, and De Sensu et Sensibili, and on the pseudo-Aristotelian De Plantis and Liber de Causis; he also wrote commentaries, now lost, on De Anima, De Generatione et Corruptione, De Caelo et Mundo, and De Animalibus.
These early lectures reveal a philosopher, immature but of unusual ability, conversant with the new literature of Aristotle and his Arabic commentators. They are of some historical interest, since Bacon was representative of the new breed of masters at Paris who prided themselves on being pure Aristotelians. In fact, however, like Avicenna and Gundissalinus before them, they were still strongly influenced by other traditions (especially Neoplatonism) that dominated such apocryphal works as the Liber de Causis and, in Bacon's case, the popular Secret of Secrets.
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