Instances of ideas which were not new with him.
Bacon has been given great credit for pointing out the need of calendar revision three centuries before the papacy achieved it; but he says himself that not only wise astronomers but even ordinary computistae were already aware of the crying need for reform,[2134] and his discussion of the calendar often coincides verbally with Grosseteste’s Computus.[2135] When Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly over a century later again urged the need of reform upon Pope John XXIII he cited Grosseteste often, but Bacon seldom or never.[2136] The Parisian version of the Bible, against which Bacon inveighs as a corruption of the Vulgate, was in the first instance the work of a conscientious Hebrew scholar;[2137] and the numerous corrections and changes made in it since, though deplored by Bacon, show the prevalent interest in such matters. While Bacon holds that there are very few men who understand the theory of Greek, Hebrew and Arabic grammar, or the technique of the sciences which have to be studied from those languages, he admits that many men are found among the “Latins” who can speak those tongues and that there are even plenty of teachers of Greek and Hebrew at Paris and elsewhere in France and England.[2138] Thus Bacon was not so superior linguistically to his age as he has sometimes been depicted.
Bacon and the discovery of America.
The treatment of geography in the Opus Maius is simply an intelligent compilation of well-known past writers, including the wretched work of Ethicus, supplemented from writings of the friars who had recently visited the Tartars. Roger Bacon’s name has sometimes been connected with the discovery of America by Columbus on the ground that Columbus was greatly influenced by the Imago mundi of Pierre d’Ailly and that a chapter in that work on the extent of the habitable earth was copied in large measure without acknowledgment from Roger Bacon.[2139] Cardinal d’Ailly, however, can scarcely be censured for failing to mention Bacon in this context since he does cite him elsewhere and since in this passage all that he borrows from Roger are the statements of other writers whom Roger cites. That is, against Ptolemy’s discouraging assertion that five-sixths of the earth’s surface is covered with water he cites Aristotle, Seneca and Pliny to prove that the distance west from Spain to India is not great and the apocryphal book of Esdras to the effect that only one-seventh of the earth’s surface is covered with water. But it is contended that the Imago Mundi was not published until 1487[2140] and that Columbus did not read it until after his first voyage in 1492,[2141] which is to be regarded as a continuation of the search after new islands and lands in the western ocean already undertaken by various Portuguese sailors.[2142] It is interesting to note one argument for the propinquity of northwestern Africa to India employed by Bacon which d’Ailly, firm believer in astrology as he was, did not copy. Bacon argues that Aristotle and his commentator included northwestern Africa in “Spain,” “since they say as proof of the narrowness of the sea between Spain and India that there are elephants only in those two places.” And “Aristotle says that there cannot be elephants in those places unless they were of like complexion.”[2143]—i. e., under the same constellations.
Bacon’s historical attitude.
If in many respects Bacon’s contribution to learning has been overestimated, there is one side of his thought which has seldom been emphasized but deserves some notice, namely, his historical attitude. In one sense history was a weak point with Bacon as with most of his contemporaries. He not only accepted the faulty accounts of the past current in his day, but was apt to pounce upon the most sensational and incredible details and use these to support his case. He had no notion of historical criticism. Unfortunately he thought that he knew a good deal about the history of philosophy, and his attitude to science is colored by his false ideas of the history of intellectual development. He of course knew nothing of evolution or of prehistoric man. For him intellectual history commenced with a complete divine revelation of philosophy to the patriarchs. Science then declined owing to the sinfulness of mankind, the invention of magic by Zoroaster, and further corruption of wisdom at the hands of Nimrod, Atlas, Prometheus, Hermes Trismegistus, Aesculapius, and Apollo. Complete knowledge and understanding were granted again by God to Solomon, after whom succeeded another period of sinful decline, until with Thales began the gradual upbuilding of Greek philosophy culminating in Aristotle. Then night set in again, until Avicenna revived philosophy among the Arabs. To him and Aristotle, however, as infidels, less complete knowledge was vouchsafed than to the representatives of God’s chosen people.[2144] Of the composition and development of Roman law Bacon had so little notion that he thought it borrowed chiefly from Aristotle and Theophrastus, except that the Twelve Tables were derived from the laws of Solon.[2145] Though he saw the value of linguistics and textual criticism, and sought with true humanistic ardor for a lost work like the Morals of Seneca, he accepted as genuine works of antiquity spurious treatises like the De Vetula ascribed to Ovid.[2146] He believed that Paul had corresponded with Seneca and that Alexander’s conquests were due to Aristotle’s experimental science. We shall soon see how he used the astrological interpretation of history, which was the medieval counterpart of our geographical and economic interpretation. Yet Bacon deserves praise for so often opening his discussion of a problem by an inquiry into its historical background; he at least tried to adopt the historical point of view. And on the whole his historical method makes about as close an approach to modern research as do his mathematics and experimental science to their modern parallels.
His “mathematical method.”
Yet the introduction of mathematical method into natural science has often been attributed to Roger Bacon, in which respect he has been favorably contrasted with Francis Bacon. Therefore it will be well to note exactly what Roger says on this point and whether his observations were notably in advance of the thought of his times. It will be recalled that in his criticism of the teaching of mathematics Roger had shown little appreciation of the labors of those pure mathematicians who devoted a lifetime to painstaking demonstration and were satisfied with nothing short of it. The discussion in the Opus Maius opens with strong assertions of the necessity for a knowledge of mathematics in the study of natural science and of theology as well; and we are told that neglect of mathematics for the past thirty or forty years has been the ruin of Latin learning. This position is supported by citation of various authorities and by some vague general arguments in typical scholastic style. Grammar and logic must employ music, a branch of mathematics, in prosody and persuasive periods. The categories of time, place, and quantity require mathematical knowledge for their comprehension. Mathematics must underlie other subjects because it is by nature the most elementary and the easiest to learn and the first discovered. Moreover, all our sense knowledge is received in space, in time, and quantitatively. Also the certitude of mathematics makes it desirable that other studies avail themselves of its aid.
Its crudity.
But now we come to the application of these glittering generalities and we see what Bacon’s “mathematical method” really amounts to. Briefly, it consists in expounding his physical and astronomical theories by means of simple geometrical diagrams. The atomical doctrine of Democritus cannot be true, since it involves the error that the hypothenuse is of the same length as the side of a square. Geometry satisfies Roger that there can be but one universe; otherwise we should have a vacuum left. Plato’s assertion that the heavens and four elements are made up each of one group of regular solids is also subjected to geometrical scrutiny. Mathematics is further of service in Biblical geography, in sacred chronology, and in allegorical interpretation of the dimensions of the ark, temple, and tabernacle, and of various numbers which occur in Scripture. But mathematics, according to Bacon, plays its greatest rôle in astronomy or astrology and in physics, and in his favorite theory of multiplication of species or virtues, or, as modern writers have flatteringly termed it, the propagation of force.[2147]