The English Franciscan Roger Bacon (1214-1294) deserves to be mentioned with the two great Dominicans. He was acquainted with the works of the Greek and Arabian scientists. He transmitted in a treatise that fell under the eye of Columbus the view of Aristotle in reference to the proximity of another continent on the other side of the Atlantic; he anticipated the principle on which the telescope was afterwards constructed; he advocated basing natural science on experience and careful observation rather than on a process of reasoning. Roger Bacon's writings are characterized by a philosophical breadth of view. To his mind the earth is only an insignificant dot in the center of the vast heavens.
In the centuries that followed the death of Bacon the relation of this planet to the heavenly bodies was made an object of study by a succession of scientists who like him were versed in the achievements of preceding ages. Peurbach (1423-1461), author of New Theories of the Planets, developed the trigonometry of the Arabians, but died before fulfilling his plan to give Europe an epitome of the astronomy of Ptolemy. His pupil, Regiomontanus, however, more than made good the intentions of his master. The work of Peurbach had as commentator the first teacher in astronomy of Copernicus (1473-1543). Later Copernicus spent nine years in Italy, studying at the universities and acquainting himself with Ptolemaic and other ancient views concerning the motions of the planets. He came to see that the apparent revolution of the heavenly bodies about the earth from east to west is really owing to the revolution of the earth on its axis from west to east. This view was so contrary to prevailing beliefs that Copernicus refused to publish his theory for thirty-six years. A copy of his book, teaching that our earth is not the center of the universe, was brought to him on his deathbed, but he never opened it.
Momentous as was this discovery, setting aside the geocentric system which had held captive the best minds for fourteen slow centuries and substituting the heliocentric, it was but a link in the chain of successes in astronomy to which Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and their followers contributed.
REFERENCES
The Catholic Encyclopedia.
J. L. E. Dreyer, History of the Planetary Systems.
Encyclopædia Britannica. Arabian Philosophy; Roger Bacon.
W. J. Townsend, The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages.