Roger Bacon

Roger Bacon, aka "Doctor Mirabilis" (The Wonderful Doctor), (1214-1294) was a Scholastic Theologian, and with Albertus Magnus one of the founders of the Scientific Method.

'There are two modes of knowing -- by argument and by experience: argument concludes and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not produce certainty and remove doubt, and enable the mind to rest in sight of the truth, unless it find it by the way of experience.'

He was the first to record how to make gunpowder and certainly experimented in optics, alchemy, geography and geometry.

External Links

• Rickaby's "Scholasticism"
• ORB Medieval Sourcebook has his 1268 On Experimental Science