Roger Bacon

The 13th-century English philosopher Roger Bacon is perhaps best known for his major work the Opus Maius. Commissioned by Pope Clement IV, this extensive text covered a multitude of topics from mathematics and optics to religion and moral philosophy. He is also regarded by some as an early pioneer of the modern scientific method. Bacon’s erudition was so highly regarded that he came to be known as ‘Doctor Mirabilis’ or ‘wonderful doctor’. However, he is a man shrouded in mystery. Little is known about much of his life and he became the subject of a number of strange legends, including one in which he allegedly constructed a mechanical brazen head that would predict the future.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Jack Cunningham No other episodes
  Academic Coordinator for Theology at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln
• Amanda Power 2 episodes
  Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford
• Elly Truitt 2 episodes
  Associate Professor of Medieval History at Bryn Mawr College

Reading list

• The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, volumes 1 and 2
  Robert Belle Burke (trans.) (Kessinger Publishing, 2010)
• Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays
  Jeremiah Hackett (ed.) (Brill, 1997) Google Books →
• God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
  James Hannam (Icon Books, 2010) Google Books →
• Magic in the Middle Ages
  Richard Kieckhefer (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• Robert Grosseteste: Great Medieval Thinkers
  James McEvoy (Oxford University Press, 2000) Google Books →
• Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom
  Amanda Power (Cambridge University Press, 2012) Google Books →
• Magic and Religion in Medieval England
  Catherine Rider (Reaktion Books, 2012) Google Books →
• The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209-1310
  Neslihan Senocak (Cornell University Press, 2012) Google Books →

Related episodes

• Baconian Science
  
  2 Apr, 2009 500 Science
• The Scientific Method
  
  26 Jan, 2012 500 Science
• Sir Thomas Browne
  
  6 Jun, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures
• Ockham’s Razor
  
  31 May, 2007 190 Modern Western Philosophy
• The Royal Society
  
  23 Mar, 2006 500 Science
• Galen
  
  10 Oct, 2013 610 Medicine and health
• Renaissance Magic
  
  17 Jun, 2004 130 Parapsychology and occultism
• Alchemy
  
  24 Feb, 2005 540 Chemistry
• Bishop Berkeley
  
  20 Mar, 2014 100 Philosophy
• Robert Boyle
  
  12 Jun, 2014 540 Chemistry

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: b08m8z2w

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08m8z2w

Auto-category: 509.2 (History of science in the Middle Ages)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, Dr Mirabilis, or Wonderful Doctor, was the nickname given to the medieval English scholar Roger Bacon.