Roger Bacon Quotes on Nature
Roger Bacon was an English Franciscan friar, philosopher, and early advocate of experimental method, sometimes called Doctor Mirabilis. This page collects quotes attributed to Roger Bacon on the topic of nature, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
-
“Mathematics is the gate and key to the sciences.”
cited in: Morris Kline (1969) Mathematics and the physical world . p. 1 -
Attributed to Roger Bacon:
“Without experiment nothing can be known sufficiently.”
-
“For sounds like thunder, and coruscations like lightning, may be made in the air, and they may be rendered even more horrible than those of nature herself. A small quantity of matter, properly manufactured, not larger than the human thumb, may be made to produce a horrible noise and coruscation. And this may be done many ways, by which a city or an army may be destroyed, as was the case when Gideon and his men broke their pitchers and exhibited their lamps, fire issuing out of them with inestimable noise, destroyed an infinite number of the army of the Midianites .”
De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae et de Nullitate Magise , Ch. 6, in a reference to Bacon's knowledge of gunpowder, as quoted by Thomas Thomson , The History of Chemistry (1830) Vol. 1, p. 36. -
“Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical .”
Cited by Peter Nicholls (1979) The Encyclopedia of science fiction: an illustrated A to Z . p. 376 -
“I shall draw ... a figure (which all these matters are made clear as far as possible on a surface, but the full demonstration would require a body like the eye... The eye of a cow, pig, and other animals can be used for illustration, if anyone wishes to experiment.”
Opus Majus, c. 1267 | v. i. iii. 3, ed. Bridges as quoted in A.C. Crombie , Robert Grossetest and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953)