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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1914. 



ROGER BACON AXD GALILEO. 

 (i) The Life and Work of Roger Bacon. An 

 Introduction to the Opus Majus. By J. H. 

 Bridges. Pp. 173. (London : Williams and 

 Xorg-ate, 191-i.) Price 35. net. 



(2) Roger Bacon. Essays contributed by Various 

 Writers on the Occasion of the Commemoration 

 of the Seventh Centenary of his Birth. Collected 

 and edited by A. G. Little. Pp. viii + 426. 

 (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1914.) Price 165. 

 net. 



(3) Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences. 

 By Galileo Galilei. Translated from the Italian 

 and Latin into Eng^lish by Henry Crew and 

 Alfonso De Salvio. Pp. xxi + 300. (New- 

 York : The Macmillan Co. ; London : Macmillan 

 and Co., Ltd., 1914.) Price 85. 6d. net. 



THE seAenth centenary of Roger Bacon's 

 birth has been happily signalised by the re- 

 publication in a separate handy volume (i) of the 

 admirable " Life and Work " which the late Dr. 

 Bridges prefixed to his edition of the "Opus 

 Majus " ; and by the issue from the Clarendon 

 Press of a collection of essays (2) by eminent 

 specialists, British and foreign, dealing with the 

 different aspects of Bacon's work. To this volume 

 the editor, Mr. A. G. Little, contributes an intro- 

 ductory life, valuable both for its own sake and 

 because the author quotes at length a lucid and 

 judicial estimate of Bacon from a lecture by the 

 late Prof. Adamson. 



Dr. Bridges's volume is, perhaps, the best 

 estimate in short compass of Bacon's work and 

 significance. The Oxford essayists follow practi- 

 cally the same order of topics, but treat them in 

 greater detail; — Bacon's indebtedness to Robert 

 Grosseteste (Dr. Baur), his relation to thirteenth 

 century philosophy (^L Picavet), to philology (Dr. 

 Hirsch), the Latin \'ulgate (Cardinal Gasquet), 

 mathematics (Prof. Eugene Smith), optics (Prof. 

 E. Wiedemann), alchemy (Mr. Pattison Muir), 

 medicine (E. Withington). Dr. \^ogl discusses 

 Bacon's curious theory of the transmission of 

 force in the " De Multiplicatione Specierum " ; 

 Prof. Duhem shows wit as well as learning in 

 his amusing history of the principle that nature 

 abhors a vacuum ; and Colonel Hime deduces from 

 the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of the 

 "Epistola de Secretis Operibus," unintelligible as 

 they stand, the complete Waltham Abbey formulae 

 for the refinement of saltpetre and manufacture 

 of gunpowder, by methods which must delight the 

 Shakespeare-Baconians or the admirers of Poe's 

 "Gold Bug." I 



It is easy to exaggerate Bacon's actual achieve- 

 ments. These masterly essays leave the impres- 

 sion that he made few, if any, positive additions 

 to science. " He gives no evidence of his own 

 proficiency in calculation, nor does he show any 

 conception of the nature of algebra." In geometry 

 " he distinguishes between axioms, postulates, and 

 definitions . . . but he makes no attempt to ad- 

 vance the science or to prove a single theorem." 

 One-fifth of the "Opus Majus" is devoted to 

 optics, but apparently he did little more than 

 reproduce the Arabian tradition through Alhazen, 

 with references to the Greek school of Euclid and 

 Ptolemy. Though he quotes from Philo of By- 

 zantium and Hero of Alexandria the classical 

 experiments of the " chantepleure " and the 

 adhesion discs, he argues the question of the 

 vacuum as a pure Aristotelian and accepts without 

 trial the supposed experimental fact that no power 

 on earth would suffice to lift an inverted glass 

 out of a bucket of w-ater without first tilting the 

 edge to admit air. "On aime a faire de Roger 

 Bacon un adepte precoce de la methode experi- 

 mentale ; des pages comme celles-ci nous montrent 

 assez qu'il experimentait seulement en imagina- 

 tion." It does not do to read into his doctrine 

 of the " Multiplication of Species " a forecast of 

 the wave-propagation of light through the aether ; 

 or into the famous passage where he seems to 

 anticipate the steam engine, the aeroplane, and 

 the submarine more than a conviction, quite re- 

 markable for his day, that the proper study of 

 nature w-ould w^ork miracles in the service of man. 

 Bacon's greatness rests on other grounds. A 

 good Catholic, he was yet of the pestilent class 

 of innovators. He attacked authority. His strong 

 character and original mind set about shaking 

 itself free from the " horse-load " of verbal con- 

 troversies that filled the schools of his day. He 

 was no mathematician and not much of an ex- 

 perimenter ; but it is his immortal glor\- that he 

 was the first to state explicitly the true method 

 of science, the union on equal terms of mathe- 

 matics and experiment, w-ith deeper insight than 

 his great namesake who, three hundred years 

 later, thought only of experiment and classifica- 

 tion, ignoring the use of deduction. He urged 

 the study of languages and philology in order to 

 provide accurate texts of the Bible and Aristotle, 

 denouncing in unmeasured terms the vices and 

 luxury of the clergy, the stupidity of the philo- 

 sophers content with their barren summaries and 

 versions by those who knew^ neither the language 

 of their authors nor the subjects they wrote about. 

 He even dared to find many of the Christian 

 virtues among the wise men of Arabia and the 

 East, and valuable stores of knowledge unknown 



