2 Britain's Heritage of Science 



only by experience. And this is the case even in mathe- 

 matics, where there is the strongest demonstration, 

 For let anyone have the clearest demonstration about an 

 equilateral triangle without experience of it, his mind will 

 never lay hold of the problem until he has actually before 

 him the intersecting circles and the lines drawn from the 

 point of section to the extremities of a straight line." 1 

 In a more detailed discussion of experimental science, 

 he points to three " prerogatives " which it has over other 

 sciences. It tests the conclusions of these other sciences 

 by experience, it attains to a knowledge of truth which could 

 not be reached by the special sciences, and " it has no 

 respect for these, but investigates on its own behalf the 

 secrets of Nature, which consist in a knowledge of the future, 

 the past and the present, and the inventing of instruments 

 and machines of wonderful power." 



We further note Bacon's repeated plea for the study of 

 mathematics, which he judges to be " the key and door to 

 the special sciences." 



Roger Bacon was born about 1214, in the county of 

 Dorset, of wealthy parents. Having completed his studies 

 at Oxford, he seems very soon to have gained a reputation 

 by lecturing, both at Oxford and Paris, where he went 

 about 1236. He entered the Franciscan Order, and, though 

 in bad health, continued his studies, devoting part of his 

 time to optical experiments. 



" During the twenty years," he writes in 1267, " in 



which I have laboured specially in the study of wisdom, 



after abandoning the usual methods, I have spent more 



than 2,000 on secret books and various experiments and 



languages and instruments and mathematical tables, etc." 



Bacon found a friend in Pope Clement IV., an enlightened 



Frenchman, who, having been a lawyer and judge, took orders 



after his wife's death and rapidly rose in the Church. In 



1263 Clement was appointed papal legate in England, and 



it was probably then that he came to hear of Bacon's 



writings. When elected Pope, two years later, he asked 



1 The translation (with a slight modification) is that given by 

 Prof. R. Adamson (see " Commemoration Essays on Roger Bacon," 

 edited by A. G. Settle, p. 18). 



