Future Perfect Future Past · Future Perfect, Future Past: Roger Bacon’s Inventions Elly R....

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Future Perfect, Future Past: Roger Bacon’s Inventions Elly R. Truitt

According to thirteenth-century Scholastic philosopher Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-ca. 1292),

a more complete understanding of natural laws and the properties of things would foster

wonderful inventions: incredibly fast conveyances that could move independent of animal

power; submarines and diving bells for exploring the ocean floor; machines for human flight;

alchemical processes that could prolong life; and mirrors and lenses that could set fire to entire

armies or produce terrifying and delightful optical illusions. These speculative technologies

exemplify the promise of the branch of knowledge that Bacon termed scientia experimentalis.

Often misleadingly translated as “experimental science” and more accurately understood as

knowledge gained through sense experience, scientia experimentalis authenticated natural

knowledge and offered a blueprint for how human ingenuity could harness the hidden, untapped

potential of nature. According to Bacon, sense experience confirms and also corrects rationality

(reasoning from first principles or knowledge gained from texts) and is necessary for complete

understanding of natural things. Furthermore, scientia experimentalis both requires and makes

possible Bacon’s theory of technology, as devices, instruments, and processes are vital to natural

philosophy, and to using that knowledge to serve humanity or intervene in the natural order. At

the same time that Bacon argued for a speculative future in which technology was used to aid

human endeavor and pursue new natural knowledge, he looked as much to the distant past as the

present to inspire his vision of the future.

In this paper I argue that scientific, political, and imaginative texts alike influenced

Bacon’s ideas of what kinds of machines could be possible—and necessary. Furthermore, the

wide range of influences on Bacon demonstrate that interest in devices as a way to gather


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knowledge about the world appears in many different kinds of texts in the medieval period,

demonstrating that ideas about instruments and natural knowledge crossed boundaries of register,

class, and genre. Interest in experientia flourished in this period, from Cairo to Lincoln, on the

battlefield and in the cloister. Bacon, however, articulated a theory of knowledge that relied on

experientia to affirm theoretical or text-based knowledge, and on instruments or devices in the

service of experimentum.1 Bacon was a participant in and beneficiary of the vibrant interest in

empiricism that characterized the scholastic milieux of Oxford and Paris in the thirteenth century.

He lectured at the University of Paris on the Aristotelian libri naturales and was also familiar

with texts that argued for the necessity of sense experience in understanding nature, and the

importance of instruments and devices to aid the senses and use natural knowledge for practical

ends. Bacon also drew on Arabic sources on optics, astral science, and secrets, including the

Secretum secretorum. These works offer explanations of how human ingenuity, yoked to natural

knowledge, could create machines, instruments, or effects and yield new knowledge about the

natural world. The legends and histories of Alexander the Great, which existed in Latin and

vernacular languages, in prose and in verse, and was closely linked to the Secretum secretorum,

likewise influenced Bacon’s ideas. In many versions of this widely adapted narrative, Alexander,

the curious conqueror of new lands, encounters distant marvels and creates stunning new

machines for exploration and domination.

1 The importance of experiential knowledge to the development of new natural knowledge and technology in slightly later periods is well-documented by a number of excellent studies, among them Pamela O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, and Authorship: Technical Arts and the culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) and Pamela Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).


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Bacon’s theory of knowledge was in the service of a belief in the apocalypse and the need

to defend Latin Christendom from the Antichrist, heresy, and the Mongols.2 Consequently, he

valued utility. According to Bacon, knowledge from sense experience was critical to the creation

of useful inventions; either processes, like alchemy, or devices, like spyglasses. Contrary to the

outdated but persistent narrative of medieval science that privileges natural philosophy and

university disciplines, Bacon’s emphasis on utility and devices demonstrates the extent to which

the courtly sciences—engineering, navigation, alchemy, and divination—were valued alongside

traditional natural philosophical frameworks, and need to be understood in that context.3 In these

sciences the goal is not only understanding for its own sake, but to intervene in the natural order

to wield power and improve human life. Bacon’s use of the past to imagine a future of effective

and productive interventions into the natural order also complicates a dominant narrative of

technological and scientific progress that considers only the increasing complication of invention

over time as evidence of scientific thought.4

Over the course of this paper I will be discussing mainly texts rather than objects. These

are texts about doing things: practical texts or treatises that either relate experiential knowledge

or argue for its importance, while implicitly reflecting the importance of the textual tradition in

the scholastic context. Roger Bacon’s writing contains evidence of a collaborative spirit between

natural philosophers and people with craft or traditional knowledge, at least on the part of the

philosopher, far earlier than is usually assumed.5

2 Amanda Power, Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 3 See, for example, David Lindberg’s textbook, The Beginnings of Western Science, 2nd ed., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), which still dominates the field. 4 George Ovitt, Jr. The Restoration of Perfection: Labor and Technology in Medieval Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 38. 5 See Ovitt, Restoration of Perfection, 42-43, on this point. In the Latin Christian West, cooperation and collaboration between artisans and natural philosophers is taken to be one of the conditions that fostered


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Experimentum/experientia

In contemporary usage an experiment is a contrived, controlled way of making or

confirming knowledge—trying to elicit a measurable phenomenon or activity in order to test a

hypothesis or demonstrate a known truth. This definition of experiment and its cognates reflects

a much narrower range of meaning than the term had in the Latin Middle Ages. Experimentum

and experientia in Latin (experiment and experience, respectively) connote personal participation

that leads to the accumulation of knowledge or skills through the senses. Both of these words

derive from the Latin experiri, meaning “to try” or “to put to the test.” In the medieval period

experimentum and experientia were used interchangeably to connote a sense of active

participation in knowing the world, one which encompassed proof and trial, but also included

experience and knowledge gained through the senses. Medieval writers in many different periods

and genres mention the importance of different tests to demonstrate, for example, the purity of a

natural substance.6 An example from closer to home comes from baking with natural sourdough.

A baker drops a spoonful of leaven into a container of water; if the leaven floats, it is ready to be

used in the dough. In medieval terms, this test is an experiment.

Bacon addresses scientia experimentalis—the branch of learning that involves active

participation in the natural world, and the utility of that knowledge—in his major opera, Opus

maius, Opus minus, and Opus tertium. It was in these texts, addressed to Pope Clement IV and

modern science, in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. See, for example, William Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Deborah Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); Pamela O. Long, Artisan-Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400-1600 (Corvallis, Ore.: Oregon State University Press, 2011).

6 For example, see Isidore of Seville on testing balsam for purity, Etymologiarum, ed. W. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1911), 17.8.14; see also Truitt, “The Virtues of Balm in Late Medieval Literature,” Early Science and Medicine, 14 (2009): 711-36, esp. 718-24.


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written at his request between 1266 and 1268, that Bacon introduced and outlined his idea of

scientia experimentalis in the context of a major educational reform of Christendom. Bacon’s

goal was to convince the Pope of the importance of learning foreign languages, natural

philosophy, and applied natural knowledge—alongside Christian moral philosophy and ethics—

in the service of defending Christendom from external threats, like the Mongols, and internal

threats, like heresy. Scientia experientalis “is both a science in itself and a method applicable to

all sciences.”7 It is a method for the practical and theoretical sciences, similar to that of logic,

enabling the practitioner to discern magic (fraud) from art and science (truth).

This science alone, therefore, knows how to test perfectly what can be done by nature, what by the effort of art, what by trickery, what the incantations, conjurations, invocations, deprecations, and sacrifices that belong to magic mean and dream of, and what is in them, so that all falsity may be removed and the truth alone of art may be retained. This science alone teaches us how to view the mad acts of magicians, that they may not be confirmed but rejected, just as logic considers sophistical reasoning.8

According to Bacon, scientia experimentalis (knowledge gained from observation or

other sensory perception) confirms and also corrects rationality (reasoning from first principles

or knowledge gained from texts) and is necessary to a full understanding of things. The purpose

of scientia experimentalis was threefold: to affirm or refute theories; to create instruments or

machines to pursue knowledge; and to uncover the secrets of nature. According to Bacon,

scientia experimentalis helps teach the literal meaning of things; next to moral philosophy (the

7 See Amanda Power, Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Bacon, Opus tertium, in Part of the Opus tertium of Roger Bacon, including a fragment now printed for the first time, ed. A. G. Little (Aberdeen, 1912), xl. 8 Bacon, Opus Maius, Book 6, chapter 2, ed. Bridges, 2: 172. Interestingly, Burke’s indifferent translation, as well as Hackett’s, both insert “and of nature” after “alone of art,” despite the fact that it does not appear in the original Latin. Note to self: check the published errata of Bridges’ edition to see if “naturae” is listed there.


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section that concludes Opus maius and immediately follows the section on scientia

experimentalis) it is the most useful for teaching an understanding of theology.9 And, Bacon

argued, it could be used to forward the goals of the papacy and Christian kingdoms: Scientia

experimentalis could both impart useful natural knowledge and enable the creation of engines of

war, such as burning mirrors, and engines of statecraft, such as tools for navigation.10

Put briefly, the first dignity of scientia experimentalis concerns different ways of

knowing things. Leaving aside divine illumination, there are two ways of knowing about nature:

rationality (argumentum) and experience (experimentum).11 But relying purely on rationality—

knowledge through syllogism—can leave room for doubt; argumentum does not always provide

certainty, nor can it account for particular or irregular phenomena.

For there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely, by reasoning and by experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest in the understanding of the truth, unless the mind discovers it by way of experience… For if a man who has never seen fire should prove by adequate reasoning that fire burns and injures things and destroys them, his mind would not be satisfied, nor would he avoid fire, until he placed his hand or some combustible substance in the fire, so that he might prove by experience that which reasoning taught. But when he has had actual experience of combustion his mind is made certain and rests in the full light of truth. Therefore, reasoning does not suffice, but experience does.12

9 “Wherefore, this science next to Moral Philosophy will present the literal truth of Scripture most effectively, so that through suitable adaptations and likenesses the spiritual sense may be derived…” Bacon, Opus maius,, ed. Brewer, 219-20. See also Hackett, “Roger Bacon on Scientia Experimentalis,” in Hackett, ed., Roger Bacon and the Sciences (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 277-316, 310. 10 Bacon, Opus maius, ed. Brewer, 220-21. 11 Bacon also recognizes divine inspiration as a source of knowledge; echoing pseudo-Ptolemy he says it is the best source of knowledge. Furthermore, some experiences are real, but are not explained by natural philosophy. See Bacon, Opus maius, ed. Brewer, 169-70; Burke, trans. 2:585-86. This is an echo of the Augustinian doctrine of illumination, as well as al-Kindi’s assertion that the search for scientific truth and morality were connected. See Thérèse-Anne Druart, “Al-Kindi’s Ethics,” Review of Metaphysics 47 (1993): 329-57; Hackett, “Roger Bacon on Scientia Experimentalis,” 285. 12 Opus maius, Book 6, chapter 1, ed. Bridges, 167; Burke trans., 2:583. Emphasis mine.


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Bacon offers a critique of purely syllogistic thinking: without both argumentum and

experimentum certainty is impossible. Bacon relates this idea to the Aristotelian distinction

between knowledge of a fact (quia) and knowledge of the cause of a fact (propter quid); the

latter, according to Bacon, is knowledge gained with the additional benefit per experientiam.13

Bacon is not suggesting that theoretical knowledge was not valuable or important; rather, that

scientia experimentalis ratifies the knowledge found in authoritative texts and conveyed through

syllogism. However, scientia experimentalis does not replace theoretical knowledge, or

knowledge drawn from first principles. Bacon expressed his frustration that the curriculum at

Paris and Oxford emphasized argumentum over experimentum, saying that “this scientia

experimentalis is wholly unknown to the rank and file of university students…”14 He

championed a method to natural philosophy that looked to experience equally as to causes and

syllogisms, and that would yield useful knowledge.

The second prerogative of scientia experimentalis is the creation of new devices that, in

turn, could yield new information about nature. For example, the magnet might be combined

with the armillary sphere in order to yield new information about the cosmos.15 However,

devices are not the only possible useful result of scientia experimentalis—processes and recipes

could also be enormously valuable. Alongside devices, such as the magnetized armillary sphere,

Bacon looked to alchemical processes and medicine as emblematic of the transformative

13 Bacon, Opus Maius, book 6, ed. Bridges, 167; trans. Burke, 2:583-84. On Aristotle’s distinction, see Metaphysica, 981a23-981b9. Although the distinction between knowledge quia and knowledge propter quid is Aristotelian, Bacon’s insistence on experience as necessary to knowledge propter quid is new. 14 Bacon, Opus maius, ed. Brewer, 169-70; Burke, trans. 2:585-86. 15 Bacon, Opus Maius, book 6, ed. Bridges, 202-03; trans. Burke, 616.


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possibilities of scientia experimentalis.16 Bacon’s interest in all manner of devices and their

potential utility, in both political and philosophical realms, is apparent in his works from the

mid-1260s and going forward; for example, he discusses the importance of instruments in his

slightly later work on mathematics, Communia mathematica, and places the construction of

instruments, such as the astrolabe, mirrors, and military devices, under the purview of

geometry.17

The third prerogative of scientia experimentalis involves the ability to have knowledge of

the past and the future. Bacon’s comments on this dignity of scientia experimentalis are short

and obscure, but it is clear that this aspect is related to judicial astrology, and that it also

somehow obviates the need for accurate astronomical tables and quality instruments that astral

prediction usually required.

[The third dignity of this science] consists in two things; namely, in the knowledge of the future, the past, and the present, and in wonderful works by which it excels in the power of forming judgments the ordinary astronomy dealing with judgments... [This] science has discovered the definitions and the means by which it can answer easily every question and… it can show us the forms of the celestial forces, and the influences of the heavenly bodies on this world without the difficulty of the ordinary astronomy.18

The other prerogatives of scientia experimentalis promote certainty, enable the practitioner to

discern fraudulent magic from the truth of nature, and enable dazzling technological feats to be

used in the service of defending Christianity; this third prerogative, by making possible complete

16 For Bacon’s writing on alchemy, not covered in the scope of this project, see William Eamon, “An Overview of Roger Bacon’s Alchemy, in Roger Bacon and the Sciences, 317-336; on medicine, see Faye Getz, “Roger Bacon and Medicine: The Paradox of the Forbidden Fruit and the Secrets of Long Life,” in same, 337-364. 17 Bacon, Communia mathematica, 44-47; cited in Hackett, “Roger Bacon on Scientia Experimentalis,” 296. 18 Bacon, Opus Maius, book 6, ed. Bridges, 212-13; trans. Burke, 627.


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knowledge of all time, encourages fruitful activities and discourages useless or wicked

occupations.19

Utility was critically important to Bacon: Natural knowledge for its own sake was less

important than how that knowledge could be used to defend Christian kingdoms. Scientia

experimentalis realized and facilitated knowledge—of particulars, like occult qualities, or of

natural forces and phenomena that allowed the construction of devices and instruments—that

could be authenticated and used. The possible inventions yielded by scientia experimentalis

numbered among them piercing, loud alarms that could disorient an army or the inhabitants of a

town or Greek fire, as well as knowledge of how to use natural substances that had hidden

powers in them, like salamander skin, which was held to be fireproof.20

Roger Bacon and via experimentalis

Bacon was the only of his contemporaries to devote so much thought and time to

theorizing and explicating scientia experimentalis, but he was not the first to use

experimentum/experientia or argue for its importance. Indeed, the concept of using experience as

a way to attain certainty about natural knowledge has many ancient antecedents as well as

medieval Latin and Arabic adherents. Bacon’s university education and his career as a university

lecturer in Paris offered him multiple opportunities to learn about, debate, and explore

experimentum in the years before he first explicated scientia experimentalis in his own writing.

We know little about Bacon’s early life, but he was born into a wealthy family in the second

decade of the thirteenth century and began his formal education early and likely continued his

19 Hackett, “Roger Bacon on Scientia Experimentalis,” 309-10. 20 OM, book 6, Burke, trans. 629.


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education in the arts at Oxford in the early 1230s. 21 During this period Oxford offered more

opportunities to study Aristotelian texts, as well as works in translation from Arabic and Greek

scholars, than Paris, which was under stricter ecclesiastical oversight.22 By the 1230s the force of

this restriction had lessened, and Bacon moved to Paris for further study, likely in the late 1230s.

He took up a career at the university there as a secular master, lecturing on the Aristotelian libri

naturales for several years in the 1240s.23

Many of Bacon’s contemporaries or near-contemporaries in and around Paris and Oxford

conducted experiments or discussed the importance of knowledge gained through sense

experience. Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1168-1253), natural philosopher, master of arts, theologian,

and eventual Bishop of Lincoln used the concept of experimentum in his work on optical theory:

when dealing with universals that are complex and not easily separated from particulars, such as

21 Bacon’s year of birth has been suggested as either 1214 or 1220, based on a statement he made in 1268: “I have labored for many years in the sciences and languages, and I have to now dedicated forty years to them since I first learned the alphabet.” Bacon, Opus tertium, chapter 17, Brewer, ed., 59. For an introduction to the different positions on his birth year, and the consequent implications, see Jeremiah Hackett, “From Sapientes antiqui at Lincoln to the new Sapientes moderni at Paris c. 1260-1280: Roger Bacon’s Two Circles of Scholars,” in J. Cunningham and M. Hocknull, eds., Robert Grosseteste and the Pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages (Springer, 2016), 119-42; “Roger Bacon: His Life, Career, and Works,” in Roger Bacon and the Sciences, ed. Hackett (Brill, 1995): 9-23; Lindberg, Roger Bacon and the Origins of Perspectiva, xvii-xx. 22 The condemnations of Paris in 1210 limited the books of Aristotelian philosophy that could be read and discussed in the Arts faculty. 23 Evidence for Bacon’s education and location during this period is patchy, and based largely on passing references in his own works to scholars such as Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh. However, given that the university of Paris jealously guarded its teaching privileges and the rights that came with them, some scholars have argued that it is unlikely that they would have granted a teaching license to someone coming to Paris from Oxford, without further study. Despite the proclamation of Gregory IX in 1233 of ius docendi ubique—a license that granted the bearer to teach anywhere, and which was invented for the new university of Toulouse—he later suggested that it would not supersede the rights and privileges of the university of Paris to grant its own licenses for teaching. See: Chartularium Uinversitatis Parisensis, ed. H. Denifle, E. Chatelain (Paris, 1889), 1: 152-53; Steven J. Williams, “Roger Bacon in Context: Empiricism in the High Middle Ages,” in Thomas Bénatouïl et Isabelle Draelants, eds., Expertus sum. L’expérience par les sens dans la phlosophie naturelle médiévale. Actes du colloque international de Pont-à-Mousson (5-7 février 2009) (SISMEL, Florence: Edizione del Galluzzo, 2011), 123-144, 126.


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the phenomenon of the rainbow, one requires some kind of external confirmation.24 After 1230,

Grosseteste lectured regularly to the Franciscan foundation in Oxford, and his treatises on logic

and optics circulated in and around Oxford and Paris. Bacon’s association with Oxford is

difficult to pin down, and he was almost certainly not Grosseteste’s student in any formal sense,

yet Bacon seems to have found Grosseteste’s work generative for his own thinking.25 He drew

heavily on Grosseteste’s commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics when he lectured on the

subject as part of the arts curriculum at the university in Paris in the 1240s. Furthermore,

Grosseteste’s work on comets, De cometis (ca. 1225), which emphasized the necessity of using

both reasoning and sense experience gained through observation of phenomena, circulated in

Paris in the decades after its completion, while Bacon was living there.26 And Bacon spoke

highly of Grosseteste in several of his writings, and specifically praising Grosseteste’s use of

experience. “Master Robert of blessed memory, who was bishop of Lincoln, ignored the works

of Aristotle and their methods but from his own experience, and in traffic with other writers and

other sciences he found out and wrote more than a hundred thousand times as many things as are

recounted in Aristotle’s books or as can be taken from the twisted translations of the same.”27

24 See Hackett, “Roger Bacon and Scientia Experimentalis,” 287; Stephen Marrone, William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste: New Ideas of Truth in the Early Thirteenth Century (Princeton, 1983). 25 Panti argues that Bacon had a more sustained intellectual relationship with both Grosseteste and Adam Marsh; see Cecelia Panti, “The Theological Use of Science in Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh According to Roger Bacon: The Case Study of the Rainbow,” in Robert Grosseteste and the Pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages, 143-63, esp. 145-51. 26 On Bacon’s engagement with Grosseteste’s commentary on Posterior Analytics, see Hackett, “Scientia experimentalis: from Robert Grosseteste to Roger Bacon,” in Robert Grosseteste: New Perspectives on His Thought and Scholarship, ed. James McEvoy (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), 89-119, 107-09; on De cometis in Paris and Bacon’s familiarity with it and other works of Grosseteste’s, see Cecilia Panti, Moti, virtù et motori celesti nella cosmologia di Roberto Grossatesta (Florence: SISMEL, 2001), 133-35, 163-64. 27 For example, he calls Grosseteste “maximus naturalis et perspectivus quem vidi,” (OM, Bridges, III, 1900, 181), and “neque sapientes antiqui, quorum aliquos vidimus, ut fuit dominus Robertus episcopus Lincolniensis, et frater Adam Marisco, et alii maximi viri,” (OMin., Brewer (1859), 329, and praises his


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Bacon ultimately looked outside of the university setting to pursue his interest in

experimentum beyond what was readily available in the curricula of Oxford and Paris. After

some years spent lecturing in the arts curriculum at the university in Paris between roughly 1247

and 1257 he pursued a self-funded career as an independent scholar. He spent some of this time

in Oxford and some in Paris, and came into contact with a vibrant circle of experimenters, as

well as Latin translations of Arabic texts on instruments and experience.28 He later wrote of this

period, “I have labored especially in the pursuit of wisdom, abandoning the opinions of the

masses, I have spent more than two thousand pounds on these studies, for books of secrets,

various experiences [experientia], languages, instruments, tables, and other things.”29 In another

work from the 1260s, Bacon suggests that probing the importance and utility of experimentum is

a shared interest among many. “There are some men…seeing that they could not know natural

philosophy through the work of Aristotle and [Averroes] his commentator [because of faulty

translations], are turning to the seven other natural sciences, to mathematics, and to other authors

of natural philosophy…and so are coming to an acquaintance with natural things, about which

Aristotle, in his common books, and his expositor, are unable to satisfy their zeal.”30 Bacon

use of experientia in Compendium Studii Philosophiae, in Brewer (1859), 429, and 469: “dominus Robertus, quondam episcopus Lincolniensis sanctae memoriae, neglexit omnio libros Aristotelis et viae eorum, et per experientiam propriam, et auctores alios, et per alias scientias negotiatus est in sapientialibus Aristotelis; et melius centies milesies scivit et scriptis illa de quibus libri Aristotelis loquuntur, quam in ipsius perversis translationibus capi possunt.” 28 See Hackett, “From Sapientes antiqui,120-28; Williams, “Roger Bacon and His Edition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum,” 59. 29 Opus tertium (Brewer), chapter 17, 59. Presumably, in this statement Bacon is referring to the period before he entered the Franciscan Order as he would have had to take a strict vow of poverty upon joining. 30 “Set aliqui viri…videntes quod per textum Aristotelis et commentatorem suum non potuerunt scire naturalem philosophiam, convertunt se ad alias sciencias naturales septem, et ad mathematicas, et ad alios autores naturalis philosophie…et sic pervenerunt ad noticiam naturalium, de quibus Aristoteles in libris vulgatis et eius expositor non possunt satisfacere studio naturali,” Communium Naturalium ed. Steele (1909), vol. II, 12-13; see also Williams, “Roger Bacon in Context,” 130-32.


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himself decried mistakes in translations of Aristotle’s books, citing the example of how

ignorance of Arabic led to serious philosophical error.31

Some of the men that shared Bacon’s interest in experientia also shared his familiarity

and affiliation with Oxford and the University of Paris as well as his willingness to look outside

the university for knowledge. Michael Scot (ca. 1175-1232), a mathematician, natural

philosopher, and contemporary of Grosseteste, with ties to Oxford and Paris and part of the court

of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, undertook at Frederick’s urging new translations of

Aristotle’s libri naturales and ibn Rushd’s (known in Latin as Averroes) commentaries from the

Arabic. William of Auvergne (ca. 1180-1249), is another of this group of scholars and writers

interested in experimentum. William was a master of theology at the University of Paris when

Michael Scot arrived there to lecture on Aristotle, and he later became bishop of Paris, and

therefore head of the University of Paris, while Bacon was there. He wrote extensively on natural

philosophy and natural particulars, and used the term experimentores to describe people

extremely learned in natural phenomena. These individuals could discern occult phenomena,

such as the inherent powers of certain gemstones, as these phenomena could only be known

through experimentum. Since so many of natural objects with hidden essences came from India,

the men who were the most skilled in this kind of knowledge were also found there. “In parts of

India…natural magic can particularly flourish there. And it thrives on account of the many

experimenters there, and people who make marvelous things through skill of this sort.”32 Nor

31 Richard Lemay, “Roger Bacon’s Attitude Toward the Latin Translations and Translators of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Hackett, ed., Roger Bacon and the Sciences, 25-48, 43. 32 “In partibus autem Indiae…et propter hoc magica naturalis potissimum ibi viguit, et viget quam de causam sunt ibi super experimentatores multi, et rerum mirabilium per huiusmodi peritiam effectores.” William of Auverge, De universo, 2.3.23, in Opera omnia, ed Peter Aubouin, 2 vols. (Paris: Aureliae, 1674), 1: 1065, col. 1. See also Antonella Sannino, “Guillaume d’Auvergne e i libri experimentorum, in Expertus sum: L’expérience par les sens dans la phlosophie naturelle médiévale. Actes du colloque


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was Bacon an outlier in his own peer group. Albert the Great, like Grosseteste and William of

Auvergne established in a context of both scholasticism and the Church, echoed the importance

of experimentum when investigating minerals, gemstones, animals, and plants.33

Frederick II, Michael Scot’s patron, was also part of this larger community of thinkers

and writers who were interested in using experientia to correct or confirm knowledge found in

authoritative texts. In the early 1240s he wrote a treatise on falconry, De arte venandi cum

avibus, and explicitly cited Scot’s translation and commentary of Aristotle, as well as the

importance of experience to correct Aristotle’s mistakes.

[W]e discovered by experience that the deductions of Aristotle, whom we followed when they appealed to our reason, were not entirely to be relied upon, more particularly in his descriptions of the characters of certain birds. Therefore, we do not follow the Prince of Philosophers in everything; he was ignorant of the practice of falconry—an art which to us has ever been a pleasing occupation, and with the details of which we are well acquainted. In the Liber animalium we find many quotations from other authors whose statements he did not verify [by experience] and who, in their turn, were not speaking of what they had seen. Entire conviction of the truth never follows mere hearsay.34

international de Pont-à-Mousson (5-7 février 2009), ed. Thomas Bénatouïl et Isabelle Draelants, (SISMEL, Florence: Edizione del Galluzzo, 2011), 67-88. 33 See Isabelle Draelants, “Expérience et autorités dans la philosophie naturelle d’Albert le Grand,” in Expertus sum: L’expérience par les sens dans la phlosophie naturelle médiévale. Actes du colloque international de Pont-à-Mousson (5-7 février 2009), ed. Thomas Bénatouïl et Isabelle Draelants, (SISMEL, Florence: Edizione del Galluzzo, 2011), 89-122. 34 “In scribendo etiam Aristotilem, ubi oportuit, secuti sumus. In pluribus enim, sicut experientia didicimus, maxime in naturis quarundam avium, discrepare a veritate videtur. Propter hoc non sequimur principem philosophorum in omnibus, raro namque aut nunquam venationes avium exercuit, sed nos semper dileximus et exercuimus. De multie vero, que narrat in libro animalium, dicit quosdam sic dixisse, sed id, quod quidam sic dixerunt, nec ipse forsan vidit, nec dicentes viderunt, fides enim certa non provenit ex auditu,” Frederick II, De arte venandi avibus, Prologue, https://www.hsaugsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost13/FridericusII/fri_arsp.html [accessed February 2, 2018].


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Frederick asserted the value of hands-on practice and experience in hunting with birds; the

second half of the treatise is dedicated to the practical instruction, with detailed instructions for

how to train and care for different raptors. Frederick also valued natural knowledge for its use—

in this case, for falconry: “Utility is of the greatest importance.”35

Bacon singled out several of his contemporaries or near contemporaries for their interest

in experimentum, including Peter of Maricourt, who likely studied at the University of Paris in

the middle of the thirteenth century, but who did not take up a teaching post afterward.36 Peter’s

treatise on magnetism, Epistola de magnete (1269), emphasized the utility of scientific

knowledge and the importance of experience. He also, in this work and in others, applied his

knowledge in the creation of new instruments and devices, such as a new kind of compass

needle, a universal astrolabe, and a perpetual motion-machine.37 In the Opus Tertium, written

perhaps a year before De magnete, Bacon lauds Peter’s erudition, his natural knowledge gained

from both texts and practice, and his dedication to the pursuit of wisdom:

I know of only one person who deserves praise for his work in [scientia experimentalis], for he does not care for the discourses of men and their pugnacious debates, but quietly and diligently pursues the works of wisdom. Therefore, what others struggle toward blindly, as bats in the evening dusk, this man contemplates

35 “Utilitas est magna,” Frederick II, De arte venandi avibus, Prologue, https://www.hsaugsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost13/FridericusII/fri_arsp.html [accessed February 2, 2018]. 36 William A. Wallace, Causality and Scientific Explanation: Medieval and Early Classical Science (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1972), 89-92. Bacon also praised the author (“the excellent experimenter”) of De retardation accidentium senectutis (“et ideo dicit experimentator bonus…”), see Bridges (1897), 2: 210. Little is known about his life; he may have been a pilgrim (hence “Peregrinus”) and it is likely that he was at the siege of Lucera in 1268-69, perhaps as an engineer. 37 Peter Perigrinus of Maricourt, Epistola de magnete, in Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt, Opera, éd. Loris Sturlese and Ron Thomson (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 1995); in English, The Letter of Petrus Peregrinus on the Magnet, c. 1269, trans. Fr. Arnold (New York: McGraw, 1904). See also R. Halleux, “Entre philosophie naturelle et savoir d’ingénieur: L’Epistola de magnete de Pierre de Maricourt,” Archives internationals d’histoire des sciences 50 (2006): 3-17; on the influence of Peter on Bacon, see Williams, “Roger Bacon in Context,” 129-32.


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fully in a flash of illumination because he is a master of experimentum. He knows about nature through experience [per experientiam], whether pertaining to medicine or alchemy, or to matters terrestrial and celestial. Indeed, he would be ashamed if some layman, or a little old lady, or a soldier, or a rube from the countryside would know something of which he himself was ignorant. He has carefully investigated the smelting of metal ore and how to work gold, and silver and other metals and minerals; he has mastered all sorts of arms used in military service and in hunting, besides which he has studied all matters relating agriculture and surveying and all matters pertaining to the countryside; and he has even closely examined the experiments [experimenta], incantations, and devices of old women and sorcerers; and likewise [examined] all the illusions and devices of jugglers so that nothing that is to be known might escape his notice, and he knows more than enough to condemn magic and all deceitful things.38

Bacon’s praise of Peter reveals his own views about what investigating the natural world using

scientia experimentalis required: mastery of traditional university subjects, like astral science,

alongside subjects that combine text and practice, like alchemy and medicine; direct experience

in metallurgy and mining, important subjects not covered in an arts education, as well as the

military arts of ballistics and other weaponry; willingness to test received wisdom; and the use of

one’s erudition and discernment to identify and repudiate magic and deception. Bacon also offers

the view that people from different registers, with kinds of experience, can be a source of

38 “Non enim cognosco nisi unum, qui laudem potest habere in operibus hujus scientiae; nam ipse non curat de sermonibus et pugnis verborum, sed persequitur opera sapientiae, et in illis quiescit. Ed ideo quod alii caecutientes nituntur videre, ut vespertilio lucem solis in crepusculo, ipse in pleno fulgore contemplator, propter hoc quod est dominus experimentorum; et ideo scit naturalia per experientiam, et medicinalia, et alkimistica, et omnia tam coelestia quam inferior; immo verecundatur si aliquis laicus, vel vetula, vel miles, vel rusticus de rure sciat quae ipse ignorant. Unde omnia opera fundentium metalla, et quae operantur auro, et argento, et ceteris metallis, et omnibus mineralibus, ipse rimatus est; et omnia quae ad militiam, et ad arma, et ad venationes ipse novit; omnia quae ad agriculturam, et ad mensuras terrarium et opera rusticorum, examinavit; etiam experimenta vetularum et sortilegia, et carmina earum et omnium magicorum consideravit; et similiter omnium joculatorum illusions et ingenia; ut nihil quod sciri debeat lateat ipsum, et quatenus omnia falsa et magica sciat reprobare,” Bacon, Opus tertium, chapter 13. Brewer, ed. (1859), 46-47. Peter is mentioned twice in marginal glosses of different manuscripts, and Bacon mentions Peter by name elsewhere.


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knowledge for the natural philosopher. Soldiers could offer insight into weaponry, ballistics, and

mining; folk remedies and “old wives’ tales” [vetula, vetularum] might provide information into

medicine or botany; and the rustic who toiled in the fields had experiential knowledge of

meteorology, astral observation, and agronomy.39

As I have outlined above, Bacon had no shortage of contemporaries to cite and consider

in his own writing about scientia experimentalis. Yet he also relied on claims to established

authorities in his explanations of scientia experimentalis. In the sixth part of the Opus Maius,

dedicated to scientia experimentalis, Bacon cites Aristotle on the importance of experience in

attaining certainty; elsewhere he cites Galen as an authority on the importance of experimentum.

40 He credits Ptolemy with the notion of scientia experimentalis in both the Opus Maius and his

edition of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum. He connects Ptolemy and scientia

experimentalis specifically to prediction and divination through the interpretation of natural

signs, emphasizing the third prerogative of scientia experimentalis, to discern the future.41

During Bacon’s period of independent research, he looked to more recent scholarship as

well as to the ancient past. He studied Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin translations of Arabic

works. Bacon drew on al-Kindi’s (ca. 800-870 AD/ 185-256 AH, and known in Latin as Alkindus

39 It’s worth noting, however, that Bacon’s use of verecundus (“ashamed”) in this passage is just so, so condescending. 40 Al-Kindi was one of the earliest Arabic translators of Aristotle, and he drew heavily on both Aristotle and Neoplatonism in his own works, which were written for the ‘Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. He also cites ‘Ali ibn al-‘Abbas al-Majusi (known in the Latin West as Haly Abbas) here; see Opus Maius, book 6, ed. Bridges, 215-16; see also Hackett, “Ego Expertus Sum: Roger Bacon’s Science and the Origins of Empiricism,” in Thomas Bénatouïl et Isabelle Draelants, eds., Expertus sum., 145-74; Williams, “Roger Bacon in Context,” 131. 41 “Set est alia sciencia que considerat futuras alteraciones hujus mundi inferioris, que vocatur Sciencia Experimentalis a Ptolomeo in libro predicto…Et hec sciencia considerat a que apparent in terra per signa in animalibus et ceteris terrestribus et aqueis, et per ea que apparent in aere, et per ea apparent in igne…” Secretum secretorum, ed. Steele, Opera haectenus inedita, Fasc. V (1920): 9.


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or Alkyndus) work mathematics, optics, and astral science, including De radiis, De aspectibus,

and Theorica atrium Magicarum.42 Bacon was one of the first natural philosophers of the

thirteenth century to take up Ibn al-Haytham’s work on optics, Kitāb al-Manāzir (ca. 1030

AD/421 AH). This work, translated into Latin at the start of the thirteenth century as De

aspectibus and attributed to Alhazen/Alhacen, contested the Ptolemaic theory of visual

perception by extramission, positing instead a theory of intromission (simply put, that objects are

perceived by the rays that they radiate to the eye).43 Alhazen’s De aspectibus was, according to

Bacon, taught only at Oxford before 1270, and only twice, so it seems likely that Bacon himself

was first introduced to this work during his period of independent study.44 Bacon grappled with

Ibn al-Haytham’s theory of intromission first in a brief work on visual perception De

multiplicatione specierum (On the multiplication of species) (ca. 1266) and shortly after on a

section of Opus maius on perspectiva (optics), which later circulated as a stand-alone work on

perspectiva.45 Ibn al-Haytham was perhaps the most important for the development of Bacon’s

concept of scientia experimentalis, especially the second prerogative, which proposed the

creation of instruments to investigate nature. Ibn al-Haytham introduced a new concept that

diverged from Aristotle’s notion of empeiria (accumulated experience): I‘tibar—rendered in

42 See Faye Getz, “Roger Bacon and Medicine,” in Roger Bacon and the Sciences, 337-64, 353; Hackett, “Roger Bacon on Scientia experimentalis,” in idem, 285. See also Thérèse-Anne druart, “Al-Kindi’s Ethics,” Review of Metaphysics 47 (1993): 329-57. 43 See A. I. Sabra, The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham: Books I-III On Direct Vision, 2 vols. (London: Warburg Instutute, 1989); A. Mark Davis, Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 91.4 and 91.5 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2001), esp. xv-xxii, xxviii-xxxii. 44 “Haec autem scientia non est adhuc lecta Parisius, nec apud Latinos, nisi bis Oxoniae in Anglia…,” Opus tertium, ed. Brewer, 37. On the dating of De aspectibus to the 1240s, see Davis, Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception; Hackett, “From Sapientes antiqui,” 125. 45 Bacon’s theory of species basically states that a force emanates from all objects; this emanation of force is what allows for visual perception of those objects. See David C. Lindberg, Roger Bacon's Philosophy of Nature (Oxford, 1983); Lindberg, Roger Bacon and the Origins of Perspectiva.


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Latin as experimentatio—is a test to investigate physical properties directly, “with the aid of an

experimental apparatus especially designed for the purpose. And the aim of the proof was to

bring certainty…and precision to an observation by subjecting it to an artificial situation in

which the conditions could be varied.”46 This specific concept of proof is separate from

empeiria, but it is employed in confirming natural phenomena, rather than in discovering new

properties. Nevertheless, this idea proved important for Bacon, as he echoes it both in the idea of

using scientia experimentalis as a way to confirm theories and the importance of specific

instruments to do so.

Aristotle, Alexander, and Experimental Devices

Natural knowledge appeared in texts that circulated outside of the university curriculum,

in genres that emphasized political utility and pragmatism. Time spent studying the Latin version

of the Arabic pseudo-Aristotelian mirror-for-princes, Kitāb sirr al-asrar, which was translated in

full for the first time around 1230 into the Secretum secretorum, or The Secret of Secrets seems

to have encouraged Bacon’s focus on the utility of natural knowledge, especially in the service of

worldly power. The Secretum secretorum circulated as a letter that Aristotle, at the end of his

life, sent to his pupil, Alexander the Great. In it, he confided to Alexander the natural

knowledge—the secrets of nature—that he had withheld from his earlier works out of care not to

squander knowledge on a populace that was not prepared to receive it, but that Alexander—the

great conqueror and empire builder—would need in order to be a powerful, canny, and just ruler.

46 A. I. Sabra, The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham: Books I-III On Direct Vision, 2 vols. (London: Warburg Instutute, 1989), 2:18-19; A. Mark Davis, Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception, for example, 1: 215. See also, Hackett, “Roger Bacon on Scientia Experimentalis,” 289-90; Graziella Federici Vescovini, “La Fortune de l’Optique d’Ibn Al-Haitham: Le livre De aspectibus (Kitab al-manazir) dans le moyen âge latin', Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences 40 (1990): 220–238. On the earlier history of “experiment” in Arabic optics, see Elaheh Kheirandish, “Footprints of ‘Experiment’ in Early Arabic Optics,” Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009): 79-104.


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The Secretum secretorum is doubly experimental: It is a practical guide focused on the

experience of the ruler, and it contains information that pertains both to scientia experimentalis

and scientia rationalis. A compendium of useful knowledge for the ruler, it includes information

on complexion, temperament, health and disease, and cosmology, as well as knowledge of

particulars, which rests more on experience, like geomancy, talismans, the powers of animals,

and alchemy.47

Philip of Tripoli’s Secretum secretorum circulated in the same milieu of interested

experimentalists discussed above. The text circulated through the papal and imperial courts from

the early 1230s. Michael Scot, at the court of Emperor Frederick II, was familiar with the

Secretum secretorum before he died in 1235.48 Bacon was introduced to the work while he was

in Paris in the 1240s, and prepared an edition of it in the early 1270s, complete with diagrams

and emendations. In it, he noted that he had consulted four copies in Oxford, but had seen other

copies back in Paris.49 Bacon also referenced Secretum secretorum as an authoritative

Aristotelian text in his own writings from the 1260s and 1270s, during a period of serious

47 Williams, The Secret of Secrets, 7-30. 48 Williams, “The Early Circulation of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets in the West: The Papal and Imperial Courts, SISMEL, Micrologus 2 (1994): 127-44, 132-39. 49 “Sicut exemplaria quatuor que nunc inveni Oxonie non habuerunt illa, nec similter multa alia, set Parisus habui exemplaria perfecta,” in Secretum Secretorum cum Glossis et Notulis, Tractatus Brevis et Utilis Ad Declarandum Quaedam Obscure Dicta Fratris Rogeri, in Opera Hactenus Inedita Rogeri Bacon [OHI], ed. Robert Steele, fasc. V (Oxford: Clarendon, 1920), 39. Although Robert Steele, editor of Bacon’s text, held that Bacon’s edition of Secretum secretorum dates from the 1240s, more recent scholarship convincingly argues from internal evidence that, although Bacon first encountered Secretum secretorum in Paris in the 1240s, he did not complete his edition of the text, along with his notes and introduction, until the 1270s. See Williams, “Roger Bacon and His Edition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum,” Speculum 69 (1994): 57-73; Williams, “The Early Circulation of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets in the West: The Papal and Imperial Courts,” SISMEL, Micrologus 2 (1994): 127-144. On the debate over the authorship of Secretum secretorum, see Williams, “Defining the Corpus Aristotelicum: Scholastic Awareness of Aristotelian Spuria in the High Middle Ages,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 58 (1995): 29-51. Williams, The Secret of Secrets, 60-94 on Philip of Tripoli’s likely authorship of the translation, and the likely date of completion.


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disagreements among the intellectual community in Paris and in the Franciscan Order about

doctrinal orthodoxy in Aristotelian natural philosophy. Bacon, convinced of the utility of scientia

experimentalis and the kind of knowledge that texts like Secretum secretorum could bestow,

prepared his edition of this mirror-for-princes for an unnamed prince (possibly Henry III of

England) whom he addresses throughout as “you.”50

Around the same time that Bacon completed his edition of Secretum secretorum he wrote

a pamphlet to clarify his views on scientia experientalis and the wonders it could implement

through legitimate human art, and to explain the difference between scientia experimentalis and

magic, which was fraudulent and pointless. In Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae et de

nullitate magiae (Letter on the Hidden Powers of Art and Nature, and on the Invalidity of

Magic), Bacon again explains how scientia experimentalis can certify theoretical natural

knowledge and suggests how human ingenuity might harness the secret, untapped potential of

nature. Not only could scientia experimentalis help discern the deceptions practiced by

magicians and charlatans, but when yoked to skilled human artifice it made possible incredible

inventions. Epistola de secretis covers several of the same topics as the Secretum secretorum,

including a discussion of humoral temperament and complexion, and alchemy.51

Bacon’s emphasis on experimentum is unmistakable throughout Epistola de secretis. The

chapter on optical illusions and lenses is titled “De experientiis perspectivis artificialibus,”

recalling Ibn al-Haytham’s articulation of the importance of using lenses and other visual

50 Williams, “Roger Bacon and His Edition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum,” 65-67; Williams, The Secret of Secrets, 379-80. 51 This work has come down to the 20th and 21st centuries as a hybrid text. The first eight chapters are accepted as the work of Roger Bacon, while the last three chapters are so different in tone and content that they have been recognized as ps.-Baconian.Bacon, Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae et de nullitate magiae, ed. J. S. Brewer, Opera Quaedam Hactenus Inedita (London, 1859), 523-551, 529-31.


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instruments in particular to measure and investigate optical phenomena. The use of lenses and

other practical knowledge of optics can also be used in the service of further textual education

and measurement. “For glasses can be so shaped that things placed at the greatest distances

appear most near and conversely; so that we could read the most minute letters at an incredible

distance, count things however small.”52 The link between experimentum and natural particulars

is also represented in De epistola, as the very next chapter after the one on optical phenomena is

“De experimentis mirabilibus,” on natural marvels, such as Greek fire, salamander skin, and the

magnet.53 Both meanings converge in his description of the automatic armillary sphere, an

instrument for taking visual measurements that operated according to occult phenomena.

For there can be nothing less than the whole power of mathematics in the [armillary sphere] built according to the design of Ptolemy, in which all things that are in the heavens are described accurately by their longitudes and latitudes. But it is not within the power of the mathematician to make it move naturally with a diurnal motion. Nevertheless, let a faithful and great experimenter labor to make it out of such material and by such design that the heavens would turn naturally with a daily motion (which it would seem possible to do, since many things are carried along by the motion of the celestial bodies, such as comets, the tides, and other things, as a whole or in part): that would be a greater wonder than all the aforementioned ones and would be of almost infinite utility. For then all instruments of astronomy, both the special and the common ones, would be obsolete; nor could it be bought with a king's treasure.54

52 “Possunt enim sic figurari perspicua ut longissimi posita appareant proinquissima, et e converso; ita quod ex incredibili distantia legeremus minutissimas literas, et numeraremus res quascunque parvas,” Bacon, Epistola de secretis, 534. 53 Bacon, Epistola de secretis, 536-38. 54 “Sed majora his sunt; nam tota potestas mathematicae non potest nisi in instrumentum sphaericum juxta artificium Ptolomaei sc. Almagesti, in quo omnia quae sunt in coelo suis longitudinibus et latitudinibus sunt descripta veraciter; quod autem, moveretur naturaliter motu diurno non est in mathematici potestate. Experimentator tamen fidelis et magnificus, ad hoc anhelat, ut ex tali materia fieret, et tanto artificio, quod naturaliter coelum motu diurno volveretur; quod videretur fieri posse quoniam multa motu coelestium defereuntur, ut cometae, et mare in fluxu, et alia in toto, vel in partibus suis, quod esset majus miraculum quam omnia antedicta et utilitatis quasi infinitae. Nam tunc omnia instrumenta astronomiae


23

The mention of the experimenter (experimentator) re-emphasizes the importance of the active

investigator, who tests natural knowledge and investigates phenomena, rather than relying solely

on textual authorities.

De epistola goes into detail about how human ingenuity might use natural knowledge to

create devices for exploration of new terrain and for domination as part of the second

prerogative, or dignity, of scientia experimentalis: to make instruments or machines using natural

laws and powers. However, the effects they produced or the things they could do were not due to

demons or to trickery, but purely to the power of nature, combined with human ability to

understand nature and to make things.

First, those things achieved through the design and reasoning of art alone: Now an instrument for sail without oarsmen can be produced such that the largest ships, both riverboats and seagoing vessels, can be moved under the direction of a single man at a greater velocity than if they were filled with men. A chariot can be made that moves at an unimaginable speed without horses; such we think to have been the scythe-bearing chariots with which men fought in antiquity.55

Other inventions could make possible new networks, or link previously separated populations,

“such as bridges that span rivers without pillars or any support, and machines and unheard-of

inventions.”56 Others could likewise be used for civil engineering and civil defense: “And an

cessarent, tam specialia quam vultaga: nec thesauro unius regis posset comparari,” Bacon, Epistola de secretis, 537. 55 “Et primo per figuram et ratinem solius artis. Nam instrumenta navigandi possunt fieri sine hominibus remigantibus, ut naves maxime, fluviales et marinae, ferantur unico homine regente, majori velocitate quam si plenae essent hominibus. Item currus possunt fieri ut sine animali moveantur cum impetus inaestimabili; ut aestimamus currus falcati fuisse, quibus antiquitus pugnabatur.” Bacon, Epistola de secretis, 533. On Bacon and the mechanical arts, see Elspeth Whitney, “The Artes Mechanicae, craftsmanship and moral value of technology,” in van Deusen, ed. Design and Production in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Ottawa, 1998), 75-87. 56 “Ut pontes ultra flumina sine columna, vel aliquo sustentaculo, et machinationes, et ingenia inaudita,” Bacon, Epistola de secretis, 533.


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instrument small in size for raising and lowering almost infinite weights; at times there is nothing

more useful than this, for, by an instrument three fingers high and just as wide, or of less size, a

man could snatch up himself and his friends and raise and lower them from every danger of

prison.”57 A number of the examples Bacon gives have to do with military conquest and

espionage. “[An] instrument could easily be made by which one man could violently draw to

himself a thousand men against their will and attract other things in the same way,” and the use

of lenses and knowledge of perspective could reduce an enemy army or town to ashes, or terrify

it with illusions.58 Other lenses or mirrors can be shaped and placed “so that hidden things appear

evident.”59 This emphasis on military utility echoes Bacon’s earlier assertions in his works for

Clement IV that scientia experimentalis could help defend Christendom from her enemies,

internal and external, is a likewise canny piece of rhetoric when addressed to a secular ruler, such

as the king of England.

Both Bacon’s edition of the Secretum secretorum and his completion of the Epistola de

secretis date from the 1270s, and both contain material and ideas also found in Latin and

vernacular literature on Alexander the Great. Just as Secretum secretorum is addressed to

Alexander the Great, it seems throughout Epistola de secretis that Bacon is casting himself as

Aristotle to some latter-day Alexander.60 The Secretum secretorum shared some features with the

57 “Item instrumentum, parvum in quantitate ad elevandum et deprimendum pondera quasi infinta, quo nihil utilius est in casu. Nam per instrumentum altitudinis trium digitorum, et latitudinis eorundem, et minoris quantitates, posset homo seipsum et socios suos ab omni periculo carceris eripere, et elevare, et descendere,” Bacon, Epistola de secretis, 533. 58 “Posset etiam de facili fieri instrumentum quo unus homo traheret ad se mille homines per violentiam, mala eorum voluntate; et sic de rebus aliis attrahendis,” Bacon, Epistola de secretis, 533-535, quote on 533. 59 “Et occulta videantur manifesta,” Bacon, Epistola de secretis, 534-35. 60 Although Robert Steele, editor of Bacon’s text, held that Bacon’s edition of The Secret of Secrets dates from the 1240s, more recent scholarship convincingly argues from internal evidence that, although Bacon first encountered The Secret of Secrets in Paris in the 1240s, he did not complete his edition of the text,


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contemporary Alexander tradition.61 The prologue of the Secretum secretorum puts the texts into

the context of an existing and robust epistolary relationship between Alexander and Aristotle,

and in many instances the Secretum secretorum appears bound together with Latin works on

Alexander or vernacular texts on the Alexander tradition.62

Although there are many variations on the legends of Alexander, his interest in first-hand

experience that went beyond ordinary human knowledge and his ingenuity are his defining

characteristics in virtually all of them. In Latin and Old French, ingenium and engin respectively,

are the terms that refer to this kind of innate, inventive spirit. But these terms and their cognates

also encompass other meanings, such as intellectual wit, invention, chicanery, deception,

stratagem, and extraordinary technical knowledge.63 In the Anglo-Norman Roman de Toute

Chevalerie (ca. 1180), based in part on the Epistola Alexandri Magni ad Aristotelem, the author,

Thomas de Kent, ends his introduction to Alexander with this summation: “He was brave and

along with his notes and introduction, until the 1270s. See Williams, “Roger Bacon and His Edition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum,” Speculum 69 (1994): 57-73, 65-67; Williams, “The Early Circulation of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets in the West: The Papal and Imperial Courts,” SISMEL, Micrologus 2 (1994): 127-144. Although it is clear that Bacon had a particular audience in mind for the Epistola de secretis the assertion that it was a letter to William of Auvergne, or some other “William of Paris,” is based on a later addition to the text, not to any information gleaned from the work itself, or from Bacon’s other writings. 61 Steven J. Williams, “Two Independent Textual Traditions? The Pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets and the Alexander Legend,” in Trajectoires européenes du Secretum secretorum du Pseudo-Aristote (XIIIe-XVIe siècle), eds. Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas, Margaret Bridges, and Jean-Yves Tilliette (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015): 27-54. 62 In fact, a late antique text that purported to be a copy of a letter that Alexander had sent to Aristotle, describing the marvels he had seen and the novel experiences he had had, circulated widely from the fourth century onwardSee Epistola Alexandri Macedonis ad Aristotelem magistrum suum de itinere suo et de situ Indiae, ed. W. Walther Boer, Beiträge zur Klassischen Philologie (Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag, 1980); previous, ed. and trans. Lloyd L. Gunderson (Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag, 1980), 34-47; Williams, “Two Independent Textual Traditions?” 29, 33-49. 63 Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, s.v.v. “ingénieur,” “engin;” Glossarum mediae et infimae latinitatis, ed. Charles DuCange, 10 vols. (Paris: Librairie des Sciences et des Arts, 1937038), s.v. “ingenium;” Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française, ed. Godefroy, s.v. “engignart,” “engigne,” “engigneor.” Cf. OED, s.v.v. “engine,” “ingenious.”


26

victorious, wise and ingenious.”64 Alexander’s conquest of new territory extends to new

geographical realms and new frontiers of knowledge, from the farthest reaches of India, to the

deep sea, to the dizzying heights. In multiple versions of his biography he devises a flying

machine, powered by griffins, and a glass diving bell to explore rivers and oceans.65 Both of

these inventions enable Alexander to gain new knowledge through experience. His new devices

allow him to explore Nature’s secrets beyond what was at that time known. Perched on his flying

machine he could experience the world as no human before him, as a synoptic whole as it

unfurled beneath him. From the safety of his diving bell he could observe the creatures at the

bottom of the ocean, that were otherwise invisible to humans. Moreover, in several of the

Alexander-texts from this period his endeavors are discussed in terms (either by the narrator or

Alexander himself) of experience and proof: “experimentum” and “esprover.”

Bacon was clearly familiar with these legends, as he cited a few of them in Epistola de

secretis. He insists that “an instrument for flying can be made, such that a man sits in the middle

of it, turning some sort of engine [ingenium] by which artificially constructed wings beat the air

in the way a flying bird does.”66 In the Historia de preliis, the tenth-century Latin prose re-telling

of the late antique Greek version by pseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander recounts how he designed a

64 “Hardiz estoit e conqueranz, sages e enginus,” The Anglo-Norman Alexander (Le Roman de Toute Chevalerie), Thomas of Kent, ed. Brian Foster with Ian Short (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1976), 2 vols., 1: 7, l. 30. Cf. Alexander de Paris, Roman d’Alexandre (Paris: Librarie générale française, 1994), in which Alexander’s knowledge of the natural world along with his technological ingenuity are listed as two of his three essential qualities. On this text as a scientific encyclopedia, see Catheerine Gaullier-Bougassas, “Savoir scientifique et ‘roman historique:’ l’Alexandre anglo-normand de Thomas de Kent,” Savoirs et fiction au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, ed. Dominique Boutet and Joëlle Ducos (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne, 2015): 143-59. 65 See, for example, Archbishop Leo, Historia de preliis (Der Alexanderroman), ed. Friedrich Pfister (Heidelberg, 1913), 126. 66 “Item possunt fieri instrumenta volandi, ut homo sedeat in medio instruenti revolvens aliquod ingenium, per quod alae artificialiter compositae aerem verberent, ad modum avis volantis,” Bacon, Epistola de secretis, 533.


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flying contraption that used winged animals to see the earth in a new way. “I planned with my

friends that I should build a device [ingenium], so that I might ascend into the sky and see what

may be seen from the sky. I designed and built the device [ingenium], where I would sit, and

caught gryphons and bound them with chains and I put a pole in front of them at whose end was

food for them, and they began to take off into the sky.”67 In the Old French Roman d’Alexandre

(ca. 1180), Alexander’s adventure explicitly links experiential knowledge to the confirmation of

text-based learning, via measurement. “Alexander forged the path up to the sky when his golden

chair, attached to four gryphons, was carried up; and his thought was enlightened by astral

science so that he could measure the paths of all the stars.”68 Alexander’s diving bell also

appears in Bacon’s Epistola de secretis. “And instruments can be made for walking in seas and

rivers, right down to the bottom, without bodily danger… For Alexander the Great used these to

see the secrets of the sea, according to what Ethicus the astronomer says.”69 Bacon’s Epistola de

secretis, the Secretum secretorum, and multiple versions of the medieval Alexander-legend all

express the idea that the time of Alexander was a time of amazing and useful inventions

employed in the service of further knowledge.70 This is the past that Bacon wants to access

through scientia experimentalis, to regain the lost knowledge of the past and make the future.

67 “Cogitavi cum amicis meis, ut instruerem tale ingeium, quatenus ascenderem caelum et viderem, si est hot caelum, quod videmus. Preparavi ingenium, ubi sederem, et apprehendi grifas et liquid eas cum catenas, et psui vectes ante eos et in summitate eorum cibaria illorum et ceperunt ascendere celum,” Historia de preliis, 3.27, 126. 68 “Et la voie du ciel refu par lui tentee/ Quant la chaiere d’or en fu lassu portee/ Par les quatre grifons, a qui fu acouplee;/ Et fu d’astronomie sa pensee enluminee,/ Que de toutes estoiles connut la compassee,” Roman d’Alexandre, 1.71-77. 69 “Possunt etiam instrumenta fiere abmulandi in mari, vel fluminibus, usque ad fundum absque periculo corporali. Nam Alexander magnus his usus est, ut secreta maris videret, secundum quod Ethicus narrat astronomus,” Epistola de secretis, 533. 70 David J. A. Ross, Studies in the Alexander Romance (London, 1985); C. Raynaud, “Aristote dans les enluminures du XIIIe siècle,” in L’unité de la culture européene au Moyen Âge, ed. D. Buschinger and W. Spiewok (Griefswald, 1994).


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Alexander’s diving bell and flying contraption are potent examples of Alexander’s

ingenuity and his curiosity, and as such were often depicted in Latin and European vernacular

manuscript copies of the history of Alexander. The figures below are taken from late-thirteenth

and early-fourteenth century copies of the Old French prose translation of the Historia de preliis,

called Ystoire de roi Alexandre (13th century). The Old French prose version was widely copied

(sixteen manuscripts are extant, the earliest from 1290) and illuminated with a fairly consistent

picture-cycle.71 In the first image, from the earliest extant version of this text, Alexander sits in a

small house, suspended between four gryphons that he has encouraged to keep flying to reach the

bloody meat on the two spears that holds. In the image of the same vignette from a slightly later

copy Alexander is not the only individual gaining experiential knowledge, as he has been joined

in this image by a group of onlookers, who witness Alexander’s flight from the earth. The image,

from the same manuscript, of Alexander’s undersea voyage vividly depicts what is at stake with

experiential knowledge—the ability to see things that were previously unknown (like mer-

hounds or mer-sheep) or lived only in legend (mer-people).

71 George Cary, The Medieval Alexander, ed. David J. A. Ross (Cambridge, 1956), 46; The Medieval French Alexander, ed. D. Maddox and S. Sturm-Maddox (Albany, NY, 2002).


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Roman d’Alexandre en prose, ca. 1290, French or Netherlandish, London, British Library, MS Royal 20 D V, fol. 70v.


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“Comment Alixandres se fist porter en l’air as oyseals que l’en apele grif.” Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliches Museum Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS 78 C 1, Fol. 66r.


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“Comment Alixandres se fist avaler en la mer ou tonnel de voirre.” Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliches Museum Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS 78 C 1, Fol. 67r.

Bacon looks to the past to conjure the future. His description of the possibilities for new

technologies afforded by scientia experimentalis uses the conditional tense and subjunctive


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mood [possunt fieri] to indicate a possible future.72 Yet his evidence for many of these examples

of the promise of scientia experimentalis comes from the past. Alexander’s exploits in the distant

past yielded important experimental knowledge—of plants, places, peoples—and devices for

gathering experiential knowledge, conveyed in different versions of his travels. The impossibly

fast chariots that Bacon mentions are actually the scythe-bearing chariots “of antiquity.” Optical

devices that allow one to see things that are very far away with perfect clarity are also inventions

of the past. “Thus, it is thought Julius Caesar on the shores of Gaul discovered by huge mirrors

the disposition and locations of the camps and cities of Great Britain.”73 Even the most

extraordinary device, the magnetic armillary sphere that turns with the daily motion of the

heavens, is based on an invention of Ptolemy, according to Bacon. He writes from a position of

loss, as these inventions and instruments used to exist, but do not any longer. Yet this knowledge

is what allows for an optimism about the future; The accounts of past devices prove that their

presence in the future is not theoretical or speculative. Additionally, these objects highlight

Bacon’s point about the need for experience to work in tandem with textual knowledge. The

moving armillary sphere, submarine, optical devices, and other machines are ones that Bacon

and his contemporaries only know of through texts, which is why Bacon cannot describe how to

make them. He also summons a future in which familiar objects, like ships or wings, become

new objects.74 Bacon combines renovatio with innovatio, the recovery of past knowledge with

the invention of a new future. Furthermore, his insistence on the ancient precedents for some of

72 Patricia Clare Ingham, The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation (Philadelphia, 2015), 58-59. 73 Bacon, Epistola de secretis, 534. 74 This multiple temporality is similar to that found in medieval romances, such as when stories of antiquity—the Aeneid, the history of the Trojan War—are refashioned for a courtly audience in a recognizable contemporary setting. See Ingham, The Medieval New, chapter 2.


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these inventions, along with his frequent invocation of ancient sources (Ethicus, Ptolemy,

Aristotle, Pliny) makes it clear that, far from rejecting claims to authority in his work, as later

historiography has claimed, Bacon relied on them.75 His inventions are Janus-faced, oscillating

between the past and the future, and between the familiar terrain of accepted authorities like

Ptolemy and the novel ideas of foreign philosophers like Ibn al-Haytham.

Bacon writes from a temporal perspective balanced between two poles. Instruments,

machines, and devices once existed, do not exist now, but will be recovered in the future. His

invocation of past and future knowledge from a present perspective of relative ignorance echoes

his account of the third prerogative of scientia experimentalis—it provides access to past and

future knowledge.

Conclusion

Bacon drew on multiple sources for his concept of scientia experimentalis and the kinds

of devices and processes that it facilitated and warranted. He read newly translated Latin

versions of Arabic texts in optics, secrets, and astral science alongside contemporary treatises on

natural particulars and experimentum, and ancient history to articulate the possibilities of scientia

experimentalis. He drew from the academic register of natural philosophy to the literary

expressions of the possibilities of human art yoked to nature, and the review of his influences

demonstrates the widespread interest in knowledge through sense experience. Yet Bacon, along

among his contemporaries (or even those who came after him for several centuries), combined

his influences with his own ideas about the purpose of technology to enable new knowledge,

improve the human condition, and be used in the exercise of power, especially through the

75 Excellent on this point, though focused on other authorities that Bacon invoked, is David C. Lindberg, “Science as Handmaiden: Roger Bacon and the Patristic Tradition,” Isis 78 (1987): 518-36.


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creation of devices or inventions. One can view Bacon’s inventions as fulfilling the same

purpose as the instrument (organon) of argumentum—the syllogism. The syllogism produces

certainty in logical reasoning, and instruments produce certainty in scientia experimentalis. The

inventions of scientia experimentalis complement Aristotelian logic, and propose a way of

understanding and benefitting from natural knowledge that harmonizes, or balances, the tools of

argumentum with the tools of experimentum. Additionally, it is clear that Bacon viewed

experimental knowledge as vital to political success, and that knowledge overall was to be used

in the service of Christian ends.

Bacon’s view of technological change and possibility is not progressive, but neither is it

solely a narrative of regression and decline. He offers optimism about the potential of

technology, and also tantalizes—even seduces—the audience with the opportunities for

exploration and domination that these inventions pose. Bacon’s temporal position relative to the

past of wonderful devices mean that he can imagine complex machines and inventions even

though unable to describe how to construct them. His inspirations for both past and future cohere

around a set of ideas that privilege hands-on knowledge, first-hand observation, utility, and

textual knowledge from Arabic sources, literary and historical narratives, and scholastic treatises

on argumentum and natural philosophy. He looks backward to look forward, blending accounts

of the past with new knowledge from his contemporaries. His account of scientia experimentalis

and the incredible possibilities it affords offers a counterpoint to the contemporary narrative of

technological development, which sees the imagination of new technologies and their uses as

something that is relentlessly progressive and future-oriented, and views the inventions of the

past as simple or obsolete.

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