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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index B > Roger Bacon Quotes

Thumbnail of Roger Bacon (source)
Roger Bacon
(c. 1220 - 11 Jun 1292)

English scholar.

Short biography of Roger Bacon >>

Science Quotes by Roger Bacon (11 quotes)

Omnes scientiae sunt connexae et fovent auxiliis sicut partes ejusdem totius, quarum quaelibet opus suum peragit non propter se sed pro aliis.
All sciences are connected; they lend each other material aid as parts of one great whole, each doing its own work, not for itself alone, but for the other parts; as the eye guides the body and the foot sustains it and leads it from place to place.
— Roger Bacon
Opus Tertium [1266- 1268], chapter 4, Latin text quoted in J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (1920), 355 (footnote to page 25). In J. S. Brewer (ed.), Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera ... inedita (1859), 18.
Science quotes on:  |  Science (754)

Sed tamen salis petrae. VI. Part V. NOV. CORVLI. ET V. sulphuris, et sic facies toniitrum et coruscationem: sic facies artificium.
But, however, of saltpetre take six parts, live of young willow (charcoal), and five of sulphur, and so you will make thunder and lightning, and so you will turn the trick.
Bacon's recipe for Gunpowder, partly expressed as an anagram in the original Latin.
— Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon's Letter Concerning the Marvelous Power of Art and of Nature and Concerning the Nullity of Magic, trans. T. L. Davis (1922), 48.
Science quotes on:  |  Gunpowder (8)  |  Reaction (45)

All science requires mathematics.
[Editors' summary of Bacon's idea, not Bacon's wording.]
— Roger Bacon
These are not the exact words of Roger Bacon, but are from an editor's sub-heading, giving a summary for the topic of Chapter 2, for example, in Roger Bacon and Robert Belle Burke (ed.), Opus Maius (reproduction 2002), Vol. 1, Part 4, 117. Part 4 is devoted to a discourse on Mathematics. In its Chapter 1, as translated, Bacon states that 'There are four great sciences, without which the other sciences cannot be known nor a knowledge of things secured. ... Of these sciences the gate and key is mathematics.'
Science quotes on:  |  Mathematics (318)  |  Requirement (21)  |  Science (754)

As regards authority I so proceed. Boetius says in the second prologue to his Arithmetic, 'If an inquirer lacks the four parts of mathematics, he has very little ability to discover truth.' And again, 'Without this theory no one can have a correct insight into truth.' And he says also, 'I warn the man who spurns these paths of knowledge that he cannot philosophize correctly.' And Again, 'It is clear that whosoever passes these by, has lost the knowledge of all learning.'
— Roger Bacon
Opus Majus [1266-1268], Part IV, distinction I, chapter I, trans. R. B. Burke, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (1928), Vol. I, 117.
Science quotes on:  |  Mathematics (318)  |  Truth (399)

But concerning vision alone is a separate science formed among philosophers, namely, optics, and not concerning any other sense ... It is possible that some other science may be more useful, but no other science has so much sweetness and beauty of utility. Therefore it is the flower of the whole of philosophy and through it, and not without it, can the other sciences be known.
— Roger Bacon
Opus Majus [1266-1268], Part V, distinction I, chapter I, trans. R. B. Burke, The Opus Maius of Roger Bacon (1928), Vol. 2, 420.
Science quotes on:  |  Optics (6)

But there is another alchemy, operative and practical, which teaches how to make the noble metals and colours and many other things better and more abundantly by art than they are made in nature. And science of this kind is greater than all those preceding because it produces greater utilities. For not only can it yield wealth and very many other things for the public welfare, but it also teaches how to discover such things as are capable of prolonging human life for much longer periods than can be accomplished by nature ... Therefore this science has special utilities of that nature, while nevertheless it confirms theoretical alchemy through its works.
— Roger Bacon
Opus Tertium [1266-1268], chapter 12, quoted in A. C. Crombie, Augustine to Galileo (1959), Vol. I, 69.
Science quotes on:  |  Alchemy (17)  |  Money (82)

But we must here state that we should not see anything if there were a vacuum. But this would not be due to some nature hindering species, and resisting it, but because of the lack of a nature suitable for the multiplication of species; for species is a natural thing, and therefore needs a natural medium; but in a vacuum nature does not exist.
— Roger Bacon
Opus Majus [1266-1268], Part V, distinction 9, chapter 2, trans. R. B. Burke, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (1928), Vol. 2, 485.
Science quotes on:  |  Vacuum (16)

For there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely, by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience; since many have the arguments relating to what can be known, but because they lack experience they neglect the arguments, and neither avoid what is harmful nor follow what is good. 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 thereby, 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.
— Roger Bacon
Opus Majus [1266-1268], Part VI, chapter I, trans. R. B. Burke, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (1928), Vol. 2, 583.
Science quotes on:  |  Fire (53)  |  Knowledge (593)  |  Observation (239)

The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation.
— Roger Bacon
Opus Tertium. Translation as stated in Popular Science (Aug 1901), 337.
Science quotes on:  |  Argument (22)  |  Conclusion (67)  |  Experience (115)  |  Experiment (346)  |  Goal (27)  |  Nothing (64)  |  Proof (120)  |  Queen (2)  |  Science (754)  |  Speculation (36)  |  Verify (3)

There are four great sciences, without which the other sciences cannot be known nor a knowledge of things secured ... Of these sciences the gate and key is mathematics ... He who is ignorant of this [mathematics] cannot know the other sciences nor the affairs of this world.
— Roger Bacon
Opus Majus [1266-1268], Part IV, distinction I, chapter I, trans. R. B. Burke, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (1928), Vol. I, 116.
Science quotes on:  |  Mathematics (318)

[I]f in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics, in so far as disposed through it we are able to reach certainty in other sciences and truth by the exclusion of error. (c.1267)
— Roger Bacon
Translation by Robert Burke, Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (1928), vol 1, 124. In Fred R. Shapiro, The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Error (141)  |  Mathematics (318)  |  Truth (399)


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  • todayinsci icon 11 Jun - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Bacon's death.


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