Roger Bacon

Roger Bacon taught at Oxford and Paris and grew impatient with a learning built on citing old books. Knowledge, he argued, comes from two sources: reasoning, which can only propose, and experience, which alone confirms. He pressed for the study of optics, mathematics, languages, and alchemy, performed experiments with lenses and light, and imagined self-propelled carriages, diving suits, and machines for flight. His enthusiasm outran his age and earned him suspicion and, by tradition, imprisonment within his own order. But his demand that nature be questioned directly makes him a forerunner of the scientific method.