The life & work of Roger Bacon : an introduction to the Opus majus / by H. Gordon Jones.
- John Henry Bridges
- Date:
- 1914
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The life & work of Roger Bacon : an introduction to the Opus majus / by H. Gordon Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.
22/180 (page 20)
![physics^ and Psychology of Aristotled Its two most prominent representatives were at this time Alexander of Hales and William of Auvergne. Of the methods and the controversies then current Bacon made himself a master, and received the title of doctor. To be able to speak the language of the schools with authority was the first con- dition of obtaining a hearing. But he was not slow to perceive that the men who taught this philosophy were, for the most part, wholly desti- tute of positive knowledge. They knew no language but Latin. Beyond the shreds of arith- metic, mensuration, and astronomy taught in the manuals of the Quadrivium, they were ignorant of mathematics. Of the possibility of applying mathematical knowledge to the facts of nature they had formed no conception whatever. Their philosophy was a tangle of barren controversies reducible, for the most part, to verbal disputes. It bore no relation to the facts of real life. It held out no hope of raising the Catholic Church to the position of intellectual domination needed for establishing her authority over the Asiatic world, from which dangers were looming of appalling magnitude. It was in Paris that Bacon came into contact with a remarkable man of whom very little would 1 [See Note B (Aristotle and the Univ. of Paris) on p. 149.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28980402_0022.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
