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Philosophical Haiku

Roger Bacon (c.1214 - c.1292)

by Terence Green

In the dim distance
Objects appear to mine eye:
Gathering the light.

Roger Bacon was one of the foremost English philosophers of the Middle Ages, and was known posthumously as Doctor Mirabilis – ‘Dr Miraculous’. From the nineteenth century onwards he has been credited as one of the earliest exponents of the modern scientific method, on the basis that he believed that nature should be studied through careful observation. Bacon’s particular interest in alchemy – whose core pursuits were trying to turn base metals into gold, and the elixir that would confer youth and long-life – is harder to square with modern science, but lots of people were into it at the time (and Sir Isaac Newton was still hard at it over four hundred years later), and alchemy did soon mutate into what we call chemistry.

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