Roger Bacon (1214 – 1292) – Biography (2003)

Yesterday I finished reading "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco for the second time. Fantastic book. It talks about a series of crimes in an abbey, and one of the lead characters, William of Baskerville, is a Franciscan logician who uses his mind and deductive abilities to eventually find the common thread among the crimes. He knew and regards Roger Bacon as his master many times in the book, and also mentions William of Occam. Highly recommended to read. It's a masterpiece.

I love this biography because it shows how contact with the Islamic world was beneficial and generative to the West (and put the West back in contact with aspects of its intellectual inheritance that it had lost, like the thought of Aristotle).

Trivia:

There is a street named after him (Rodger Bacon Dr.) in Reston, VA.

Right across from it is Isaac Newton Sq, where the lab that discovered the Reston Ebola Virus was located. Around the corner is Michael Faraday Dr.

Calling Bacon just a mathematician (first sentence of the text) seems quite reductive. Other than that it was an interesting read. I think the Wikipedia page is better - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bacon

Medieval cancel culture! Imprisoned incommunicado by his fellow Franciscans in the convent in Ancona, Italy, 1278-1290 for teaching views too novel.