News Item: Roger Bacon's Amazing Predictions
(Category: Misc)
Posted by RadicalRed
2018
Author: Karen Sphink
Modern cars and aeroplanes were accurately described as long ago as the C13th by the English Franciscan monk Roger Bacon, Bacon , probably the earliest scientist in the modern sense, lived from around 1214 to 1292. He was learned in the classics and in the scholarship of the Arabs. In 1247 Bacon resigned his chair at the University of Paris and devoted himself to experimental science, studying and teaching at Oxford......................
Well ahead of his time, Bacon successfully demonstrated the magnifying glass. And in his Epistola de Secretis Peribus, he wrote 'cars can be made so that without animals they will move with unbelievable rapidity"and "flying machines can be constructed so that a man sits in the midst of the machine revolving some engine by which artificial wings are made to beat the air ..like a flying bird: Other predictions included Steamships, submarines, diving suits and telescopes.............................
But contemporary ignorance destroyed the reputation of Bacon. His scientific theories were reduced to the predictions of a soothsayer because people feared his interest in Muslim texts and mathematics. Muslims were popularly believed to practice sorcery, and mathematics was widely assumed to be a black art as late as the C16th.......... In about 1256.....Roger Bacon retired to Paris - some say expelled from England - and in 1277, the General of the Franciscan Order banned his books. He was also imprisoned for heretical teachings......................
In life , Bacon's experiments and interest in unconventional philosophy and alchemy earned him the nickname Dr.Mirabilis. After death, the legend that he was a wizard gained momentum, one story reported he could make prophetic heads of brass...Like Faust, Bacon reputedly signed a pact with the Devil in return for magic skills, promising his soul ....except if he died neither inside the church nor outside it . It was said he tried to cheat the Devil by creating a cell in the wall of a church, where he remained until he died, neither inside nor outside
[Submitted by Radical Red]
This news item is from Red Sea Rising
( http://redsearising.net/news.php?extend.140 )
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