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History of Dynamics

art, Books, History of Optics, History of Physics, History of Science, Roger Bacon, writing

It’s amazing what a little house arrest can do for the active mind. It provides time and focus as well as protection from earthly distractions that dissipate the intellect. How much more productive might we be if freed from the daily grind?

For Galileo Galilei, house arrest after ridiculing the pope gave him time to write his "Two New Sciences" that had been percolating in the back of his mind for decades. His arrest gave birth to the sciences of mechanics and strength of materials.

For Augustin Fresnel, house arrest after supporting royalists against Napoleon was the perfect retreat from building roads and bridges to explore the physics of light scattering and interference. His arrest gave birth to the physics of optical interference.

For Jean-Victor Poncelet, whiling away his time as a prisoner of war in Russia after Napoleon’s disastrous march on Moscow, it kept him occupied and sane. His confinement gave birth to the theory of projective geometry.

For Piotr Kapitsa, exiled under Stalin for not joining the Party, he could focus on his physics. His arrest gave birth to the physics of dynamic equilibrium.

For Roger Bacon (121? – 1292), the medieval Franciscan friar who was under effective house arrest (his monastic cell) and prohibited from publishing anything, his arrest gave birth to the first science grant proposal.

The Rise of Roger Bacon

More has been written about Roger Bacon that is fantasy than the truth. In truth, almost nothing is known of his background, other than that he came from a wealthy family. They paid for him to go to college, at the age of thirteen, at Oxford, where he studied until he received his magister’s degree around 1240. Because Oxford was a religious college, his degree allowed him to teach anywhere under the umbrella of the Catholic Church, whether in Bologna, Rome, Paris or Oxford. Latin was the universal language, and the Christian faith was the universal context of all the young universities, so that scholars could move at will among these great centers of learning, despite the constant wars that raged between England and France. Bacon began teaching at Oxford, but the university in Paris at that time removed their prohibition against the teaching of Aristotle’s science, so he was recruited in 1241 to teach science in the Faculty of Arts, in the English division of the University of Paris.

During his time in Paris, across seven years, starting when he was around 30 years old, he began to shift his perspective on the state of learning in the university system. At that time, scholarly discourse was based on creative citation of the authorities, much like discourse is in law, citing court cases and legal precedence. New ideas arose by finding ambiguities or contradictions in established texts and then arguing for a new theory that could explain or contain formerly conflicting points of view. This kind of learning was endlessly self-referential and backwards focused, never moving forward beyond the frontiers of what was known.

At Paris, he met Peter Peregrinus, whose open-mindedness came as a revelation to Bacon. Peregrinus was willing to study anything, no mater how arcane (even magic tricks), burrowing down to the finest detail to understand how it worked. This meant using direct observation in place of cited authorities as the foundation for creating new ideas that could explain what was observed. At the time this was a radical departure, because it meant that the realm of knowledge could be added to, not just refined. It also elevated the individual to the level of the ancient authorities in their ability to devine new truths about nature. These new attitudes about observation and experimentation were reinforced when Bacon returned to Oxford in 1247 where he was exposed to the ideas of Robert Grosseteste.

Grosseteste and Bacon at Oxford

Robert Grosseteste (1170 – 1251) was born poor but his brilliance must have been recognized early by some priest with influence, because his education was supported by the Church. He was educated at Oxford and began teaching there, rising through the ranks to become the Magister Scholarum...