Eileen C.

Sweeney
Roger Bacon and Albert the Great
on Aristotles Notion of Science

Roger Bacon and Albert the Great are two important early adopters of Aristotles Posterior Analytics, eager to put the resources of the new science to work.
However, their accounts of the sciences are different even though in important
ways inspired by some of the same sources. Their differences lay out many of
the basic questions about Aristotelian science that will continue to be discussed
throughout the 13th and 14th centuries.
Roger Bacon takes up Aristotelian demonstrative science, contrasting it with
the older and more traditional notion of knowledge. His goal is to replace the
traditional canon and methods of the liberal arts with science and push back
against the canon lawyers and theologians at Paris who instigated the bans on
Aristotle and scientific works, particularly Arabic astronomy/astrology. Bacons
enthusiasm for demonstrative argument brings him to advocate a complete restructuring of the curriculum, placing mathematics at the center as the most
certain, most accessible, and most important of the disciplines. For example,
Bacon claims that the disciplines of grammar and logic depend on mathematics
through the mediation of music and its explanation of rhythm, meter, and accent all required to achieve its end: persuasive arguments with the maximum
amount of beauty. Logic also needs mathematics for its middle and heart: the
art of demonstration, for only in mathematics is there true and forceful demonstration. Thus, the way to arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without
error is to ground all the other sciences in mathematics1.
Bacon ultimately puts mathematics at the center of physics by appealing to
the properties of light, studied in terms of the geometry of refraction and reflection. However, while Grosseteste (Bacons mentor) understood the role of mathematics and light in largely Neoplatonic metaphysical terms, Bacon thinks of
light and the use of mathematics in terms of physical causality. Lights equivocal
action produces diverse effects: light causing heat, heat causing putrefaction and
1

Roger Bacon, Opus maius, IV, Dist. 1, c. 1, ed. Bridges, vol. 1, pp. 97-98.

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Eileen C. Sweeney

putrefaction, death. We can know earthly/physical things only through mathematics because celestial bodies are their causes, and these bodies are known via
mathematics, Bacon argues2.
In addition to demonstrative syllogistic form, science is characterized by
experimentum for Bacon. Though it is not clear whether Bacon means empeiria
in Aristotles sense or something closer to the modern notion of controlled experiment, its role in producing scientia is different for Bacon than for Aristotle3.
While Aristotle describes the path of the discovery of the principles of science
by induction from experience, Bacon notes that knowledge of conclusions as well
as principles requires experimentum4. Even for conclusions drawn via valid arguments by reasoning, the removal of doubt requires confirmation of conclusions
by experiment5. Only thus can trickery and magic be distinguished from art and
nature, Bacon maintains6.
Bacon also argues that there are crucial ties between mathematics and experimentum. Quantity is especially a matter of sense perception, Bacon argues,
because it is a common sensible and nothing is perceived without quantity.
The act of understanding is only completed with reference to continuous quantity
and time7. Moreover, mathematical knowledge can be certain and without error
because it has examples perceived by the senses from which to proceed and to
which to make confirming reference. By contrast, the proper causes of natural
things are generated and corrupted. Nor it is possible in metaphysics, because
there is no demonstration of incorporeal things except indirectly through effects8. In the Perspectiva Bacon also associates sense perception through vision
with experimentum and thus with mathematics through optics. Optics is a mathematically based science that grounds the sense evidence of vision, resulting not
in belief but experience9.
In the Opus maius Bacons criticism of the traditional teaching of the disciplines is a broadside against the path of reading and reliance on authority
that grounds the traditional study of liberal arts and scripture. Bacon lists four
causes of error: submission to faulty authority, the influence of custom, popular
prejudice, and the desire to conceal ignorance and appear wise. In order to avoid
Roger Bacon, Opus maius, IV, Dist. 1, c. 2, ed. Bridges, vol. 1, pp. 102-103.
See Hackett 1997, pp. 279-284.
4 Arist., Analytica Posteriora, II, 19, 100a1-14; Bacon, Opus maius, VI, c. 2, ed. Bridges, vol. 2, pp.
172-173.
5 On the need for experience, see Bacon, Opus maius, VI, c. 1, ed. Bridges, vol. 2, p. 167. Cf. Hackett
1997, p. 291; Thorndike 1929, p. 666, and Molland 1993, pp. 140-160.
6 Bacon, Opus maius VI, cc. 2 & 12, ed. Bridges, vol. 2, pp. 172, 221.
7 See Arist., Analytica Posteriora, I, 18, 81a37-40 and De memoria, 1, 450a1-10. Bacon, Opus maius,
IV, Dist. 1, c. 3, ed. Bridges, vol. 1, p. 107.
8 Bacon, Opus maius, IV, Dist. 1, c. 3, ed. Bridges, vol. 1, pp. 107-108.
9 Bacon, Perspectiva, I, 1, 1, ed. Lindberg, p. 4.
2
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these errors and find the true authorities, we must freely hear what is contrary
to vulgar convention10. In the spirit of experiment, one must oppose common
opinion, cultivating skepticism. Truth is usually on the side of what is unpopular,
Bacon warns, and a certain contrariness is the way to avoid error. It is hard not
to hear in these criticisms of authority, tradition, and common sense the tones
of that other and much later Bacon, Francis, and his critique of the idols of the
mind11. Nonetheless, the 13th century Bacon is less opposed to tradition than he
seems, aligning his move to defend Aristotelian and Arabic science with initially
rejected but ultimately revered authorities, such as Jerome and even Moses and
Jesus; thus Bacons goal is the extension not the extinction of the tradition but
in a way that places mathematics and experimental science at the center of all
science, including theology12.
Albert the Great articulated a different way of reorganizing the disciplines
around the model of Aristotelian science and highlighting experiment than Bacon. Alberts rejection of the mathematical physics so favored by Bacon is one of
the most well known of his views. In his Commentary on the Metaphysics he argues
against Platos view that the principles of natural things are founded in mathematics, and the principles of mathematics in metaphysics13. Mathematics and
natural science emerge co-equally from metaphysics, he argues. Further, Albert
argues that dimension is not a principle of body as body but rather a consequence
of being a body, while matter is subject of motion and time per se14. On these
grounds, Albert rejects any wholesale application of mathematical categories to
natural objects and phenomenon as the constitutive method of physics. This may
be partly because, as Molland argues, Albert is more conceptualist than realist on
mathematics15. Albert maintains that the abstraction of mathematics is the product of the imagination, which compos[es] figures and angles rather than finds
those qualities inherent in the objects. Hence, Albert often focuses on the gap
between mathematics and the natural world, for example, pointing out that it is
only mathematical spheres not material ones that a line touches only at a point16.
Alberts Commentary on the Physics begins with a distinction between the
path of knowing in physics versus the other sciences. Physics begins with the
senses and thus begins with the confused universal and works its way toward
more distinct knowledge, Albert comments. Moving from that which is more simple and indistinct to what is more distinct and composite is the via compositionis;
Bacon, Opus maius, I, c. 8, ed. Bridges, vol. 1, p. 17.
F. Bacon, Novum Organon, Bk. I, aphorisms 38-68, ed. Rees / Wakely, pp. 79-108.
12 Bacon, Opus maius, I, c. 9, ed. Bridges, vol. 1, pp. 19-20.
13 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica, I, tr.1, c. 1, ed. Geyer, p. 2.
14 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica, I, tr.1, c. 1, ed. Geyer, p. 2.
15 Molland 1980, p. 467.
16 Molland 1980, pp. 468-470.
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Eileen C. Sweeney

it is proper to natural science but not to the other sciences. In metaphysics and
mathematics, the opposite path of resolution is followed, from the particular to
the universal17. Thus Albert draws a sharp line between physics and its dependence of sensation and the other sciences of metaphysics and mathematics.
In a number of passages, Albert expresses a Platonic or Neoplatonic account
of the hierarchy of the sciences in terms of which some sciences are more certain:
a sciences conclusions are more necessary and certain to the degree to which its
subject is separated from matter. Albert does not, as those who want to see him
strictly as an Aristotelian claim, completely give up the idea that mathematics is
superior to physics because of its greater distance from the vagaries of material
things. He notes that things are closer to wisdom the more they recede from sensation and he praises mathematics as separated from sense and the necessities
of life18. Albert defines wisdom as that which is difficult to know; things are
difficult to know either through their imperfection (physics) or their perfection
(metaphysics), but mathematics is accessible in ways the objects of physics and
metaphysics are not19. Mathematics is the most liberal of the sciences because
it is proportioned to our intellects and is not a subject to the variety of opinion,
but not physics (because of greater error and diverse opinions) nor divine science
(because it is beyond our intellects)20.
It might seem hard to square this skepticism about the ability to know material things on their own terms with Alberts well-known interest in empirical
data21. Alberts commentaries on Aristotles works of natural philosophy include
insertions of alphabetical lists of types of stones, herbs, and animals, along with
their descriptions, properties and possible uses or virtues. Beyond the perfectly clear Aristotelian justification for including such particular data that the
process of induction requires particulars from which we can abstract the universal, Albert adds that knowledge of things in matter and time is mixed with
opinion and not confirmed science22. Hence, he argues, we are more in need of
experience/experiments in regard to them than mathematical or metaphysical
objects23. We need to test/experience those things that are less certain more often

17 Albertus Magnus, Physica, I, tr. 1, c. 6, ed. Hossfeld, p. 12, ll. 53-66. Cf. Albertus Magnus,
Metaphysica, I, tr. 1, c. 7, ed. Geyer, p. 10, ll. 35-51.
18 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica, I, tr. 1, c. 11, ed. Geyer, p. 16, ll. 67-94.
19 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica, I, tr. 2, c. 1, ed. Geyer, p. 18, ll. 31-42.
20 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica, I, tr. 2, c. 7, ed. Geyer, p. 24, ll. 38-67. Cf. Ashley 1980, p. 95.
Ashley claims wrongly that Albert completely rejects the Platonist view that math is more a science than
physics.
21 Asa 2001, pp. 389-400.
22 Arist., Ethica Nicomachea, VI, 8, 1142a11.
23 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica, I, tr. 1, c. 1, ed. Geyer, p. 1, ll. 24-27, 52-56. Cf. Asa 2001, p.
399. See also Khler 1996, pp. 161-177.

Roger Bacon and Albert the Great on Aristotles Notion of Science

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and more diligently24. In this way Alberts Neoplatonism fits seamlessly with his
experimentalism, and both fit into a picture which depicts the different sciences
as having diverse methods and degrees of certainty, depending on their subject
matter and relationship to human ways of knowing.
Albert defines the subject of metaphysics as being qua being (rather than
God), but he adds that ens is esse simpliciter, being as not contracted to this or
that being but the first effluxio of God, the first created. This study, then, is
of the principles that give to all other things the fullness of their being. It is
called divine science because these principles are best and are the perfection
of the divine intellect within us25. Thus Albert situates an Aristotelian view of
the topic of metaphysics within a Neoplatonic frame. He adopts the Avicennian
account of metaphysics, though modified such that God does not fall under the
ens commune that is the subject of metaphysics; at the same time he links Aristotles Metaphysics with what he thinks is Aristotles theology in the Liber de
Causis. That which is first and highest is neither (strictly speaking) substance
nor being, yet is considered within the study of being qua being26. Albert thus
attempts to link as hierarchical steps and within the same discipline Aristotelian
metaphysics as ontology with Neoplatonic metaphysics as natural theology27.
The latter he construes as a kind of negative natural theology.
Alberts little treatise De intellectu et intelligibili makes this point in a particularly clear fashion as it lays out the different lights by which the intellect is
progressively perfected. While clearly operating from within the realm of reason
(not revelation), Albert speaks of the holy intellect and some kind of vision
of the divine. He describes the knowledge of metaphysics as knowledge only
available to those able to understand without reference to sensible examples28.
Its study of divine things repels and defeats our intellect by its light, while math
is proportioned to our intellect, and physics, because of the privation of matter
and motion, falls below intelligibility29. Thus, Albert not only thinks of sacred or
revealed theology as being informed by a different light than the other sciences
but holds that there are gradations and different lights and starting points for all
the different sciences30.
This is also clear from the discussion of theology as a science in the Summa.
Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica, I, tr. 1, c. 8, ed. Geyer, pp. 11-12.
Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica, I, tr. 1, c. 1, ed. Geyer, p. 3.
26 Albertus Magnus, De causis et processu universitatis a causa prima, I, tr. 3, c. 6, ed. Kbel, p. 41,
ll. 38-43.
27 Cf. Noone 2005, pp. 691-704.
28 Albertus Magnus, De intellectu et intelligibili, ed. Borgnet, 501b. The ones who can learn without
sensible reference, Albert notes, are described as having intellectus sanctus sive mundus by Avicenna,
and divine intellect by Aristotle.
29 Albertus Magnus, De intellectu et intelligibili, ed. Borgnet, 500a.
30 Cf. Fhrer 2001, p. 151.
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Eileen C. Sweeney

Albert distinguishes between theology and the other sciences in terms that are
much the same as those used to distinguish metaphysics from the other sciences.
He argues that the sciences concerned with creatures have unchanging rationes
which reside in changing creatures. Theology, by contrast, is founded in eternal
reasons in eternal things, and in this sense is the only science in the strictest
sense31. Albert consistently defends the scientific character of theology by noting the higher source/higher light from which its knowledge comes. Knowledge
of things through that which is prior, unchangeable, and known by inspiration
is more truly knowledge or science, and theology is most truly science, science
of the highest things, which are, as Aristotle said, the most difficult for human
beings to know32. Here Albert explicitly takes over Aristotles description of
metaphysics and applies it to revealed theology. As he replies to objections,
Albert notes, as he did in De intellectu, that the human intellect is perfected by
diverse lights; the light for metaphysics is distinct from the superior sources of
knowledge of the Trinity, Incarnation and resurrection33.
In Alberts Summa, the opening six questions on the nature of the subject being explored, the discipline is named theologia, not sacra doctrina nor any other
name drawing attention to its different source in scripture. Albert thus chooses
to use the term theologia which can mean either the philosophical study of the
divine and highest immaterial beings or the study of God through scripture. So,
too, he describes theologia in terms of the higher intelligibility of its objects
and higher illumination needed to see those objects the same terms used to
describe the theologia of the philosophers.
When he turns from whether theology is a science to its definition, he pivots
clearly to the different source and end of revealed theology, giving it a different
set of tasks and tactics. Through the whole discussion of the nature of theology,
Albert works hard to retain the traditional ways of describing the topic of theology, including a series of questions on frui and uti, and discussion of traditional definitions of theology as concerned with res et signa, Christus et ecclesia34.
Albert also defends the use of poetic language in theology forcefully, beginning
from the feature theology shares with metaphysics that, as Aristotle says, our
eyes confronted with the highest things are like those of bats looking toward
the sun35. Thus the use of persuasive and literary techniques for those things
that are beyond our intellect is not exclusive to theology. Albert notes that the
principles of metaphysics cannot be demonstrated or taught but that one must
Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae, Prol., ed. Siedler et al., p. 2, l. 16 sqq.
Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae, I-I, tr. 1, q. 1, ed. Siedler, p. 6, ll. 52-56.
33 Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae, I-I, tr. 1, q. 1, ad 2, ed. Siedler, p. 7, ll. 34-42.
34 Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae, I-I, tr. 2, qq. 7-12 et tr. 1, q. 3, c. 2, ed. Siedler.
35 Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae, I-I, tr. 1, q. 5, c. 1, ed. Siedler, pp. 16-17.
31
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be persuaded to their truth; thus, a broader use of language and tactics than pure
demonstration is required for basic principles36.
In defending the four modes of sacred scripture, Albert develops a long list
of different tasks for theology. It can operate either by force or instruction; if by
force (either disposing or compelling men to virtue), it can use admonition or
exhortation or command. If it operates by instruction, then it must either appeal
to the intellect or senses. It can address the intellect through hymns or prayer,
or prophecy or apocalyptic writings. If it is to appeal to the senses, then it can
operate by comparison to things or similitudes, e.g. parable, or by examples37.
Albert fits theology into his account of the different lights for the intellect
such that it is just the highest part of a strongly differentiated hierarchy; thus
he does not emphasize just the distinction between theology, operating on faith,
and the other disciplines, grounded in reason, as Aquinas does. The breadth of
Alberts notion of the definition of theology as a science and its multiple modes
is of a piece with his account of all the sciences as strongly differentiated from
each other in method and path because of their different topics.
Sometimes the differentiation and autonomy Albert grants the different
sciences are taken as a sign of his adherence to a kind of double truth. This is
urged because of Alberts lack of reference to scripture in contexts where there
might seem to be a conflict between philosophy and theology and/or on the basis
of Alberts retaining of the notion of metaphysics as a path to contemplation having unity with the divine intellect as its goal38. As De Libera points out, Albert
recognized the rationality of theology without folding theology back into natural
reason, and the spirituality of philosophy, without involving philosophy in the
irrational39. What this means, however, is not that for Albert a double truth is
possible, a contradiction between the conclusions of philosophy (or science) and
theology, but rather that Albert sees philosophy in general and metaphysics in
particular as paths toward contemplation in their own right, not reducing them to
tools of theology. But even though metaphysics can be part of the ascent toward
the divine for Albert, it is still clear that for him, the ascent of the intellect is to
a single final and complete truth/good in God.
There might also be in Alberts hierarchy of the sciences a response to the
other common criticism of Albert: that he was just a compiler throwing together
inconsistent bits from different thinkers rather than constructing his own coherent vision. Behind Alberts universal incorporation, there is a more broadly
Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica, I, tr. 2, c. 3, ed. Geyer, p. 20, ll. 40-49.
Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae, I-I, tr. 1, q. 5, c. 4, ad 13, ed. Siedler, p. 22, ll. 71-86.
38 Honnefelder 2005, p. 272.
39 de Libera 2005, p. 60. Cf. Honnefelder 2005, p. 263, who notes that for Albert, theology is a
science based on things that are revealed but he retains the notion of theology as practical.
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Eileen C. Sweeney

analogical sense of science that could range from encyclopedic lists of stones
and plants, to Neoplatonic metaphysics, to the new as well as traditional modes
of theology.
Both Albert and Bacon are struggling to integrate Aristotle with Christianity
and traditional arts, as well as with the new impetus outward toward the world
manifested in Alberts clear joy in the stuff of the world and Bacons barely contained mania to get to work in the world. They illustrate different ways in which
the pleasures of knowledge are recognized and sought and reveal a rich diversity
of responses to Aristotelian science in this first wave of Aristotelianism in the
13th century.

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Eileen C. Sweeney

Abstract: The paper examines the different uses of and responses to Aristotles account
of science in the first wave of interpretation of Aristotles theory of science and works in
natural science and metaphysics in the early 13th century in Roger Bacon and Albert the
Great. The author argues that Bacon reduces all the disciplines to mathematics as the
most scientific discipline, even as he argues that experimentum is at the center of scientific
evidence and conclusions. Albert the Great, by contrast, gives a more strongly analogical
account of science, with broader differences between different disciplines as operating
according to different intellectual lights and methods. Albert champions experimentum
in physics in a special way, rejecting a mathematical physics.
Key words: Roger Bacon; Albert the Great; Aristotle; Aristotelian Science; Demonstration; Mathematics; Experiment; Experience; Physics / Natural Philosophy; Metaphysics;
Theology.
Eileen Sweeney
Department of Philosophy
Boston College
MA - 02467, Chestnut Hill
eileen.sweeney@bc.edu