The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon

Published in 1897, this was the first complete edition of Roger Bacon's influential thirteenth-century encyclopedia of science.

This 1897 two-volume edition of Roger Bacon's ground-breaking thirteenth-century encyclopedia of science was the first complete printed edition. Bacon's text appears here in the original Latin, and Bridges provides ample supplementary material in English, including an introduction, analytical table, footnotes, and analysis of each chapter.Roger Bacon, the medieval natural philosopher who broke new ground in promoting scientific method, produced the encyclopedic Opus Majus or 'Greater Work' in the mid-thirteenth century. This 1897 publication in two volumes was the first complete edition of the work to appear in print. Written at the request of Pope Clement IV, the Opus Majus is the most significant and most influential of Bacon's works, containing his observations of the natural world and theories on knowledge acquisition. Bacon's text appears in the original Latin, and Bridges includes a substantial introduction and brief analysis of each chapter in English, as well as extensive footnotes and an analytical table to aid the reader. Volume 2 contains the last three parts of Bacon's treatise, on Optics, Experimental Science, and Moral Philosophy. This volume also incorporates a later supplement containing additional material and corrections.