The Effects of Medieval Islamic Thought on Roger Bacon’s Understanding of Being

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Translations from Greek and Arabic into Latin during Middle Ages effect several Medieval European philosophers. One of them is Roger Bacon (1214/1292). In De multipliatione specierum, Bacon's basic problem was to account the change in the World and the causes of the change. In this way he imposed a new sense to the conception species and by this conception he tried to account for the change in the World. He described the term species as "first effect of an agent" and material force. By describing the term species as material force, he accounted for the change in the World with a physical causation. The physical causation of the change in Bacon essentially based on the philosophical and religious tradition of light metaphor which used it in the content of metaphysical and epistemological concept. In this way Neoplatonism affect Bacon's philosophy of nature by indirection. The effect of Neoplatonism was with the translations from Arabic into Latin. Especially Kindî who has first-hand knowledge of Plotinus imposed on Bacon and Robert Grosseteste and designated their philosophy. Bacon and Grosseteste took the main idea of Kinî's philosophy, that "All things come into being and exist through rays" and "the forces of all things that exist are infused and penetrated through everything". Bacon converted the Kindî's metaphysical causation into physical causation. In addition to Kindî he affected by Avicebron, Avicenna and Alhazen and made a new physical causality. Morever, he improved Alhazen's mathematically/geometrical formulation -which he only used in optic- in all physical nature. In this paper my aim is to show how Islamic thought effect Roger Bacon and what was new in his philosophy.