SOURCE: "Religion and Mediaeval Science," in Mediaeval Religion (The Forwood Lectures 1934) and Other Essays, Sheed & Ward Inc., 1934, pp. 57-94.

In the following excerpt, Dawson summarizes the significance of Bacon's thought and its originality, citing him as a key example of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

[It] is difficult to overestimate the influence of Grosseteste's thought on the mind of one of the most remarkable figures of the thirteenth century, whose fame has indeed overshadowed that of his master—I mean Roger Bacon. It was from Grosseteste that Bacon derived not only his distinctive philosophical and scientific views, above all his conviction of the importance of mathematics, but also his interest in philology and in the study of Greek and the oriental languages, of which Grosseteste was one of the pioneers. But if Bacon owed far more to his predecessors than has usually been supposed, he...