SOURCE: "Roger Bacon as a Critic among the Schoolmen," in Roger Bacon: A Biography, James Clark & Co., Ltd, 1938, pp. 89-101.

In the following excerpt, Woodruff examines the role of Bacon as a critic of and among the Schoolmen, comparing his philosophical emphases with those of Thomas Aquinas, Alexander of Hales, and others.

Bacon was somewhat critical of the intellectual world around him, and it is important to consider his comments on some of the great individuals of his day. At first he seems to have studied with a docile spirit, and to have been appreciative of his teachers. Indeed to judge from his earlier writings there is little to distinguish him from the general tone of the time. For instance, in his treatise Questions on Aristotle, which belongs to his early Paris life, there is hardly a trace of that emphasis on the appeal to experience which is...