SOURCE: "Grosseteste and the Oxford School," in Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, 1100-1700, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1953, pp. 135-88.

In the following excerpt, Crombie demonstrates the influence of Robert Grosseteste 's thought upon Bacon 's scientifictheories.

The writer who most thoroughly grasped, and who mostelaborately developed Grosseteste's attitude to nature andtheory of science was Roger Bacon (c. 1214-92) himself. Recent research has shown that in many of the aspects ofhis science in which he has been thought to have beenmost original, Bacon was simply taking over the Oxfordand Grossetestian tradition, though he was able also tomake use of new sources unknown to Grosseteste, as, forexample, the Optics of Alhazen. Though it is improbablethat Bacon heard Grosseteste's lectures at Oxford, heseems to have become a member of Grosseteste's 'circle'by 1249, and when he became a Franciscan friar he would, no doubt, have had access to his...