Roger Bacon (1214–94)

Abstract

IN a paper entitled “Notes on the Early History of the Mariner's Compass” in the Geographical Journal for November, 1918, Mr. M. Esposito ably shows the difficulty of stopping a fable when it has once gone forth, and, incidentally, reveals the small amount of knowledge possessed even by eminent men of science of the actual facts of the life of the first modern man of science. Mr. Esposito clearly demonstrates to the scientific public what was already known to Baconian scholars: that Roger Bacon, great as are his titles to remembrance, was neither the inventor nor introducer of the mariner's compass.