Science & Technology

J.J.N. McGurk profiles Roger Bacon; a 13-century Franciscan, with a reputation as a necromancer, who showed a remarkable combination at Oxford and in Paris of philosophic and scientific gifts.

Michael Langley describes how, until a mid-eighteenth century innovation, navigators seldom knew exactly where they were when at sea.

Raymond Lamont Brown describes how this professional soldier’s greatest achievement was a splendid feat of peace-time engineering along lines that he himself laid down.

David Patten describes how the breech-loading rifle was newly used during the American War of Independence and how its founder Patrick Ferguson himself was slain in North Carolina, 1780.

Letha Musgrave introduces William of Ockham  a native of Surrey, the Franciscan scientist and philosopher who was deeply involved during his own lifetime in the politics of medieval Church and State.

Gerald Morgan describes how the history of Europe and Asia was changed when Mongolian horses were adopted for migration.

Trevor Fawcett describes how courses of public lectures provided some of the knowledge of science omitted from a gentleman’s education.

J.H.M. Salmon asserts that René Descartes and Blaise Pascal stand out from other men of letters of their era due to the enduring relevance of their lives and works.

W. Bruce Lincoln describes how Enlightenment figures and themes drifted gradually westward, to the Russia of Peter the Great.

Since the myths of creation were composed, writes John Cohen, men have tried to emulate the gods. Is the twentieth-century computer capable of the daemonic urge?