Roger Bacon became the "father of empiricism." Understanding that he could only believe scientifically what could be verified repeatedly through experiment and the senses, Bacon's experiments carefully assembled the empirical method of science, starting with hypothesis, testable by experiment and laying out the influencing variables and permutations before arriving at any conclusions. Based on his own experiments with optics and lens making, he may have been one of the inventors of the telescope. In his own words he wrote:

For we can so shape transparent bodies, and arrange them in such a way with respect to our sight and objects of vision, that the rays will be reflected and bent in any direction we desire, and under any angle we wish, we may see the object near or at a distance. . . . Sowe might also cause the Sun, Moon and stars in appearance to descend here below. . . .

The ability to draw the celestial bodies closer in--"Sun, Moon and Stars in appearance to descend here below"--seems impossible to achieve without the magnification power of a series of separate lenses of a telescope. Bacon also believed that Earth was a sphere, a deduction derivable by geometric principles, and that enough water existed in oceans to circumnavigate the planet. Also using geometry, he deduced the nearest stars were over 130 million miles distant, greatly in error considering the Earth-Sun distance is around 93 million miles, but nonetheless a huge sum for his day.

Scientists following Bacon gradually began to understand his enormous range of interests and the value of empirical experiment over perceived authority. Rationalism and empiricism did not find common intellectual acceptance until the Renaissance and afterward, so in some sense Bacon was ahead of his time. Bacon's work in optics and on light anticipated Galileo (1564-1642) and Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) by about four centuries; his work on reversing lenses and a probable telescope invention likewise are in advance of instrumentation of the microscope in the inventions of Zacharias Janssen (c. 1580-1638), Robert Hooke (1635-1703), and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723). Bacon's study of gunpowder and incendiaries became important in European warfare and reduced the role of castles and like defenses, helping to make feudalism obsolete. His insistence on linguistic accuracy and original biblical texts possibly even influenced John Wyclif (c. 1328-1384) in biblical studies in anticipation of the Reformation, where authority of text was more important than authority of tradition. Overall, Bacon has to be one of the greatest minds in the history of science.

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