endar reform, which Bacon had formed after making observations. It was reported that Bacon ... did sometimes use in the night season to ascend this place (his study on Folly Bridge, on an eyot midstream in the Thames) invironed with waters and there to take the altitude and distance of stars and make use of it for his own convenience... Bacon believed that the Earth was a sphere and that one could sail round it. He estimated the distance to the stars coming up with the answer 130 million miles. Around 1278 Bacon was put in prison by his fellow Franciscans, the charge being of suspected novelties in his teaching. Clearly from his writings Bacon did not meekly refrain from putting forward his views after this. They were as aggressively stated in his last writings of 1293 as at any time in his life. William of Occam, 1285-1349, deceased. “It is vain to do more with what can be done for less.” (No photo available) Ockham was born in Surrey, England. He entered the Franciscan order and studied and taught at the University of Oxford from 1309 to 1319. Denounced by Pope John XXII for dangerous teachings, he was held in house detention for four years (1324-1328) at the papal palace in Avignon, France, while the orthodoxy of his writings was examined. Siding with the Franciscan general against the pope in a dispute over Franciscan poverty, Ockham fled to Munich in 1328 to seek the protection of Louis IV, Holy Roman emperor, who had rejected papal authority over political matters. Excommunicated by the pope, Ockham wrote against the papacy and defended the emperor until the latter's death in 1347. William of Occam is most famously known for his concept of adhering to the simplest hypothesis, known as Occam’s razor.Auguste Comte, 1798-1857, departed. A French positivist who was the founder of sociology. Comte argued that an empirical study of historical processes, particularly of the progress of the various interrelated sciences...
