Bacon was born around 1214, probably in Somerset, to a wealthy family that was reduced to poverty by its allegiance to Henry III against the barons. Before this fall, he managed to spend £10m in today’s money pursuing his research. In 1266, Pope Clement IV wrote to him in secret, asking for his thoughts and solutions to the problems of the day. The response was an encyclopaedia beginning with the Opus Majus, written in defiance of a Franciscan prohibition, but there is no evidence that the Pope was able to read it before he died.

Bacon wrote that “he who is ignorant of mathematics cannot know the other sciences nor the affairs of this world”. He identified mathematics and experimentation as the twin pillars of science and even denounced Thomas Aquinas as a philosophical fraud for neglecting them. He was disgusted that the latter’s system convinced many that philosophy was at an end. On the contrary, he wrote, “future generations will know much that we are ignorant of, and a time will come when our successors will wonder that we were blind to things so obvious to them”.

Like Socrates, Bacon was fond of admitting his own ignorance, although it extended somewhat further than he suspected. Like all the best pre-modern thinkers he was responsible for his share of claptrap, such as his thesis on the preservation of youth that became a source­book for quacks.

He thought the disparity between contemporary lifespans and those of Biblical characters was down to a moral decline and suggested that old men could regain their youth by inhaling the breath of virgins. He shared the common delusion that the Second Coming was imminent. In fact, he argued that scientific research was needed because if good men did not use such learning then the Antichrist surely would, and he must not be allowed exclusive access to “burning glasses”, “navigating machines” for ships, horseless “scythe-­bearing cars that cut through all ­obstacles” and “flying machines”.