''Doctor Mirabilis'' is a historical novel written in 1964 by American writer

James Blish James Benjamin Blish () was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is best known for his '' Cities in Flight'' novels and his series of ''Star Trek'' novelizations written with his wife, J. A. Lawrence. His novel '' A Case of Conscie ...

. Blish, James "Doctor Mirabilis : A Vision", New English Library, 1964 This is the second book in Blish's quasi-religious trilogy '' After Such Knowledge'' (1958-1971). The historical novel recounts of the life of the 13th-century English Franciscan Roger Bacon and his struggle to develop a 'Universal Science'. Though thoroughly researched, with a host of references, including extensive use of Bacon's own writings, frequently in the original Latin, the book is written in the style of a novel, and Blish himself referred to it as 'fiction' or 'a vision'. Blish's view of Bacon is uncompromisingly that he was the first scientist, and he provides a postscript to the novel in which he sets forth these views. Central to his depiction of Roger Bacon is that "He was not an inventor, an Edison or

Luther Burbank Luther Burbank (March 7, 1849 – April 11, 1926) was an American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science. He developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. Burbank's varied creations inc ...

, holding up a test tube with a shout of Eureka!" He was instead a theoretical scientist probing fundamental realities, and his visions of modern technology were just by-products of "...the way he normally thought – the theory of theories as tools..." Blish indicates where Bacon's writings, for example, consider Newtonian metrical frameworks for space, then reject these for something which reads remarkably like Einsteinian relativity, and all "...breathtakingly without pause or hiccup, breezily moving without any recourse through over 800 years of physics".

References

1964 American novels 1964 science fiction novels American science fiction novels American historical novels Novels by James Blish Novels set in the Middle Ages Science in fiction by theme Faber and Faber books {{1960s-hist-novel-stub