Roger Bacon OFM (; Latin: Rogerus or Rogerius Baconus, Baconis, also Frater Rogerus; c. – c.), also known by the scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis, was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiricism. In the early modern era, he was regarded as a wizard and particularly famed for the story of his mechanical or necromantic brazen head. He is sometimes credited (mainly since the 19th century) as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method. Bacon applied the empirical method of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) to observations in texts attributed to Aristotle. Bacon discovered the importance of empirical testing when the results he obtained were different than those that would have been predicted by Aristotle. (Aristotle had never performed experiments to verify his explanations of his observations of nature; in ancient times, constructing an artificial situation was not considered a valid way to discover the laws of nature.)