Quantifying Aristotle

The Impact, Spread and Decline of the Calculatores Tradition
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-90-04-49982-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 34, 480 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 820 g

Reihe: Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy and Science

Aristotelian philosophy is generally regarded as incompatible with the mathematical methods and principles that form the basis of modern science. This book offers an entirely new perspective on this presumed incompatibility. It surveys the tradition of the Oxford Calculators from its beginnings in the fourteenth century until Leibniz and the philosophy of the seventeenth century and explores how the Calculators' techniques of quantification expanded the conceptual and methodological limits of Aristotelianism. In the process, it examines a large number of authors, some of them never studied in this context. Exploring the relationship between various late medieval disciplines, the book sheds new light on the problem of continuity vs. discontinuity between scholasticism and modern science. Beyond its historiographical purpose, this book also hopes to be a source of inspiration for present-day philosophers of science.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Di Liscia, Daniel A.

Sylla, Edith D.

Fachgebiete

• Mathematik | Informatik Mathematik Mathematik Allgemein Geschichte der Mathematik
• Mathematik | Informatik Mathematik Mathematik Allgemein Philosophie der Mathematik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie der Mathematik, Philosophie der Physik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Antike Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Daniel A. Di Liscia

1 Thomas Wylton on the Ceasing of an Instant of Time

Cecilia Trifogli

2 The New Interpretation of Aristotle: Richard Kilvington, Thomas Bradwardine, and the New Rule of Motion

Elzbieta Jung

3 The Opuscula de motu Ascribed to Richard Swineshead: The Testimony of the Ongoing Development of the Oxford Calculators’ Science of Motion

Robert Podkonski

4 Calculations in Thomas Bradwardine’s De causa dei, Book I

Edit Anna Lukács

5 The Calculators on the Insolubles: Bradwardine, Kilvington, Heytesbury, Swyneshed, and Dumbleton

Stephen Read

6 The Influence of the Oxford Calculatores on the Understanding of Local Motion: The Example of the Tractatus de sex inconvenientibus

Sabine Rommevaux-Tani

7 Wyclif, the Black Sheep of the Oxford Calculators

Mark Thakkar

8 On the Reception of English Logic at Universities of Central Europe: Helmoldus de Zoltwedel (Prague, Leipzig) on the Liar-Paradox

Harald Berger

9 Blasius of Parma on the Calculation of the Variation of Qualities and Aristotelian Physics

Joël Biard

10 The Calculators Tradition in Oresme’s De visione stellarum

Aníbal Szapiro

11 Perfections and Latitudes: The Development of the Calculators’ Tradition and the Geometrisation of Metaphysics and Theology

Daniel A. Di Liscia

12 Decline of the Calculators in Paris c. 1500: Humanism and Print

Richard Oosterhoff

13 Some Aspects of the ‘Rules’ of motus difformis in Angelo da Fossambruno’s Commentary on Heytesbury’s De tribus praedicamentis

Fabio Seller

14 Leibniz and the Calculators

Edith Dudley Sylla

Manuscripts

Bibliography

Index Nominum

Über Autor(innen)

Daniel A. Di Liscia (Ph.D. 2003), is Lecturer at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany), at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. He worked on the edition of Copernicus and Kepler, and published several papers on the Oxford Calculators, in particular on the latitude of forms.

Edith D. Sylla (Ph.D. 1971) is Professor Emerita at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, North Carolina). She works on the history of mathematics, physics, and their interrelations from the late Middle Ages to the early eighteenth century.