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Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
- Print publication:
- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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44 - The subject of the aristotelian science of metaphysics
- from VIII - Metaphysics
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- By Rega Wood, Indiana University
- Edited by Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado Boulder
- Edited in association with Christina van Dyke, Calvin College, Michigan
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- Book:
- The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2014
- Print publication:
- 19 June 2014, pp 609-621
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Summary
Aristotelian science conveys understanding by showing the necessary relationship between immediately evident first principles and conclusions about the natural world. To take a trivial example: induction from repeated experience teaches us that all broad-leaved plants are deciduous. We discover that grapevines have broad leaves. We infer that grapevines are deciduous, and thereby we also learn that they lose their leaves in winter because they are broad-leaved (see Aristotle, Post. An. II.16–17).
Aristotelian science explains a subject’s possession of an attribute (the explanandum) by identifying the possession of that attribute with membership in a species, and then citing as explanans the inclusion of that species within a prior genus. In the present example, the property is “losing its leaves in winter,” the species is “grapevines,” and the genus is “broad-leaved plants.” The explanation is then presented in the form of a syllogism. In the first premise an attribute (being deciduous) is predicated of a subject (broad-leaved plant). The second premise introduces a new subject that belongs to the class described by the subject of the first premise, allowing us to conclude that the second subject shares an attribute of the first.
Aristotle describes this demonstration as propter quid science because it explains why grape leaves fall. If the deduction were valid, but its premises were not explanatory, it would count as quia science: knowing a fact without understanding why it obtains (ibid., I.13, 78a22–b3) (see also Chapter 26).
18 - The influence of arabic aristotelianism on scholastic natural philosophy: projectile motion, the place of the universe, and elemental composition
- from III - Natural philosophy
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- By Rega Wood, Indiana University
- Edited by Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado Boulder
- Edited in association with Christina van Dyke, Calvin College, Michigan
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- The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2014
- Print publication:
- 19 June 2014, pp 247-266
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Summary
Most popular accounts of the introduction of Aristotle’s natural philosophy credit Arabic civilization with transmitting classical Greek works to the Latin West. By contrast, a few contemporary authors, hostile to Islam, deny any contribution of the Islamic world to scholasticism. Neither claim is credible. As we shall see, although Arabic Aristotelianism did not provide the primary access to Aristotle’s texts themselves, it did make a profound contribution to scholastic natural philosophy.
Confounding this dispute is a misunderstanding of the significance of Arabic-based Aristotle translations. Scholastic authors seldom commented on translations based on the Arabic Aristotle. Almost every major scholastic commentary on Greek philosophical works is based on a direct translation from Greek into Latin, with a few early exceptions. Scholastics evidently recognized that though they were often harder to follow and more obscure than translations from the Arabic Aristotle, Greek-based translations were closer to the original.
So let us look chiefly at the influence of the interpretative tradition of Arabic Aristotelianism on the Latin West, after saying a few words on translations of Arabic texts. We will suggest that though scholastics did not comment on Arabic-based translations of Aristotle, without these translations and more importantly without the interpretative tradition that accompanied them, the scholastic tradition would have been much poorer; indeed, it might never have arisen. After all, James of Venice’s translations had been available since about 1150, but Aristotelian analytics, metaphysics, and natural philosophy began to influence major scholastic authors only when the Michael Scot translations became available around 1225.
18 - The influence of Arabic Aristotelianism on scholastic natural philosophy: projectile motion, the place of the universe, and elemental composition
- from III - Natural philosophy
-
- By Rega Wood
- Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado Boulder
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy
- Published online:
- 28 May 2011
- Print publication:
- 17 December 2009, pp 247-266
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Summary
Most popular accounts of the introduction of Aristotle’s natural philosophy credit Arabic civilization with transmitting classical Greek works to the Latin West. By contrast, a few contemporary authors, hostile to Islam, deny any contribution of the Islamic world to scholasticism. Neither claim is credible. As we shall see, although Arabic Aristotelianism did not provide the primary access to Aristotle’s texts themselves, it did make a profound contribution to scholastic natural philosophy.
Confounding this dispute is a misunderstanding of the significance of Arabic-based Aristotle translations. Scholastic authors seldom commented on translations based on the Arabic Aristotle. Almost every major scholastic commentary on Greek philosophical works is based on a direct translation from Greek into Latin, with a few early exceptions. Scholastics evidently recognized that though they were often harder to follow and more obscure than translations from the Arabic Aristotle, Greek-based translations were closer to the original.
So let us look chiefly at the influence of the interpretative tradition of Arabic Aristotelianism on the Latin West, after saying a few words on translations of Arabic texts. We will suggest that though scholastics did not comment on Arabic-based translations of Aristotle, without these translations and more importantly without the interpretative tradition that accompanied them, the scholastic tradition would have been much poorer; indeed, it might never have arisen. After all, James of Venice’s translations had been available since about 1150, but Aristotelian analytics, metaphysics, and natural philosophy began to influence major scholastic authors only when the Michael Scot translations became available around 1225.
44 - The subject of the Aristotelian science of metaphysics
- from VIII - Metaphysics
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- By Rega Wood
- Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado Boulder
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy
- Published online:
- 28 May 2011
- Print publication:
- 17 December 2009, pp 607-621
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- Export citation
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Summary
Aristotelian science conveys understanding by showing the necessary relationship between immediately evident first principles and conclusions about the natural world. To take a trivial example: induction from repeated experience teaches us that all broad-leaved plants are deciduous. We discover that grapevines have broad leaves. We infer that grapevines are deciduous, and thereby we also learn that they lose their leaves in winter because they are broad-leaved (see Aristotle, Post. An. II.16–17).
Aristotelian science explains a subject’s possession of an attribute (the explanandum) by identifying the possession of that attribute with membership in a species, and then citing as explanans the inclusion of that species within a prior genus. In the present example, the property is “losing its leaves in winter,” the species is “grapevines,” and the genus is “broad-leaved plants.” The explanation is then presented in the form of a syllogism. In the first premise an attribute (being deciduous) is predicated of a subject (broad-leaved plant). The second premise introduces a new subject that belongs to the class described by the subject of the first premise, allowing us to conclude that the second subject shares an attribute of the first.
Aristotle describes this demonstration as propter quid science because it explains why grape leaves fall. If the deduction were valid, but its premises were not explanatory, it would count as quia science: knowing a fact without understanding why it obtains (ibid., I.13, 78a22–b3) (see also Chapter 26).
Richard Rufus’s De anima Commentary: The Earliest Known, Surviving, Western De anima Commentary
- REGA WOOD
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- Journal:
- Medieval Philosophy and Theology / Volume 10 / Issue 1 / March 2001
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 16 May 2002, pp. 119-156
- Print publication:
- March 2001
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Richard Rufus of Cornwall was educated as a philosopher at Paris where he was a master of arts.
Thomas Eccleston, De adventu Fratrum minorum in Angliam c. 6 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1951), p. 30. In 1238, after lecturing on Aristotle’s libri naturales, Rufus became a Franciscan and moved to Oxford to study theology, becoming the Franciscan master of theology in about 1256 and probably dying not long after 1259.A. Little, “The Franciscan School at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 19 (1926): 842–45. Wills and Inventories, Surtees Society Publications 2 (London: J.B. Nichols, 1835), pp. 10–11. Cf. A. Little, The Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), p. 143.
15 - Ockham's Repudiation of Pelagianism
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- By Rega Wood
- Edited by Paul Vincent Spade, Indiana University
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to Ockham
- Published online:
- 28 May 2006
- Print publication:
- 13 December 1999, pp 350-374
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Summary
Pelagianism is a heresy first defined in reaction to the views of the monk Pelagius in the fifth century and attacked by Saint Augustine. In the centuries since Pelagius's defeat, theologians have repeatedly stigmatized their opponents as Pelagians. Such disputes typically pit those who emphasize predestination and original sin against those who believe in human free will and human capacity for goodness. But seldom are the arguments in these debates straightforward. Often incredibly refined, they frequently ask us to consider not the human situation as we know it but the situation before the Fall and even the options that obtained (or did not obtain) before humans were created. Not only is Pelagianism a heresy, but so is semi-Pelagianism, and so complicated are the issues involved that advocates of contrary views on relevant issues have both been accused of Pelagianism.
The Earliest Known Surviving Western Medieval Metaphysics Commentary
- REGA WOOD
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- Journal:
- Medieval Philosophy and Theology / Volume 7 / Issue 1 / March 1998
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 March 1998, pp. 39-49
- Print publication:
- March 1998
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Erfurt Quarto 290 includes two commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Timothy B. Noone established the attribution to Richard Rufus of Cornwall of the commentary that appears on folios 1–40,
T. Noone “An Edition and Study of the Scriptumsuper Metaphysicam, bk. 12, dist. 2,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1987). chiefly on the basis of a thirteenth-century ascription to Richard Rufus, deciphered by Fr. Leonard Boyle; the aim of this essay is to show that the author of the commentary on folios 46–56 is also Richard Rufus. Since the manuscript itself was copied before 1250, both commentaries are clearly early. Noone calls the commentary on folios 1–40, the Scriptum, but that seems misleading since Noone also claims that what we have is a record preserved by its auditors, a reportatio (p. 65). And in medieval scholarly practice, a reportatio is distinguished from a scriptum, which is a written version corrected by the author and meant for publication. In order not to prejudice the question whether this commentary is reportatio or a scriptum, we will call it the Dissertatio in Metaphysicam Aristotelis, taking the term ‘Dissertatio’ from the work’s incipit (Vat. lat. 4538, fol. 1ra): “Placet nobis nunc parumper disserere de quadam propositione quam dicit Aristoteles in ‘Veteri Philosophia.’” Rufus cites the Dissertatio as the work of a secular author,Gál, G., “Commentarius in Metaphysicam Aristotelis cod. Vat. lat. 4538, fons doctrinae Richardi Rufi,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 43 (1950):214–15. so it must have been written before he became a Franciscan in 1238. The shorter, more primitive commentary found on folios 46–56 probably dates from around 1235, but the basis for that claim will be stated at the end of this paper.
Walter Burley on Motion in a Vacuum
- Rega Wood
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We all ‘know’ that medieval Aristotelians did not believe that a vacuum was possible, and we are complacent in our ‘knowledge’ that they were wrong. Even if we have an inkling of the sophistication of much medieval thinking on this topic, we are unlikely to suppose that anything medievals had to say on the subject is worth the trouble to study. What we may not realize is that not all medievals thought a vacuum or motion in a vacuum was impossible; following Avempace, in fact, many medieval philosophers argued that motion in a vacuum was possible, at least in theory.
Intuitive Cognition and Divine Omnipotence: Ockham in Fourteenth-Century Perspective
- Rega Wood
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- Journal:
- Studies in Church History Subsidia / Volume 5 / 1987
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 17 February 2016, pp. 51-61
- Print publication:
- 1987
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When someone calls Ockham a philosophical skeptic, he is usually claiming that Ockham denied that our knowledge of the external world is based on certain apprehensions. To discuss this claim requires an understanding of Ockham’s doctrine of intuitive cognition. According to Ockham—and Scotus from whom he derived this view—knowledge of our internal states and the external world is acquired by an intuitive grasp of the facts of existence and presence. But Ockham criticized Scotus on intuitive cognition, holding that Scotus’ views must be modified because God is limited only by the principle of contradiction.
Adam Wodeham on Sensory Illusions with an Edition of ‘Lectura Secunda,’ Prologus, Quaestio 3
- Rega Wood
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In the third question of the Prologue to his Lectura secunda, Adam Wodeham asks whether intuitive cognition can be naturally produced or conserved when its object is either non-existent or absent. This question was written in reply to Peter Aureol, and in it Adam argues that Peter's definition of intuitive cognition has skeptical consequences. In fact, as Wodeham knew, Aureol held that intuitive cognition was unerring, and he was arguing not for skepticism, but merely against Scotus' definition of intuitive cognition.
Nicholas of Lyra and Lutheran Views on Ecclesiastical Office
- Rega Wood
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- Journal:
- The Journal of Ecclesiastical History / Volume 29 / Issue 4 / October 1978
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 March 2011, pp. 451-462
- Print publication:
- October 1978
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Sixteenth-century reformers, led by Martin Luther, justified their resistance to the Roman Church on the basis of Scripture literally understood. Were they influenced by the foremost medieval authority on the literal meaning of Scripture, Nicholas of Lyra? At one time, it seemed obvious that the answer was, ‘yes’. According to a couplet famous in the sixteenth century: Si Lyra non lyrasset, totus mundus delirasset, Lutherus non saltasset.