Oresme's commentary is one of the most relevant documents of the discussions at Paris University in the midst of the 14th Century. Original solutions concerning the main philosophical issues are associated with sharp criticism of the realist and nominalist positions.

This book examines scholastic conceptions of final causality through the methods and concerns of historical theology. It argues the history of final causality is most profitably understood according to the interplay of regularity, order, and intentionality as interpretive categories. Within this analytic framework, the author explores the history and theological implications of final causality from Aristotle to Nicole Oresme, utilizing shifts in the dominant interpretive category to clarify how final causality could change from one of four co-equal explanatory strategies in Aristotle to the cause of causes in Avicenna to a merely metaphorical cause in Walter Chatton. Theological debates – ranging from questions of creation, the relationship of primary and secondary causality and of the ultimate good to secondary goods, the autonomy or instrumentality of nature, and the compatibility of chance with providence – motivated many of these changes. The chapters examine final causality in Aristotle and the commentorial tradition from late antiquity to medieval Arabic sources and then consider in detail various scholastic understandings and uses of final causality. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of historical theology, systematic theology, scholastic thought, and medieval philosophy.

This volume collects twelve chapters that present the multifaceted responses to the works of the William of Ockham in Oxford, Paris, Italy, and at the papal court in Avignon in the 14th century, and it assembles contributions on philosophers and theologians who all have criticized Ockham’s works at different points. In individual case studies it gives an exemplary overview over the reactions the Venerable Inceptor has provoked and also serves to better understand Ockham’s thought in its historical context. The topics range from ontology, psychology, theory of cognition, epistemology, and natural science to ethics and political philosophy. This volume demonstrates that the reactions to Ockham’s philosophy and theology were manifold, but one particular kind of reception is missing: unanimous approval. Contributors include Fabrizio Amerini, Stephen F. Brown, Nathaniel Bulthuis, Stefano Caroti, Laurent Cesalli, Alessandro D. Conti, Thomas Dewender, Isabel Iribarren, Isabelle Mandrella, Aurélien Robert, Christian Rode, and Sonja Schierbaum

John Buridan (d. ca. 1360) was one of the most talented and influential philosophers of the later Middle Ages. He spent his career as a master in the Arts Faculty at the University of Paris, producing commentaries and independent treatises on logic, metaphysics, natural philosophy, and ethics. His Questions Commentary on the eight books of Aristotle's Physics is the most important witness to Buridan's teachings in the field of natural philosophy. The commentary was widely read during the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This volume presents the first critical edition of books I & II of the final redaction of Buridan's Questions Commentary on the Physics. The critical edition of the Latin text is accompanied by a detailed guide to the contents of Buridan's questions.

Nicole Oresme was one of the most original and influential thinkers of the fourteenth century. He is best known for his mathematical discoveries, his economic theories, as well as his vernacular translations of cosmological and ethical texts that were undertaken at the request of King Charles V. This volume sheds light on the beginning of Oresme's scientific activity at the University of Paris (ca. 1340 – ca. 1350), a period of his intellectual career about which little is known. Over the course of this decade, Oresme lectured on many Aristotelian texts on natural philosophy, such as the Physics, On the Heavens, On generation and corruption, Meteorology, and On the Soul. Oresme's commentaries on Aristotle's Meteorology count among his only unpublished texts. This volume presents the first critical edition of books I-II.10 of the second redaction of Oresme's Questions on Meteorology. The edition is preceded by a historical and philological introduction that discusses the context of Oresme’s scientific career and examines the manuscript tradition.

This volume focuses on philosophical problems concerning sense perception in the history of philosophy. It consists of thirteen essays that analyse the philosophical tradition originating in Aristotle’s writings. Each essay tackles a particular problem that tests the limits of Aristotle’s theory of perception and develops it in new directions. The problems discussed range from simultaneous perception to causality in perception, from the representational nature of sense-objects to the role of conscious attention, and from the physical/mental divide to perception as quasi-rational judgement. The volume gives an equal footing to Greek, Arabic, and Latin philosophical traditions. It makes a substantial contribution not just to the study of the Aristotelian analysis of sense perception, but to its reception in the commentary tradition and beyond. Thus, the papers address developments in Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Avicenna, John of Jandun, Nicole Oresme, and Sayf al-Din al-Amidi, among others. The result of this is a coherent collection that attacks a well-defined topic from a wide range of perspectives and across philosophical traditions.

This book offers an entirely new perspective on the alleged incompatibility between Aristotelian philosophy and the mathematical methods and principles that form the basis of modern science. 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 their various techniques of quantification expanded the conceptual and methodological limits of Aristotelianism.

This volume provides a much needed, historically accurate narrative of the development of theories of space up to the beginning of the eighteenth century. It studies conceptions of space that were implicitly or explicitly entailed by ancient, medieval and early modern representations of the cosmos. The authors reassess Alexandre Koyré’s groundbreaking work From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (1957) and they trace the permanence of arguments to be found throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. By adopting a long timescale, this book sheds new light on the continuity between various cosmological representations and their impact on the ontology and epistemology of space. Readers may explore the work of a variety of authors including Aristotle, Epicurus, Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, John Wyclif, Peter Auriol, Nicholas Bonet, Francisco Suárez, Francesco Patrizi, Giordano Bruno, Libert Froidmont, Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke. We see how reflections on space, imagination and the cosmos were the product of a plurality of philosophical traditions that found themselves confronted with, and enriched by, various scientific and theological challenges which induced multiple conceptual adaptations and innovations. This volume is a useful resource for historians of philosophy, those with an interest in the history of science, and particularly those seeking to understand the historical background of the philosophy of space.

Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy showcases the best new scholarly work on philosophy from the end of antiquity into the Renaissance. OSMP combines historical scholarship with philosophical acuteness, and will be an essential resource for anyone working in the area.

The Ultimate Space Place presents information about the history of space flight, with emphasis on aviation, rocketry, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle.