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- Intermediate Parts of Motion According to Ramon Llull: Some Remarks About
His Medieval Background
Authors: José Higuera Rubio
Pages: 17 - 32
Abstract: Following Aristotle, Averroes rejects atomism and the infinite division of geometric lines. Thus, his arguments dealt with the continuity and contiguity of the non-atomic parts of motion. He vindicates the perceptual aspect of physical movement that shows itself like in-progress-path between two edge points A and B, in which there are middle parts where qualitative, local, or quantitative changes occur. Ramon Llull took the lines’ geometrical points as “motion parts.” Points are intermediate divisions that represent physical phenomena by the continuity of geometrical lines, surfaces, and figures. Also, he appeals to relational logic to spot the middle parts between A and B into the in-progress-path of motion. Those middle parts are signified by a dynamic vocabulary, called: correlative language. This contribution focuses on the conceptual environment of Llull’s assumptions, in which Averroes’ Latin readers explored the geometry and the vocabulary of motion intermediate parts.
PubDate: 2022-10-12
DOI: 10.21071/refime.v29i1.15088
Issue No: Vol. 29, No. 1 (2022)
- An (Apparent) Exception in the Aristotelian Natural Philosophy:
Antiperistasis as Action on Contrary Qualities and its Interpretation in
the Medieval Philosophical and Medical Commentary Tradition
Authors: Aurora Panzica
Pages: 33 - 76
Abstract: This paper explores the scholastic debate about antiperistasis, a mechanism in Aristotle’s dynamics described in the first book of Meteorology as an intensification of a quality caused by the action of the contrary one. After having distinguished this process from a homonymous, but totally different, principle concerning the dynamics of fluids that Aristotle describes in his Physics, I focus on the medieval reception of the former. Scholastic commentators oriented their exegetical effort in elaborating a consistent explanation of an apparently paradoxical process like the intensification of a quality by the opposite one. From the fourteenth century onwards, most of the commentators resorted to the theory of the multiplication of species, according to which each entity acts through the emission of simulacra of the objects (species) that spread spherically in the medium. When these rays encounter an obstacle, such as a contrary quality, they are pushed back towards their source. The reflection of the species determined by the surrounding and opposite quality produces a concentration of the first one, which is therefore intensified. Another distinctive feature of the scholastic interpretation of Aristotle’s antiperistasis is the convergence between the discussions on inorganic and organic matter, physical and medical discourse. This convergence found its most significant expression in the adoption of the model described in the first book of Aristotle’s Meteorology to the biological context of Hippocrates’s Aphorisms I, 15. Following Galen’s exegesis of this passage, medieval commentators established a link between physics and medicine substantially extraneous to Aristotle’s theory.
PubDate: 2022-10-12
DOI: 10.21071/refime.v29i1.15134
Issue No: Vol. 29, No. 1 (2022)
- Robert Halifax, an Oxford Calculator of Shadows
Authors: Edit Anna Lukács
Pages: 77 - 95
Abstract: In his commentary on Lombardʼs Sentences, question 1, Robert Halifax OFM presents a remarkably original and inventive optical argument. It compares two pairs of luminous and opaque bodies with two shadow cones until the luminous bodies reach the zenith. In placing two moving human beings into the shadow cones whose moral evolution parallels the size of the shadows, Halifax creates an unprecedented shadow theater equipped with mathematics and theorems of motion from Thomas Bradwardineʼs Treatise on Proportions. This paper is a first attempt at analyzing this imaginary experiment and the mathematics of the infinite it implies. It also shows that optics had new aims through its connexion with the theorems of motion of the Oxford Calculators.
PubDate: 2022-10-12
DOI: 10.21071/refime.v29i1.15135
Issue No: Vol. 29, No. 1 (2022)
- The Paradoxes Produced by the Different Ways of Determining the Rapidity
of Motion in the Anonymous Treatise De sex inconvenientibus
Authors: Sabine Rommevaux-Tani
Pages: 97 - 111
Abstract: The anonymous treatise De sex inconvenientibus is a good example of the calculatores’ approach when dealing with motion. It is organized around four main questions relating to the determination of rapidity in four kinds of changes, i.e. in the generation of substantial forms, in alteration, in increase, and in local motion. In some arguments the author points out the paradoxes to which the two ways of determining the rapidity of a motion can lead: rapidity is determined by the effect produced (the degree of quality generated, the space covered, etc.) or it results from the ratio between the moving power and the resistance of the mobile or patient. While this twofold approach to determining rapidity appears in the majority of calculator texts, the two points of view – the analysis according to its effects and the analysis according to its causes – have rarely been confronted.
PubDate: 2022-10-12
DOI: 10.21071/refime.v29i1.15136
Issue No: Vol. 29, No. 1 (2022)
- Nicole Oresme on Motion and the Atomization of the Continuum
Authors: Philippe Debroise
Pages: 113 - 155
Abstract: As Aristotle classically defined it, continuity is the property of being infinitely divisible into ever-divisible parts. How has this conception been affected by the process of mathematization of motion during the 14th century' This paper focuses on Nicole Oresme, who extensively commented on Aristotle’s Physics, but also made decisive contributions to the mathematics of motion. Oresme’s attitude about continuity seems ambivalent: on the one hand, he never really departs from Aristotle’s conception, but on the other hand, he uses it in a completely new way in his mathematics, particularly in his Questions on Euclidean geometry, a tantamount way to an atomization of motion. If the fluxus theory of natural motion involves that continuity is an essential property of real motion, defined as a res successiva, the ontological and mathematical structure of this continuity implies that continuum is in some way “composed” of an infinite number of indivisibles. In fact, Oresme’s analysis opened the path to a completely new kind of mathematical continuity.
PubDate: 2022-10-12
DOI: 10.21071/refime.v29i1.15137
Issue No: Vol. 29, No. 1 (2022)
- Nicole Oresme on the Movements of Javelin Throwers: a Peripatetic Reading
of De Configurationibus II, 37
Authors: Valérie Cordonier
Pages: 157 - 198
Abstract: In this contribution, I analyze a text by Oresme which gives a rather original explanation of the process of throwing a javelin and, more generally, of the actions of people who seem to have a kind of natural ability to succeed in their actions (De Configurationibus II, 37). In highlighting some sources that appear to have been present on the author’s mind although they were hitherto neglected in Oresmian studies, I would like to show that his presentation of this specific kind of motion is deeply rooted in the scholastic theological tradition and that this tradition makes this chapter seem much less strange than it might seem at first glance.
PubDate: 2022-10-12
DOI: 10.21071/refime.v29i1.15138
Issue No: Vol. 29, No. 1 (2022)
- The Concept of Motion in Jacques Legrand’s Philosophical Compendium
Authors: Daniel Di Liscia
Pages: 199 - 233
Abstract: The following paper investigates the concept of motion in Jacques Legrand, a hitherto little-studied author of the early fifteenth century. Legrand, an important member of the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine, wrote a philosophical Compendium for the students of his Order. This contribution first attempts to provide a contextualization of Legrand’s treatment of motion within this work. Legrand’s contribution to philosophical encyclopedism is here discussed. Secondly, it reviews the most important theories on the nature of movement in the Middle Ages. Thirdly, it offers a detailed analysis of Legrand’s arguments in support of the nominalist view that it is unnecessary (if not wrong) to consider the local motion as a fluxus added to the moveable body. The article suggests that Legrand’s generalized nominalist position may be connected with certain lines to be followed within his own Order or even with the anti-realist ideology of the conciliarists philosopher, like Pierre D’Ailly and Jean Gerson.
PubDate: 2022-10-12
DOI: 10.21071/refime.v29i1.15142
Issue No: Vol. 29, No. 1 (2022)
- Mark Edwards, Dimitrios Pallis, and Georgios Steiris. Eds. The Oxford
Handbook on Dionysius the Areopagite. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2022.
Authors: Gustavo Riesgo
Pages: 243 - 245
Abstract: This book of recent publication represents an updated synthesis of the origins, receptions, and influence of the Corpus Dionysiacum. The topics developed are not limited to the Neoplatonic roots and its fusion with Christianity, but rather explore the traditions that converge in the thought of (Pseudo) Dionysius the Areopagite and their deploy in various philosophies and theologies that are deeply affected by the reading modes of the Corpus. The writers recognized authority on the subject and the thematic extension that they cover constitute this volume in a new reference work necessary for Dionysian studies and the receptions of late-ancient thought in general.
PubDate: 2022-10-12
DOI: 10.21071/refime.v29i1.14302
Issue No: Vol. 29, No. 1 (2022)
- Luis Bacigalupo. Aristóteles en París. Ensayos sobre la filosofía
cristiana en la Edad Media, Lima: Fondo Editorial PUCP, 2022.
Authors: Jean Christian Egoavil
Pages: 272 - 274
PubDate: 2022-10-12
DOI: 10.21071/refime.v29i1.15131
Issue No: Vol. 29, No. 1 (2022)
- Thomas Murner. El Juego de Cartas de Lógica. Traducción, introducción y
notas de Jorge Medina Delgadillo. Prólogo de Mauricio Beuchot. Ciudad de
México: Notas Universitarias, 2017.
Authors: José Luis Caballero Bono
Pages: 275 - 277
PubDate: 2022-10-12
DOI: 10.21071/refime.v29i1.14200
Issue No: Vol. 29, No. 1 (2022)
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