Zmiany jakościowe i ich miara w traktacie O sześciu niedorzecznościach
Qualitative changes and their measure in the treatise De sex inconvenientibus

Author(s): Joanna Papiernik
Subject(s): Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: Oxford Calculators; De sex inconvenientibus; motion; Aristotle; Aristotle’s physics; philosophy of nature; qualitative change; Thomas Bradwardine; William Heytesbury
Summary/Abstract: In the late Middle Ages, when universities dominated the intellectual world, natural philosophy was very much about analyzing the works of Aristotle (with commentaries by Averroes), but it does not mean, that this part of philosophy was limited to paraphrasing the Philosopher’s words or that there was nothing new to say. To the contrary, the old problems began to be discussed in greater detail and some new methods were used to solve them. These were the tasks of the group called Oxford Calculators, thinkers from the fourteenth century, connected to Oxford, who presented logical and mathematical approach to philosophical problems. The first Calculators, Richard Kilvington and Thomas Bradwardine, recognized that mathematics can be the right language to describe natural phenomena. In their works – Kilvington in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics and Bradwardine in the On the Proportions of Speeds in Motions (De proportionibus velocitatum in motibus) – they gave convincing reasons, why the laws of motion presented in the Stagirite’s Physics erroneously describe speeds of some kind of motions. Based on their achievements, subsequent philosophers in similar manners, i. a. using mathematical proportionality, presented ways of measuring various types of motions: this was also done by the anonymous author of the treatise De sex inconvenientibus (also known as De sex inconvenientium). The book considers the issue of measuring the process of generation (a complex one) and qualitative changes discussed in this treatise. The author of the De sex inconvenientibus most probably belonged to the milieu of Oxford Calculators, as evidenced both by the fact that he knew and cited the works of his predecessors (Thomas Bradwardine and William Heytesbury), and the fact that his work was mentioned by the next generation of Calculators (by John Dumbleton). The treatise, written in the mid-fourteenth century, between 1335 and 1344, is devoted to the problems of change, or rather the possibility of determining their speeds. Its author deals with some changes that occur in nature: generation of forms, qualitative and quantitative changes, as well as local motion (change of place). As the problems of motions are analyzed here using the theory of proportion, it is thus the best testimony to the reception of the concepts of the creators of the Oxford Calculators school.

• Details
• Contents