The idea of reconciling Ptolemaic planetary theory with Aristotelian natural philosophy by imagining epicycles and eccentric deferents as three-dimensional orbs or orb-segments within larger spheres is frequently associated with Georg Peurbach and his widely read astronomy textbook, the Theoricae novae planetarum (1454). This article cautions against existing tendencies to overstate the originality or revolutionary force of this work by taking a closer look at the early history of the same Ptolemaic-Aristotelian compromise in a Latin European context. Using previously unpublished or (...) unused source material from the twelfth to early fourteenth centuries, it documents the gradual spread and acceptance of an orbicular interpretation of Ptolemy’s planetary models among astronomers and university teachers. (shrink)

Continuing the tradition of Oxford Calculatorial physics, the late fourteenth-century British Carmelite Richard Lavenham authored an amplification of the popular short textbook commonly referred to as Termini naturales. A copy of this amplification, preserved in a late fourteenth-century manuscript (Venezia, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, ms Lat. Z. 300 [= 1872]), is followed by a short series of notes and comments on some of the principles introduced in Lavenham’s treatise (drawn from the first four books of Aristotle’s Physics). The present article offers (...) an edition of the text, and analyses its content and relationship with fourteenth-century physics, especially with the physical doctrines of Richard Lavenham. (shrink)

This article distinguishes between two historical ways of presenting the catchphrase “Once true, always true” (semel verum, semper verum), associated with the twelfth-century logical school of the nominales. Within the Time-Jumping Model, a hypothetical tenseless propositional content (enuntiabile) is treated as the common significate of differently tensed statements, such as “Socrates will die” and “Socrates died,” uttered before and after Socrates’s death. This hypothetical enuntiabile is “always true” thanks to its tenseless nature. By contrast, the Fixed-Present Model preserves the tensed (...) character of enuntiabilia. By revealing an implicit temporal index, the nominales could apply “Once true, always true” to enuntiabilia such as Christum venisse (that Christ has come), which not only is true and will always be true but also – paradoxically – has always been true. It has always been true because it amounts to the propositional content that Christ came before this instant, where “this instant” rigidly denotes the present moment. The Fixed-Present Model alleviates the worry that the nominales confused truth-bearers with truthmakers. (shrink)

The present article focuses on the questions on matter by the Franciscan Alexander of Alexandria (Lectura ii, d. 12). The article is divided into two main sections. The first section provides a philosophical-historical overview of Alexander’s questions on prime matter (qq. 1–2, 5). The second section provides insight into Alexander’s questions on heavenly matter (qq. 3–4), expounding the author’s solutions to the issues related to that subject. Appendix 1 contains a question list of Alexander’s unedited Lectura ii. An edition of (...) Alexander’s Lectura ii, d. 12, qq. 1–5 is given in Appendix 2. (shrink)

The Distinctio divisionis terrae et paradisi deliciarum (Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, ms Barb. lat. 2687, ff. 12v–16v) is an anonymous treatise on the place of the earthly Paradise. An unknown author asks whether the earthly Paradise could be located in the land of the Antipodes and rejects this hypothesis. This article demonstrates two points. First, it attributes the Distinctio to the Franciscan friar Gerard Odonis (d. 1349). In fact, this text is a distinction of his commentary on the (...) Sentences (book ii, d. 20, qq. 1–2). Second, the article argues that Odonis’s opinion on the location of Paradise is quite unusual, since he reverses the Aristotelian order of elementary spheres. Odonis places the earthly Paradise so high on a mountain that it is necessary to deny the existence of the sphere of fire. While explaining how the Flood did not inundate Paradise, he asserts that water is naturally lower than earth. The article provides the first critical edition of the Distinctio. (shrink)

This is a review of a new edition with translation of the final question commentary of John Buridan on Aristotle's "De anima", published by Springer in May 2023.

For many areas of philosophy, we lack an understanding of their developments between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. One such area is the development of the notion of final causation. The rejection of final causation is often described as one of the distinguishing hallmarks of so called Early Modern philosophy in relation to the Scholastic philosophical tradition. Our lack of understanding of the development of this notion in philosophy therefore impedes our ability to write an adequate history of philosophy spanning (...) these centuries. In this article, the notion of final causation as treated in the works of Chrysostom Javellus (1472–1538) and Francis Silvestri (of Ferrara) (1474–1526) is presented. It is argued that the treatment of final causation in these thinkers is already shaped by concerns regarding finality that we find in Early Modern philosophy. (shrink)

The ontological status of esse cognitum was at the center of complex debates throughout the Scotist tradition (Alnwick vs. Aesculo, Mastri vs. Punch). This article investigates the Scotist Angelo Volpe’s discussion of esse cognitum enjoyed by possible creatures in the divine intellect. Volpe responds to two religious warnings, one against assuming any eternal real being for merely possible creatures, and a second against depriving God’s eternal knowledge of a corresponding object, since that would endanger this knowledge itself. Volpe opts for (...) a solution that allows possible creatures the status of beings of reason (entia rationis) due to their own ontological merit, and the status of real beings (entia realia) due to God’s knowing that they as possibles are not in opposition to real existence. He rejects the view that esse cognitum is a kind of being that holds a middle position between real being and being of reason. Volpe’s historical significance is emphasized. (shrink)

The Destructions of the Modes of Signifying (henceforth: dms) is an anonymous fourteenth-century polemic against modist speculative grammar (grammatica speculativa). Wielding Ockhamist logic and metaphysics, the dms repeatedly attacks the very root of modism: the claim that the grammatical features of language are grounded in the metaphysical properties of the world. I call this the Modist Correspondence Thesis (henceforth: mct). In its most general form, mct says that every mode of signifying exhibited by an utterance corresponds to a mode of (...) being exhibited by a thing. The Emptiness Argument of the dms tries to show that mct fails to accommodate certain special cases, such as privative, fictitious, and divine utterances, like ‘blindness’ (caecitas), ‘chimera’ (chimaera), and ‘deity’ (deitas). The modist Thomas of Erfurt directly addresses the Emptiness Argument, anticipating the anti-modist criticisms present in the dms. In doing so, he points the way to alternative formulations of mct that are immune to those criticisms. (shrink)