Vers 1360, la carrière de Nicole Oresme connut un tournant capital, largement ignoré jusqu'à présent : après plus de vingt-cinq ans en Faculté des arts, il se fit théologien. Se munissant d'un doctorat de théologie, il accomplit les étapes successives du cursus. Il faut s'en surprendre : la cohérence de son parcours de philosophe de la nature aurait pu le conduire aux mêmes choix que Jean Buridan qui s'était lui-même refusé l'accès aux Facultés supérieures et était demeuré à (...) la Faculté des arts de Paris. Ce tournant se manifeste dans un manuscrit, unique le Vat. Lat. 986, épais dossier issu, d'une circonstance universitaire précise, la résompte d'Oresme. Une introduction détaillée en donne la composition. Dans ce manuscrit, Alain Boureau pense avoir découvert le texte de dix longues questions sur les Sentences, inédites et même inconnues, dont la transcription et la traduction constituent les deux premiers tomes de cette série. (shrink)

During the fifteenth century the organic body politic metaphor was gradually associated or superseded by a physiological paradigm built on the ancient humoral theory. The new body politic, based on humours rather than on organs, eventually became a dynamic and fluid entity. Authors such as Nicole Oresme or Jean Gerson alleged that the etiology of humoral imbalance had its origins in growing social inequalities; Claude de Seyssel subsequently urged that the cure to restore the humoral balance should focus (...) on creating new hope and bridges for the gifted. Seyssel was able to draw up his pioneering manifesto for social mobility thanks to the new physiological image of the civic body. The present study argues that such a physiological conception transformed anxiety about motion and disarray into a belief that social fluidity was indispensable to the well-being and health of the whole body, but the idea that (social) order and movements are not conflicting, was soon eradicated by new perspectives on nobility constructed on race and blood. (shrink)

According to Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382), human beings, unlike all other animals, consist of two substances: a thinking substance and a sensing substance. This paper presents and explores the arguments Oresme uses to arrive at this position, which is unusual in medieval philosophical psychology and which at least superficially – though their methods are completely different – resembles what Descartes concluded about the nature of the human soul and body two and a half centuries later. The paper (...) also considers some moments of ambivalence in Oresme’s presentation, as well as unresolved difficulties, several of which have theological as well as philosophical implications. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This paper is the written version of my contribution to the International Conference «30 years Logica modernorum» held in Amsterdam in November 1997 in honor of the late prof. Lambertus M. de Rijk. Research on Oresme’s modi rerum theory was in the first stage, while now we can read the critical edition of Oresme’s Physics commentary, where modi are introduced and widely used. In this paper I shall consider Oresme’s polemical use of modi rerum, trying to set (...) it in the larger context of both his ontology and his epistemology. Oresme’s challenge to either a realist or terminist ontology by means of modi rerum conceals probably an attack to William of Ockham; Oresme refers explicitly to Ockham concerning exclusive propositions, but I think that on many other occasions the polemical target of Oresme’s criticism can be reasonably identified in William of Ockham or in some unnamed followers of the Venerabilis Inceptor. Some hints are reserved also to the possible sources of Oresme’s modi rerum. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Contributions to science, natural philosophy, and mathematics Attitude towards nature.

The pantheon of classical liberal thinkers must honor the memory of one brilliant mathematician, scientist, and debunker of superstitious beliefs, the sound-money advocate Nicole Oresme. Although his opposition to the recoinage practices of the French monarchy was not unprecedented in the fourteenth century, Oresme must be credited with anticipating the “rational expectations” in economics when he distinguished quite forcefully between “preannounced debasement” and “secret debasement” and their effects on the distribution of wealth. Oresme explains that the (...) king should not practice secret debasement, and can appear as a pioneer for modern ideas on monetary surprises. (shrink)

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Nicole Oresme raises a question that he is apparently the first to ask in these terms, in such a context: do all beings have the desire to persevere into being? Before him, this question is not found in any of the medieval commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics. But after him it became canonical until at least the 16th century, since it can be found in Pietro Pomponazzi’s works for example. The novelty here consists (...) in questioning the validity of Averroes’ thesis, in his own commentary on the Physics, according to which all beings have the desire to persist into being, using the Augustinian analysis of voluntary death and suicide. How can we explain that one can freely put an end to his days if he is naturally inclined by a desire for life and even for eternity? Oresme’s solution consists in justifying not only the possibility, but also the moral obligation to accept death under certain conditions. In most cases, we do not really want to die. The desperate man wishes to cancel his misfortune and the heroic man who sacrifices himself for his country wishes to immortalize himself in the memory of other men. From a moral point of view, Nicole Oresme justifies only one case of voluntary death: that of individual sacrifice for the common good. The aim of this paper is to analyze precisely this important turning point in the long history of the notion of conatus in the West by comparing this quaestio from the commentary on the Physics with the glosses that accompany the French translation of the Nicomachean Ethics realised by Oresme at the court of Charles V. (shrink)