Jean Buridan on the Classification of the Sciences (Terminism, Nominalism, Logic)

Description

Carol A. Day is an emeritus tutor of Thomas Aquinas College with astrophysics B.S., astronomy M.A., and Indiana U. history & philosophy of science (HPS) Ph.D. degrees.

Abstract:

Since antiquity, educators and philosophers have been interested in the classifications of the arts and sciences. The three major classificatory traditions of antiquity (Stoic, Boethian-Aristotelian, and the Seven Liberal Arts) were adopted, combined and modified by the medieval classifiers.

Students of the history of the classification of the sciences have tended to ignore the later middle ages. Some have suggested that the schoolmen of the fourteenth century were not interested in the problem. I have shown that the discussion continued into the fourteenth century and that its fundamental character did not change from the thirteenth century.

The late medieval classifiers were concerned primarily with the philosophical principles of classification. Aristotle's writings, recovered in the twelfth century, posed many questions for the medieval classifiers. A major problem was to find the proper means to unify a science and to distinguish it from others. The logical method of terminism and the nominalist philosophy posed deep difficulties for the resolution of this issue. Some fourteenth century nominalists, among them William of Ockham, saw the Aristotelian method of division by formal subjects as no more than a convenience, lacking objective validity.

Jean Buridan, the Parisian Master of Arts and prominent nominalist, objected to the Ockhamist critique of the Aristotelian division. Desiring to save the Philosopher's doctrine, he proposed a solution based upon terminist principles and compatible with nominalism. Each science, which he regarded as a collection of propositions, was unified by a single "subject of attribution," to which every subject and predicate term used in the science reduced in some way. In this dissertation I explain Buridan's solution and argue that, despite its shortcomings, it is probably the best nominalist resolution of the difficulty. I conclude by showing how Buridan incorporates much of the earlier classificatory doctrine into his scheme of the sciences.

The Catholic logician Paul Vincent Spade (cf. his website) was on her committee!