A Skewed View: The Achievement Of Late Medieval Science And Philosophy As Seen From The Renaissance

Abstract

This chapter talks about one of the most philosophically interesting and intriguing accomplishments of the fourteenth century. It refers, not to the overall logical analysis of Aristotles natural philosophy in general, but to separate treatises which grew out of separate parts, indeed separate chapters, of his natural philosophy. The chapter presents, first of all, late medieval tracts De primo et ultimo instanti and the related works De incipit et desinit and treatises De maximo et minimo .The chapter also addresses the two chapters of the Physics behind the medieval limit decision literature. Furthermore, the logical or propositional analysis was frequently put in the context of sophismata . The chapter concentrates on the sophisma functioning as a counter-intuitive example falling under a given theory or rule derived from logic or natural philosophy or some other discipline. Keywords: Aristotle; fourteenth century; late medieval science; medieval limit decision literature; natural philosophy; renaissance