Oxford Master Research Articles

Magnetism in Condensed Matter”(Oxford Master Series in Physics)

Magnetism in Condensed Matter”(Oxford Master Series in Physics)

A Jumble of Writings: Commentaries on Aristotle’s De Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae Attributed to Adam of Buckfield

Abstract The translatio vetus of Aristotle’s De longitudine et brevitate vitae – a medieval text also known under the title of De morte et vita – was commented upon by the Oxford Master Adam of Buckfield in the thirteenth century. Inventories record two commentaries, which are either anonymous or unclearly ascribed. These writings are usually attributed by modern scholarship to Buckfield, though not always on convincing grounds. In the present article, I offer a more accurate, expanded overview of some so-called Buckfield commentaries on the translatio vetus, distinguishing between four individual texts. In order to characterize these writings, and to have a solid basis for addressing the authenticity problem, one passage from each commentary is scrutinized within the scope of a case study.

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

Evidence‐based medicine among the dreaming spires of Oxford: the Pfizer Pharmacy Grant 2014

In November 2014, I attended a short course at Oxford University, Teaching Evidence-Based Practice, with assistance from an SHPA grant. The course was run by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) and the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education. The CEBM is a recognised world leader in evidence-based practice. This was an intensive course for those who already have skills in evidence-based medicine, and focused on the teaching of critical appraisal and evidence-based practice. The NSW Medicines Information Centre (MIC) runs courses for pharmacists in Medicines Information. Critical appraisal is an integral part of both the introductory and advanced courses offered by the MIC. I wanted to attend the course to improve my teaching skills in an area that many people find dry and overly technical. The course is part of Oxford's Master in Science (MSc) in Evidence-Based Health Care or Postgraduate Diploma in Health Research, but is also available as a stand-alone professional development course. The CEBM courses attract participants from around the world with attendees from Europe, America, Canada, Scandinavia, Southeast Asia and Australia. They were from primary and secondary care, academia, medical and non-medical backgrounds, and junior and senior positions; one was a current Rhodes Scholar. Most were involved in teaching of some kind ranging from formal university and clinical teaching to responsibility for peer programs and courses. This wide variety of backgrounds and experience allowed for stimulating cross-pollination of ideas. The course was designed to equip attendees to teach evidence-based practice and to develop effective and relevant educational curricula in evidence-based health care. Individual guidance was given to extend critical appraisal and teaching skills. The course was divided into formal plenary sessions, and small group work. Plenaries covered searching methods, teaching critical appraisal, learning styles, statistics, curriculum development and evaluation. Most plenary sessions combined a teaching demonstration with commentary on the methods used and alternatives. Emphasis was placed on engaging participants and demystifying the process of appraisal. Particular attention was given to the teaching of statistics, which many people find daunting. Each attendee gave at least two presentations to his or her tutorial group, one of which was on statistics. Preparation time for the statistics presentation was deliberately limited. Criticism of presentations was focused on improvement and identifying strengths, making the process educational rather than threatening. The topics were varied, reflecting the difference in backgrounds of the participants. This diversity was a real bonus. One doctor commented at the end of the course that she had initially been disappointed at being the only clinician in the group, but that she had learnt enormously from seeing other professional viewpoints. The course was both stimulating and practical. It has given me more confidence to teach evidence-based practice. I plan to use the skills learnt to develop a short course for pharmacists and a set of online tutorials. I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia and Pfizer Australia Pty Ltd. Without this support, I would not have been able to attend the course. Leone M. Snowden, B. Pharm NSW Medicines Information Centre, St Vincent's Hospital Sydney, Sydney, Australia E-mail: Leone.Snowden@svha.org.au

A Neglected Eucharistic Controversy: The Afterlife of John Wyclif's Eucharistic Thought in Bohemia in the Early Fifteenth Century

The renewed interest in John Wyclif (d. 1384) has brought this late medieval figure back into the spotlight of historians, giving rise to numerous studies evaluating his thought and its implications in the context of late fourteenth century England. However, it is not possible fully to appreciate Wyclif's importance in late medieval European culture without understanding the legacy of his ideas on the continent. According to the accepted narrative, John Wyclif's thought was mediated to the continent through the scholarly contacts between the universities in Oxford and in Prague, and re-emerged in the Latin writings of Jan Hus. This article argues that John Wyclif's thought, especially his critique of the church's doctrine of transubstantiation, found a larger audience among the rural clerics and laity in Bohemia, whom it reached through Peter Payne, who simplified and disseminated the works of the Oxford master. Wyclif's critique of transubstantiation sparked a nationwide debate about the nature of the Eucharist, generating numerous treatises, both in Latin and in the vernacular, on the subject of Christ's presence in the sacrament of the mass. This debate anticipated, a full century earlier, the famous debate between Luther and Zwingli and the Eucharistic debates of the sixteenth century Reformation more generally. The proliferation of vernacular Eucharistic tractates in Bohemia shows that Wyclif's critique of transubstantiation could be answered in a number of different ways that included both real presence (however defined) and figurative theologies—a fact, which, in turn, explains the doctrinal diversity among the Lollards in England.

Polymer Electronics. Oxford Master Series in Physics 22. By Mark Geoghegan and Georges Hadziioannou.

Polymer Electronics. Oxford Master Series in Physics 22. By Mark Geoghegan and Georges Hadziioannou.

Alan Trachtenberg, in Conversation with Paul Giles

This conversation took place in Oxford on 27 February 2007. Alan Trachtenberg was Visiting Professor at Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute during winter term 2007, co-teaching with Paul Giles a course on ‘The Idea of Culture in American Thought and Art’ as a methods course for the new Oxford Master’s degree in English and American Studies, which accepted its fi rst intake of students in 2006–07. Readings on the course included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, John Dewey, Kenneth Burke, William Carlos Williams, Alain Locke, Constance Rourke, Hart Crane, and Walker Evans. Leo Marx, emeritus professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology — born in 1919, but still academically active — visited the seminar on 7 February, and he later gave a talk to the Oxford English Faculty on The Great Gatsby. Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden, originally published in 1964 and never out of print since then, is, along with F. O. Matthiessen’s American Renaissance (1941), one of the most seminal scholarly works in American Studies of all time.

John Wyclif on Body and Mind

The evangelical doctor, John Wyclif (1320-1384), a prominent, if controversial, Oxford master, is commonly identified as the evening star of scholasticism and the morning star of the Reformation. That Wyclif was a bold thinker is reflected in his philosophical system and in his theological and political views. Our interest here is in Wyclif's now little known natural philosophy. What I wish to examine is whether he can, with any justice, be dubbed the morning star of a reformation in science as well as religion, for his contribution anticipates some developments of early modern natural philosophy.

J.Singleton, Band Theory and Electronic Properties of Solids, Oxford University Press, 2001, xvi+222p., 25×l9cm, \l0,540, (Oxford Master Series in Condensed Matter Physics), [大学院向

J.Singleton, Band Theory and Electronic Properties of Solids, Oxford University Press, 2001, xvi+222p., 25×l9cm, \l0,540, (Oxford Master Series in Condensed Matter Physics), [大学院向

Of Angels and Pinheads: The Contributions of the Early Oxford Masters to the Doctrine of Spiritual Matter

Of Angels and Pinheads: The Contributions of the Early Oxford Masters to the Doctrine of Spiritual Matter Surely one of the strangest doctrines to emerge from the intense theological debates of the thirteenth century was the concept of spiritual matter} Traceable to the Fons vitae of Ibn Gabirol, spriritual matter (or "universal hylomorphism") in tandem with the doctrine of the plurality of forms became one of the pillars of what used to be called with such confidence the "Franciscan School."2 In fact, as I shall argue, this terminologically gauche teaching exemplifies the occasional ill fit between the newly discovered natural philosophy of Aristotle and traditional Christian teaching. The metaphysical testing ground par excellence for the compatibility of these two world views was the doctrine of the angels, spiritual substances that were at the same time limited and mutable. How, in philosophically coherent language, was one to account for their composition (or lack thereof) and their distinctiveness both from the incarnate spirits below them in the chain of being and the infinite Spirit above them? Indeed, how account for their distinction from one another? In the three or four decades before positions hardened into the Wegenstreit between the Dominicans [read "Thomists"] and the Franciscans, masters belonging to both orders, as well as secular masters, debated the issue without the constraints of following a party line. I intend in this paper to focus on the contributions to 1On the face of it an oxymoron, spiritual matter is more generally referred to by historians of philosophy by the less obtrusive label, "universal hylomorphism." The most complete treatment of the issue is still the dissertation of Erich Kleineidam, Das Problem der hylomorphen Zusammensetzung der geistigen Substanzen im 13. Jahrhundert, behandelt bis Thomas von Aqmn (Breslau, 1930). For corrections and additions to the latter see O. Lottin, "La composition hylémorphique des substances spirituelles; les débuts de la controverse," RNSP 34 (1932) 21-41. 2See e.g. Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy m the Middle Ages (New York, 1954), pp. 327-53, and David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (London, 1962), pp. 235-48. The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (ed. Norman Kretzmann et al. [Cambridge, 1982]) talks of "Franciscan thinkers" and even "Franciscan thought" but avoids mention of a "Franciscan School." 239 Franciscan Studies, Vol. 56 (1998) 240R.James Long this debate of the earliest Oxford theologians who wrote on the subject, Grosseteste, Fishacre, and Rufus—a secular, a Dominican, and a Franciscan respectively.3 The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 had set the parameters for Christian belief concerning the angelic nature, that it was, namely, spiritual: . . . creator omnium visibilium et invisibilium, spiritualium et corporalium: qui sua omnipotenti virtute simul ab initio temporis utramque de nihilo condidit creaturam, spiritualem et corporalem, angelicam videlicet et mundanam.4 But "spiritual" was philosophically imprecise (as imprecise as mundanam "earthly" in the same formula) and needed to be translated into Aristotelian terms. And herein lay the difficulty. Did "spiritual" mean pure form, as were the separate substances in Aristotle's cosmos? If so, how account for their finitude on the one hand and for their individuation on the other hand? It was to respond to these metaphysical exigencies that the notion of "spiritual matter" was born. Although Grosseteste's influence on speculative theology at the Oxford Studium, especially on the Franciscans, is difficult to exaggerate, it seems that he was not responsible for the doctrine of spiritual matter. On a number of occasions, in fact, Grosseteste insists that the angels are immaterial both in their nature and their activity.5 The sole statement of his to the contrary—namely, that in comparison with the absolute simplicity of God all creatures are material—can be explained away by the context.6 'Although one cannot ignore the influence of Parisian theologians (among them William of Auvergne, William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, and Philip the Chancellor) on their English counterparts, what one finds on investigation is that the distinctively empirical orientation of Oxford infuses even their angelology. 4Conc. Lateranense G?" (1215); Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum no. 428. 5E.g. De cessatione legahum: "Igitur simpliciter universitatem reducere ad completam unitatem non est, ut videtur, alio modo possibile...

Adam of Buckfield and John Sackville: Some Notes on Philadelphia Free Library MS Lewis European 53

A manuscript which was once thought to have belonged to Petrarch and which is now owned by the Free Library of Philadelphia, currently catalogued as MS Lewis European 53, contains several items of interest to historians of philosophy and science. Included among the twelve mostly anonymous treatises in the codex (see below) are three hitherto unnoticed witnesses to the Aristotle commentaries of the Oxford master of arts, Adam of Buckfield. The sixth item in the collection is one of six surviving copies of Adam's commentary on the pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis, four already having been listed in Charles Lohr's inventory published in this journal and the fifth, in a Munich manuscript, having recently been brought to my attention by the same scholar. The ninth item is a copy of the first recension of Adam's commentary on the De sensu et sensato and the tenth item a copy of the first recension of the same master's commentary on the De generatione et corruptione. None of these works has been edited.

A Question on the Plurality of Forms by John Dymsdale, Oxford Master of Arts

A Question on the Plurality of Forms by John Dymsdale, Oxford Master of Arts

Via Antiqua and Via Moderna: Late Medieval Prolegomena to Early Reformation Thought

When in the first part of the fourteenth century the Oxford master Thomas Bradwardine (†1349) launched his formidable offensive Contra Pelagium in a massive work completed in 1344, the very assumption of his campaign was the common front of the Pelagians of all times. For him, the ancients and the moderns formed one unbroken phalanx: ‘Sicut antiqui Pelagiani… ita et moderni.’ To leave no room for doubt, he clarified his battle plan as directed against ‘tarn veteres quam recentes’.

University of Oxford masters degree in development economics

University of Oxford masters degree in development economics

Robert Holcot's Quodlibeta

As historians of medieval theology and philosophy increasingly turn to study intellectual developments in the early fourteenth century, it is natural that Robert Holcot, O.P. († 1349), should come to stand out as an Oxford master worthy of further investigation. During his own lifetime, when he was associated with the household of Richard de Bury, the famous bishop of Durham, and on even into the early years of the sixteenth century, when several editions of his major works were printed, Holcot was held in high regard as a commentator on the Sentences, as a biblical exegete, and as a supplier of moralizing sermon exempla. His view of predestination was carefully studied by John Eck, and the Parisian master Jacques Almain devoted a treatise to his Sentence commentary.

Two early Oxford Masters on the Problem of Plurality of Forms. Adam of Buckfield — Richard Rufus of Cornwall

Two early Oxford Masters on the Problem of Plurality of Forms. Adam of Buckfield — Richard Rufus of Cornwall