Contains a English translation of Questions 1-21 with a bibliography.

Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-1384) was one of the most important intellectual figures of the scholastic period: not only was he a leading philosopher, theologian, astronomer and mathematician, but he was also involved in practical matters - he was secretary to the king of France, he was bishop of Lisieux, and he was involved in the assessment of coins and associated political problems. He took part in the teaching of scholastic philosophy, writing numerous commentaries on Aristotle. His contributions to the so-called "latitude of forms", i.e. the quantification of qualities, are universally recognized in modern scholarship. Also connected with university education are his Questiones on the Elements of Euclid, the basic and most widely read of the Greek mathematical classics. These Questiones cannot be regarded as a commentary, but rather examine problems suggested by Euclid's text. Among the subjects investigated are the quantitative change of qualities, e.g. of velocity, colours or heat, in time. There are penetrating analyses of infinite and infinitesimal qualities.

This Source Book explores a millennium of European scientific thought accompanied by critical commentary and annotation; nearly half the selections appear for the first time in the vernacular. Representing "science" in the medieval sense, selections include alchemy, astrology, logic, and theology as well as mathematics, physics, and biology.

The aim of this book is to analyze the problem of the intensity of forms in the late Middle Ages and to show how this debate eventually gave rise to a new metaphysical project in the 14th century: the project of quantifying the different types of perfections existing in the universe – that is the project of “measuring being”. Cet ouvrage se propose d’analyser l’histoire du débat relatif à l’intensité des formes au Moyen Âge, et de retracer la manière dont il conduisit au XIVe siècle à l’émergence d’un projet métaphysique nouveau : celui de quantifier les perfections contenues dans l’univers et, ainsi, de “mesurer l’être”.

Oresme's commentary is one of the most relevant documents of the discussions at Paris University in the midst of the 14th Century. Original solutions concerning the main philosophical issues are associated with sharp criticism of the realist and nominalist positions.

Calculating Ethics in the Fourteenth Century addresses a moment in the history of ethics, when discoveries in natural philosophy blurred the boundary between the possible and the impossible, and made the impossible a preferred territory in discussions on practical reason. The volume studies the onset and expansion of a new movement in constructing ethics, as the methods, arguments, and cases adopted from logic and natural philosophy came to be extensively applied at Oxford and swiftly disseminated among other Oxonians eventually making their way outside Oxford. It shows how the Oxford Calculators triggered a unique and durable transformation in ethics. Contributors are Pascale Bermon, Valeria Buffon, Michael W. Dunne, Marek Gensler, Simon Kemp, Edit A. Lukács, Monika Michałowska, and Andrea Nannini.

This volume examines a selection of late medieval works devoted to the intensive infinite in order to draw a comprehensive picture of the context, character and importance of scholastic efforts to reason philosophically about divine infinity. As Dominican masters face Franciscan 'spirituals' and as university-trained theologians face evangelical laymen, the purpose and meaning of divine infinity shift, reflecting a basic tension between the Church's Petrine vocation for geopolitical orthodoxy and its more Pauline mission to promote Christian orthopraxis. The first part of the book traces the scholastic defense of divine infinity from the holocaust of Montségur up to John Duns Scotus. The second part examines the semiotic breakthrough initiated by William of Ockham and the subsequent penetration of infinist theory into a wide variety of disciplines.