Quantifying Aristotle - (Hardcover)

About the Book This book offers an entirely new perspective on the alleged incompatibility between Aristotelian philosophy and the mathematical methods and principles that form the basis of modern science. It surveys the tradition of the Oxford Calculators from its beginnings in the fourteenth century until Leibniz and the philosophy of the seventeenth century... Book Synopsis Aristotelian philosophy is generally regarded as incompatible with the mathematical methods and principles that form the basis of modern science. This book offers an entirely new perspective on this presumed incompatibility. It surveys the tradition of the Oxford Calculators from its beginnings in the fourteenth century until Leibniz and the philosophy of the seventeenth century and explores how the Calculators' techniques of quantification expanded the conceptual and methodological limits of Aristotelianism. In the process, it examines a large number of authors, some of them never studied in this context. Exploring the relationship between various late medieval disciplines, the book sheds new light on the problem of continuity vs. discontinuity between scholasticism and modern science. Beyond its historiographical purpose, this book also hopes to be a source of inspiration for present-day philosophers of science. About the Author Daniel A. Di Liscia (Ph.D. 2003), is Lecturer at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany), at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. He worked on the edition of Copernicus and Kepler, and published several papers on the Oxford Calculators, in particular on the latitude of forms.

Edith D. Sylla (Ph.D. 1971) is Professor Emerita at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, North Carolina). She works on the history of mathematics, physics, and their interrelations from the late Middle Ages to the early eighteenth century.