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New Light on Medieval Philosophy: The Sophismata of Richard Kilvington*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

E. J. Ashworth
E. J. Ashworth
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
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Extract

The fourteenth-century English philosopher and theologian Richard Kilvington (1302/5–61) presents a useful correction to popular views of medieval philosophy in two ways. On the one hand, he reminds us that to think of medieval philosophy in terms of Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Ockham, or to think of medieval logic in terms of Aristotelian syllogistic, is to overlook vast areas of intellectual endeavour. Kilvington, like many before and after him, was deeply concerned with problems that would now be assigned to philosophy of language; philosophical logic and philosophy of science. He discussed topics in epistemic logic, semantic paradoxes, problems of reference, particularly those connected with the interplay between quantifiers and modal or temporal operators, and problems arising from the use of infinite series in the analysis of motion and change. On the other hand, this very account of his work raises the important issue of conceptual domain. I have spoken as if Kilvington's work can be neatly classified in terms of contemporary interests; and the temptation to read medieval philosophy in modern terms is only strengthened when one recognizes Kilvington as the first member of the group of Oxford calculatores, men such as William Heytesbury and Richard Swineshead, whose discussions of mathematics and physics have caused them to be hailed as forerunners of modern science.

Type
Critical Notices/Études critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 31 , Issue 3: Philosophy in the Fourteenth Century , Summer 1992 , pp. 517 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1992

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References

Notes

1 Alfonso Maierù, “The Sophism ‘Omnis propositio est vera vel falsa’ by Henry Hopton (Pseudo-Heytesbury's De veritate et falsitate propositionis)” (paper read at the Ninth European Symposium for Medieval Logic and Semantics, St. Andrews University, Scotland, June 1990).

2 Kilvington's comment on this one empirical observation is worth quoting: “Thus even though the hypothesis supposed there is impossible in fact according to this last reply, it is nevertheless possible per se; and for purposes of the sophisma, that is enough” (p. 68).

3 de Libera, Alain, “Bulletin d'histoire de la logique médiévale [2],” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 71 (1987): 594.Google Scholar

4 Kretzmann, Norman and Kretzmann, Barbara Ensign, The Sophismata of Richard Kilvington. Text Edition (Oxford: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

5 There are two recent papers which provide useful further reading: Murdoch, John E., “The Involvement of Logic in Late Medieval Natural Philosophy,” in Studies in Medieval Natural Philosophy, edited by Caroti, Stefano (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1989), p. 3–28Google Scholar; and Alain de Libera, “La problématique de ‘'instant du changement’ au XIIIe siècle: contribution à l'histoire des Sophismata Physicalia,” in ibid., p. 43–93.