thomas bradwardine's tractus review

8/12/2019 Thomas Bradwardine's Tractus Review

1/7

C 2011 Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and ScienceAll rights reserved

ISSN 15494497 (online) ISSN 15494470(print) ISSN 15494489(CD-ROM)Aestimatio 8 (2011) 23--29

Thomas Bradwardine, Trait des rapports entre les rapidits dansles mouvements suivi de Nicole Oresme, Sur les rapports de rap-ports . Introduction, traduction et commentaires by Sabine Rom-mevaux

Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010. Pp. lxvi+190. ISBN 978--2--251--18109--7. Cloth 29.00

Reviewed byEdith Dudley Sylla

North Carolina State University

[email protected]

Thomas Bradwardines Tractatus de proportionibus velocitatum inmotibuswas published in a modern edition together with an Englishtranslation by H. Lamar Crosby [1955]. Nicole Oresmes De propor-tionibus proportionumwas published with an English translation byEdward Grant in 1966 in the same University of Wisconsin Pressseries. Here Sabine Rommevaux has published French translations

of the two works based on the editions by Crosby and Grant.Bradwardines Tractatus de proportionibuswas adopted as a uni-

versity textbook in England and on the Continent for the two cen-turies after its first appearance in 1328. Its impact certainly resultedin part from the fact that it gave a mathematically elegant expressionto what Aristotle had said about the relations of movers, moved bod-ies, and velocities, but also because it contained a primer on the math-ematics of ratios and proportions, useful introductory knowledge forundergraduate students. Oresmes work followed Bradwardines butcontained creative elaborations of its basic mathematics and appliedBradwardines rule for the relations between forces and resistances,on the one hand, and the velocities they produce, on the other, toshow that the motions of the planets are most probably incommen-surable, thus undermining the basic premiss of astrology that whena given configuration of the planets is repeated their combined effecton Earth will be the same. (If the motions are incommensurable,the configurations will never be repeated.) At roughly the same

time, Albert of Saxony composed his own Tractatus proportionum,covering the same subject matter more succinctly. In later periods,
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


2/7

24 Aestimatio

Albert of Saxonys shorter work was sometimes included, rather thanBradwardines, in compilations of basic logical, natural philosophical,and mathematical texts for university students that sometimes also

included works on the latitude of forms descended from OresmesTractatus de configurationibus qualitatum et motuum (a work madeavailable in a Latin text and English translation by Marshall Clagettin1968in the University of Wisconsin Press series).

On the basis of her extended studies of medieval and early mod-ern theories of ratios, Sabine Rommevauxs mastery of Bradwardinestheory is considerably greater than that of Crosby in1955and some-what beyond that of Grant in1966; and so scholars may well want

to consult her introduction and notes to this book as well as herforthcoming book, Thories des rapports (XIIIe--XVIe sicles). Re-ception, appropriation, innovation [2011]. The introduction to thebook is clear and largely uncontentious. Whereas previous scholarshave struggled with such controverted subjects as the role and signif-icance of the concept of denomination in medieval theories of ratios,Rommevaux states simply that the denomination of a ratio (when itexists) is the integer or integer plus fraction by which it is named, asthe denomination of a double ratio is 2 and the denomination of a

sesquialterate ratio, i.e., 3:2, is 11/2.As far as I can see, Rommevauxs translations will be useful main-

ly for Francophone students who are not fluent in medieval scholasticLatin and who would find a French translation easier to read thanan English one. For Anglophone readers, the existing English trans-lations will be preferred even if they have a few imperfections.

In choosing French translations of Latin words, Rommevauxtries to avoid misleading cognates. For instance, she translatesveloci-

tasby the Frenchrapiditso as to distinguish the medieval notion ofvelocitas from the post-Galilean notion ofvitesse [ix n1]. While thepoint is frequently made that in modern physics velocity is a vectorand not a simple magnitude, so that using the word velocity maymislead those used to modern terminology, I question Rommevauxscomment that for most medievals velocitaswas considered as a qual-ity of motion or of the thing moved. For those authors like WilliamHeytesbury and Richard Swineshead who followed William of Ock-

hams ontological minimalism, motion is not a qualitative form butinstead simply a shorthand way of referring to a situation in which


3/7

EDITH DUDLEY SYLLA 25

something does not remain in the same place or position over a periodof time. For Oresme himself, motion is not a quality but a mode. Itseems to me that avoiding translations using words that have special

connotations in later science is not as straightforward as Rommevauxseems to think. Would one not allow Aristotelians to say in trans-lation that the heavens are made of the element ether (or aether)because in 19th-century physics the word ether was repurposed tomean what carries light waves?

This debate about words has a striking instance in Rommevauxschoice to write of what is commonly called Bradwardines law of mo-tion not as a law (loi) but as a rule (rgle) because it does not have

to do with a physical law in the sense understood starting in the17th century [xii]. If I am not mistaken, this is letting Descartesbe the arbiter of the meaning of laws of nature, despite the me-dieval use of the Latin phrase lex naturae (law of nature), forexample, in Jean Gersons statement: Lex naturae est in rebus cre-atis regulatio motuum et operationum et tendentiarum in suos fines[Oberman 1975, 425n47]. Similar questions might be raised aboutwords for force. Rommevaux criticizes Marshall Clagett for his dis-tinction between medieval dynamics and medieval kinematics on the

grounds that dynamics presupposes a notion of force which is ab-sent from Bradwardines treatise [xlvii n91]. While I would agreethat the Calculators distinction between measures of motion withrespect to cause and measures of motion with respect to effect doesnot map exactly onto the distinction between dynamics and kine-matics (especially for alterations where qualitative forms are bothcauses and effects), Rommevauxs translation policy leaves the stu-dent of 14th-century physics tongue-tied if no word whose meaninghas evolved into something different can be used in describing theirwork. Moreover, changing what the texts literally say carves in stonethe judgment that the ideas of these medieval authors were not inany way like those of 17th-century scientists.

Finally, coming at the difficulties of translation from the op-posite direction, I wonder that Rommevaux, while being careful toavoid anachronism, simply uses the modern term rapport to trans-lateproportio, when a modernrapportor ratio is normally identifiedwith a rational number or fraction, whereas the medievalproportioas

used by Bradwardine and Oresme emphatically was not but alwaysremained a relation between two quantities.


4/7

26 Aestimatio

But the value of this volume goes beyond the translations intoFrench of the two texts (and little harm is done in translatingveloci-tasbyrapidit, when one knows that this has been consistently done).

Rommevauxs notes identifying the sources cited by Bradwardine andOresme provide interesting food for thought in themselves. For in-stance, the frequency with which Bradwardine cites Averroes state-ments, the fact that he locates passages in Aristotle by the associatedcomment number in Averroes, and his seeming identification in placesof Aristotles view with that of Averroes, all seem to show the impor-tance of Averroes commentaries as background to Bradwardine.

Moreover, that Rommevaux compares Bradwardines statements

with those of Oresme on a series of topics may also cast new light onthe concepts and purposes of the two authors. If Bradwardine drewupon preexisting theories of ratios and proportions to provide thegrounding for his law, was his approach enabled by the fact that heused Campanus version of Euclids Elements, or by the pre-existingapplication of ratios in music, or by theories of ratios found in Ara-bic works translated into Latin such as Ahmed Ibn Yusufs Epistolade proportione et proportionalitate? Bradwardines mathematics ofratios makes most sense if one thinks only of ratios of greater in-

equality and if in compounding ratios one always deals with ratioshaving terms in common such that the middle terms are less thanthe greater extreme and more than the lesser extreme. For instance,one compounds A:B with B:C and with C:D to get A:D, whereA > B > C > D.1 In the mathematics of musical harmony, where onemay add intervals between tones to get harmonies between more dis-tant tones, one always continues to have the separate tone-producingstrings, as when one string and another twice as long, struck together,produce the harmony of the octave. In such a situation, the relationof the two strings is the same whether one thinks of the shorter tothe longer or of the longer to the shorter, i.e., thinks of 2:1 or of 1:2.Nicole Oresme, in order to extend Bradwardines approach to com-pounding ratios to ratios of lesser inequality, proposes to reverse therelations between whole and part. Thus, in ratios of greater inequal-ity, 4:2 compounded with 2:1 produces 4:1 and thus the whole 4:1 isgreater than the parts 4:2 and 2:1. But in ratios of lesser inequality,

On page xix, there is a misprint where C:D is repeated: Rommevaux intends1

(A:B) = (B:C) = (C:D).


5/7


where 1:2 compounded with 2:4 produces 1:4, the result, 1:4 is lessthan the parts 1:2 and 2:4. Rommevaux has a sound discussion ofOresmes proposals on this subject, referring to an article by Paul

Rusnock and criticizing earlier historians who represented Oresmesideas using fractional exponents and who concluded as a result thatOresmes understanding was erroneous.

One issue that lurks in the background here is the interactionand relative importance for Bradwardine and Oresme of theories ofratios applied to numbers versus theories that apply to continuousmagnitudes. The concept of denomination is one that fits with ra-tios of integers, where there are names for ratios that draw upon

names for numbers but not for ratios of incommensurable quantities,such as ratios between lines that are incommensurable with eachother. In the end, Bradwardines theory and his whole approach toratios and proportions would be undermined by the choice to iden-tify ratios with the denominations associated with them and by thechoice to extend the concept of number to include rational numbers(fractions) and eventually real numbers. At that point, treating thecompounding of ratios as addition, as Bradwardine and musical the-ory did, would become problematic.

Rommevaux began her serious study of ratios with a book onClavius [2005], but Clavius represents the situation after the identi-fication of ratios with a broader concept of numbers and after therejection of the approach taken by Bradwardine and Oresme. Morerecently she has edited the questions of Blasius of Parma on Brad-wardines De proportionibus, but Blasius too, at least in one versionof his questions, is someone who rejects Bradwardines and Oresmesapproach to the composition of ratios as addition.

Oddly, from my point of view, in discussing the posterioritof the movement started by Bradwardine, Rommevaux moves fromBradwardine to Oresme and then to those who reject Bradwardinesapproach, including Blasius of Parma, Giovanni Marliani, Alessan-dro Achillini, and then Clavius [lxiv], while forgetting about RichardSwineshead and John Dumbleton, who certainly must be countedamong Bradwardines most important heirs. To me, this appears toresult from a certain bias toward the Continent, perhaps natural in

a book whose raison dtre is French translations, but neverthelessan incomplete picture of what happened.


6/7

28 Aestimatio

This book, then, while primarily useful to those who would likea French translation of the two works included, also provides a judi-cious interpretation of the meaning and significance of the two texts,

which will be useful for future scholarly research. It is not the bestsource for the historical context. On the second page [x n4], it makesa silly mistake in stating that Bradwardine was a member of the or-der of Augustinian Hermits, whereas in fact he was a secular whomay have held Augustinian positions on some theological topics. Idoubt the suggestion in the same note that Bradwardines De causaDeiwas the result of Bradwardines teaching while Chancellor of StPauls in London. For one thing, Bradwardine held that positiononly between 1337 and 1339, and the De causa Dei is far too long

and complicated a book for much if any of it to have been deliveredas lectures, even supposing that as Chancellor Bradwardine wouldhave taught so advanced a course. I likewise doubt the assertion [xi]that BradwardinesDe continuorefuted mathematically the possibil-ity that a continuum may be composed of indivisibles and thus closeda debate among Oxford masters that had been going on for severalyears. These, however, are minor points, easily ignored while con-centrating on the mathematical content of the works on which Rom-

mevauxs judgments are much more deserving of confidence. Thus,Rommevaux has here established a reliable picture of the work ofBradwardine and Oresme, which should be useful in working towardsa wider historical overview, looking both earlier to Arabic and Latinas well as Greek works, and later to those who worked in the sametradition as Bradwardine and Oresme and to those who rejected it.

bibliography

Clagett, M. 1968. Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry ofQualities and Motions: A Treatise on the Uniformity and Dif-

formity of Intensities Known asTractatus de configurationibusqualitatum et motuum. Madison, WI.

Crosby, H. L. 1955. Thomas Bradwardine. HisTractatus de Propor-tionibus: Its Significance for the Development of MathematicalPhysics. Madison, WI.

Grant, E. 1966. Nicole Oresme, De proportionibus proportionumand Ad pauca respicientes. Madison, WI.


7/7


Oberman, H. 1975. Reformation and Revolution: Copernicus Dis-covery in an Era of Change. Pp. 397--429 in J. E. Murdoch andE. D. Sylla edd. The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning. Dor-

drecht/Boston.Rommevaux, S. 2005. Clavius. Une cl pour Euclide. Paris.

2011. Thories des rapports (XIIIe--XVIe sicles). Recep-tion, appropriation, innovation. Turnhout, Belgium. (in press)

thomas bradwardine's tractus review

Documents