Excerpta de uniformitate et difformitate: A Physical-Matemathical Compilation in Ms. Paris, Bl. De l’Arsenal, Lat. 522 Unknown Until Today
Abstract
The main purpose of this paper is to present some new materials related to the development of the so called calculatores – tradition at the end of the 14th century in Paris. It is well known that this tradition emerged at the Merton College in Oxford about 70 years before and proposed a new approach to natural philosophy or “physics” consisting in the generalized use of mathematical and “half-mathematical” methods of analyzing and discussing questions concerned with motions and qualities. The manuscript Lat. 522 of the Arsenal Library was entirely copied by a man called “Johannes Monachus”, who can possibly be associated with the famous philosopher and theologian Pierre D’Ailly. Besides other significant works, Johannes Monachus copied the tracts De configurationibus (by Nicole Oresme) and De latitudinibus formarum (by Jacobus de Sancto Martino). At the end of this last work he decided to complete the “latitude of forms” with “some further things” (cum quibusdam aliis), a short text which most probably he himself compiled using the Regulae by Heytesbury and other similar sources and to which the title Excerpta de uniformitate et difformitate may be given. The following paper gives a transcription of this short text, expounds its content and discusses its significance in the context of the tradition of the late calculators. In adittion, a full description of the manuscript is given.Downloads
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