Jean Buridan

Jean Buridan , in Latin Joannes Buridanus (towards 1300 - after 1358), Philosopher French, doctor Scholastic, was the instigator of religious skepticism in Europe. It was, in Occident, the redecouvror of the theory of the Impetus, about 1340. Its name is more frequently known by the Expérience of thought known as of the ass of Buridan.

Biography

Probably born with Béthune (Pas-de-Calais) he studied with the Université of Paris under the direction of the philosopher Scolastique Guillaume d' Occam and was burning a Nominaliste.

He taught the Philosophie with Paris, and was elected in 1347 vice-chancellor of the University of this city. Like philosopher, Buridan taught purest nominalism and was confined in the philosophical studies.

Contrary to the ordinary course for a career in philosophy, it chooses to study the arts rather than the Théologie. It all the more maintains its independence while remaining a secular clerk rather than by joining an religious order. Starting from 1340 it is opposed to its mentor, Guillaume d' Occam. This act was interpreted like the beginning of religious skepticism and the paddle of the revolution Scientifique.

Persecuted by the Realistic S, it was withdrawn in Germany, where it founded a school, and taught with Vienna. Buridan, as a nominalist, could not admit the existence of human freedom, and he lengthily discussed the question of the free will in his comments about Ethics of Aristote.

Buridan itself prepared the way for Galileo Galilei through the theory of the Impetus . A posthumous campaign by Occamistes succeeds in making place the writings of Buridan on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum of 1474 at 1481.

Albert of Saxony among most famous of its disciples, is recognized like a logician.

Many stories apocryphal books in connection with its adventures in love show that it had the reputation to be a brilliant and mysterious figure with Paris. It had also an unusual charisma to attract academic subsidies. According to a tradition more legendary than historical, Buridan in its youth would have been introduced into the Tour of Nesle, where the queen Jeanne II of Burgundy, woman of Philippe V of France, would have had with him a guilty trade, and it would have failed to be victim of its imprudence.

Paradox of the ass of Buridan

Ass which, according to the legend, died of hunger and thirst between its ration of oats for oats and its water bucket, fault of choosing by what to start… (See Liste of paradoxes)

The Paradoxe of the ass of Buridan does not appear in any known works of Buridan, although it is completely coherent with the theory buridanienne of freedom and the animal.

In De Caelo (295b32), Aristote wondered how a dog which must choose between two foods also attracting chooses between them.

Buridan does not discuss the particular problem but its contribution is that he pled for a moral Déterminisme where, except for ignorance or the embarrassment, human which deals with possible behaviors must always choose largest well. Buridan considers that the will can delay the choice more completely to determine the possible results of the option. Later presenters satirized this sight in a assoiffé and famished, positioned ass at equal distance between a bucket of water and an oats bucket. The ass dies of hunger and thirst whereas he hesitates between his two desires.

It seems that Spinoza is the first with speaking about “she-ass about Buridan” (“ Buridani asina ”). In the scholium of proposal 49 of the second part of the Ethical , Spinoza answers a possible objection against its own system:

“One that, if the man does not operate by the freedom of the will, that thus arrives it if it is in balance, like the she-ass of Buridan can object? Will he die of hunger and thirst? That if I grant it, I will seem to design a she-ass, or a statue of man, not a man; and if I deny it, it is thus that it will be determined itself, and consequently it is that it with the faculty of going, and doing all that it wants. I grant completely that a man placed in such a balance (I hear, who anything else perceive only thirst and the hunger, such food and such drink at equal distance from him) will die of hunger and thirst. If they ask to me whether one should not rather hold such a man for an ass than for a man? I say that I do not know, not more than I do not know with how much estimating that who is hung, and with how much the children, the stupid ones, demented people, etc” (tr. france Bernard Pautrat, p. 191 and 195.)

Spinoza carries out a generalization that Buridan would have refused. According to Buridan, indeed, the ass would die of hunger and thirst, but a man placed in the same situation would be able to choose arbitrarily: it is the “Liberté of indifference”. Spinoza, on the other hand, estimates that on this point there is no difference between the man and the animal: even the man would die of hunger and thirst.

The Impetus

Dealing with problem of the dynamics of a projectile, Jean Buridan shows that the theory of Aristote of the causes driving saying that “All that is mû is mû by other thing…” is taken failing this; including the various palliatives the such antiperistasis (the violent movement creates a vacuum, or a rarefaction of the air which continues to propel the projectile in the airs) or the opinion saying that the air, shaken by the violent movement, acquires power to push the projectile.

Citation of Jean Buridan: “Here thus, this seems to me, which one can say: while the engine drives the mobile, it prints some to him impetus, a certain power able to drive the mobile in the direction even where the engine drives the mobile, that it is to the top, or downwards, or on side, or circularly. Larger is the speed with which the engine drives the mobile, more powerful is the impetus than it prints in him… but by the resistance of the air, and also by gravity which inclines the stone to be driven in contrary direction… this impetus weakens All the forms continuously and natural provisions are received on the matter and in proportion of the matter; leaving one body more matter contains, more it can receive this impetus; however in a dense and serious body: weighing, there is, all equal things besides, more matter than in a rare and light body. A feather receives a impetus so weak that this impetus is destroyed at once by the resistance of the air”

An idea close, but less developed, was already clearly at Jean Philopon, commentator Byzantine of the 5th century, and Guillaume d' Ockham had as put forth the assumption, vague, as it transmits something of the body “agent” to the “patient” body.
The impetus, concept fuzzy, qualitative, near to the Momentum, born before the concept speed, will not be able to be based on mathematics algebraically powerful (which will come with Rene Descartes) nor on experiments quantifying it and specifying it (the experiments will come with Galileo) and will not be employed almost any more after Galileo and Rene Descartes which will have known to be inspired some to build a more precise theory (the Inertie) and a quantitative concept (the Quantité of movement).

Publications

It left:

of the comments on Aristote, as the titles testify some to its writings:

Summula of dialectica (Paris, 1487, folio);
Compendium Logicae (Venice, 1487, folio);
Sophismata (in-8);
Quaestiones in X libros Ethicorum Aristotelis (Paris. 1489, in-fol., and Oxford, 1637, in-4);
Quaestiones in Cheap libros Physicorum Aristotelis, libros of Physica and parva naturalia (Paris, 1516, in-4);
In Aristotelis Metaphysica ( Métaphyique ) (Paris, 1516 - 1518, 17 folio volumes).

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