Gerard of Cremona (1114–87)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D. Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Posterior Analytics ◽  
Book Of Causes

Gerard of Cremona was the most important translator of philosophical works from Arabic to Latin in the twelfth century. During a career of about forty years, he translated at least seventy books. The most famous translations are those of works of Aristotle, including Posterior Analytics, Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption and Meteorology 1–3. Gerard also translated a number of works as part of the Aristotelian corpus that were not at all Aristotelian; the most important of these is the so-called Liber de causis (Book of Causes). However, the Aristotelian translations were only a small part of his labour. He translated many more works that were medical, astronomical or mathematical, bringing into Latin several small libraries of fundamental natural science.

The Monstrous Birth of Alexander the Great

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-561
Author(s):  
Mary Franklin-Brown
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Illegitimate Birth ◽  
The World ◽  
Romance Genre

Alone among the French romances of Alexander the Great penned in the twelfth century, Thomas de Kent’s Roman de toute chevalerie reproduces the story of Alexander’s illegitimate birth from the principal Latin source. According to this account, Alexander’s father was Nectanabus, a mage and astrologer who seduced Queen Olympias with an astronomy lesson, deceived her by using animal pelts to disguise himself as a god, and then used his magic arts to retard the child’s birth when his astrological calculations indicated the child would be born a hybrid man-beast. Thomas wrote his romance at the very moment when both astrology and paradoxography (the writing of marvels) were being reevaluated as means of understanding the world, and so Alexander’s odd birth offers a reflection — shaped by the romance genre — on the limitations and ethical implications of medieval natural science.

Robert Grosseteste's Conclusiones and the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics

Vivarium ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bloch
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Euclidean Geometry ◽  
Posterior Analytics

AbstractThis article examines the nature of Robert Grosseteste's commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics with particular reference to his “conclusions” (conclusiones). It is argued (using book 1, chapter 2, of the commentary as a case study) that the simple demonstrative appearance of the commentary, which is very much the result of the 64 conclusions, is in part an illusion. Thus, the exposition in the commentary is not simply based on the strict principles of the Posterior Analytics and on the proof-procedures of Euclidean geometry; rather the commentary is a complicated mixture of different elements of twelfth-century texts and the scholarship of Grosseteste's day.

Science and Theology at Chartres: The Case of the Supracelestial Waters

1977 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 226-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Rodnite Lemay
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Science And Theology ◽  
European Thought

The twelfth-century school of Chartres has long been famous for its rhetorical excellence and its Platonist philosophy. Only recently, however, have scholars become aware of the important role played by natural science in this centre of European thought. Questions about the corporeal world, or, as one Chartrain put it, ‘those things which are and which are seen, were asked there just as frequently and their answers sought just as eagerly as more intangible queries about incorporeal beings. Chartres produced long encyclopedic works of natural philosophy and applied a scientific outlook to its theological writings as well.

The Discovery of Nature: The Contribution of the Chartrians to Twelfth-Century Attempts to Found aScientia naturalis

Traditio ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 135-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Speer
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Middle Ages

If one takes standard overviews of the history of natural science or natural philosophy as his measure, the object appearing in the title of this study would literally appear not to exist. For, apart from a few scattered encyclopedia entries — which are always of necessity rather summary in character — one searches in vain for studies on the medieval interest in the natural sciences. For the contemporary cosmologist, be he first and foremost philosopher or physicist, the Middle Ages lie in a very deep darkness indeed.

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