JOANNA PAPIERNIK, Mathematical Procedures within Natural Philosophy. The Issue of Velocity in the Generation of Forms according to the 14th Century Treatise “De Sex Inconvenientibus”

SUMMARY

The anonymous treatise De sex inconvenientibus was written by an author who presumably belonged to the group of Oxford Calculators (it is assumed that he was William Heytesbury’s student). The four questions discussed in this text concern the velocities in the process of generation (De generatione), motion of alteration (De motu alterationis), motion of augmentation (De motu augmentationis) and in local motion (De motu locali). The fragment of the first question presented above concerns the problem of measuring velocity in the generation of the forms of the elements. It is a good example of the application of some mathematical procedures in Aristotelian-Averroean physics, which was characteristic of the Oxford Calculators. The translated part also shows the important dependence of De sex inconvenientibus on William Heytesbury’s De tribus praedicamentis (the sixth chapter of his treatise Regulae solvendi sophismata).