On the Threshold of Exact Science: Selected Writings of Anneliese Maier on Late Medieval Natural Philosophy (review)

368 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 2~: 3 JULY 1984 tic analysis. The Epicurean distinction between katastematic and kinetic pleasure is given a new interpretation, one which, for better and for worse, more successfully fits the requirements of philosophical consistency than the testimony of some of the ancient sources. In their final chapter the authors emphasize approvingly the Stoic connection of pleasure with belief. The book ends rather abruptly, somewhat as if it had been a series of essays, with no concluding chapter to sum up or to judge the importance of the ancient views which have been analyzed, though the authors have briefly indicated their favor for a combination of Stoic with Aristotelian/Epicurean views. In the introduction the authors state that, while the ancients have been influential on recent Anglo-Saxon philosophers, their aims and methods are different from those of recent philosophers , and that it is interesting to see the difference. This book is at its worst when the authors make too heavy use of the tools of contemporary analytic philosophy, but at its best when they offer clear and cogently reasoned analyses and criticisms of ancient theorizing about pleasure. If there is inevitably some loss of perspective in focusing on a single topic in several philosophers' work, there is corresponding gain in concentration and facility of comparison. W. JOSEPH CUMMINS University of Cincinnati Anneliese Maier. On the Threshold of Exact Science: Selected Writings of Anneliese Maier on Late Medieval Natural Philosophy. Edited, translated, and with an Introduction by Steven D. Sargent. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Pp. xiv + I73. $21.5o. Over a forty-year period (193 ~ 197 x), Anneliese Maier published a steady stream of essays on the history of late medieval natural philosophy and on the complex intellectual milieu of the 14th century. These were collected in nine volumes, five of these comprising the well-known and influential Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Spiitscholastik . The first of these five, Die Vorli~ufer Galileis im 14. Jahrhundert (1949), asked the question to which she returned over and over: In what sense can one speak of Buridan, Oresme, and other natural philosophers of the 14th century as "Galileo's predecessors"? In answering, she tried to avoid the facile claims of discontinuity or of continuity that had characterized earlier periods of the debate. Her expressed aim was to see the 14th century in its own terms first, and only then to search for affinities with later thought. Though her work has been influential, it is not as well-known to English-speaking readers as it deserves to be. Steven Sargent has thus performed an important service in choosing and translating seven representative essays from among the 37oo pages of her essays on late medieval philosophy. The translations are clear, and each is prefaced with a brief introductory paragraph; the volume itself is introduced by a helpful overview of Maier's contribution to the scholarship of the late medieval period. The seven essays deal with some of the central notions of scholastic natural BOOK REVXEWS 369 philosophy: motion, causes, forces, and the elements. They discuss two achievements of the 14th century in particular: Oresme's development of the mathematical concept of function, and the theory of impetus of the Paris school. It is her contribution to this last topic that is likely to be best-remembered. Duhem was the first to suggest a continuity between the 14th century concept of impetus and the idea of inertial motion so central to the mechanics of Newton. Maier found Duhem's continuity thesis too facile. "l'hough she still believed that impetus theory had "prepared the way," the differences between it and the later view were far too great to allow it be looked on as an "anticipation." Impetus theory was still governed by the Aristotelian principle requiring a moving cause for all motion, including uniform motion. So even if tile communication of impetus could allow a motion to continue indefinitely in the absence of a contrary resistance (Buridan's suggestion), this catches only one aspect of the law of inertia since impetus is still causing the motion to continue, whereas in Newtonian mechanics no continuing cause is needed tbr...