Buridan, Ockham, Aquinas: Science in the Middle Ages

REVIEW ARTICLE BURIDAN, OCKHAM, AQUINAS: SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES r---rHE DEATH OF Ernest A. Moody in December of 1975 J_ _deprived the academic world of one of its foremost medievalists and intellectual historians, a person to be ranked surely with Pierre Duhem and Anneliese Maier for the many difficult texts he made available to scholars and for the novelty of the insights with which he continually stimulated them. Fortunate it was that just six months before his death the University of California Press saw fit to publish his collected papers, together with an autobiographical preface that explained his intellectual odyssey, why and when he wrote what he did from beginning to end, and how he finally evaluated the results of all his labors.1 This series 1 Ernest A. Moody, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Science, and Logic. Collected Papers, 1933-1969. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. 477 pp., no index, $20.00. Apart from the Foreword and the Preface, the papers include: "William of Auvergne and His Treatise De Anima," pp. 1-110, written as Moody's M. A. thesis at Columbia in 1933 and previously unpublished; "John Buridan on the Habitability of the Earth," pp. 111-126, which originally appeared in Speculum, Vol. 16 (1941); "Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt," pp. 127-160, reprinted from Franciscan Studies, Vol. 7 (1947); "Ockham and Aegidius of Rome," pp. 161-188, also from Franciscan Studies, Vol. 9 (1949); "Laws of Motion in Medieval Physics," pp. 189-202, reprinted from The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 72 (1951); "Galileo and Avempace: The Dynamics of the Leaning Tower Experiment ," pp. 203-286, reprinted from the Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 12 (1951); "Empiricism and Metaphysics in Medieval Philosophy," pp. 287-304, reprinted from The Philosophical Review, Vol. 67 (1958); "The Age of Analysis," pp. 305-320, reprinted from Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 36 (1963); "A Quodlibetal Question of Robert Holkot, O. P., on the Problem of the Objects of Knowledge and Belief," pp. 321-352, reprinted from Speculum, Vol. 39 (1964); "Buridan and the Dilemma of Nominalism," pp. 353-370, which appeared in The Harry A. Wolfson Jubilee Volume, published at Jerusalem in 1965 by the American Academy for Jewish Research; " The Medieval Contribution to Logic," pp. 371-392, reprinted from Studium Generale (Heidelberg ), Vol. 19 (1966); "Galileo and His Precursors," pp. 393-408, which appeared in Galileo Reappraised, ed. C. L. Golino, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; " William of Ockham," pp. 409-440, reprinted from the Encycl