Arché Research Centre for Logic, Language, Metaphysics and Epistemology
Medieval Logic Seminar (aka Medieval Logic Reading Group)
The Logic Gallery has a new home
Organiser: Stephen Read
Semester 1 (September - December 2023), each Monday at 09.30 (UK time) by Zoom (provisionally starting on 25 September): We will begin reading through the edition and translation by W.K.Seaton of Ralph Strode's Tractatus de Consequentiis in his Ph.D. thesis of 1973.
Semester 1 (September - December 2022), each Monday at 09.30 (UK time) by Zoom (actually, starting on 3 October): We will begin reading through the edition and translation that Barbara Bartocci and I have prepared (as part of our project on Theories of Paradox in Fourteenth-Century Logic) of John Dumbleton's Summa Logicae, focussing on the section on De Scire et Dubitare.
Semester 2 (January - June 2023), each Monday at 09.30 (UK time) by Zoom, starting on 23 January: we will read through Jennifer Ashworth's forthcoming edition and translation of Ralph Strode's Obligationes. For a description of this genre of medieval logical treatise, see, e.g., the Stanford Encyclopedia entry: Medieval Theories of Obligationes.
Semester 1 (September - December 2021), each Monday at 09.30 (UK time) by Zoom (starting on 20 September): We read the edition and translation that Barbara Bartocci and I have prepared (as part of our project on Theories of Paradox in Fourteenth-Century Logic) of Walter Segrave's treatise on Insolubles.
Semester 2 (January - Jume 2022), each Monday at 09.30 (UK time) by Zoom (starting on 31 January): We read through the edition and translation that Barbara Bartocci and I have prepared (as part of our project on Theories of Paradox in Fourteenth-Century Logic) of Walter Segrave's treatise on Insolubles.
Semester 1 (October - December 2020), each Friday at 10.15 by Zoom (starting on 2 October): We read from the edition and translation that Barbara Bartocci and I are preparing (as part of our project on Theories of Paradox in Fourteenth-Century Logic) of John Dumbleton's Summa Logicae, focussing on the section on Insolubles.
Semester 2 (February - June 2021), each Monday at 09.30 by Zoom (starting on 1 February): We read from the edition and translation that Barbara Bartocci and I are preparing (as part of our project on Theories of Paradox in Fourteenth-Century Logic) of Dumbleton's Summa Logicae, focussing on the section on Insolubles.
Semester 1 (September - December 2019), each Friday at 10.15 in the Arché Seminar Room (starting on 27 September): Roger Bacon's De Signis. This is available (at a reasonable price) in English translation by Thomas Maloney ('Roger Bacon: On Signs', PIMS 2013), and the Latin text is online in Traditio 34 (1978), 75-136.
Semester 2 (February - June 2020): we continued our reading of Bacon's 'On Signs'. When we were finished with Bacon's text (around the end of April), we turned to look at the opening chapters of Dumbleton's Summa Logicae, which are preliminary remarks on signification prior to his discussion of insolubles, in the edition and translation that Barbara Bartocci and I are preparing as part of our project on Theories of Paradox in Fourteenth-Century Logic.
Semester 1 (September - December 2018), each Friday at 10.15 in the Arché Seminar Room (starting on 28 September): we read Paul of Venice's own solution in his treatise De Insolubilibus from his Logica Magna in the transcription and English translation which Barbara Bartocci and I are preparing as part of our project on Theories of Paradox in Fourteenth-Century Logic.
Semester 2 (February - June 2019): We completed reading through Paul's treatise De Insolubilibus, after which we will read some excerpts from his Quadratura and sophism 50 from his Sophismata Aurea, both of which give additional information on Paul's two solutions to the insolubles.
Semester 2 (February - June 2018): We read through the discussion of insolubles in John Wyclif's Logicae Continuatio (aka 'Proofs of Propositions') in Mark Thakkar's draft edition and translation.
Semester 1 (September - December 2017): We read through the initial chapter of Paul of Venice, Logica Magna, Part II treatise 15, De Insolubilibus. In this first chapter, Paul discusses 15 alternative solutions, which he argues against.
Semester 2: We read through some more of John Wyclif's Logicae Continuatio (aka 'Proofs of Propositions') in Mark Thakkar's draft edition and translation.
Semester 1: We read through Paul of Venice's Tractatus de Veritate et Falsitate Propositionis (Treatise on the Truth and Falsity of the Proposition) from his Logica Magna, edited by Francesco del Punta and translated into English by Marilyn McCord Adams in 1978 (OUP for the British Academy). We then read the final section of the Tractatus de Significato Propositionis (Treatise on the Significate of the Proposition), in the same volume.
Semester 2: meeting on Fridays at the usual time of 10.15 am (for an hour and a half), starting on 5 February 2016, in the Arché Seminar Room. The plan for the semester is as follows:
Semester 1: we read selected passages from Brian Copenhaver's new translation (and edition) of Peter of Spain's Summaries of Logic (OUP 2014) meeting on Fridays from 10.15 - 11.45 in the Arché Seminar Room in College St., starting on 18 September 2015.
Semester 2: we read through some of John Wyclif's Tractatus de Logica (written in the 1360s) in Mark Thakkar's draft edition and translation. The Latin text edited by M. H. Dziewicki (1893-99) is notoriously unreliable, so we were among the first people to read a tolerably accurate version for centuries.
Semester 1: we read through Terry Parsons' new book, Articulating Medieval Logic. Terry gives a useful summary of the formation rules and rules of inference, and solutions to many of the exercises, at https://sites.google.com/site/tparsons5555/home/articulating-medieval-logic.
Semester 2: Chapter 8 of John Buridan's Sophismata in Gyula Klima's English translation, meeting each Tuesday from 18 February 2014 at 4 pm until 5.30 pm in Edgecliffe room G03. All welcome.The Latin text of the Sophismata has been edited twice, in 1977 by T.K.Scott and in 2004 by Fabienne Pironet, and ch.8 has been translated into English three times: the whole of the Sophisms by Scott in 1966, the whole of the Summulae de Dialectica, including the Sophismata by Klima in 2001 and ch.8 alone by George Hughes in 1982.
Semester 1: Thomas Bradwardine's De Continuo in John Murdoch's English translation, meeting each Tuesday from 24 September 2013 at 4 pm until 5.30 pm in Edgecliffe room G03. All welcome. In this treatise, composed probably in the early 1330s, Bradwardine defends what he takes to be Aristotle's account of the continuum, and attacks four contemporary views.
Semester 2: John Buridan's Sophismata in Gyula Klima's English translation, meeting each Monday from 28 January 2013 at 9.30 until 11 (except week 2: meeting at 1 pm) in Arche room 19.203.
Semester 1: meeting each Monday from 10 October 2011 at 2.30 till 4 pm in Edgecliffe room 109.
John Buridan, Treatise on Consequences, Book IV: Syllogisms between Modal Propositions. For details, see below under 2008-9 and 2009-10.
Semester 1: Albert of Saxony, 'Twenty-five Disputed Questions on Logic'. English translation by Michael Fitzgerald, published in 2010 by Peeters. (Fitzgerald published the Latin text with Brill in 2002.) We will concentrate on Questions 12-19, on the theory of supposition.
Semester 2: William Heytesbury, 'Treatise on the compounded and divided senses' and 'Rules for solving sophisms' (the first two parts on 'Insolubles' and 'Knowledge and doubt'). They are all available in English translation. The 'Treatise on the compounded and divided senses' and 'Knowledge and doubt' are in The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts, ed. N. Kretzmann and E. Stump (CUP 1988), pp. 413-72, and the 'Insolubles' are available in an English translation by Paul Spade (out of print, but in the University Library at BC21.I64H4S7). The Latin text is available online.
Second term: we have now completed our reading of William Ockham, Predestination, God's Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents, translated by M.M. Adams and N. Kretzmann (second edition: Hackett 1983). The Latin text was edited by P. Boehner in The Tractatus de Praedestinatione et de Praiscientia Dei et de Futuris Contingentibus of William Ockham (Franciscan Institute 1945), along with a commentary and other texts. As background reading, look at (my translation of) Richard Lavenham's very short Treatise on Future Contingents, and at Norman Kretzmann's translation of (part of) Thomas Bradwardine's treatise “On Future Contingents” (probably drawn from his Sentences Commentary, written in the 1330s, which appears to be lost). You could also look at the Stanford Encyclopedia article on “Future Contingents”, or at Calvin Normore's article on “Future Contingents” in the Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, pp. 358-81 .
First term: we have now completed reading Buridan's Treatise on Consequences in my new translation of Book III (Syllogisms). Sometime in the future (perhaps starting in September 2010), I hope we can read and discuss Book IV (Modal Syllogisms). See also my paper “Inferences”, in the Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, and “The Medieval Theory of Consequence”, a paper I presented to the Workshop on The Philosophy of Logical Consequence at Uppsala in November 2008 (forthcoming in Synthese). You might also find it useful to look at Catarina Dutilh Novaes, “14th century logic after Ockham”, in D.Gabbay and J.Woods (eds.), The Handbook of the History of Logic, vol 2 (2008), pp. 433-504.
In session 2008-9, we read through Books I and II of Buridan's Treatise on Consequences in a new translation which I have made of the treatise. The translation published in 1985 is very problematic: see my review in Vivarium 1987.
In session 2007-8, we worked through Walter Burley’s treatise Obligations. I made a (rough) English translation of those sections which were not translated in Kretzmann and Stump, The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts, vol. I (Cambridge UP, 1988). Here also is a ‘Short History of Impossible positio’.
In session 2006-7, we worked through my new edition and translation of Thomas Bradwardine's Insolubilia. This has now appeared (May 2010) as volume 10 of the Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations.
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