Thomas Bradwardine

Thomas Bradwardine (c. 1300 – 26 August 1349) was an English cleric, scholar, mathematician, physicist, courtier and, very briefly, Archbishop of Canterbury. As a celebrated scholastic philosopher and doctor of theology, he is often called Doctor Profundus (medieval epithet, meaning "the Profound Doctor" or "the Profound Teacher").

Life

Sources vary about Bradwardine's early life before receiving his degree in 1321. His exact date of birth is unknown but sources point to a date between 1290 and 1300. His place of birth is also unknown but some sources point to it being near Chichester, Sussex, or Harfield. The first concrete sources of his do not appear until he received his degree in 1321 from Balliol College, Oxford. Thomas Bradwardine became a Fellow of Merton College in Oxford, and was awarded his B.A. in August 1321. Bradwardine stayed at Merton College until 1333, when he was appointed Canon of Lincoln, and in 1337 he was appointed the chaplain of St Paul's Cathedral. His involvement with the ecclesiastical began in September 1333, when he was made the Canon of Lincoln. It is less corroborated by sources but it is stated that Bradwardine may have been the Bishop of Durham between 1335 and 1337. It is rumoured that this move to Durham helped put him into contact with King Edward III, which would lead to his eventual appointment of Chaplain of Old St Paul's Cathedral in London.

He acquired several degrees from Oxford, it is presumed he acquired them on these dates: B.A. by August 1321, an M.A. by 1323, a B.Th. by 1330, and a D.Th. by 1348. on 26 August 1349, 38 days after his consecration. He was buried at Canterbury.

Chaucer in "The Nun's Priest's Tale" (line 476) ranks Bradwardine with Augustine and Boethius. His great theological work, to modern eyes, is a treatise against the Pelagians, entitled De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum. Bradwardine's major treatise argued that space was an infinite void in which God could have created other worlds, which he would rule as he ruled this one. The "causes of virtue" include the influences of the planets, not as predestining a human career, but influencing a subject's essential nature. This astrophysical treatise was not published until it was edited by Sir Henry Savile and printed in London, 1618; its circulation in manuscript was very limited. The implications of the infinite void were revolutionary; to have pursued them would have threatened the singular relationship of man and this natural world to God (Cantor 2001); in it he treated theology mathematically. He wrote also De Geometria speculativa (printed at Paris, 1530); De Arithmetica practica (printed at Paris, 1502); De proportionibus velocitatum in motibus (1328) (printed at Paris, 1495; Venice, 1505); De Quadratura Circuli (Paris, 1495); and an Ars Memorative (Sloane MS no. 3974 in the British Library) – earning from the Pope the title of the "Profound Doctor". Another text, De Continuo is more tenuously credited to him and thought to be written sometime between 1328 and 1325.

Theology

Bradwardine helped revive Augustinian Theology during his time in the fourteenth century. He wrote extensively on various subjects, including speculative arithmetic, geometry, and the workings of the human mind. As a theologian and scholar of natural philosophy, Bradwardine rejected William of Ockham's belief that God could know future events and contingencies in a limited sense, insisting instead that God's knowledge is absolute.

Bradwardine was influenced by the Augustinian soteriology, which centered on a divine monergism and implied a double predestination. He accepted the idea of predestination and suggested that all evil acts of Human will were due to God. He argued that providence is inseparable from predestination, and rejected the notion that humans could do good of their own volition. Instead, he claimed they act solely according to God's will. Bradwardine would go on to write that free will and predestination through predeterminism are compatible, a theory known as compatibilism.

Science

thumb|upright=1.1|Geometria speculativa, 1495

Merton College sheltered a group of dons devoted to natural science, mainly physics, astronomy and mathematics, rivals of the intellectuals at the University of Paris. Bradwardine was one of these Oxford Calculators, studying mechanics with William Heytesbury, Richard Swineshead, and John Dumbleton. The Oxford Calculators distinguished kinematics from dynamics, emphasising kinematics, and investigating instantaneous velocity. They first formulated the mean speed theorem: a body moving with constant velocity travels the same distance as an accelerated body in the same time if its velocity is half the final speed of the accelerated body. They also demonstrated this theorem – the foundation of "The Law of Falling Bodies" – long before Galileo, who is generally credited with it.

The mathematical physicist and historian of science Clifford Truesdell, wrote:

In Tractatus de proportionibus (1328), Bradwardine extended the theory of proportions of Eudoxus of Cnidus to anticipate the concept of exponential growth, later developed by the Bernoulli and Euler, with compound interest as a special case. Arguments for the mean speed theorem (above) require the modern mathematical concept of limit, so Bradwardine had to use arguments of his day. Mathematician and mathematical historian Carl Benjamin Boyer writes, "Bradwardine developed the Boethian theory of double or triple or, more generally, what we would call 'n-tuple' proportion". Bradwardine attempted to reconcile contradictions in physics, where he largely adopted Aristotle's description of the physical universe.

Bradwardine rejected four opinions concerning the link between power, resistance, and speed on the basis that were inconsistent with Aristotle's or because they did not align with what could be easily observed regarding motion. He does this by examining the nature of ratios. Bradwardine's identification of this error was described by Ernest Moody as a "radical shift from Aristotelian dynamics to modern dynamics, initiated in the early fourteenth century." Yet "Bradwardine and his Oxford colleagues did not quite make the breakthrough to modern science" (Cantor 2001, p. 122).

Al-Kindi in particular seemed to influence Bradwardine, though it is unclear whether this was directly or indirectly. Nonetheless, Bradwardine's work bears many similarities to the work of Al-Kindi, Quia primos (or De Gradibus). Gerard of Cremona's Latin translation of Quia primos (or De Gradibus) would have been available to Bradwardine, but Roger Bacon seemed to be the only European philosopher to have had a direct connection to the book, but not to the degree of Arnald of Villanova.

Bradwardine's On Acquiring a Trained Memory, translated by Mary Carruthers, contains, as Carruthers describes it, was similar to Cicero's work on the art of memory. She states, "Bradwardine's art is notable for its detailed description of several techniques for fixing and recalling specific material through the use of graphically detailed, brilliantly colored, and vigorously animated mental images, grouped together in a succession of pictures or organized scenes, whose internal order recalls not just particular content but the relationship among its parts." Bradwardine's work on kinematics was also influential to Buridan. Despite never rejecting the papacy, Thomas Bradwardine is cited as holding Reformation theology before Luther and Calvin.

His De Causa Dei influenced the theology of John Wycliffe on grace and predestination.

Works

Latin works and English translations

Insolubilia (Insolubles), Latin text and English translation by Stephen Read, Leuven, Peeters Editions (Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, 10), 2010.
De insolubilibus (On Insolubles), edited by Marie Louise Roure in 'La problématique des propositions insolubles du XIIIe siècle et du début du XIVe, suivie de l'édition des traités de William Shyreswood, Walter Burleigh et Thomas Bradwardine', Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen Age 37, 1970: 205–326.
De incipit et desinit (On 'It Begins' and 'It Ceases'), ed. Lauge O. Nielsen, Cahiers de l'Institut du moyen Age grec et Latin 42, 1982: 1–83.
Geometria speculativa (Speculative Geometry), Latin text and English translation with an introduction and a commentary by George Molland, Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1989.
Arithmetica speculativa (Speculative Arithmetic) Parisiis: G. Marchant, 1495
De proportionibus velocitatum in motibus (On the Ratios of Velocities in Motions) Latin text and English translation by H. Lamar Crosby Jr. in: 'Thomas of Bradwardine: His Tractatus de Proportionibus: Its Significance for the Development of Mathematical Physics', Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955.
De continuo (On the Continuum), edited by John Emery Murdoch in 'Geometry and the Continuum in the Fourteenth Century: A Philosophical Analysis of Thomas Bradwardine's Tractatus de continuo', PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1957.
De futuris contingentibus (On Future Contingents): edited by
De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum ad suos Mertonenses, libri tres (In Defense of God Against the Pelagians and on the Power of Causes, in three books), edited by Henry Savile, London: 1618; reprinted at Frankfurt: Minerva, 1964.
Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard: some questions found in a manuscript at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris are published in: J.-F. Genest and Katherine Tachau, 'La lecture de Thomas Bradwardine sur les Sentences', Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 57, 1990: 301–6.
De memoria artificiali adquirenda (On Acquiring a Trained Memory), ed. Mary Carruthers, Journal of Medieval Latin, 2, (1992): 25–43; translated in Carruthers M., The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. 1990, pp. 281–8; Carruthers M. and Ziolkowski J., The Medieval Craft of Memory, Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, pp. 205–14.
Gillmeister H. (ed.), "An intriguing fourteenth-century document: Thomas Bradwardine's De arte memorativa". Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 220, 1983, pp. 111–4.
Green-Pedersen N.-J. (ed.), "Bradwardine (?) on Ockham's doctrine of consequences: an edition". Cahiers de l'Institute de moyen age grec et latin, 42, 1982, pp. 85–150.
Lamar Crosby H. (ed.), Thomas of Bradwardine: his Tractatus de Proportionibus: its significance for the development of mathematical physics. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1955.

References

Citations

Sources

In the Wake of the Plague, Norman F. Cantor, Simon & Schuster, 2001. "Death comes to the Archbishop": a chapter sets Bradwardine's political and intellectual career in his Oxford milieu, in the context of the Black Death.
A History of Mathematics (pp. 288, 302), Carl O. Boyer, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1984.
The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages, Marshall Claggett, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1960.
Tractatus de Proportionibus, Its Significance for the Development of Mathematical Physics, H. L. Crosby, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1955.
W. F. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. iv.
See Quétif–Échard, Script. Praedic. (1719), i. 744
Essays in The History of Mechanics, Clifford Truesdell, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1968, QC122.T7.

External links

Thomas Bradwardine at The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
Thomas Bradwardine. Geometria speculativa at Somni