Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham : : Optics, Epistemology and the Foundation of Semantics 1250-1345 / / Katherine Tachau.

• Superior document: Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters ; 22
• VerfasserIn: Tachau, Katherine,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden; , Boston : : BRILL,, 1988.
• Year of Publication: 1988
• Language: English
• Series: Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters ; 22.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xxii, 428 p. )
• Notes: Includes indexes.

When William of Ockham lectured on Lombard's Sentences in 1317-1319, he articulated a new theory of knowledge. Its reception by fourteenth-century scholars was, however, largely negative, for it conflicted with technical accounts of vision and with their interprations of Duns Scotus. This study begins with Roger Bacon, a major source for later scholastics' efforts to tie a complex of semantic and optical explanations together into an account of concept formation, truth and the acquisition of certitude. After considering the challenges of Peter Olivi and Henry of Ghent, Part I concludes with a discussion of Scotus's epistemology. Part II explores the alternative theories of Peter Aureol and William of Ockham. Part III traces the impact of Scotus, and then of Aureol, on Oxford thought in the years of Ockham's early audience, culminating with the views of Adam Wodeham. Part IV concerns Aureol's intellectual legacy at Paris, the introduction of Wodeham's thought there, and Autrecourt's controversies.

Table of Contents

Preface -- List of Abbreviations, Sigla, and Technical Vocabulary -- Part One: From Perspectivist Optics tto Intuitive Cognition: The background to Fourteenth-Century Epistomology -- I. The Multiplication of Species: The Legacy of Roger Bacon -- II. From the Baconian Synthesis to the Epistomology of John Duns Scotus -- III. John Duns Scotus -- Part Two: Interpretation and Reconception -- IV. Peter Aureol -- V. William of Ockham -- Part Three: The Rejection of Ockham's Theory of Knowledge in England -- VI.Oxford Between Scotus and Ockham -- VII. The Early Reaction to Aureol and Ockham: the Views of Walter Chatton -- VIII. Oxford in the 1320s -- IX. Oxford in the 1330s -- X. Adam Wodeham at london and Oxford -- Part Four: The Introduction of English Theories of Knowledge to Paris -- XI. Paris 1318-1245: The Interpreters of SCotus and Aureol -- XII. Epiloguw: Adam Wodeham's First Parisian Readers -- Bibliography -- Index manuscriptorum -- Index personarum et rerum.