| "Scientiae mediae" was the common medieval name for a group of sciences each considered to be intermediate between natural philosophy and pure mathematics. Comprising astronomy, optics, harmonics, and sometimes mechanics, the intermediate sciences posed certain methodological problems within Aristotle's system of scientific demonstration as expressed in the Posterior Analytics. Of these problems the main two were (1) the relation of the intermediate sciences to pure mathematics and to natural philosophy, and (2) what it means for the intermediate sciences to know quia and pure mathematics to know propter quid. This thesis examines the solutions given to these and other problems surrounding the intermediate sciences by seven commentators on the Posterior Analytics from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, namely Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1168-1253), Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200-1280), Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274), Aegidius Romanus (before 1247-1316), Walter Burley (ca. 1285-1347), Paul of Venice (ca. 1370-1429), and Jacopo Zabarella (1533-1589).;Through the writings of these commentators this thesis traces a continuous tradition of the intermediate sciences, a tradition begun by Grosseteste and which reached a high point with Aquinas and again with Zabarella. The texts and sources used by each commentator and his influence on later writers are treated in detail. Although the interpretations of various points differed, each of these commentators was committed to restricting the use of mathematics to its proper sphere while at the same time accounting for its obvious utility in the intermediate sciences.;By delineating the main trends in the medieval treatment of the intermediate sciences, this thesis provides a basis for future study of its implications not only for the practice of these sciences in the Middle Ages and for the increased use in the fourteenth century of mathematical techniques in natural philosophy, but also for the origin of the mathematical method of the seventeenth-century scientific revolution. |
