Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

434 Catarina Dutilh Novaes
the present purposes, it is sufficient to present the extension of the term ‘logic’
in the 14 th century — that is, the kinds of theories that were treated under the
heading of logic in that period.
As any list of 14 th century authors and texts (such as in [Spade, 1996, 329]) will
show, the main logical topics treated in that period were: insolubilia (paradoxical
propositions); modal propositions; supposition; the analysis (‘proof’) of propositions;
obligations; and consequence. One also encounters works bearing the title
‘sophismata’ (William Heytesbury, Albert of Saxony, Richard Kilvington), but
sophismata are not theories in themselves; rather, sophismata are logical and/or
philosophical puzzles (cf. [Pironet, 2005]). The apparatus to be used to solve a
given sophisma obviously depends on the source of the problem in question, and
may come from any of the familiar theoretical frameworks most used then (theories
of supposition, theories of fallacies etc.).
As for the first two topics of this list, insolubilia and modal propositions (two
of the main topics in 14 th century logic), they are treated in detail elsewhere this
volume, so I will not approach them here. We are thus left with the other four
prominent logical genres in the 14 th century: supposition, the analysis (‘proof’)
of propositions, obligationes, and consequence. Indeed, this chapter is composed
of three main parts, each of them dedicated to one of these topics – under the
common heading of ‘semantics’, I treat supposition and, briefly, the theory of
proofs of propositions. But before I move to the study of these three topics,
in a preliminary section I give an overview of names, dates and places, so as to
provide the reader with some of the historical background before we proceed to the
conceptual analysis. The reader may also choose to turn directly to the thematic
sections, if the historical aspects are not her main interest.
1 NAMES, DATES AND PLACES
While it is true that there has been growing interest in 14 th century philosophy
over the last decades, and that the number of publications on this subject has
grown exponentially, we are still nowhere near a complete account of the historical
and bibliographical events involving the authors in question. It is significant,
for example, that even the exact date of death of an author as influential as
John Buridan remains unknown (cf. [Zupko, 2002a, section 1]). It may be a
matter of further work on the extant manuscripts and records, which remain largely
unstudied in libraries, but it may also be that some of these details will never be
revealed for lack of extant records.
Be that as it may, and although there is definitely a significant amount of work
still to be done on manuscripts and records, scholars have managed to compile an
impressive, albeit incomplete, amount of information on the philosophers of that
period. Here I attempt to present the main lines of our current state of knowledge
on 14 th century philosophers and logicians, especially in view of the conceptual
analyses to follow. Naturally, several important texts remain without definitive
authorial attribution and are listed as ‘Anonymous’; whenever relevant, such texts