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O
xford has such a long intellectual heat, colour, density and light. But their where he witnessed the Battle of Crécy; he
history that even the episodes experiments were those of the imagination; was later appointed to negotiate peace with
that made it illustrious are liable practical experiments would have been of Philip VI. He was consecrated Archbishop
to be forgotten. One such took little help in any case without suitable meas- of Canterbury in 1349, just over a month
place in the second quarter of the four- uring instruments. Indeed, some of the cal- before succumbing to the Black Death.
teenth century, when a group of Oxonians culators’ works, although ostensibly dealing Nowadays, Bradwardine is known
developed a battery of new techniques for with the natural world, may best be seen as primarily for his views on free will and
dealing with philosophical problems, the advanced exercises in logic.
strikingly mathematical nature of their They have been dubbed ‘the Merton
approach earning them the epithet of ‘cal- School’, because several of them – includ- above: Oxford mathematician Richard of
culators’. ing the most notable, Thomas Bradwardine, Wallingford (1292–1336), a contemporary
These scholars busied themselves with William Heytesbury and Richard Swineshead of the Merton calculators, though any
quantitative analyses of qualities such as – were Fellows of Merton. I cannot resist evidence of a connection is lost
Swineshead’s magnum opus, and per- came instead from its devastating effect From the student’s point of view, how-
haps the crowning achievement of the group on primary education, which meant that ever, the analytical facility developed by
as a whole, was a series of treatises known students from the 1360s onwards were not such technical study would have proved use-
as the Book of Calculations (c.1350). These sufficiently well prepared to cope with work ful for careers in an increasingly monetised
dealt in exhausting detail with problems of as advanced and sophisticated as that of the society. It is notable that even today Oxford
quantitative physics, including more than 50 calculators. (Oxford, with its overwhelm- bills its Mathematics and Philosophy joint
variations on Bradwardine’s ingly English demographic, degree as involving ‘two of the most fun-
law. While supposedly wres- suffered more in this respect damental and widely applicable intellectual
tling with such subtle prob- Swineshead ... than the cosmopolitan univer- skills’.
lems, Swineshead took part was subsequently sity of Paris.) Moreover, with hindsight we can see
in a brawl over the election Subsequently the abstruse that the calculators made an important
ordered to return
of the Provost of Oriel as nature of the calculators’ writ- advance by treating qualities such as heat
Chancellor of Oxford, and several items ings earned them ridicule and force as quantifiable at all, even if only
was subsequently ordered seized from the from some quarters. While theoretically. Although the problems they
by the Crown to return sev- University Chest the Italian universities enthu- set themselves stemmed from imaginary
eral items seized from the siastically adopted an Oxonian situations rather than actual experiments,
University Chest. It seems approach, the humanists of the they nonetheless ‘introduced mathemat-
he favoured the Mertonian candidate, John Renaissance heaped scorn on what they ics into scholastic philosophy’, as Leibniz
Wyliot, who was installed when the Provost called quisquiliae suiceticae, ‘Swinehead’s put it. This influential move facilitated the
died a month later. rubbish’. One particularly vicious critic full-scale application of mathematics to the
Oxford scholastic philosophy is thought complained that ‘the scholastics hit upon real world that characterised the Scientific
to have declined in brilliance after 1350. It cavillations of the most stupid subtlety and Revolution and culminated triumphantly in
is tempting to see this as an immediate con- called them calculations’, and asked: ‘What Newton’s laws of motion.
sequence of the Black Death, but the plague science can there be in subjects so remote Mark Thakkar (Balliol) is studying for a
actually claimed the lives of comparatively and divorced from all intelligence and com- DPhil in medieval philosophy. He is also
few Oxonians. The real blow probably mon sense?’ Oxford Today’s crossword editor
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