Peirce's retrieval of scotistic realism

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 72, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 179-196

  Lee Jr , Richard A ^a  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84880535295     PISSN: 10513558     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/acpq199872216     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. Peirce, however, does entertain some historically inaccurate theories about the rise of nominalism: "Notwithstanding a great outburst of nominalism in the fourteenth century which was connected with politics, the nominalists generally being opposed to the excessive powers of the pope and in favor of civil government, a connection that lent to the philosophical doctrine a factitious following, the Scotists, who were realists, were in most places the predominant party, and retained possession of the universities" (1.17). Our picture of the politics of nominalism and realism in medieval universities is much richer today, contradicting the statements Peirce makes here. There are any number of nominalists in ecclesiastical positions of authority, and any number of realists arguing against the power of the papacy. Peirce's picture seems to be drawn from the experience at the University of Paris, but even then, it is not convincing. On the picture at Paris in the fourteenth century after Ockham, see Paque, Ruprecht, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut zur Entstehung des Realitätsbegriffs der neuzeitlichen Naturwissenschaft, (Occam, Burdian und Petrus Hispanus, Nikolaus von Autrecourt und Gregor von Rimini), (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970).
2. By "later medieval" I mean thinkers after the rediscovery of Aristotle in the Latin West. It is indeed interesting that Peirce does not seem to consider the incredible range of medieval nominalist positions ranging from the circle around Peter Abelard through and beyond Ockham. Nominalist positions before the rediscovery of Aristotle in the West were not concerned with the place of universal propositions in science. That context for the debate could only arise out of discussions of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics.
3. Peirce, however, cannot have missed the fact that science was for later medieval thinkers something quite different than contemporary science. In his treatment of Peirce and Scotus, John Boler points out this fact: "⋯it would be anachronistic to identify our current notion of experimental science with the scholastic scientia.⋯" Boler goes on, however, to link these two concepts of science in such a way that Peirce's move is exonerated: "it would be historically naïve to deny any pertinent connection," John F. Boler, Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963), 20. It would also be historically naive to posit any direct connection between the medieval notion of a demonstrative syllogism to our modern "hypothesis-experiment-falsification" scientific procedure.
4. For Scotus' theory of scientia, see Ioannis Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, Prologue, Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera Omnia, I (Vatican City: Vatican Press, 1950)
5. as well as Stephen D. Dumont, "The Propositio Famosa Scoti: Duns Scotus and Ockham on the Possibility of a Science of Theology," Dialogue 31 (1992): 415-29
6. and Edward O'Connor, "The Scientific Character of Theology According to Scotus," in De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, ed. Commisio Scotistica (Rome: Commisio Scotistica, 1968), 3-50.
7. This is the analysis of Robertus Grosseteste, see Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros, ed. Pietro Rossi (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1981).
8. On this shift in understanding the ground of necessity in scientia, see my "Contingency from Necessity: The Late Medieval Grounding of Scientific Necessity," diss. Krakow, Poland: Jagiellonian University, 1995.
9. Porphyry, Isagoge, trans. Edward W. Warren, Mediaeval Sources in Translation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1975).
10. Ioannis Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, Liber Secundus, Dist. I-III, Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera Omnia, 7 (Vatican City: Vatican Press, 1973), 403: Non solum autem ipsa natura de se est indifferens ad esse in intellectu et in particulari, ac per hoc et ad esse universale et particulare (sive singulare)⋯.
11. OrdinatiOy Liber Secundus, dis. I-III, 394: ⋯ igitur intellectus intelligens illud obiectum sub ratione universalis, intelligit ipsum sub ratione opposita suae rationi, quia ut praecedit actum determinatur ex se ad oppositum illius rationis, scilicet universalis.
12. See Metaphysics 1028a10-15.
13. Metaphysics 1028a26; this translation is taken from Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinell, IA: The Peripatetic Press, 1979), 108.
14. This discussion of formalities draws heavily on Allan B. Wolter O.F.M., The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus (St. Bonaventure: The Franciscan Institute, 1946), 22-23.
15. William of Ockham, Scriptum in Librum Primum Sententiarum Ordinatio, ed. Gedeon Gâl, O.F.M. and Stephen Brown, O.F.M., Guillelmi de Ockham Opera Philosophica et Theologica (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1967), 91.
16. Ockham's rejection of the formal distinction, see William of Ockham, Scriptum in LibrumPrimum Sententiarum Ordinatio. Distinctiones II-III, ed. Stephen Brown, O.F.M., Guillelmi de Ockham Opera Theologica Vol. II (St. Bonaventura Franciscan Institute Publications, 1970), 14-17.
17. Marilyn McCord Adams, "Universals in the Early Fourteenth Century," in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, Jan Pinborg, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 418.
18. William of Ockham, Expositio in Librum Praedicamentorum Aristotelis, ed. Gedeon Gal, Guillelmi de Ockham Opera Philosophica et Theologica (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1978), 347;
19. William of Ockham, Summa Logicae, ed. Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M., Gedeon Gal, O.F.M. and Stephan Brown, Guillemi de Ockham Opera Philosophica et Theologica (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1974), 7: "Terminus conceptus est intentio seu passio animae⋯."
20. William of Ockham, Expositio in Librwn Praedicamentontm Aristotelis, 351: ⋯ istas passiones esse subjective et realiter in anima tamquam veras qualitates⋯.
21. William of Ockham, Expositio in Librwn Praedicamentorum Aristotelis, 355: Et hoc non est aliud quam quod talis cognitio aliquo modo assimilationis magis assimilatur homini quam asino, et non magis isti homini quam illi.
22. This process is more or less complicated depending upon whether a thinker accepts the multiplication of sensible species in the medium. On this topic, see the excellent treatment in Katherine Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250-1345, Studien und Texte Zur Geistesgeschichte Des Mittelalters, XXII (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988).