Albertus De Saxonia

Questiones Subtilissime Alberti De Saxonia in Libros De Celo Et Mundo

      Orinus de Luna, Papiensis, 1497, 9 June. Hieronymus Surianus, ed. Folio. a-h6, i3. [-i4 blank] 51 (of 52 lacks last blank]ff. 19th c. paste-paper boards, titling piece, some rubbing; foxing throughout, light marginal dampstain on last 4 leaves; last leaf restored in upper outer margin with some loss of text. Albert of Saxony (ca. 1316-1390), Master of Arts at Paris, then Rector of the University of Vienna, and finally Bishop of Halberstadt (Germany). As a logician, he was at the forefront of the movement that expanded the analysis of language based on the properties of terms, especially their reference (in Latin: suppositio), but also in the exploration of new fields of logic, especially the theory of consequences. As a natural philosopher, he worked in the tradition of John Buridan and contributed to the spread of Parisian natural philosophy throughout Italy and central Europe. "Albert of Saxony's treatises on physics consist of a "Tractatus proportionum" and questions on Aristotle's "Physics", "De Coelo", and "De generatione et corruptione". These contain, in a clear, precise, and concise form, an explanation of numerous ideas which exercised great influence on the development of modern science, which ideas, however, were not wholly personal to Albert of Helmstädt, many of the most important of them being derived from his master, Jean Buridan. He abandoned the old Peripatetic dynamics which ascribed the movement of projectiles to disturbed air. With Buridan he placed the cause of this movement in an impetus put into the projectile by the person who threw it; the part he assigned to this impetus is very like that which we now attribute to living force. With Buridan he considered that the heavens were not moved by intelligences, but, like projectiles, by the impetus which God gave them when He created them. With Buridan he saw in the increase of impetus the reason of the acceleration in the fall of a heavy body. He further taught that the velocity of a falling weight increased in proportion either to...<!-