Abstract
Sobol’s chapter builds on the thesis that although medieval scholars inherited a theory of sensation based primarily on visual phenomena from Aristotle and his Islamic commentators, this had yet to be applied to sensation in general. Roger Bacon began the task of elucidating the nature of sensible species (the primary representations of sensible qualities) and their role in sensation, but it was Buridan who devoted a large part of his question commentary to demonstrating that both external and internal sensation relied on species. Buridan departed from Aristotle in asserting a finite speed of light, but on the other side he departed from most of his contemporaries, and remained faithful to Aristotle, by locating the organs of the common sense and the imagination in the heart instead of the head.
Now all of this is to be understood
in a spiritual manner.
Let us cover
the nakedness of our fathers
with the cloak of a
favorable interpretation.
Excerpted from James McMichael (1973), “The Very Rich Hours” (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/21843).
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Notes
- 1.
Buridan says in several places that the question at hand is a difficult one, e.g. II.4, par. 10; II.7, par. 10; II.8, par. 11; II.17, par. 17; II.18, par. 10, II.25, par. 10.
- 2.
Aristotle [1975] 95.
- 3.
Aristotle [1975] 147.
- 4.
Aristotle [1975] 99.
- 5.
The ninth question also contains the interesting statement that the soul’s lodgment in the body is miraculous, because only by a miracle could an unextended thing inhere in an extended thing from the potency of which it did not arise (par. 25).
- 6.
“Et debes hoc consyderare, quoniam indiget perscrutatione” [1962] Suppl. 2, f. 81 B.. This was noted by Albert, who wrote “Hoc est dignum consideratione, et est questio, quam tangit Averroes et reliquit insolutum.” ([1951] tom. 7, pt 1,104:48–50) although he then quickly dismissed the need for an agent sense.
- 7.
One might insist that Buridan has correctly located Averroes’s agent sense in sensing animals, but this would require that there are as many agent senses as there are sensing animals, which would constitute a major departure from Averroes’s singular agent intellect.
- 8.
In fact Aristotle does not distribute the elements to the senses in this way in De anima III.1. And if earth can be dominant in more than one sense, perhaps air and water might also be dominant in a sense not possessed by humans.
- 9.
This paragraph contains the important point that, although the eye must be transparent and the ear’s air as quiet as possible, the organs of sight and hearing are not the water of the eye or the air of the ear because the soul cannot inhere in a simple body.
- 10.
This example should dispel the canard sometimes attributed to Jules Michelet that the Middle Ages was “a thousand years without a bath.”
- 11.
Cf. DA II.11, “We perceive all things through a medium” (Aristotle [1975] 133).
- 12.
This claim was frequently cited by commentators. Buridan devoted the 21st question of Book II to this claim, and defended it, as we shall see.
- 13.
For the history of these theories, see Lindberg ([1976]).
- 14.
“Haec namque pars Perspectivae perfecte cognita ostendit nobis modum, quo res longissime distantes faciamus apparere propinquissime positas, et quo res magnas propinquas faciamus apparere brevissimas et quo res longe positas parvas faciamus apparere quantum volumus magnas, ita ut possibile sit nobis ex incredibili distantia litteras minimas legere, aut arenam, aut granum, aut gramina, aut quaevis minuta numerare” (Baur [1912] 74). Buridan remarked on the changes in apparent size of objects viewed in concave and convex mirrors at QDA II, q. 13, n. 10.
- 15.
Lindberg [1983] 192:83–84).
- 16.
Against this claim, Buridan proposed that the rising Sun may always be a little bit ahead of where we see it (QDA II.18, par. 35).
- 17.
Bartholomew the Englishman reported that sick elephants gather herbs to cure themselves but, before using them, “they heave up the head and look up toward heaven, and pray for the help of God in a certain religion” [1582, 1976] XVIII.42 f. 362vb.
- 18.
In works on the soul in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, these two terms are sometimes used interchangeably and sometimes to designate distinct powers.
- 19.
Albert, ([1890–1899] 157:36–37). Also see the dubious De apprehensione in ibid. vol. 5, p. 581a, n. 10. So intentions could not have been patterns of species, like common sensibles.
- 20.
Sleep and dreams are also discussed in the Lokert edition of the commentaries on the Parva naturalia attributed to Buridan. The final question of the commentary on De somno et vigilia contains first-person accounts of remarkable episodes of somnambulism, and notes that sleepwalkers remember their dreams but do not remember their sleepwalking. The explanation offered at the end of the question makes no mention of nerves, but suggests that the sensory impressions needed to guide the sleepwalker are yet too weak to make an impression on memory (Buridan [1516] f. 47r-v). NB the final question is in fact the tenth question of the commentary, although it, along with the ninth question, is labeled “Quaestio VIII.” The seventh and eighth questions are both labeled “Quaestio VII.”
Bibliography
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Sobol, P.G. (2017). John Buridan on External and Internal Sensation. In: Klima, G. (eds) Questions on the Soul by John Buridan and Others. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51763-6_6
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