Abstract
John Dumbleton’s large Summa of Logic and Natural Philosophy is a superb exemplar of the state of teaching in the faculty of arts at Oxford in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. It covers several topics of logic and many of Aristotle’s natural philosophical works, interspersed with the methods that were typical of the so-called Oxford Calculators. Unfortunately, the Summa has never been printed, although it exists in several large and handsome manuscript copies on the basis of which historians have analyzed about half of its contents so far.
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Bibliography
Primary Sources
An outline in Latin of Parts II–V of the Summa is contained in Edith Sylla (1970, 1991) The Oxford calculators and the mathematics of motion, 1320–1350. Physics and measurement by latitudes. Harvard University PhD dissertation, 1970; repr. with new preface and errata, Harvard dissertations in the History of Science (1991) Garland Publishing, New York/London, pp. 565–625. This outline primarily, but not always uses passages from the copy of the Summa in MS Cambridge, Peterhouse 272.
An unpublished transcription of the early parts of the Summa based on MS Vatican City lat. 6750, made by James A. Weisheipl in preparation for his 1956 Oxford University dissertation. Early fourteenth century physics of the Merton ‘school’: with special reference to Dumbleton and Heytesbury, 2 vols, is deposited at the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies in Toronto.
John Dumbleton’s Summa logicae et philosophiae naturalis is available only in manuscript form. Among the many good manuscripts are Cambridge, Peterhouse 272 and Vatican City, lat. 6750.
Secondary Sources
Molland, G. (1973). John of Dumbleton and Sylla E (2008) Dumbleton, John. In Complete dictionary of scientific biography (Vols. 7, p. 20). Detroit: Charles Scribner (available from Gale, online, through academic libraries).
Molland, G. (1974). John Dumbleton and the status of geometrical optics. Actes du XIIIe Congrès International d’Histoire des Sciences 3/4, Moscow: Editions “Naouka,” 1–6. Reprinted in Molland, G. (1995). Mathematics and the medieval ancestry of physics. Aldershot: Variorum.
Sylla, E. (1973). Medieval concepts of the latitude of forms: The Oxford calculators. AHDLMA, 40, 223–283.
Sylla, E. (1991). The Oxford calculators and mathematical physics: John Dumbleton’s Summa logicae et philosophiae naturalis, Parts II and III. In S. Unguru (Ed.), Physics, cosmology and astronomy, 1300–1700: Tension and accommodation (Boston studies in the philosophy of science) (Vol. 126, pp. 129–161). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Weisheipl, J. (1959). The place of John Dumbleton in the Merton school. Isis, 50, 439–454.
Weisheipl, J. (1969). Repertorium Mertonense. Mediaeval Studies, 31, 174–224 (contains a list of manuscripts of Dumbleton’s work).
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Sylla, E.D. (2020). John Dumbleton. In: Lagerlund, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1665-7_266
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1665-7_266
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