Jean Buridan
1300-1358
French Physicist and Philosopher
More than three centuries before Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Jean Buridan anticipated Newton's first law of motion when he stated that an object in motion will remain moving. This put him at odds with the prevailing idea, passed down from Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who had maintained that a moving object requires continual application of force to keep it in motion.
Born at Béthune, in the French district of Artois, Buridan studied philosophy at the University of Paris under William of Ockham (c. 1290-1349). He went on to an appointment as professor at his alma mater, then took a position as university rector from 1328 to 1340. In 1345, Buridan became an ambassador from the university to the papal court, at that time located in Avignon, France.
Buridan wrote widely, and his works include Compendium logicae, Summa de dialectica, Consequentie, and a series of commentaries to works of Aristotle. In his commentary on the latter's Physics, he challenged Aristotle's assertion that the air around an object in motion is what keeps it moving. Buridan was not the first to take issue with the Aristotelian view of motion: the Byzantine Johannes Philoponus (c. 490-570) had done so eight centuries before.
But Buridan took the point a great deal further, producing an amazingly accurate hypothesis regarding impetus: that one object imparts to another a certain amount of power, in proportion to its velocity and mass, that causes the second object to move a certain distance. He was also correct in stating that the weight of an object may increase or decrease its speed, depending on other circumstances; and that air resistance slows an object in motion.
In the realm of philosophy, Buridan was primarily concerned with the same issues of epistemology as his teacher, Ockham, though the two reputedly came to a parting of the ways on certain issues. Buridan's most important philosophical argument sprang from a discussion of Aristotle's De caelo (On the heavens), and borrows the image of a dog used by the Greek philosopher tomake a point in that book. Buridan's illustration also makes use of a dog, though for some reason his argument has come to be known as "Buridan's ass." In any case, the illustration concerns the question of choices: if a dog is forced to choose between two equal amounts of food, which he desires equally and about which he possesses equal knowledge, he must either starve to death or make a completely random choice.
Actually, there is some dispute as to whether Buridan himself made the "Buridan's ass" argument, with some scholars asserting that it was created by opponents to make his ideas appear absurd. It has also been suggested that the question raised by the "Buridan's ass" illustration provides a framework for the scientific investigation of statistics.
This is the complete article, containing 461 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
