Circa 1295 - Circa 1358
Professor

Contributions to Science. Probably the most distinguished and influential teacher at the University of Paris during the first half of the fourteenth century, Jean Buridan did little experimental science himself but helped to lay the groundwork for the modern conception of science based on experimentation and observation rather than on "final" causes (that is, the how rather than the why of phenomena). He did important work in logic, reorganizing the Summary of Logic of the thirteenth-century scholar Peter of Spain, and he helped to develop the tradition of Nominalism in the philosophy of language. For the Nominalist individual beings and things alone are real. Ideas and Universals are just names. They are not real entities in nature.

Education and Career. After studying philosophy at the University of Paris, Buridan began teaching there and served as university rector. Before Buridan, most scholars taught...