Thierry de Chartres (Author)
Caiazzo, Irene (Editor)
Arithmetic was one of the seven liberal arts taught in the French schools just before the middle of the twelfth century, and Boethius’s De arithmetica was the principal textbook for this art. This volume provides an edition of a commentary on the De arithmetica; the accompanying introduction identifies the author of the commentary as Thierry of Chartres, and provides a careful consideration of how the commentary reflects his philosophy. Unlike the commentaries on Plato's Timaeus and on Boethius's Consolatio philosophiae, medieval exegesis of Boethius's De arithmetica has seldom been subjected to comprehensive and systematic enquiry. Inhabiting the shifting boundary between philosophy and history of science, the De arithmetica itself has been neglected by most medievalists. Yet, from the Carolingian renaissance onward, when the scholarly curriculum came to be based on the seven liberal arts, Boethius's work soon became a canonical text for the study of arithmetic. Indeed, the growing interest in it during the twelfth century is attested by the large number of surviving commentaries in manuscript. The commentary on the De arithmetica preserved in Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. math. 4° 33 and edited here for the first time can be securely attributed to Thierry of Chartres. It belongs to a phase when the Chartrian master's interests were mainly directed toward the liberal arts. We can also discern in Thierry's commentary on the De arithmetica themes and problems developed in his Tractatus de sex dierum operibus and more elaborately in his commentaries on Boethius's Opuscula sacra. Indeed, the discovery of this commentary on the De arithmetica might legitimately be said to clarify not only the more intractable passages in the theological writings but also to illuminate Thierry's philosophical project as a whole. At the heart of that vision is a developing trend in twelfth-century philosophy that places number and proportion at the heart of the physical cosmos. In this profoundly 'mathematical Platonism,' all things are based on number and follow the rule of number; or, to quote Thierry himself, “creatio numerorum, rerum est creatio.”
...MoreReview David Albertson (2016) Review of "The Commentary on the De arithmetica of Boethius". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 622-624).
Book
Fiorella Magnano;
(2018)
Boethius. On Topical Differences: A Commentary
(/isis/citation/CBB665154986/)
Book
Lagerlund, Henrik;
(2002)
Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes
(/isis/citation/CBB000301676/)
Article
Watts, Edward;
(2005)
Where to Live the Philosophical Life in the Sixth Century? Damascius, Simplicius, and the Return from Persia
(/isis/citation/CBB000660069/)
Article
Correia, Manuel;
(2004)
Philoponus on the Nature of Logic
(/isis/citation/CBB000502259/)
Book
Suto, Taki;
(2012)
Boethius on Mind, Grammar, and Logic: A Study of Boethius' Commentaries on Peri Hermeneias
(/isis/citation/CBB001213920/)
Article
Ayuso García, Manuel;
(2006)
Evolución del término punctum en los textos latinos de geometría
(/isis/citation/CBB001023866/)
Book
Ellard, Peter;
(2007)
The Sacred Cosmos: Theological, Philosophical, and Scientific Conversations in the Early Twelfth Century School of Chartres
(/isis/citation/CBB000773715/)
Article
Andrea Sacchetti;
(2020)
Francesco Carlini: Kepler's Equation and the Asymptotic Solution to Singular Differential Equations
(/isis/citation/CBB588160769/)
Article
Stanisław Domoradzki;
Małgorzata Stawiska;
(2019)
Polish mathematicians and mathematics in World War I. Part II: Russian Empire
(/isis/citation/CBB969006407/)
Article
Emingera, Stefanie;
(2012)
Viribus unitis! shall be our watchword: The First International Congress of Mathematicians, Held 9--11 August 1897 in Zurich
(/isis/citation/CBB001212293/)
Article
Sørensen, Henrik Kragh;
(2013)
What's Abelian about Abelian Groups?
(/isis/citation/CBB001212298/)
Article
Ehrhardt, Caroline;
(2011)
Évariste Galois and the Social Time of Mathematics
(/isis/citation/CBB001221117/)
Article
Peckhaus, Volker;
(2014)
Ernst Schröder on pasigraphy
(/isis/citation/CBB001551987/)
Article
Ehrhardt, Caroline;
(2010)
A Social History of the “Galois Affair” at the Paris Academy of Sciences (1831)
(/isis/citation/CBB000932775/)
Article
Adrian Rice;
Ezra Brown;
(2016)
Commutativity and Collinearity: A Historical Case Study of the Interconnection of Mathematical Ideas. Part I
(/isis/citation/CBB871195795/)
Article
Nicolas Michel;
(2021)
Mathematical Selves and the Shaping of Mathematical Modernism: Conflicting Epistemic Ideals in the Emergence of Enumerative Geometry (1864–1893)
(/isis/citation/CBB361934147/)
Article
Craik, Alex D. D.;
(2013)
In Search of Thomas Knight: Part 2
(/isis/citation/CBB001213291/)
Article
Brazil, Marcus;
Graham, Ronald L.;
Thomas, Doreen A.;
Zachariasen, Martin;
(2014)
On the History of the Euclidean Steiner Tree Problem
(/isis/citation/CBB001214201/)
Article
Gispert, Hélène;
Leloup, Juliette;
(2009)
Des patrons des mathématiques en France dans l'entre-deux-guerres
(/isis/citation/CBB000954522/)
Article
Muntersbjorn, Madeline;
(2012)
On the Intellectual Heritage of Henri Poincaré
(/isis/citation/CBB001210329/)
Be the first to comment!