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Jean Buridan (; ; Latin: Johannes Buridanus; – ) was an influential 14thcentury French scholastic philosopher.
Buridan taught in the faculty of arts at the University of Paris for his entire career and focused in particular on logic and on the works of Aristotle. Buridan sowed the seeds of the Copernican Revolution in Europe.Thomas Kuhn The Copernican Revolution, 1958, pp. 119–123. He developed the concept of impetus, the first step toward the modern concept of inertia and an important development in the history of medieval science. His name is most familiar through the thought experiment known as Buridan's ass, but the thought experiment does not appear in his extant writings.Dugas, René. Histoire de la méchanique. 1955. Tr.: Maddox, J.R.. A History of Mechanics. Dover: NY. 1988:48. "[Pierre Duhem]], who has studied Buridan's works in detail, including those concerning free will, says that he has found no trace of the parable of the ass, which apart from his status in the history of mechanics, has made Buridan's name classical."
Unusually, he spent his entire academic life in the faculty of arts, rather than obtaining the doctorate in law, medicine or theology that typically prepared the way for a career in philosophy. Also unusual for a philosopher of his time, Buridan further maintained his intellectual independence by remaining a Secular clergy, rather than joining a religious order. A papal letter of 1330 refers to him as simply, " clericus Atrebatensis diocoesis, magister in artibus a."Faral 1951, p. 11 As university statutes permitted only those educated in theology to teach or write on the subject, there are no writings from Buridan on either theological matters or commentary of Peter Lombard's Sentences.
Speculation on his reasons for avoiding religious matters have remained uncertain.Zupko 2004, ch. 10Courtenay 2002Courtenay 2005 Most scholars think it is unlikely that he went unnoticed, given his philosophical talents. As well, it is unlikely that he could not afford to study theology, given that he received several bursaries and stipends. Indeed, he is listed in a document from 1350 as being among the teachers capable of supporting themselves without the need for financial assistance from the University. John Alexander Zupko has speculated that Buridan "deliberately chose to remain among the 'artists artistae'," possibly envisioning philosophy as a secular enterprise based on what is evident to both the senses and the intellect, rather than the non-evident truths of theology revealed through scripture and doctrine.
The last appearance of Buridan in historical documents came in 1359, where he was mentioned as the adjudicator in a territorial dispute between the England and Picard nations. It is supposed that he died sometime after then, since one of his benefices was awarded to another person in 1362.Michael 1986, pp. 79–238 399–404
The bishop Albert of Saxony, himself renowned as a logician, was among the most notable of his students.
An ordinance of Louis XI in 1473, directed against the nominalism, prohibited the reading of his works.
Some rumors hold that he died when the King of France had him put in a sack and thrown into the River Seine after his affair with the Queen came to light. François Villon alludes to this in his famous poem Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis. Others suggest that he was expelled from Paris due to his nominalist teachings and moved to Vienna to found the University of Vienna. Another story talks of him hitting Pope Clement VI with a shoe.
Buridan developed a theory of impetus by which the mover imparts to the moved a power, proportional to the speed and mass, which keeps it moving. In addition, he correctly theorized that resistance of the air progressively reduces the impetus and that weight can add or detract from speed. Buridan was the first to name this motion-maintaining property impetus but the theory itself probably did not originate with him. A less sophisticated notion of impressed forced can be found in the commentary of John Philoponus on Aristoteilan physics.Zupko 2015, §6 In this he was possibly influenced by John Philoponus who was developing the Stoic notion of hormé (impulse).Zupko 1997 The major difference between Buridan's theory and that of his predecessor is that he rejected the view that the impetus dissipated spontaneously, instead asserting that a body would be arrested by the forces of air resistance and gravity which might be opposing its impetus. Buridan further held that the impetus of a body increased with the speed with which it was set in motion, and with its quantity of matter. This is closely related to the modern concept of momentum. Buridan saw impetus as causing the motion of the object:
Buridan also contended that impetus is a variable quality whose force is determined by the speed and quantity of the matter in the subject. In this way, the acceleration of a falling body could be understood in terms of its gradual accumulation of units of impetus.
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