The Empiricism of Seventeenth-Century Aristotelianism
The first important seventeenth-century British Aristotelian was Samuel Smith. Anthony à Wood remembers him at Oxford as ‘the most accurate disputant and profound philosopher in the university’. It is undoubtedly true that ‘throughout the middle of the ce
- PDF / 620,225 Bytes
- 20 Pages / 439.37 x 666.14 pts Page_size
- 18 Downloads / 197 Views
The Empiricism of Seventeenth-Century Aristotelianism
8.1
Samuel Smith’s Introduction to Logic
The first important seventeenth-century British Aristotelian was Samuel Smith. Anthony à Wood remembers him at Oxford as ‘the most accurate disputant and profound philosopher in the university’.1 It is undoubtedly true that ‘throughout the middle of the century the Aditus ad Logicam of Samuel Smith, fellow of Magdalen, was in vogue’.2 In fact, his brief compendium to logic had 11 editions in 80 years: as a matter of fact it was the most popular textbook of the century only after that of Robert Sanderson.3 The scholarship has always considered Smith as a syncretist, close to the Ramist positions4; however, a careful examination of his handbook shows the strong influence of Zabarella and Pace on the Aditus, in which entire propositions taken from Zabarella are repeated, revised and expanded. Smith presents a large number of Zabarella’s views from an empiricist perspective, especially with regard to the theory of science and of method. Smith’s definition of logic is original and complex. Logic is the science of arguing on any ‘theme’ and it is the methodical and artificial comprehension of the precepts which make reasoning possible.5 Logic is then divided into three parts as
1
Anthony à Wood, The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, vol. 2, 283. Thomas, ‘Medieval Aftermath: Oxford Logic and Logicians of the Seventeenth Century’, 307. 3 Cf. Samuel Smith, Aditus ad logicam (London, 1613). The compendium was subsequently republished in 1615, 1617, 1618, 1621, 1627, 1633, 1634, 1639, 1649, 1656, and 1684. 4 Cf. Thomas, ‘Medieval Aftermath: Oxford Logic and Logicians of the Seventeenth Century’, 307; for some apparently Ramist aspects of Smith’s theory of method cf. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England 1500–1700, 294–295. Concerning these pseudo-Ramist elements, however, Howell points out that there are Aristotelian doctrines incorporated into the Ramist dialectic. 5 Cf. Smith, Aditus ad logicam, 3: ‘Logica est scientia de quovis themate probabiliter et anguste disserendi … Logica est artificiosa et methodica praeceptorum comprehensio, qua cognoscimus succincte ratione uti ad fidem faciendam in qualibet re probabili’. 2
M. Sgarbi, The Aristotelian Tradition and the Rise of British Empiricism, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 32, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4951-1_8, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
147
148
8 The Empiricism of Seventeenth-Century Aristotelianism
are the three operations of the mind: the first deals with simple words, the second with the composition of words, and the third with complex discourses.6 Words are signs of things and of concepts, which are arbitrarily imposed by either divine or human will according to what can be written and pronounced.7 If Smith’s position seems to be neutral concerning the problem whether the words signify things or concepts, in truth his thought implies that words signify things, but only by means of concepts. In fact, without the us
Data Loading...
