Nicholas Oresme

Nicholas Oresme (born c. 1320, Normandy—died July 11, 1382, Lisieux, France) was a French Roman Catholic bishop, scholastic philosopher, economist, and mathematician whose work provided some basis for the development of modern mathematics and science and of French prose, particularly its scientific vocabulary.

It is known that Oresme was of Norman origin, although the exact place and year of his birth are uncertain. Similarly, the details of his early education are unknown. In 1348 his name appears on a list of graduate scholarship holders in theology at the College of Navarre at the University of Paris. As Oresme became grand master of the college in 1356, he must have completed his doctorate in theology before this date. Oresme was appointed canon (1362) and dean (1364) of the Cathedral of Rouen and also canon at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (1363). From about 1370, at the behest of King Charles V of France, Oresme translated Aristotle’s Ethics, Politics, and On the Heavens, as well as the pseudo-Aristotelian Economics, from Latin into French. His effect on the French language can be discerned through his creation of French equivalents for many Latin scientific and philosophical terms. Oresme was elected bishop of Lisieux in 1377 and was consecrated in 1378.

Oresme presented his economic ideas in commentaries on the Ethics, Politics, and Economics, as well as an earlier treatise, De origine, natura, jure et mutationibus monetarum (c. 1360; “On the Origin, Nature, Juridical Status and Variations of Coinage”). Oresme argued that coinage belongs to the public, not to the prince, who has no right to vary arbitrarily the content or weight. His abhorrence of the effects of debasing the currency influenced Charles’s monetary and tax policies. Oresme is generally considered the greatest medieval economist.

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Oresme is also considered one of the most eminent scholastic philosophers, famous for his independent thinking and his critique of several Aristotelian tenets. He rejected Aristotle’s definition of a body’s place as the inner boundary of the surrounding medium in favour of a definition of place as the space occupied by the body. Similarly, he rejected Aristotle’s definition of time as the measure of motion, arguing instead for a definition of time as the successive duration of things, independent of motion.

In Livre du ciel et du monde (1377; “Book on the Sky and the World”) Oresme brilliantly argued against any proof of the Aristotelian theory of a stationary Earth and a rotating sphere of the fixed stars. Although Oresme showed the possibility of a daily axial rotation of the Earth, he finished by affirming his belief in a stationary Earth. Like few other scholastic philosophers, Oresme argued for the existence of an infinite void beyond the world, which he identified with God—just as he identified eternity, in which there is no separate past, present, and future, with God.

Oresme was a determined opponent of astrology, which he attacked on religious and scientific grounds. In De proportionibus proportionum (“On Ratios of Ratios”) Oresme first examined raising rational numbers to rational powers before extending his work to include irrational powers. The results of both operations he termed irrational ratios, although he considered the first type commensurable with rational numbers, and the latter not. His motivation for this study was a suggestion of the theologian-mathematician Thomas Bradwardine (c. 1290–1349) that the relationship between forces (F), resistances (R), and velocities (V) is exponential. In modern terms: F₂/R₂ = (F₁/R₁)^V₂/V₁. Oresme then asserted that the ratio of any two celestial motions is probably incommensurable. This excludes precise predictions of successively repeating conjunctions, oppositions, and other astronomical aspects, and he subsequently claimed, in Ad pauca respicientes (its name derives from the opening sentence “Concerning some matters…”), that astrology was thereby refuted. As with astrology, he fought against the widespread belief in occult and “marvelous” phenomena by explaining them in terms of natural causes in Livre de divinacions (“Book of Divinations”).

Oresme’s main contributions to mathematics are contained in his Tractatus de configurationibus qualitatum et motuum (“Treatise on the Configurations of Qualities and Motions”). In this work Oresme conceived of the idea of using rectangular coordinates (latitudo and longitudo) and the resulting geometric figures to distinguish between uniform and nonuniform distributions of various quantities, even extending his definition to include three-dimensional figures. Thus, Oresme helped lay the foundation that later led to the discovery of analytic geometry by René Descartes (1596–1650). Furthermore, he used his figures to give the first proof of the Merton theorem: the distance traveled in any given period by a body moving under uniform acceleration is the same as if the body moved at a uniform speed equal to its speed at the midpoint of the period. Some scholars believe that Oresme’s graphical representation of velocities was of great influence in the further development of kinematics, affecting in particular the work of Galileo (1564–1642).

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