Paul Vincent Spade

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE LOGIC RADULPHUS BRITO, Quaestiones super Priscianum minorern. Introduction and critical edition by H.W. Enders and J. Pinborg. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980. 460 pp. 2 fascicules. DM 168 per fascicule. PAUL VINCENT SPADE, Peter of Ailly: concepts and insolubles. An annotated translation. (Synthese Historical Library, Volume 19.) Dordrecht, Holland: Boston, U.S.A.: London, England: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1980. xii + 193 pp. Df1.60/$31.40. VINCENT FERRER, Tractatus de suppositionibus. Introduction and critical edition by J.A. Trentman. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1977. 188 pp. No price stated. GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, Late scholastic and humanist theories of the proposition. Amsterdam, Oxford and New York: North Holland Publishing Co., 1980. 237 pp. Dfl.75.00/$36.50. LARRY HICKMAN, Modern theories of higher level predicates: second intentions in the Neuzeit. (Analytica. Investigations in Logic, Ontology and the Philosophy of Language.) Miinchen: Philosophia Verlag, 1980. 191 pp. DM 98. GERMAN TRADITIONS IN LOGIC JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE, Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre als Handschrift fiir seine Zuhörer (1794). Einleitung und Register von Wilhem G. Jacobs. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1979 (third edition). xxviii +272 pp. DM 23. GOTTHARD GUNTHER, Grundziige einer neuen Theorie des Denkens in Hegels’ Logik. Zweite Auflage. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1978. xx+226 pp. DM 26. DIEGO MARCONI (ed.), La formalizzazione della dialettica. Turin: Rosemberg &Sellier, 1979. 474pp. No price stated. SUBSTANCE >M.J. Loux, Substance and attribute: a study in ontology. (Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, volume 14.) Dordrecht, Boston and London: Reidel, 1978. xi + 187 pp. $29.00 (cloth)/$11.95 (paper). DAVID WIGGINS, Sameness and substance. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980. xi + 238 pp. £12.50. EDITIONS OF FREGE GOTTLOB FREGE, Posthumous writings. Translated by P. Long and R. White, with the assistance of R. Hargreaves. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979. viii+288pp. £15.00. GOTTLOB FREGE, Philosophical and mathematical correspondence. Translated by Hans Kaal, abridged by Brian McGuinness. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. xviii +214 pp. £15.00. G. FREGE, Schriften zur Logik und Sprachphilosophie. Aus dem NachlaB mit Einleitung, Anmerkungen, Bibliographie und Register herausgegeben von G. Gabriel. 2. Aufl. Hamburg: Meiner 1978. xxx + 224 pp. DM 25. PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE ERNEST NAGEL, The structure of science: problems in the logic of scientific explanation. London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, paperback edition 1979. xiii + 618 pp. £4.95 (paper). JENNIFER TRUSTED, The logic of scientific inference: an introduction. Foreword by Sir Peter Medawar. London: The MacMillan Press, 1979. xii + 145 pp. £8.00. G. TORALDO DI FRANCIA (ed.) Problems in the foundations of physics. (Proceedings of the International School of Physics ‘Enrico Fermi’, Course LXXII, Varenna, Italy, 25th July-6th August 1977.) Amsterdam and New York: North Holland Publishing Company, 1979. xvii + 500 pp. US $87.75/dfl.180.00. A.-F. SCHMID, Une philosophie de savant. Henri Poincar6 et la logique mathématique. Paris: Maspéro, 1978. 175 pp. No price stated. LOGIC AND LANGUAGE LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, Notebooks 1914-16. Second edition. Edited by G.H. Von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe. English translation by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979. 231 pp. £8.95 SAUL A. KRIPKE, Naming and necessity. Revised and enlarged edition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher, 1980. 172 pp. £7.95. M.A.E. DUMMETT, Truth and other enigmas. London: Duckworth, 1978. lvii + 470 pp. £24.00. MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS JAAKKO LOUNELA, Die Logik im XVII. Jahrundert in Finnland. (Annales Academiae Fennicae. Dissertationes Humanarum Litterarum, no. 17.) Helsinki: Suomlainer Tiedeakatemia, 1978. vi + 188 pp. No price stated. BERNARD BOLZANO, Grundlegung der Logik. (Selections and synopses from Volumes I and I1 of Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre, second edition.) Edition and introduction by Friedrich Kambartel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1978. lxxi + 380 pp. DM 38 (paper). HERBERT MEHRTENS, Die Entstehung der Verbandstheorie. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg Verlag, 1979. ix + 363 pp. DM 42. JANE BRIDGE [KISTER], Beginning model theory. The completeness theorem and some consequences. (Oxford Logic Guides.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. viii + 143 pp. $10.00.

The history of the mediaeval obligationes-literature has only recently begun to be studied. Two important treatises in this literature, one by Walter Burley and the other attributed to William of Sherwood, have been edited by Romuald Green in a forthcoming book. But there is considerable doubt concerning the authenticity of the text attributed to Sherwood. The correct attribution and dating of this treatise is crucial for our understanding of the history of this literature. In this paper, we argue that the treatise is not as early as William of Sherwood, that on the contrary it dates no earlier than the very end of the thirteenth century, and that, although there is some contrary evidence, the treatise may be an early work by Walter Burley himself

I am preparing an English translation of both the Tractatus longior and the Tractatus brevior of Walter Burley’s De puritate artis logicae for the “Yale Library of Medieval Philosophy.” My translation is based of course on the 1955 critical edition by Philotheus Boehner, the only reasonably reliable text available. Nevertheless, in preparing my translation, I have had several occasions to question or correct readings in Boehner’s edition. In some instances the corrections are merely obvious typographical errors, but in others there was something more substantive at stake. The text of the Tractatus brevior is particularly problematic in places, since there are fewer extant manuscripts on which to base an edition.

The manuscript Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Class XI n. 12, Zanetti Latini 301 (= 1576), contains on fols. 1r–24v a seemingly unique copy of a series of fifteen logical questions, ten on obligationes and the remaining five on insolubilia.1 The series on obligationes is untitled and unattributed in the manuscript, but the questions on insolubilia begin (fol. 18r11) “Incipiunt quaestiones super insolubilibus,” and are attributed at the end to a certain John of Wesel (fol. 24v41): “Ergo expletae sunt quaestiones insolubilium a Johanne de Vesalia Parixius2 disputatae. Deo gratias. Amen.”.

'This sentence is false' - is that true? The 'Liar paradox' embodied in those words exerted a particular fascination on the logicians of the Western later Middle Ages, and, along with similar 'insoluble' problems, forms the subject of the first group of articles in this volume. In the following parts Professor Spade turns to medieval semantic theory, views on the relationship between language and thought, and to a study of one particular genre of disputation, that known as 'obligationes'. The focus is on the Oxford scholastics of the first half of the 14th century, and it is the name of William of Ockham which dominates these pages - a thinker with whom Professor Spade finds himself in considerable philosophical sympathy, and whose work on logic and semantic theory has a depth and richness that have not always been sufficiently appreciated.