Talk:Nicole Oresme/Archive 1

Archive 1

Self-published source

This article seems somewhat idiosyncratic in its treatment of Oresme; it pays little attention to the extensive historical studies of Oresme by Edward Grant and other lesser known historians of science.

Instead it relies heavily on a book by Dr. Ulrich Taschow, Nicole Oresme und der Frühling der Moderne. Although I have not read this book, I am concerned that it is the only book listed on the web page of its publisher, Avox Medien-Verlag and that the founder and director of this publishing firm is Dr. Ulrich Taschow. Since it is a self-published source it should be treated with caution and should not form the central core of this article. --SteveMcCluskey 20:25, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Web based source

Note the following reference citation in the article, also from Ulrich Tachow.

• http://www.nicole-oresme.com Oresme Biography from which the above article was taken, with friendly authorization of its author Ulrich Taschow. There you can also find the complete bibliography of Oresme's work and many other materials on Nicole Oresme.

What should we do about this extensive use of self-published sources; as I see it this article needs a major rewrite so it represents a broader consensus of historical opinion. --SteveMcCluskey 20:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Reviews and comments

There are no reviews (or other citations) of Taschow's book listed in the Institute for Scientific Information's three major citation indexes. There is one essay review (which I could not access) by André Goddu (a well known Oresme scholar) mentioned on Google entitled "Nicole Oresme and Modernity" in Early Science and Medicine, 9(2004):348-359.

The publisher's web page [1] includes the following passage from the book cover which speaks for itself:

In medieval thought, everything was anticipated, from the modern Information Theory, System Theory, the Self-Organization and Chaos Theory; the discovery of the Complexity, Indetermination and Infinity of the world, the Wave-Mechanics of sound and light, the Theory of Overtones of the 19th century; the psychological discovery of the Unconscious, of the Constructivity and Subjectivity of Perception; H. v. Helmholtz’ “Theory of Unconscious Conclusions of Perception”… to the first formulation of a modern Theory of Cognition, Psycho-Cybernetics and Psycho-Physics in the sense of G. Th. Fechner.

--SteveMcCluskey 01:10, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

PS -- I just accessed Goddu's essay review, which is generally sympathetic in tone, but begins with a quotation from Marshall Clagett on the dangers of trying to anticipate modern discoveries in early thinkers like Nicole Oresme (p. 348), and midway through expresses puzzlement over Taschow's idiosyncratic interpretation of Oresme's idea of species, concluding that "The only explanations for Taschow's interpretation left are his committment to equating Oresme's theory with a wave-mechanical account, and his misreading of Ockham" (p. 357).

It seems that a reinterpretation of Oresme in such decidedly modern terms does not provide a sound basis for an encyclopedia article about a major figure in the history of medieval science. --SteveMcCluskey 01:47, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd just like to second what Steve is saying - while I'm not that familiar with Oresme's writings in the original, there seemed to be a lot of stretches of ambiguous concepts to make Oresme seem like he was on the cusp of modern physics and psychology (and...?). It reads a lot like the essays on Indian mathematicians that claim they invented calculus (and that Europeans like Newton bascially stole it). There's enough interesting original thought that is well documented (like graphical expression of subject and extension) to keep Oresme plenty startling without resorting to contortionist connections to very modern concepts. Xanthoptica 04:15, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed reversion

Having thought over the matter this weekend, it seems that the most reasonable procedure would be to remove the additions to the Nicolas Oresme article based on the self-published work of Ulrich Tacschow, and revert the article to the state of the revision as of 19:54, 6 July 2005, when it was listed as a mathematics stub. In addition to that I would add the image of Oresme and a listing as a history of science stub. It's a shame to do such drastic editing, but if we are to maintain a trustworthy encyclopedia, articles must conform to Wikipedia policy on sources. --SteveMcCluskey 01:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Book began life as doctoral dissertation

Further investigation found that the book began as Taschow's doctoral dissertation in musicology (musikwissenschaft) at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in 2001. I've struck out my earlier comments that no longer seem applicable. That being said, the article still seems excessively Whiggish in seeking the modern in Oresme and needs revision to provide a more balanced portrayal of Oresme drawing on a wider range of scholarly interpretations. --SteveMcCluskey 15:58, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Further references needed

I've just converted all the footnotes and inline references to the <ref> format. Some of the inline references were incomplete and further documentation from other sources would be helpful. --SteveMcCluskey 01:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

An algebraic equation?

under mathematics there is this statement: "Oresme proved that this definition is equivalent to an algebraic relation in which the longitudes and latitudes of any three points would figure: i.e., he gives the equation of the right line, and thus long precedes Descartes in the invention of analytical geometry." This certainly needs a cite from Oresme's materials. If I recall correctly, Oresme does not provide any equations, although Clagett's translation inserts them (my guess is that this statement is a misreading of Part I, Chapter 7 of the Tractatus de configurationibus) SmaleDuffin 18:33, 27 February 2007 (UTC)SmaleDuffin

"probably one of the most original thinkers of the 14th century."

Nice vagueness in that first sentence with `probably', but this strikes me as very point of view. Ockham, Duns Scotus, Petrarch, Dante, Chaucer, Wyclif.... the bar is set pretty high to be `one of the most original thinkers of the 14th century'. SmaleDuffin 18:33, 27 February 2007 (UTC)SmaleDuffin

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was PAGE MOVED per discussion below, and per WP:COMMONNAME. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:56, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

---

Nicolas Oresme → Nicole Oresme — Nicole Oresme is his accepted name in any number of histories of science written in English and in the Library of Congress authorities database. SteveMcCluskey 15:29, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Add  # '''Support'''  or  # '''Oppose'''  on a new line in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~. Please remember that this survey is not a vote, and please provide an explanation for your recommendation.

Survey - in support of the move

1. Support As proposer of the change. I don't see Gene Nygard's toss-up, given the preponderance of the name Nicole in the literature. Scanning my bookshelves I get:

• Printed editions of Oresme's works: Nicole, 5; Other, 0
• PhD dissertations editing Oresme's works: Nicole 4; Other 0
• Other books with his name in the index: Nicole 14, Nicolas 2, Nicholas 2

That preponderant weight is why the Library of Congress gave Nicole Oresme as the main entry and has redirect with "See also" for Nicolas, Nicholas, etc. Wikipedia should follow the accepted name from the Library of Congress authorities list, as recommended in Wikipedia:Proper names#Personal names. SteveMcCluskey 13:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I just checked to see how many changes from Nicolas to Nicole are needed in the article. It turns out the changes would be minimal as the name Nicolas only appears four times in the article: Once in the title, twice in the discussion of alternate spellings, and once in a citation in the references. Nicole appears once among the alternate spellings, six times in the body of the article, and twelve times in the notes and references. It seems that internal consistency argues for the change to Nicole. SteveMcCluskey 17:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

1. Support. A quick look at JSTOR returns 90 results for Nicolas Oresme and 615 for Nicole Oresme.

SmaleDuffin 18:33, 27 February 2007 (UTC)SmaleDuffin

Survey - in opposition to the move

1. Oppose. It's at best a toss-up, in which case there is no good reason for a move. Gene Nygaard 17:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Survey - neutral

I agree that "Nicolas" may be more prevalent in older sources (it is, however, the form used in Coppleston and Thorndike—references that haven't, I think, been entirely superseded). What's most important, it seems to me, is that the name used throughout the article corresponds to the article title. Whichever is decided on, I hope that the article will be revised accordingly. Deor 00:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the refs. Thorndike did use Nicolas in his 1934 History of Magic and Experimental Science but changed to Nicole in his (and Pearl Kibre's) 1962 Catalogue of Incipits of Medieval Scientific Writings.... I suspect the Library of Congress's rationale reflects the fact that Oresme wrote in French, using the name Nicole. If he had only written in Latin, their outcome may have been different.

Agreed that the article should be changed for consistency, whatever is decided. What brought me to propose the change was that the name Nicolas was beginning to diffuse into other articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SteveMcCluskey (talk • contribs) 00:30, 20 February 2007

Discussion

Add any additional comments:

See the following from the Library of Congress authorities database:

HEADING: Oresme, Nicole, ca. 1320-1382 Used For/See From:

• Oresmius, Nicolaus, ca. 1320-1382
• Oremius, Nicolaus, ca. 1320-1382
• Orême, Nicole, ca. 1320-1382
• Horen, Nicholas, ca. 1320-1382
• Oresme, Nicolas, ca. 1320-1382
• Nicolaus Oresmius, Bishop of Lisieux, ca. 1320-1382
• Oresme, Nicolas, Bp., d. 1382
• Oresme, Nicolaus, ca. 1320-1382
• Nicholas Oresme, Bishop of Lisieux, ca. 1320-1382
• Oresme, Nicola, ca. 1320-1382

--SteveMcCluskey 04:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:19, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Octave in Twelve Parts

I'm probably reading this too fast and out of context, so maybe I'm the only one who can't make sense of the following:

"Here is an example for the equal division of the octave in 12 parts:" (math didn't copy, but it has (2/1) to the 1/12 power times the same, over and over, presumably twelve times supposedly equalling (2/1) to the 12/12 power or first power (=2). Huh?

For starters, are octaves generally divided into twelfths? I thought octave kind of implied eight. Did the editor mean,"What today we call an octave"?

And the math does not seem to scan. Please tell me it is not math. Next, please tell me how anyone else can figure that out. Thanks. Student7 (talk) 00:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

In the diatonic scale an Octave consists of 8 notes if you count both end notes (i.e. if you count do twice in do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do). That is 7 intervals. The scale has 5 full steps and two half steps for a total of seven. In the chromatic scale, however, the octave consists of twelve half steps. You can see this on a piano keyboard; there are 8 white keys from do to do on the keyboard, but if you count the black keys you get 12 intervals in the same Octave. See the articles on Octave, diatonic scale, and chromatic scale for more info. Rwflammang (talk) 18:12, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I know nothing

Nice quote, but not originally from Oresme: "Therefore, I indeed know nothing except that I know that I know nothing. - Nicole Oresme". It's Socratic (in Latin "hoc tantum scio, quod nescio; can be found back in letters of St Hiëronymus to Paulinus, who ascribes it to Socrates). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Riyadi (talk • contribs) 13:38, 10 September 2008