GRAVITATIONAL MOTION ACCORDING TO 

 THEODORIC OF FREIBERG 



THE recent appearance of Marshall Clagett's The Science 

 of Mechanics in the Middle Ages ^ has focussed atten- 

 tion once again on the wealth of material made avail- 

 able by scholars in the " Dark Ages " for the development of 

 science as we now know it. Concentrating on " the mechanical 

 doctrines of the medieval period which were framed in mathe- 

 matical terms or had important consequences for a mathe- 

 matical mechanics," ^ Clagett reproduces most of the important 

 texts in this area and analyzes them for the conceptual content 

 that contributed to the revolutionary seventeenth-century 

 development. By intent he avoids the study of methodology, 

 nor does he attempt to evaluate the complex relationships 

 that existed between physics and natural philosophy during 

 this period. Yet even these areas have not been without their 

 share of attention in the recent literature. Three significant 

 studies of medieval scientific methodology have appeared in 

 succession,^ and Anneliese Maier has recently concluded the 

 fifth volume of her monumental Stiidieji zur Naturphilosophie 

 der Spdtscholastik * with some weighty observations on the 

 transitional philosophical concepts that gave rise to the new 



* University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, 1959, xxix -\- 711 pp. 

 " Ibid., p. xxii. 



'A. C. Crombie's Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, 

 Oxford, 1953; my own The Scientific Methodology of Theodoric of Freiberg, Fri- 

 bourg, 1959; and J. A. Weisheipl's The Development of Physical Theory in the 

 Middle Ages, London, 1959. 



* Zwischen Philosophic und Mechanik, Rome, 1958, particularly pp. 373-382. The 

 five volumes, which we shall henceforth refer to as Studien I, II . . . etc., are 

 entitled respectively: I. Die Vorldufer Galileis im 14.. Jahrhundert (1949); II. Zivei 

 Grundprobleme der scholastischen Naturphilosophie (1951); III. An der Grenze 

 von Scholastik und Naturunssenschaft (1952); IV. Metaphysische Hintergriinde 

 der spdtscholastischen Naturphilosophie (1955); and V. Zwischen Philosophic und 

 Mechanik (1958). 



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