Nicole Oresme | |
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Portrait of Nicole Oresme: Miniature from Oresme's Traité de l'espère, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France, fonds français 565, fol. 1r.
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Born | c. 1320–1325 Fleury-sur-Orne, Normandy, France |
Died | 11 July 1382 Lisieux, Normandy, France |
Alma mater | College of Navarre, Paris |
Era | Medieval philosophy |
Region | Western Philosophy |
School | Nominalism |
Institutions | University of Paris |
Main interests
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Natural philosophy, astronomy, theology, mathematics |
Notable ideas
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Rectangular co-ordinates, first proof of the divergence of the harmonic series |
Influences
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Influenced
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Nicole Oresme (French: [nikɔl ɔʁɛm]; c. 1320–1325 – July 11, 1382), also known as Nicolas Oresme, Nicholas Oresme, or Nicolas d'Oresme, was a significant philosopher of the later Middle Ages. He wrote influential works on economics, mathematics, physics, astrology and astronomy, philosophy, and theology; was Bishop of Lisieux, a translator, a counselor of King Charles V of France, and probably one of the most original thinkers of 14th-century Europe.
Nicole Oresme was born c. 1320–1325 in the village of Allemagne (today's Fleury-sur-Orne) in the vicinity of Caen, Normandy, in the diocese of Bayeux. Practically nothing is known concerning his family. The fact that Oresme attended the royally sponsored and subsidized College of Navarre, an institution for students too poor to pay their expenses while studying at the University of Paris, makes it probable that he came from a peasant family.
Oresme studied the "arts" in Paris, together with Jean Buridan (the so-called founder of the French school of natural philosophy), Albert of Saxony and perhaps Marsilius of Inghen, and there received the Magister Artium. He was already a regent master in arts by 1342, during the crisis over William of Ockham's natural philosophy.