Authors/Richard Swyneshed

One of the principal leaders at Oxford in the school who recognized the value of treating the qualitative intensions quantitatively was RICHARD SWINESHEAD (Suiseth). And while I shall reserve questions of biography to a later article, it seems fairly certain that Richard Swineshead was a fellow of Merton College about 1340 and that his principal work, later known as the Calculationes, must date from about this time. And of all of the English philosophers of Oxford at this time who were interested in questions of qualities and movements, men such as THOMAS BRADWARDINE, JOHN DUMBLETON, WILLIAM HEYTESBURY, the anonymous author of the Six Inconveniences, et. al., Swineshead seems to have gained greatest renown in later centuries for this kind of activity. Fifteenth century schoolmen in Italy like ANGELUS DE FOSSAMBRUNO, GIACOMO DA FORLI, PAUL OF VENICE, and GIOVANNI MARLIANI, call him „the Calculator" with obvious respect, and point to him as the great authority in this quantitative physics that was growing up. It is also true that Italian humanists of the same century failed to appreciate the subtleties of his thought and in fact appropriated his name in coining the derisive term for scholastic inanities, suisetica. But in the sixteenth century he was admired by men of the caliber of SCALIGER and CARDAN (21), and no less a figure than LEIBNIZ pleaded for the editing of the Calculator's work, at the same time describing him as the man " who introduced mathematics into scholastic philosophy ". (Clagett 1950)

Primary Sources

• Subtilissimi Ricardi Suiseth Anglici calculationes nouiter emendate atque reuise. Venice 1520

Secondary Sources

• "RICHARD SWINESHEAD'S "LIBER CALCULATIONUM" IN ITALY: SOME REMARKS ON MANUSCRIPTS, EDITIONS AND DISSEMINATION", Robert Podkoński, Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales, Vol. 80, No. 2 (2013), pp. 307-361 (55 pages) Peeters Publishers
• "Quantification in Medieval Physics", A. C. Crombie, Isis, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Jun., 1961), pp. 143-160 (18 pages)
• “Richard Swineshead and Late Medieval Physics: I. The Intension and Remission of Qualities”, Marshall Clagett, Osiris Vol. 9 (1950), pp. 131-161.