A sophism in the medieval sense of the word is a problematic sentence that is argued for and against the case (casus), often against an assumed background situation. The solution of a sophism typically consists of the correct evaluation, an explanation of the problems involved, and a resolution of the argument or arguments for the wrong evaluation. For example, ‘‘all men are all men’’ (omnis homo est omnis homo) can be argued for as a predication where the same is predicated of the same, or by pointing out that ‘‘this man is a man, and that man is a man, etc.’’ The same sentence can be argued against since from a universal predication a particular follows, but ‘‘some man is every man’’ is false, and thus the sophism itself must be false. The sophism is solved through distinguishing two senses of ‘‘every man’’: the sophism is true if it is taken to claim that the set of all men is the set of all men, but false if it claims that each singular men would be all men.
Sophisms had an important role in the medieval university education. it seems clear that sophisms were actively discussed in medieval universities from the twelfth century to the Renaissance. In medieval writings, sophisms were most importantly discussed in specific collections of sophisms of different kinds. Different authors from the same period would typically discuss roughly similar lists of sophisms. It seems that sophisms would circulate among teachers in roughly the same manner in which logical examples circulate among logic teachers nowadays.
Twelfth - and thirteenth-century sophisms deal mainly with linguistic and logical issues. In the fourteenth century, problems of natural philosophy are addressed through sophisms. These topics belonged to the first years of medieval university education, and indeed sophisms seem to have formed an important part of the first years of study. In fourteenth-century oxford, a student who had done two years of disputations on sophisms, was called ‘‘Sophista.’’ Later in the Renaissance, the title started to be used in a pejorative sense.
Magister Abstractionum
A particularly important early collection of sophisms was known as the work of ‘‘magister abstractionum’’ or ‘‘magister Ricardus Sophista.’’ The collection was composed around 1230s or 1240s and contained over 300 sophisms, which are characteristically logico-linguistic. Scholarship has not yet satisfactorily identified the author. Richard Fishacre and Richard Rufus of Cornwall have been suggested among others. one possibility is that the collection evolved from the work of many authors using sophisms in their teaching. In any case, the collection circulated several decades as the work of ‘‘magister abstractionum,’’ and it was well known even in the 1330s.
Natural Philosophy ''secundum imaginationem''
In the fourteenth century, sophisms were used also for the purposes of natural philosophy. They were particularly important in the work of the so-called Oxford Calculators, especially Richard Kilvington and William Heytesbury. Commentators have wondered whether their sophisms really can be directed at first-year students, given the complexity of the issues involved. Rather, it may seem that sophisms were appropriated as a methodology for studying nature ‘‘secundum imaginationem,” which would involve assuming a casus and reasoning what would happen given such a casus. For example, assume that a hole is drilled through the earth and a stone dropped into it. Will it stop when it reaches its Aristotelian natural place at the center of the earth, or continue further as the impetus-theory of movement would have it? One crucial finding achieved by the secundum imaginationem - method that may have found its way to modern physics was the mean speed theorem.
World History
