The Grammar and Logic of Oneness and Number at the Beginning of the Twelfth Century

Abstract

The study of the interdependence of grammar and logic at the beginning of the twelfth century is a difficult subject and progress here has been slow. With the recent publication of the Notae Dunelmenses, however, we are now able to see rather more clearly how closely the two disciplines were bound to one another. The following article draws upon this newly published material and on unpublished material from contemporary commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories to investigate how the grammarians’ account of number was reconciled with that given by Aristotle. It considers in particular the problem of the meaning of numerical terms such as ‘pair’ (binarius) and of collective names such as ‘people’ (populus) and how attempting to solve it shaped thinking about the metaphysics of number.