Natural Order and Mathematical Imagination. The Use of Quoting Sapientia 11–21 in Oresme’s Works

Abstract

Nicole Oresme quotes four times the passage from The Book of Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon) or, in the Vulgate, Sapientia 11–21 (omnia in mensura et numero et pondere disposuisti), in several works covering his whole career. It goes to show the importance he gives to that passage: the order of nature arranged by God limits natural potencies within boundaries from which harmony follows, and at the same time it marks for man the path to perfection. But the human mind can know the natural order only to a certain degree of probability, as it results from De commensurabilitate. After all, it makes it possible to glimpse a more varied and complex order that one can imagine. Thus harmony results from a wise mixture of rationality and irrationality. From the point of view of his use of the passage of Sapientia 11–21, the skeptical Oresme appears as a scholar in search for a new synthesis, beyond that of mediaeval philosophy.