ADELARD (or Aethelard) of Bath (12th century), English scholastic
philosopher, and one of the greatest savants of medieval England. He
studied in France at Laon and Tours, and travelled, it is said, through
Spain, Italy, North Africa and Asia Minor, during a period of seven
years. At a time when Western Europe was rich in men of wide knowledge
and intellectual eminence, he gained so high a reputation that he was
described by Vincent de Beauvais as
Philosophus Anglorum. He
lived for a time in the Norman kingdom of Sicily and returned to England
in the reign of Henry I. From the Pipe Roll (31 Henry I. 1130) it
appears that he was awarded an annual grant of money from the revenues
of Wiltshire. The great interest of Adelard in the history of philosophy
lies in the fact that he made a special study of Arabian philosophy
during his travels, and, on his return to England, brought his knowledge
to bear on the current scholasticism of the time. He has been credited
with a knowledge of Greek, and it is said that his translation of
Euclid's Elements was made from the original Greek. It is probable,
however, from the nature of the text, that his authority was an Arabic
version. This important work was published first at Venice in 1482 under
the name of Campanus of Novara, but the work is always attributed to
Adelard. Campanus may be responsible for some of the notes. It became at
once the text-book of the chief mathematical schools of Europe, though
its critical notes were of little value. His Arabic studies he collected
under the title
Perdifficiles Quaestiones Naturales, printed
after 1472. It is in the form of a dialogue between himself and his
favourite nephew, and was dedicated to Richard, bishop of Bayeux from
1113 to 1133. He wrote also treatises on the astrolabe (a copy of this
is in the British Museum), on the abacus (three copies exist in the
Vatican library, the library of Leiden University and the Bibliotheque
Nationale in Paris), translations of the Kharismian Tables and an Arabic
Introduction to Astronomy. His great contribution to philosophy
proper was the
De Eodem et Diverso (On Identity and Difference),
which is in the form of letters addressed to his nephew. In this work
philosophy and the world are personified as Philosophia and Philocosmia
in conflict for the soul of man. Philosophia is accompanied by the
liberal arts, represented as Seven Wise Virgins; the world by Power,
Pleasure, Dignity, Fame and Fortune. The work deals with the current
difficulties between nominalism and realism, the relation between the
individual and the genus or species. Adelard regarded the individual as
the really existent, and yet, from different points of view, as being
himself the genus and the species. He was either the founder or the
formulator of the doctrine of indifference, according to which genus and
species retain their identity in the individual apart altogether from
particular idiosyncrasies. For the relative importance of this doctrine
see article Scholasticism.
See Jourdain, Recherches sur les
traductions d'Aristote (2nd ed., 1843); Haureau, Philosophie
scolastique (2nd ed., 1872), and works appended to art.
Scholasticism.
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