Nicholas of Oresme and Late Medieval Mathematical Physics

Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382), a Norman by birth, studied theology at the College of Navarre in Paris, where he became grand master in 1356, and went on to a distinguished ecclesiastical and political career as almoner, then advisor and translator to King Charles V of France, before becoming Bishop of Lisieux in 1377, a post he held until his death. A student in the broadly Buridanian nominalist tradition of the Parisian arts faculty, Oresme combined mathematical originality with a notably cautious, methodologically self-aware attitude toward the limits of both reason and observation in natural philosophy.