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Jean Buridan, c.1295-1358
French secular Scholastic philosopher and member of William of Ockham's "Nomalist" School (whom he later condemned). Buridan rose to become rector of the University of Paris and the lover of the French queen. Nicholas Oresme was his most famous pupil.
In economics, Buridan was a renowned critic of Aristotle's "just exchange" and an originator of the metallic theory of money. Jean Buridan's theory of determinism and the relationship between will and intellect was ridiculed by his opponents with the parable of "Buridan's Ass": the dilemma of the donkey who, standing between two equal piles of hay, is so overcome with indifference that he ends up dying of starvation (a parable which can also be inveighed against modern revealed preference theory).
Buridan also developed several physical notions the presage modern Newtonian dynamics. In his critique of Aristotle, Buridan argued that an object moves not because of the air surrounding it (as Aristotle proposed), but rather because it is set in motion by the force or "impetus" of another body. Air, Buridan speculated correctly, formed the resistance which slowed and eventually stopped the object. His critique of Aristotle's astronomy (De caelo) was to be highly influential on Copernicus.
In 1340, while rector in Paris, Buridan condemned his old master Ockham's school.
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