Walter Burley

Walter Burley (or Burleigh), c.1275-1344/5, was a medieval English logician. He was a Master of Arts at Oxford in 1301, and a fellow of Merton College, Oxford until 1305. He studied theology in Paris from before 1310, and by c.1320 he was a doctor of theology at Paris. He was a fellow of the Sorbonne by 1324. After studying William of Ockham's commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Burley opposed Ockham on a number of points concerning logic and natural philosophy.

Works

His main work was the "De Puritate Artis Logicae Tractatus Longior", in which he covers such topics as the truth conditions for complex sentences, both truth-functional and modal, as well as providing rules of inferences for different types of inferences. He was one of the first logicians to recognize the priority of the propositional calculus over the predicate calculus, despite the fact that the latter had been the main focus of logicians up until this period.

Other works include:
*"Treatise on Suppositions"
*"In Aristotelis Perihermenias" ("Questions on Aristotle's Perihermenias", 1301)
*"De Formis"

References

* Broadie, Alexander. "Introduction to Medieval Logic" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
* Walter Burley. "De Puritate Artis Logicae Tractatus Longior, with a revised edition of the Tractatus Brevior", ed. P. Boehner (New York: 1955).
* Walter Burley. "On the Purity of the Art of Logic. The Shorter and Longer Treatises", trans. & ed. P.V. Spade (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2000).
* Walter Burley. "De Formis", ed. Frederick J. Down Scott (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1970 ISBN 3769690044).
* Gracia, J.G. and Noone, T.B., "A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages", London 2003

External links

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Persondata
NAME=Burley, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Burlaeus, Gualterus; Gualterus Burlaeus; Burleigh, Walter; Gualterius Burleus Anglicus
SHORT DESCRIPTION=English logician
DATE OF BIRTH=1275
PLACE OF BIRTH=Burley-in-Wharfedale, Yorkshire
DATE OF DEATH=1344/1345
PLACE OF DEATH=