On Midpoints in the Middle Ages
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While the centuries surrounding the turn of the first millennium in Europe are typically associated with ignorance, superstition, and the dismissal of scientific thought in the name of religion, many brilliant, forward-thinking minds of the Middle Ages— including those of the devoutly religious—often go overlooked. Among them, is that of a 14th-century man named Nicole Oresme, a French scholar who, according to Marshall Clagett (the author responsible for the English translation and biographical information found in this paper), appears for the first time in the records of the College of Navarre in Paris, France as a student of theology in 1348 [1, p. 4]. He would later be appointed Grand Master of his aforementioned alma mater, and eventually employed by King Charles V to translate various works of Aristotle into French. His time spent at the College would yield his most interesting and revolutionary contributions to mathematics, not the least of which was a cleverly detailed attack on astrology, a pseudoscience held to be true by many during his lifetime, and in fact, many still today [1, pp. 6-7].