Jean Buridan was an influential 14th-century French philosopher.
12 Facts About Jean Buridan
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Jean Buridan sowed the seeds of the Copernican Revolution in Europe.
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Jean Buridan developed the concept of impetus, the first step toward the modern concept of inertia and an important development in the history of medieval science.
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Jean Buridan's name is most familiar through the thought experiment known as Buridan's ass, but the thought experiment does not appear in his extant writings.
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Jean Buridan was born sometime before 1301, perhaps at or near the town of Bethune in Picardy, France, or perhaps elsewhere in the diocese of Arras.
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Jean Buridan received his education in Paris, first at the College du Cardinal Lemoine and then at the University of Paris, receiving his Master of Arts degree and formal license to teach at the latter by the mid-1320s.
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Also unusual for a philosopher of his time, Jean Buridan further maintained his intellectual independence by remaining a secular cleric, rather than joining a religious order.
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Jean Buridan was the first to name this motion-maintaining property impetus but the theory itself probably did not originate with him.
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Jean Buridan further held that the impetus of a body increased with the speed with which it was set in motion, and with its quantity of matter.
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Jean Buridan saw impetus as causing the motion of the object:.
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Jean Buridan contended that impetus is a variable quality whose force is determined by the speed and quantity of the matter in the subject.
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Zupko has disagreed, pointing out that Jean Buridan did not use his theory to transform the science of mechanics, but instead remained a committed Aristotelian in thinking that motion and rest are contrary states and that the universe is finite in extent.