Andrew Arlig: Is There a Boethian Mereology?

We are happy to announce the next meeting of The Groningen Centre for the Medieval and Early Modern Thought (GCMEMT) monthly lecture series. This month our invited speaker is Andrew Arlig (Brooklyn College, CUNY).

In contemporary philosophy “mereology” often refers to that part of formal ontology which provides a comprehensive account of parts and wholes as such. It has recently been suggested that prior to logicians such as Leśniewski and Tarski, philosophers did not attempt to give a complete, general account of wholes, parts, their properties, and their interrelations. To test this hypothesis, I propose that we look at Boethius’s On Division. This little book not only provides many of the key terms, notions, and distinctions employed by subsequent medieval philosophers, it also appears, at least at first glance, to provide a comprehensive and highly general account of wholes and their parts. I will survey the relevant sections on part and wholes in On Division and I will show why Boethius’s survey does not present a complete mereology in the modern sense. This still raises the interesting question of whether one could easily expand Boethius’s remarks so that they do come close to providing a mereology. With this question in mind, I will briefly examine some of the ways that medieval philosophers reacted to Boethius’s concise, yet often suggestive remarks about wholes and parts. In doing so, we will see whether medieval philosophers saw in On Division the beginnings of a general theory of parts and wholes and, if so, what this Boethian theory looks like. We will compare this Boethian mereology – to the extent that there is one – with a basic framework that is common to many contemporary mereologies.

Register to join

If you wish to join this event, please send an email to c.k.r.henkel rug.nl or to l.georgescu rug.nl to receive the link.