Abstract

Since Marshall Clagett’s work in the 1950s the importance of the Mertonian physicists in fourteenth century Oxford has been well understood. The recovery of Aristotle as a source for contemporary philosophy of physics, initiated by William Wallace’s important study The Modeling of Nature, has made the development of Aristotelian physics no longer a historical curiosity. Trifogli’s study of Oxford physics in the thirteenth century adds substantially to our understanding of Aristotle’s contribution, or rather one might say, to how Aristotelian physics was received at that time: what they made of it. Inevitably, the story has to be told in terms of debate, since there is enough latitude in Aristotle’s own writings to permit a variety of interpretations.