Background
Nicholas of Oresme was born at Allemagne in Normandy. Little is known of his early years, except that he studied theology.
(Nicole Oresme has been called the most brilliant scientis...)
Nicole Oresme has been called the most brilliant scientist of the 14th century: mathematician, musicologist, physicist, philosopher, and economist. On top of that, he was a Bishop and a theologian. His writings of money bear much in common with Carl Menger. Oresme's treatise on money, De Moneta, provides a detailed account of the function of money and the effects of inflation. And as Guido Hulsmann argues in The Ethics of Money Production, Oresme was the first theorist to present a fully worked out ethics of money, one that shows the sheer immorality of government monopoly over money and the social effects of debasement. In this translation and commentary by Charles Johnson, published first in 1958, we gain new insight into this pre-Austrian thinker of the middle ages. Oresme anticipated Gresham's Law, argued that money is not the possession of the state, and makes a detailed case that money belongs to the community and individuals primarily. This text offers the additional advantage of printing the original Latin alongside the English so that the reader can compare. Having this book in print begins the process of restoring a high place for Oresme in the history of economic thought. 260 pages, paperback 2009
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economist philosopher scientist translator
Nicholas of Oresme was born at Allemagne in Normandy. Little is known of his early years, except that he studied theology.
He attended the College of Navarre of the University of Paris in 1348 and served as master of that college from 1356 to 1361.
By 1370 he had become royal chaplain to King Charles V, and he had probably been Charles's tutor during the reign of Charles's father, King John II.
Charles V, a patron of the early Renaissance in France, collected a library of several thousand volumes. He commissioned Nicholas to translate, from Latin into French, Aristotle's De caelo (On the Heavens), Ethics, Politics, and Economics. The influence of the King can also perhaps be seen in Nicholas's chief interest, economics. Under the pressure of the economic disruption caused by the Hundred Years War, Charles V reorganized royal finances into a system that was preserved until 1789. In these circumstances, Nicholas wrote his treatise De moneta (On Money) between 1355 and 1360. In it Nicholas maintained that money is the property of the community, not of the ruler, and that, therefore, the ruler has an obligation to preserve the purity of coinage and may not debase it. De moneta is not always a realistic reflection of late medieval economy, but it became very popular in the 17th century.
Astrology was a fad of Nicholas's times, and he wrote in both French and Latin against the notion that the future can be predicted from a study of the stars. For example, borrowing his title and purpose from Cicero, Nicholas wrote De divinatione (On Divination) in order to attack dream interpreters and horoscopes. In general, Nicholas argued that supposedly magical events can be explained by natural causes. To support his arguments, he studied astronomy; and although he accepted the Ptolemaic system, in which the universe was believed to revolve around the earth, he granted that terrestrial motion cannot be disproved. Nicholas encouraged the study of nature and the use of reason in examining the Christian faith, remarking that "Everything contained in the Gospels is highly reasonable. "
(Nicole Oresme has been called the most brilliant scientis...)