Notion and Object: Aspects of Late Medieval Epistemology

by Alexander Broadie

The early 16th century was a time of intense intellectual activity during which ideas central to the disputes between traditionalists and reformers were being refined. This is the first full-length study of the quest for the answer to the question then being "What is knowlege?"
Broadie focuses on the distinction between sensory and intellectual cognition, and on the concept of "notion" which was central to the epistemological debates of the period, paying special attention to the doctrines of John Mair, David Cranston, Gilbert Crab, George Lokert and Gervaise Waim, all
philosophers at the University of Paris between 1500 and 1530 who represented the intellectual tradition confronting the reformers.

206 pages, Hardcover

First published February 23, 1989

About the author

Alexander Broadie FRSE is a Scottish philosopher and emeritus professor of logic and rhetoric at Glasgow University. He writes on the Scottish philosophical tradition, chiefly the philosophy of the Pre-Reformation period, the 17th century, and the Enlightenment.

Broadie attended the Royal High School, Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh (MA), Balliol College, Oxford (MLitt), and the University of Glasgow (PhD, DLitt). He was Henry Duncan prize lecturer in Scottish Studies, Royal Society of Edinburgh (1990 - 1993), and has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 1991. As Gifford Lecturer in Natural Theology at Aberdeen University in 1994, he delivered a series of Lectures published under the title The Shadow of Scotus: Philosophy and Faith in Pre-Reformation Scotland (1995). Since demitting his professorship of logic and rhetoric at Glasgow University (held from 1994 to 2009) he has been honorary professorial research fellow there, mainly researching 17th-century Scottish philosophy.

In 2007 Broadie was awarded the degree of DUniv honoris causa by Blaise Pascal University at Clermont-Ferrand in recognition of his contribution to Franco-Scottish collaboration in the field of the history of philosophy.

Broadie's A History of Scottish Philosophy (2009) was named Saltire Society Scottish History Book of the Year. In July 2018 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society, and in 2020 was appointed honorary vice-president of the Saltire Society in recognition of his contribution to Scottish philosophy.