The problems of the true nature and status of psychology (scientia de anima) among sciences were much debated by sixteenth-century philosophers. Chapter I.1 of Aristotle's De anima provided main material here, and different positions were mostly expressed in commentaries to it. This chapter discusses a number of sixteenth-century scholastic interpretations, in particular two great Jesuit works: the scholarly Coimbra commentary and Suárez's more original De anima. Aristotle himself posed several questions which required elaboration. One of these concerned the subject of psychology. Because of Averroism and Alexandrism, this issue was alive during the whole century. Another important problem was whether psychology belongs among natural sciences or to metaphysics. This generated a complicated discussion. Moreover, there was enquiry about what was the correct place of psychology among biosciences, how useful it was and how we should evaluate the worth and glory of it. A final puzzle concerned the explanation of its difficulty. The tentative conclusion of our survey is that these philosophers of the "second scholasticism" had a rather conscious notion of their task in this connection, though their methods were often tangled. Some of their observations, especially those related to the understanding of mental existence, can even have permanent relevance outside the strictly Aristotelian framework. Keywords De anima • order of sciences • second scholasticism • Coimbra commentators • Suárez The Doctrinal SituationIn the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, philosophers paid great attention to the system of sciences. Constantly interested in the harmony of the whole, they found pleasure in investigating the natures and correct characterisations of various disciplines.
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Frege's docent's dissertation Rechnungsmethoden, die sich auf eine Erweirerung des Grossenbegrzffes griinden (1874) contains indications of a bold attempt to extend arithmetic. According to it, arithmetic means the science of magnitude, and magnitude must be understood structurally without intuitive support. The main thing is insight into the formal structure of the operation of 'addition'. It turns out that a general 'magnitude domain' coincides with a (commutative) group. This is an interesting connection with simultaneous developments in abstract algebra. As his main application, Frege studies iterations of functions. He does not yet pose the question of existence proofs. Measurement of magnitudes is also connected to numbers, but the discussion is here ambiguous in a way which calls for the systematic account of numbers in Grundgesetze.
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