Richard Kilvington on Continuity

Abstract

Although with his solutions to the problem of the possible existence of indivisibilia Richard Kilvington seems to fi t into the main stream of the fourteenth-century considerations, which leaned toward the refutation of atomism, he attacks and solves the problem in an original manner. In this paper we will focus on two of Kilvington's questions, respectively from his De generatione et corruptione and Sentences commentaries, where he presents geometric proofs for the infi nite divisibility of a continuum. Richard Kilvington's commentary on De generatione et corruptione is a set of ten fully developed questions. 1 They were written around 1324-1325 * We want to express our gratitude to Chris Schabel for his help with English. 1 All ten questions are contained in Mss: Bruges 503, ff. 20vb-50vb (along with Kilvington's questions on the Ethics and the Sentences); Erfurt SB Amploniana O-74, ff. 35ra-86va, Sevilla Bibl. Columbina 7.7.13, ff. 9ra-29rb, Paris BNF lat. 6559, ff. 61ra-119va. Part of the set is to be found in Cambridge Peterhouse 195, ff. 60r-69r and Krakow Bibl. Jagiellonska, cod. 648, ff. 40ra-53rb. In Ms. Vat. lat. 4353, the manuscript, where Maier (cf. Maier, Ausgehende Mittelalers, pp. 253-54) 'found' Kilvington's commentary on the Physics, there are 40 lines of the fourth question listed below.