A History of Balance, 1250–1375
The Emergence of a New Model of Equilibrium and its Impact on Thought

This book is a groundbreaking history of balance, exploring how a new model of equilibrium emerged during the medieval period.

Joel Kaye (Author)

9781107028456, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 April 2014

530 pages, 6 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.3 cm, 0.98 kg

'This is a wonderful, sophisticated and extremely detailed study of equilibrium in the later Middle Ages. The scholarship is meticulous, the prose lucid and the argument convincing. Ranging between disciplines, from the history of economic thought, to medieval medical theory, to political philosophy, to analysis of illuminated manuscripts and commentary on economic and socio-cultural context, Joel Kaye's book should be of great interest to a wide range of historians.' H. Skoda, The English Historical Review

The ideal of balance and its association with what is ordered, just, and healthful remained unchanged throughout the medieval period. The central place allotted to balance in the workings of nature and society also remained unchanged. What changed within the culture of scholasticism, between approximately 1280 and 1360, was the emergence of a greatly expanded sense of what balance is and can be. In this groundbreaking history of balance, Joel Kaye reveals that this new sense of balance and its potentialities became the basis of a new model of equilibrium, shaped and shared by the most acute and innovative thinkers of the period. Through a focus on four disciplines - scholastic economic thought, political thought, medical thought, and natural philosophy - Kaye's book reveals that this new model of equilibrium opened up striking new vistas of imaginative and speculative possibility, making possible a profound re-thinking of the world and its workings.

Introduction
1. Equality and equalization in the economic sphere, part I: the scholastic discourse on usury to 1300
2. Equality and equalization in the economic sphere, part II: the scholastic discourse on price and value to 1300
3. Balance in medieval medical theory, part I: the legacy of Galen
4. Balance in medieval medical theory, part II: the scholastic reception and refinement of Galenic balance to c.1315
5. Evolving models of equalization in medieval political thought, c.1250–1325
6. The new model of equilibrium in medieval political thought, part I: the Defensor Pacis of Marsilius of Padua
7. The new model of equilibrium in medieval political thought, part II: the writings of Nicole Oresme
8. The new model of equilibrium in scholastic natural philosophy, c.1325–75
Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Medieval history [HBLC1], European history [HBJD]