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Marshall Clagett
(23 Jan 1916 - 21 Oct 2005)
American science historian who was one of the dominant scholars in the field of medieval science in the 20th century. He spent four decades at the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study.
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Science Quotes by Marshall Clagett (1 quote)
No medieval schoolman has been singled out as a precursor more often than the French scholastic Nicole Oresme.This brilliant scholar has been credited with … the framing of Gresham’s law before Gresham, the invention of analytic geometry before Descartes, with propounding structural theories of compounds before nineteenth century organic chemists, with discovering the law of free fall before Galileo, and with advocating the rotation of the Earth before Copernicus. None of these claims is, in fact, true, although each is based on discussion by Oresme of some penetration and originality …
— Marshall Clagett
In Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Quantities and Motions (1968).
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
