Are Touch and Taste Necessary? Some Answers from Fourteenth-Century Natural Philosophy

Abstract

The relationship between natural philosophy and medicine is addressed in this paper by considering some late medieval texts on the sense of touch. The paper analyses the issue of “whether touch (and, relatedly, taste) is necessary” in the fourteenth-century questions on the De sensu et sensato by John Buridan, Nicole Oresme or Albert of Saxony (?), and Marsilius of Inghen. The three questions highlight how the intersection of natural philosophy and medicine helped shape late medieval theories of sensation, particularly in the Parva naturalia commentary tradition.