Notes and some of the love letters of Heloise and Abelard can be found at foot of this page. [Editor]

Somebody sneered at the Scholastic Professors for debating such trivia as how many angels could dance on the head of pin. Maybe that person didn't quite understand the scholastic vocabulary. The trivium simply meant the three-subject university curriculum. [9]

Angels or spirits stood in for quite a number of things for which we have different names now. Angels brought ideas from God (remember that Augustine had said c. 400 C.E. that you create nothing -- with devotion and good luck, though, God might choose to illuminate your mind). Angels brought dreams (bad angels brought sexy ones). Saintly spirits and angels defended you, interceded for your soul, shoved the planets around in their orbits. Thomas Aquinas and the rest had... er... spirited discussions of all these matters. [10]

Peter Abelard (1079-1142),translator of Aristotle, nominalist, celebrated teacher and lover.[11]

Abelard was suspicious about reification, which means he thought that there might exist names for which there are no corresponding things. Because you can discuss unicorns or Santa Claus -- stop reading, children! -- does not mean that they exist. Psychologists in our time sometimes talk about intelligence, aggression, schizophrenia and so on as if they were material things. Presumably, we know perfectly well that they are hypothetical constructs, or something like that, so "it's only a manner of speaking." Still, it's hard to find an alternative "manner of speaking." People can be forgiven for complaining, as one biologist has, that psychologists "think that aggression is a liquid that slops around in the brain." [12]

The young Master Peter Abelard argued that there are no Platonic Forms of Catness or Aristotelian Essences of Cat separate from individual cats. No Ideal Model of Human Nature or Universal Human arete -- just people. In the terminology of the time, this made Abelard a nominalist as opposed to a realist.[13

] Philosophy is grand stuff, he said, but you can't do physics with mere words. (How he thought you could do physics -- or at least investigate the ordinary world -- isn't clear. Wait for Aquinas on the next page.)

But doesn't Abelard's nominalism mean thatall the abstract words are suspect? Is your immortal soul just a word? Your mind? Your inner self? Your hopes and dreams? Even God?

In the beginning was the word, and if the word won't do, what happens to morality, or Redemption or Heaven or Christ's Vicar-on-Earth, the papal authority? Abelard couldn't or wouldn't see a problem.

Notes on the lecture -- "Learned Schoolmen; Abelard"

"9. trivium... The three subjects were the same as those taught in the ancient Greek schools: Grammatica, Rhetorica and Dialectica. During the Renaissance, the trivium was replaced with a new quadrivium: Aritmetica, Geometria, Musica and Astronomia. No doubt the same people who championed this new practical and scientific curriculum made the word trivial mean unimportant.

10. angels on a pin... If angels are incorporeal, how can they do their jobs? Maybe they are physical, but infinitesimally small (like Democritus' atoms). Therefore, an enormous number could congregate on the head of a pin, if they wanted to.

By the way, I don't think angels had wings at the time -- some Italian painter, perhaps Giotto, started putting them on in about 1300 CE. [WWW: Giotto di Bondone, The Mourning of Christ. webMuseum, Paris, accessed 10/10/1998]

In 1487, the theologians Kramer and Sprenger decided that bad angels (devils, demons) can't do nasty things all by themselves because angels are, in fact, not physical beings. That's why demons recruit witches to do the dirty work [see Hergenhahn (1997), p. 439 on the influence of Malleus Maleficarum].

11. Abelard... Real name (!) Pierre du Pallet. His chosen nickname, Abaelardus, is variously spelled -- Abeillard, Abailard, etc.

The Pete and Eloise Story (Abelard and Heloise) is a famous tale of true love or a sordid sex-scandal, depending on your point of view. In middle age, Peter Abelard was overcome with lust for the apparently willing 17-year old niece of a colleague. He got her and then the girl's outraged family got him in the style of the recently celebrated Mrs. Lorena Bobbit. Peterless, Abelard was consigned to a monastery. Heloise retired among Nuns. The lovers thereafter made do with exchanging letters describing their sexual fantasies.

There is a good short biography by William Turner at Notre Dame's Jacques Maritain Center, http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/abelard.htm and another among James Kiefer's Christian Biographies at http://www.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/04/21b.html [Both sites accessed 10/10/1998].

12: Klopfer studied, among other things, how sheep and goats smell.

They smelled terrible! But seriously, folks ... they smelled seriously terrible! (Old but good joke.)

Klopfer wouldn't accept "maternal bonding" as a thing -- he wanted a physical understanding of the signals that the mothers and babies exchange, and he found them. Some of them are odor molecules. (have article filed "imprinting" office - check.)

13. Hergenhahn (1997) refers to both Plato and Aristotle as realists as opposed to Abelard the nominalist. This is confusing because we now usually call Plato and the Medieval realists idealists. Furthermore, a 20th century 'common-sense realist' wants nothing to do with any of these philosophers -- his or her intellectual ancestor is probably a tough-minded Scotsman named Thomas Reid who wasn't born until 1710.

"Reality -- whatta concept!" -Russian/American comedian Jakov Smirnov.

I once watched philosophy Prof. Neil McGill trying to persuade a class of freshman engineers to question the reality of an oak table. A tough sell! Psychologist Donald Hebb wrote persuasively (ref?) that a steel I-beam is a solid object to an engineer but, equally, it's a wispy cloud of electrons to a physicist. The 12th century anti-nominalists were claiming that there is one "real" God's-eye way to see a steel beam (or anything else).

Some Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard
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Abelard: Brilliant light who is used to shining in the midst of darkness, may you experience no diminishing of your sweetest light. No-one is unhappier than we who are simultaneously pulled in different directions by love and shame.

Heloise:To the spice of perfect quality and finest fragrance, multiplied a hundredfold with the seed of sweetness in the wasteland, a full moon, the delights of binding love. You give words to the wind. If you stone me for such things, what would you do to one inflicting injuries on you? He who does not remember a friend except in time of necessity, is no friend deserving of praise, nor perfect in every part. Farewell.

Heloise:To her heart's love more sweetly scented than any spice, she who is his in heart and body, the freshness of eternal happiness as the flowers fade of your youth. Farewell, well being of my life.

Abelard:To the singular joy and only solace of a weary mind, that person who's life without you is death, what more than himself insofar as he is able in body and soul? Farewell my light, farewell, you for whom I would willingly die.

Heloise: To her love most pure, worthy of any fidelity, through the state of true love the secret of tender faith. May the ruler of heaven mediate between us; may he accompany our faith. Farewell, and may Christ King of Kings save you my sweetest for eternity. Farewell in him who governs all things in the world.

Abelard:To one who is sweeter from day to day, is loved now as much as possible and is always to be loved more than anything, her only one, the same unchanging constancy of sincere faith. Farewell my brightest star, my noblest delight and my only consolation. Farewell, my wellbeing.

Heloise: To my joyful hope, my faith and my very self with all my devotion as long as I live. May he bestower of every art and the most bountiful giver of human talent, fill the depths of my breast with the skin of the art of philosophy in order that I may greet you in writing, most beloved, in accord with my will. Farewell. Farewell, hope of my youth.

Abelard:To his brightest star, whose rays I have recently enjoyed. May she shine with such unfailing splendour that no cloud can obscure her. Because you, my sweetest lady, have so instructed me, or to speak more truly, because the burning flame of love compels me, your beloved could not restrain himself from greeting you as he can through the agency of a letter in place of his actual presence. Therefore keep well, just as I need your keeping your well; and farewell, just as my faring well depends on your doing so. In you is my hope; in you my rest. Never do I wake so suddenly that my spirit does not find you present within itself.

Heloise: You know, greatest part of my soul, that many people love each other for many reasons, but no friendship of theirs will be as constant as that which stems from integrity and virtue and from deep love. For I do not consider the friendship of those who seem to love each other for riches and pleasures to be durable at all, since the very things on which they base their love seem to have no durability. Consequently, when their riches or pleasure runs out, so to at the same time, love may fail.

But my love is united with you by a completely different pact, and the useless burdens of wealth, more conducive to wrongdoing than anything when the thirst of possession begins to grow, did not compel me to love you. Only the highest virtue in which lies the root of all honours and every success. Indeed it is this virtue which is self sufficient and in need of nothing else, which restrains passion, keeps desires in check, moderates joys and eradicates sorrows, which provides everything proper, everything pleasing, everything delightful, and than which nothing better can be found.

Surely I have discovered in you, since I love you, undoubtedly the greatest and most outstanding good of all. Since it is established that this is eternal, it is for me the proof beyond doubt that you will remain in my love for eternity. Therefore believe me desirable one, that neither wealth, distinctions, nor all the things that devotees of this world lust after, will be able to sever me from love for you. Truly there will never be a day in which I would be able to think of myself and let it pass without thinking of you. Know that I am not concerned by any doubt that I may hope the same thing from you.

Abelard:To the only disciple of philosophy among all the young women of our age, the only one of whom fortune has completely bestowed all the gifts of the manifold virtues, the only attractive one, the only gracious one. He, who through your gift, is nourished by the upper air, he who lives only when he is sure of your favour, may you advance ever further, if she who has reached the summit can advance any further.

I admire your talent, you who discussed the rules of friendship so subtly that you seem not to have read Tully but to have given those precepts to Tully himself. What you say is true, sweetest of all women, that truly such a love does not bind us as often binds those who seek only their own interests, who make friendship a source of profit, whose loyalty stands firm or collapses with their fortunes, who do not consider virtue to be of value for its own sake, who call friendship to account, those who with busy fingers keep count of what they ought to get back, for whom indeed nothing is sweet without profit, truly, we have been joined, I would not say by fortune, but rather by God, under a different agreement.

I chose you among many thousands because of your countless virtues. Truthfully, for no other benefit than that I might rest in you, or that you might lighten all my troubles, or that of all the good things in this world only your charm might restore me and make me forget all sorrows. You are my fill when hungry, my refreshment when thirsty, my rest when weary, my warmth when cold, my shade when hot, indeed in every storm, you are my most wholesome and true calm.