Kamil Majcherek

I am a Title A Fellow (a.k.a. Junior Research Fellow) in History of Philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge. I work mainly on the metaphysics and natural philosophy in the late Latin Middle Ages, from around 1250 to 1500. I completed my PhD at the University of Toronto in 2022, with a dissertation on Medieval Metaphysics of Artefacts 1250-1500, which is currently under review as a monograph. I also specialise in medieval palaeography and textual editing.

During my stay at ND, I will continue working on my second monograph, on Medieval Ontology of Numbers 1250-1500. The medieval debate that I study was focused on the question concerning the ontological status of numbers: Are numbers something distinct from the numbered things, and if so, where do they exist: in reality (if so, in what sense), in the mind (again, in what sense), or perhaps numbers have no reality independent of the numbered objects? The late medieval authors were puzzled by this question as well as many further issues clustered around it, such as, What are numbers metaphysically speaking? How (if at all) is it possible that a number is something one despite the fact that it is an aggregate of discrete unities? Even though the medieval debate about these questions was heated and attracted the attention of the foremost minds of its era, thus leading to a great abundance of diverse and sophisticated views, there has been almost no scholarship on this topic; hence my attempt to fill the lacuna in our knowledge, first via a series of articles and critical editions and ultimately the monograph. During my stay at ND, I will most probably be predominantly focused on the discussions within the Thomist camp, but I will also be working on making the first half of the book, which is now ready, into a coherent and readable whole.