ALBERTO di SASSONIA (ALBERTO di HELMSTEDT, Albertus, Albertus parvus). — Occamist philosopher and student of the natural sciences, of the second half of the fourteenth century. He died in 1390. He studied at the University of Paris, where he taught from 1351, and became its rector in 1353. When the University of Vienna was founded in 1365, A. became its first rector, serving until 1366, when he was elected bishop of Halberstadt.
His works are numerous and varied: Tractatus logicae; Sophismata; Quaestiones in logicam Guil. Occam; In Post. Analyt.; Quaestiones super octo Physicorum libros; In libros de coelo et mundo; De generatione et corruptione; Expositio decem librorum Ethicorum Aristotelis; De sensu et de sensato; Tractatus de proportionibus, etc.
Although A.’s philosophical and scientific importance is not of the first order, since he generally connected himself with the doctrines of predecessors and teachers, nevertheless, through his many works, which were read, cited, transcribed, and subsequently printed several times, A. contributed considerably to that fervor of research, especially in the field of «physica», which constitutes the most commendable feature of the terminist school of the fourteenth century and anticipates some of the great discoveries of the sixteenth century in the fields of mechanics and celestial physics. A faithful disciple of Occam in logic, in the natural sciences he Buridano (v.), from whom, among other things, he took up the theory of «impetus» with its various applications, though not without introducing into it the differing views of Nicola di Oresme. Also noteworthy are his researches and hypotheses (here too dependent on Nicola di Oresme) concerning the mathematical laws of accelerated motion — particularly the fall of heavy bodies — in relation to time and the distance traversed. Also noteworthy are his somewhat original views on the center of gravity, placed at the center of the world: toward this point the center of gravity of the earth naturally tends, just as the center of gravity of bodies tends toward the center of the earth. Alberto also states, taking it from “one of his teachers,” the hypothesis—by no means entirely forgotten in the Middle Ages—of the motion of the earth and the immobility of the heavens.
tustheorie der Scholastik, Vienna 1940; An den Grenzen von Scholastik und Naturwissenschaft, Essen 1943 (v. GIUDICI).