- Lived:
- c. 1232 – c. 1315/16 · Majorca, and most ports of the western Mediterranean
- Tradition:
- Medieval Christian philosophy at its wildest edge — missionary logic, mysticism, and the first dream of mechanical reasoning
- The Big Idea:
- If all minds share the structure of reason, then argument can be made systematic — even mechanical: a combinatorial "Art" that generates every question and its answer from principles all faiths accept.
- In their words:
- "Say, fool, what is love?" He answered: "Love is that which enslaves the free and sets the enslaved free."
- If you remember one thing:
- Seven hundred years before computers, a reformed troubadour built rotating paper wheels meant to generate true arguments — and discovered, the hard way, everything we are now learning about thinking machines.