Nizolius, Marius

Nizolius, Marius of Bersello, an Italian philosopher, flourished near the middle of the 16th century. He was born about 1498, and died in 1576. He was a Nominalist of no mean order, and is frequently quoted by Leibnitz, who saw much of merit in his writings, though he condemned Nizolius's opposition to Aristotle as too extreme, as also his extreme nominalistic doctrine that the genus is only a collection of individuals — by which doctrine the possibility of scientific demonstration on the basis of universal propositions is destroyed, and only induction, as the mere collation of similar experiences, is left remaining as an organon of method. Nizolius exhibited his scholasticism in his Thesaurus Ciceronianus, and particularly in his Antibarbarus sive de veris principiis et vera ratione philosophandi contra pseudo-philosophos (Parm. 1553, ed. G. W. Leibnitz [Frankfort, 1670 and 1674]). Nizolius maintained the nominalistic doctrines that only individual things are mere substances; that species and genera are only subjective conceptions by means of which several objects are considered together; and that all knowledge must proceed from sensation, which alone has immediate certainty.