Buridan taught in the faculty of arts at the University of Paris for his entire career and focused in particular on logic and on the works of Aristotle.

[12] Unusually, he spent his entire academic life in the faculty of arts, rather than obtaining the doctorate in law, medicine or theology that typically prepared the way for a career in philosophy.

[12] Also unusual for a philosopher of his time, Buridan further maintained his intellectual independence by remaining a secular cleric, rather than joining a religious order.

A papal letter of 1330 refers to him as simply, "clericus Atrebatensis diocoesis, magister in artibus [a cleric from the Diocese of Arras and Master of Arts].

[12] John Alexander Zupko has speculated that Buridan "deliberately chose to remain among the 'artists [artistae]',"[12] possibly envisioning philosophy as a secular enterprise based on what is evident to both the senses and the intellect, rather than the non-evident truths of theology revealed through scripture and doctrine.

[20] Some rumors hold that he died when the King of France had him put in a sack and thrown into the River Seine after his affair with the Queen came to light.

Thus, in the Aristotelian view, a projectile moving through the air would owe its continuing motion to eddies or vibrations in the surrounding medium, a phenomenon known as antiperistasis.

[8] Because of his developments, historians of science Pierre Duhem[23] and Anneliese Maier[24] both saw Buridan as playing an important role in the demise of Aristotelian cosmology.

[26] Zupko has disagreed, pointing out that Buridan did not use his theory to transform the science of mechanics, but instead remained a committed Aristotelian in thinking that motion and rest are contrary states and that the universe is finite in extent.