Albert was a pupil of Jean Buridan and was very much influenced by Buridan's teachings on physics and logic. As a natural philosopher, he contributed to the spread of Parisian natural philosophy throughout Italy and central Europe. Similar to Buridan, Albert combined critical analysis of language with epistemological pragmatism. Albert distinguishes, as his teacher did, between what is absolutely impossible or contradictory and what is impossible “in the common course of nature” and considers hypotheses under circumstances that are not naturally possible but imaginable given God's absolute power. Albert refused to extend the reference of a physical term to supernatural, purely imaginary possibilities. Later regarded as one of the principal adherents of nominalism, along with his near contemporaries at Paris, namely Buridan and Marsilius of Inghen, whose works are often so similar as to be confused with each other. The subsequent wide circulation of Albert's work made him a better-known figure in some areas than more important contemporaries like Buridan and Nicole Oresme.