This chapter focuses on an aspect of Suárez’s metaphysics that is especially relevant to the non-scholastic identification of matter with extension in early modern thought, namely, his account of the nature of the Aristotelian accident of “continuous quantity.” The chapter begins with Suárez’s contribution to a debate within medieval scholasticism between “realist” and “nominalist” views of quantity. One distinctive feature of this contribution is Suárez’s insistence that this accident bears a special relation to impenetrability. There is then a consideration of Suárez’s contribution to a scholastic debate over the mereological relation between wholes and their “integral parts” that pits anti-reductionists against reductionists. The chapter ends with an examination of Suárez’s contribution to scholastic debates over the ontological status of the “indivisible” boundaries of parts, namely, points, lines, and surfaces. Suárez adopts a “moderate realism” that takes boundaries to be really distinct from the parts they limit.
The relative salience of discrete and continuous quantity in young infants
