Natural philosophy, medieval

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Dudley Sylla
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
John Duns Scotus ◽  
Biblical Commentary ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
The University

Medieval Latin natural philosophy falls into two main periods, before the rise of the universities (mainly in the twelfth century, when works were produced in connection with aristocratic patrons, monastic institutions or cathedral schools) and after their rise. In the earlier period, the dominant Greek influence is that part of Plato’s Timaeus which had been translated into Latin and commented on by Calcidius. In the university period, the central works are those of Aristotle, often together with commentaries by Averroes. Before the twelfth century, there was very little that could be described as natural philosophy. Such work as existed fell mainly into the genres of natural history (encyclopedic works using Pliny and the like as sources), didactic works (perhaps following a question and answer format on the model of Seneca’s Natural Questions) or biblical commentary (especially commentaries on the Hexaemeron, or six days of creation). In the twelfth century, however, there are a number of original texts that may be considered as natural philosophy; examples include William of Conches’ Philosophia mundi (Philosophy of the World), Bernard Sylvester’s Cosmographia or Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias (Know the Ways). Greek natural philosophy also reached the Latin West through its influence on medical works and on art, for example on drawings of the cosmos, heaven, angels and hell. The high and late Middle Ages (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) was perhaps the preeminent period in all of history for natural philosophy. Natural philosophy was an official area of study in the arts faculties of medieval universities, alongside and distinct from the seven liberal arts (the trivium – grammar, rhetoric and logic – and the quadrivium – arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music), moral philosophy or ethics, and first philosophy or metaphysics. As a subject of the arts faculty, natural philosophy was also defined as distinct from the subjects studied in the graduate faculties of theology, medicine and law. The most common approach to natural philosophy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was to comment on, or to dispute questions arising from, the natural works of Aristotle, especially his Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, Meteorology and On the Soul, as well as his various works in biological areas and the so-called Parva Naturalia, a group of short works on psychological topics. Medieval investigations of the cosmos that were largely mathematical – for example, most of astronomy – were considered in the Middle Ages to belong not to natural philosophy but to the quadrivium or perhaps to the so-called ‘middle sciences’ (such as optics, statics or the newly developed ‘science of motion’). What little medieval experimental science there may have been (for instance that appearing in Peter Peregrinus’ De magnete (On the Magnet), in Frederick II’s De arte venandi cum avibus (On the Art of Hunting with Birds) and perhaps in some works on alchemy) seems not to have been done within the university setting. In the fourteenth century the new methods of medieval logic (supposition theory, propositional analysis or exposition, rules for solving sophismata and so on) are prominently used in natural philosophy. Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century natural philosophy began with the general assumption of the Aristotelian world view, but later medieval natural philosophers did not hold to the Aristotelian view rigidly or dogmatically. In some cases, Christian faith seemed to contradict or to add to Aristotle’s ideas, and natural philosophers tried to resolve these contradictions or to make the appropriate additions, as in the case of heaven and hell and angels. A number of difficulties, inconsistencies and sticking points in Aristotle were special subjects for discussion and received new resolutions as time went on. Within the medieval university, natural philosophy was considered to be a part of general education, but it was also thought to be useful as a tool for theology and medicine. In northern universities such as Paris and Oxford, some of the most fundamental original work in natural philosophy was done in connection with the investigation of theological problems, for which natural philosophy, together with the other disciplines of the arts faculty, served as important aids. In Italian universities, where faculties of theology were less prominent or non-existent, natural philosophy was similarly tied to the resolution of medical questions. European libraries contain many manuscript commentaries on Aristotelian works that still await modern analysis. The medieval university system did not as a rule identify, encourage or reward originality or uniqueness. Many natural philosophers claimed to be explaining Aristotle’s meaning, even when they were introducing a novel interpretation of or variation on his ideas. When they made use of the ideas of earlier commentators, they rarely mentioned them by name. What we now know about medieval natural philosophy is not a mirror reflection of what happened in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, because modern scholars have chosen to study those subjects and individuals relevant to their own present situations: Dominicans have emphasized the history of Dominican natural philosophy in such thinkers as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, Franciscans have studied Franciscans such as John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, historians of science have studied those individuals who had something to say about the subjects of modern science such as bodies, forces, velocities and resistances, logicians have studied logic, and so on. Because natural philosophy as such is not the focus of attention of many modern philosophers or other scholars, much medieval natural philosophy remains unread, sometimes in large-scale and handsomely produced commentaries on Aristotle’s works, sometimes in hastily scribbled student notebooks.

Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen. New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. ix, 437. $27.95.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 250-251
Author(s):  
Margaret C. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Natural Philosophers

The Marxists had it right all along, they just got tripped up by their materialism. Early modern capitalism opened vast new worlds, particularly in the arts and sciences, only the traffic went both ways. Creative agents invented new markets and pushed commerce in directions that favored enterprises immensely cosmopolitan and innovative, often solely for the sake of beauty and display. Commerce offered a context but the nobility, and not an imagined bourgeoisie, had the edge when it came to exploiting the market for objets. Paintings could be traded for property, land, and houses. Princes could sponsor natural philosophers, and the fluidity in values meant that good investors, like good practitioners of the arts and sciences, took an interest in all aspects of learning. The interrelatedness of the representational arts and natural philosophy stands as one of the central themes in this tightly integrated collection of essays. We now have a vast historiography telling us that we should no longer teach early modern science without reference to the art of the time, and vice-versa. The point is beautifully illustrated by an exhibition recently held at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (spring 2002) on the art of Pieter Saenredam. Working in Utrecht in the 1630s, he used geometry to regularize and make precise the angles and corners found in the exquisite paintings he made of the city's churches. He knew as much about geometry as he did about chiaroscuro. At precisely the same moment, an hour or two away by barge, Descartes in Leiden put the final touches on his Discourse on Method (1637). In effect he explained to the world why precision and clarity of thought made possible the kind of beauty that Saenredam's paintings would come to embody.

Aristotelianism, medieval

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D. Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Mathematical Reasoning ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
John Duns Scotus ◽  
Albert The Great ◽  
Active Rivalry ◽  
The Middle Ages

Although there are many possible definitions, ‘medieval Aristotelianism’ is here taken to mean explicit receptions of Aristotle’s texts or teachings by Latin-speaking writers from about ad 500 to about ad 1450. This roundabout, material definition avoids several common mistakes. First, it does not assert that there was a unified Aristotelian doctrine across the centuries. There was no such unity, and much of the engagement with Aristotle during the Middle Ages took the form of controversies over what was and was not Aristotelian. Second, the definition does not attempt to distinguish beforehand between philosophical and theological receptions of Aristotle. If it is important to pay attention to the varying and sometimes difficult relations of Aristotelian thought to Christian theology, it is just as important not to project an autonomous discipline of philosophy along contemporary lines back into medieval texts. The most important fact about the medieval reception of Aristotle is in many ways the most elementary: Aristotle wrote in Greek, a language unavailable to most educated Europeans from 500 to 1450. Aristotle’s fate in medieval Europe was largely determined by his fate in Latin. Early on, Boethius undertook to translate Aristotle and to write Latin commentaries upon him in order to show the agreement of Aristotle with Plato, and also presumably to make Aristotle available to readers increasingly unable to construe Greek. He was able to finish translations only of the logical works, and to write commentaries on a few of them and some related treatises. Even this small selection from Aristotle was not received entire in the early Middle Ages. Of the surviving pieces, only the translations of the Categories and De interpretatione were widely studied before the twelfth century, though not in the same way or for the same purposes. Before the twelfth century, Aristotelian teaching meant what could be reconstructed or imagined from a slim selection of the Organon and paraphrases or mentions by other authors. The cultural reinvigoration of the twelfth century was due in large part to new translations of Greek and Arabic works, including works of Aristotle. Some translators worked directly from the Greek, among whom the best known is James of Venice. Other translators based themselves on intermediary Arabic translations; the best known of these is Gerard of Cremona. Although the translations from Greek were often the more fluent, translations from the Arabic predominated because they were accompanied by expositions and applications of the Aristotelian texts. To have a Latin Aristotle was not enough; Latin readers also needed help in understanding him and in connecting him with other authors or bodies of knowledge. Hence they relied on explanations or uses of Aristotle in Islamic authors, chiefly Avicenna. The thirteenth century witnesses some of the most important and energetic efforts at understanding Aristotle, together with reactions against him. The reactions begin early in the century and continue throughout it. The teaching of Aristotelian books was condemned or restricted at Paris in 1210, 1215 and 1231, and lists of propositions inspired by certain interpretations of Aristotle were condemned at Paris and Oxford in 1270 and 1277. However, interest in Aristotle continued to grow, fuelled first by the translation of Averroes’ detailed commentaries, then by new translations from Greek. At the same time, some of the most powerful Christian theologians were engaged in large-scale efforts to appropriate Aristotle in ways that would be both intelligible and congenial to Christian readers. Albert the Great composed comprehensive paraphrases of the whole Aristotelian corpus, while his pupil Thomas Aquinas undertook to expound central Aristotelian texts so as to make them clear, coherent, and mostly concordant with Christianity. Very different projects predominate in the fourteenth century. For John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, the texts of Aristotle serve as distant ground against which to elaborate philosophical and theological teachings often radically anti-Peripatetic. If they are fully conversant with Aristotle, if they speak technical languages indebted to him, they are in no way constrained by what they take his teaching to be. Other fourteenth-century projects include the application of procedures of mathematical reasoning to problems outstanding in Aristotelian physics, the elaboration of Averroistic positions, and the rehabilitation of Albert’s Peripateticism as both faithful and true to reality. By the end of the Middle Ages, then, there is anything but consensus about how Aristotle is to be interpreted or judged. There is instead the active rivalry of a number of schools, each dependent in some way on Aristotle and some claiming to be his unique interpreters.

Hugh of St Victor, Dominicus Gundissalinus and the Place of the Mechanical Arts in Medieval Architectures of Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Vol 153 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-318
Author(s):  
Alexander Fidora ◽  
Nicola Polloni
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The One ◽  
Mechanical Arts

This contribution engages with the problematic position of the mechanical arts within medieval systems of knowledge. Superseding the secondary position assigned to the mechanical arts in the Early Middle Ages, the solutions proposed by Hugh of St Victor and Gundissalinus were highly influential during the thirteenth century. While Hugh’s integration of the mechanical arts into his system of knowledge betrays their still ancillary position as regards consideration of the liberal arts, Gundissalinus’s theory proposes two main novelties. On the one hand, he sets the mechanical arts alongside alchemy and the arts of prognostication and magic. On the other, however, using the theory put forward by Avicenna, he subordinates these “natural sciences” to natural philosophy itself, thereby establishing a broader architecture of knowledge hierarchically ordered. Our contribution examines the implications of such developments and their reception afforded at Paris during the thirteenth century, emphasising the relevance that the solutions offered by Gundissalinus enjoyed in terms of the ensuing discussions concerning the structure of human knowledge.

The ‘Entheticus’ of John of Salisbury: A Critical Text

Traditio ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 127-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald E. Pepin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
British Museum ◽  
John Of Salisbury ◽  
University Library ◽  
Critical Text ◽  
Standard Edition ◽  
The University ◽  
Editio Princeps

The Entheticus de dogmate philosophorum of John of Salisbury has come down to us in three manuscripts: a twelfth-century codex in the British Museum (Royal 13. D. IV); a fourteenth-century manuscript in the University Library at Cambridge (Ii. II. 31); a seventeenth-century codex now located in the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin (Hamburg Cod. Phil. 350). The editio princeps was published by Christian Petersen (Hamburg 1843), and it has remained the standard edition. However, important deficiencies in that work have made a complete re-examination of the text necessary.

Heavens On Earth. From the Tabula Smaragdina To the Alchemical Fifth Essence

2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michela Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Technical Process ◽  
Full Development ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
John Of Rupescissa ◽  
Heaven And Earth

AbstractAlchemical writings of Arabic origin introduced into the Latin natural philosophy of the twelfth century a cosmological issue that was at variance with Aristotelian cosmology: the idea of a subtle substance that stood at the origin of the four elements and encompassed heaven and earth. In this article, I consider the links of this notion with Hermetic and Stoic thought; its association with the technical process of distillation; its emergence in some philosophical texts of the early thirteenth century; and finally its full development in two fourteenth century alchemical treatises, the Testamentum attributed to Raimond Lull and the Liber de consideratione quintae essentiae written by John of Rupescissa.

Patrons and Minders: the Intrusion of the Secular into Sacred Spaces in the Late Middle Ages

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 143-178
Author(s):  
Andrew Martindale
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
Entire Sequence ◽  
Written Sources

From the twelfth century onwards it became common for sacred spaces—that is, churches—to be invaded by objects and imagery which are often surprising and bizarre and which, in their secular-ity, have little to do with the fundamental teachings of Christianity. Many of these objects are familiar, some less familiar; arid the topic seems appropriate for a ‘generalist’ audience of ecclesiastical history specialists. It should be said at once that this secularity seems to reach a peak around the middle of the fourteenth century, to be followed by a slow and somewhat irregular retreat; but since the entire sequence of events is accompanied by an almost complete silence in the written sources, the reasons for what was happening remain largely speculative. I shall return to this point.

Johannes Buridan und die Professionalisierung der Artisten

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (51) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Jürgen Miethke
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Social Trends ◽  
Short Overview ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Few Data ◽  
The University

The paper does not consider the contributions of the magister artium Buridanus to the Artes liberales and the Aristotelianism of the Later Middle Ages, that is the topic of some other participants of our colloquium in Katowice. It is aiming at giving a short overview over the very few data of his biography which are known to us framing them by the general social trends of his time. First of all (I.) a sketch of his biography is given which sheds some light on his social background, his milieu and career at Paris university. Secondly (II.) there follows an outline of his main income, namely church benefices, which are given to the university master by papal allowance and are registered mainly in the Vatican Archives. Thirdly (III.) the more than three decades of teaching at the Arts Faculty of Paris are considered within the framework of general social professionalization of teaching at the universities in the Later Middle Ages.

Platonism, medieval

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dermot Moran
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Mathematical Treatment ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
John Of Salisbury ◽  
Direct Knowledge ◽  
Theory Of Ideas ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The University

Medieval Platonism includes the medieval biographical tradition, the transmission of the dialogues, a general outlook spanning commitment to extramental ideas, intellectualism in cognition, emphasis on self-knowledge as the source of philosophizing, and employment of the dialogue form. Platonism permeated the philosophy of the Church Fathers, the writings of Anselm and Abelard, the twelfth-century renaissance, the Italian Renaissance and the northern renaissance. Indeed the mathematical treatment of nature, which inspired the birth of modern science in the works of Kepler and Galileo, stems in part from late medieval Pythagorean Platonism. The term ‘Platonism’ is of seventeenth-century origin. Medieval authors spoke not of Platonism but rather of Plato and of Platonists (platonici), applying the term ‘Platonist’ to an extreme extramental realism about universals, or a commitment to the extramental existence of the Ideas. Thus John of Salisbury characterized Bernard of Chartres as ‘the foremost Platonist of our time’ in regard to his theory of ideas. For Aquinas, Platonists hold an overly intellectualist account of human knowledge, ignoring the mediation of the senses. In general, medieval writers agreed with Cassiodorus’ maxim, Plato theologus, Aristoteles logicus. Plato was primarily a theologian, an expert on the divine, eternal, immaterial and intelligible realm, a classifier of the orders of angelic and demonic beings, whereas Aristotle was primarily a logician and classifier of the forms of argument. Medieval Platonism combines elements drawn from Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. It generally assumes a dualistic opposition of the divine and temporal worlds, with the sensible world patterned on unchanging immaterial forms, often expressed as numbers. It also affirms the soul’s immortality and direct knowledge of intelligible truths, combined with a suspicion of the mortal body and a distrust of the evidence of the senses. Neoplatonists sympathized with Porphyry’s aim (in his lost De harmonia Platonis et Aristotelis) of harmonizing Plato with Aristotle. A Platonic outlook (largely inspired by the Timaeus) dominates the early Middle Ages from the sixth to twelfth centuries, whereas the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the age of scholasticism, witnessed an explosion in the knowledge of Aristotelian texts, often transmitted through Arabic intermediaries. The new interest in Aristotle was such that, although the Timaeus was widely lectured on during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, by 1255 it was no longer required reading at the University of Paris. Interest in Plato re-emerged in the Italian Renaissance with the availability of genuine works of Plato, Plotinus and Proclus. Nevertheless, through Pseudo-Dionysius in particular, Platonism reverberates in many thirteenth-century authors, especially in theology.

The Theory of Natural Consequence

Vivarium ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 340-366
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Connexive Logic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Special Case

Abstract The history of thinking about consequences in the Middle Ages divides into three periods. During the first of these, from the eleventh to the middle of the twelfth century, and the second, from then until the beginning of the fourteenth century, the notion of natural consequence played a crucial role in logic, metaphysics, and theology. The first part of this paper traces the development of the theory of natural consequence in Abaelard’s work as the conditional of a connexive logic with an equivalent connexive disjunction and the crisis precipitated by the discovery of inconsistency in this system. The second part considers the accounts of natural consequence given in the thirteenth century as a special case of the standard modal definition of consequence, one for which the principle ex impossibili quidlibet does not hold, in logics in which disjunction is understood extensionally.

Celestial Motions in the Late Middle Ages

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Grant
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Proper Motion ◽  
Physical System ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Simple Body ◽  
Islamic Science ◽  
Natural Philosophers

AbstractWith the introduction of Greco-Islamic science and natural philosophy, medieval natural philosophers were confronted with three distinct astronomical systems: Aristotelian, Ptolemaic, and the system of al-Bitruji. A fundamental problem that each had to confront was how to explain simultaneous contrary motions in the heavens -for example, the sun's motion, which moves east to west with a daily motion while simultaneously moving west to east along the ecliptic- within an Aristotelian physical system that assumed that a simple body could have only one proper motion. How medieval natural philosophers resolved this problem is the focus of the article.

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