I argue we cannot understand the meaning of the concepts of place and space, and their impact on our understanding of the nature of reality, without considering the meaning of other basic concepts that are co-implicated with and necessary for understanding the very concepts of place and space. That was particularly evident ever since I introduced Julian Barbour’s scientific history on the discovery of dynamics, where we have considered the intimate relationship between the concept of motion and the concepts of space and place, through which man tried to understand and explain the basic functioning of the Cosmos (see the article Space and Place: A Scientific History – Part One). That was also evident when I considered the close relationship between things and place, in articles like The Place of a Thing, What Is a Thing?, or Limit Place Appearance , where I have argued that behind things we find matter and/or energy, and, in turn, behind them, we find places (and not space, which is a much more abstract term): we could consider matter and/or energy as a physical ‘state of place’, therefore I consider ‘place’ the fundamental principle, or archē — ἀρχή — as the ancient Greeks called the origin of all existents.
More in detail, the current article deals with the origin and development of those fundamental concepts which needed or, sometimes, presupposed the concepts of place or space to explain the nature of physical existence — what the ancient Greeks called ‘phusis’ or ‘physis’, a basic concept which we have already introduced in the previous two articles (Being as Place: Introduction to Metaphysics – Part One and Part Two). Then, we are going to elucidate the concept of the physical (which is linguistically related to the concept of nature) and matter, and their different historical declinations as substrate, substance, element, atom, body and compound body, particle, res-extensa, etc. We will consider again the concepts of place, the void, and space, which are strictly related to the development of the different concepts of matter. We are going to consider the concepts of motion, change, and time; those of force and energy; we will investigate the fundamental issues of continuity and discreteness, of the infinite and the finite, of the mathematical and the physical, of potentiality and actuality.
To pursue this kind of survey, in-between metaphysical, physical, historical, and linguistic considerations, I shall commence a cycle of three articles, dedicated to the work of Ivor Leclerc, American philosopher and former president of the Metaphysical Society of America: The Nature of Physical Existence (1972), The Philosophy of Nature (1986), and other minor essays, such as Concepts of Space (1979), and The Relation Between Natural Science and Metaphysics (1988).[1]
I arrived at Leclerc since he was an exponent and interpreter of the philosophy of Alfred N. Whitehead, whose thinking I often took as a reference to give direction to my intuitive understanding of nature as a relentless process characterized by being and becoming. With his work, Leclerc offered a clear and penetrating interpretation of some fundamental concepts in terms of which the nature of reality has been understood and explained, from the early Greeks to our epoch. I’ve found Leclerc’s inquiries into The Nature of Physical Existence and The Philosophy of Nature particularly useful to my fundamental thesis, which I briefly recall here: place understood as a fundamental, systemic and processual notion, which sets up with space a kind of dialectic polarity, necessary to understand reality as One encompassing realm, in-between being and becoming, the actual and the potential, the physical and the mathematical or ideal, or even in-between the sensible and the intellectual, or, again, in-between ontological and epistemological levels of understanding. Those are correlative terms: complementary and mutually dependent aspects of One and the same reality. All of their differences and continuities — I argue — can be reduced, by analogy, to the basic difference and continuity that I believe exists between the concepts of place and space: one — place — concrete and corporeal, to begin with; the other — space — abstract and conceptual. Therefore, the possibility to consider space a physical or quasi-physical entity is completely rejected, and the importance traditionally accorded to space as a metaphorical notion greatly reduced, and balanced with place.
In his work, Leclerc demonstrated to be a scholar particularly sensitive to the important ontological and epistemological differences between the concepts of place and space, which is too often overlooked by scholars of any discipline. In this regard, Leclerc expressed these illuminating words, which I take possession of: ‘Today the prevailing presupposition is that the term [space] has one fundamental basic meaning which is constant […]; there is extraordinarily little appreciation of the shifts in sense of the various occurrences of its usage, even in the same writer, and often in the same sentence or paragraph. This variation in sense is further confounded by the use of space […] as synonymous with place.’[2] I’ve recently published an article — Spatiophilia — which is a perfect, transversal exemplification of the soundness of those words, pronounced by Leclerc 35 years ago. Leclerc was also particularly sensitive in attributing the proper meaning to each spatial/placial term used by different authors, in their specific epochs, from the pre-Socratics to Whitehead. For instance, concerning the meaning of the term ‘space’ in Kant, Leclerc said: ‘I want to get at the meaning of the word as Kant understood it.’[3]
Leclerc also put a special emphasis on the historical importance of the concept of place, which is commonly adumbrated within space, or very often misplaced for space. In this regard, very relevant for the thesis I’m arguing for at RSaP-Rethinking Space and Place, Leclerc maintained that ‘what was in controversy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries […] was not “space” as it is commonly supposed. This supposition rests upon the nineteenth-century sense of space as an entity and constitutes a block to the inquiry before us. There was then indeed no concept of space at all in the modern sense. The relevant controversy […] was concerning “place”.’[4] Concerning this fundamental question — the anachronism and misplaced interpretations of space (and place) — I have dedicated a few articles on this website: Place, Space, and the Unicorn, and, at the more specific level concerning architecture, Anachronistic Interpretations of Space, On the Ambiguous Language of Space, Beyond Architectural Realities: Place, Space, and the In-Between, Concepts of Space in Vitruvius and Urban Spaces or Places?
Also, I’ve found Leclerc’s inquiry into our current understanding of nature especially appropriate with respect to what I consider a logical necessity: to elucidate the concepts of place and space as conceptualizations belonging to a wider set of notions, whose meanings, taken together, form a close-knit conceptual network or framework necessary to understand reality as a whole, and in consonance with the quite recent premises of scientific knowledge and methods (I’m referring to the discovery of relativity and quantum theories, to certain developments in thermodynamics, or the birth and development of systems theory, just to name a few important contemporary scientific and methodological advancements which are contributing to change our perspective on nature, on its intimate structure, and on the meaning of those fundamental concepts that are necessary to speak about nature, i.e., concepts of place, space, matter, time, motion, causality, etc.). For me scientific and philosophical questionings go hand in hand: one is necessary to the other to extend our understanding of the nature of reality, and to appreciate the full range and depth of the arguments at stake.
That’s why, as I have said in the introductory article of this website — Preliminary Notes — in my crusade against old reductionist modes of thinking, it is more important than ever to group different perspectives on fundamental concepts, such as space and place, into a coherent unitary framework, which is encompassing enough to consider all the different phenomena of reality invested by those concepts — physicochemical, biological, ecological, social, cultural and intellectual phenomena, to begin with. In this way, the use of those basic concepts can be preserved in common parlance as well as in more technical domains of knowledge, provided the meaning of such concepts is extended beyond the epistemological and ontological limitations that affected their senses and use in the last three-hundred years, especially. This entails the necessity to go beyond old (and misleading) presuppositions that are still carried over by those terms and concepts at present, as Leclerc showed, and as we are going to see. Fundamentally, following Leclerc, this article aims at illustrating the modern presuppositions behind such basic conceptualizations as the concepts of matter, place, space, time, etc. As Leclerc showed, those presuppositions halt our understanding of current natural and human phenomena. To go beyond those presuppositions is, therefore, necessary if we aim at a new conception of nature and of the concepts that are necessary to interpret and communicate about nature.
We will commence this historical and critical survey by taking into consideration Leclerc’s book The Nature of Physical Existence (1972). To offer you an outline of it, in PART I, Leclerc analyzes The Concept of the Infinite, from Aristotle to Giordano Bruno. In PART II, he analyzes The Concept of the Physical, beginning with the old Greek notion ‘phusis’, or ‘physis’, whence our modern understanding of matter and nature derived; in this part, Greek, mediaeval, renaissance, and early seventeenth-century concepts of matter are analyzed through different historical conceptualizations such as ‘hylē’, ‘materia’, ‘ensouled matter’, ‘elementary bodies’, etc. In PART III, Leclerc explores The Modern Concept of Nature, which eventually led to the formalization of the Newtonian scheme and concepts; here, the author elucidates the relation between the concepts of matter, motion, place and space, providing an unconventional interpretation of Newtonian concepts. Finally, in PART IV — Prolegomena to a New Concept of Nature — those basic concepts are re-analyzed critically according to a more contemporary perspective towards a redefinition of our understanding of physical existence, or nature.
Due to the complexity, the relevance (for the scopes of this website, especially), and the extension of the argumentations maintained by Leclerc in The Nature of Physical Existence, I opted for a division of his historico-critical survey into two articles: the first three parts of the book, which cover a temporal arc from the Greek epoch to the modern era, are the subject of this article; while I have included PART IV in another article — Place, Space, and a New Conception of Nature —, which, by considering Leibniz, Kant and Whitehead’s thinking especially, and by developing Leclerc’s own metaphysical insight, has the scope to envision ‘how physical existence is to be understood in the twentieth century’, promoting a new conception of nature and, with it, a new understanding of the concepts that are necessary for developing that conception (among those concepts, the concepts of space and place). In the third and final article of this cycle dedicated to Leclerc’s work I will present other minor essays and The Philosophy of Nature (1986), which is a sort of resume of his previous metaphysical thinking with the scope to further elaborate on the new conception of nature as the conjoint effort of philosophical and recent scientific developments.
The Nature of Physical Existence: PREFACE
In the preface, Leclerc makes an observation that we can directly reconnect to the argumentation I’ve presented in the two articles concerning Martin Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics: on that occasion, we have seen that every discussion that aims at questioning ‘that which exists’ starts with the analysis of the meaning of the classical Greek term ‘phusis’, or ‘physis’, — what Heidegger also termed ‘being’, on the base of the early Greek interpretations, even if that term is usually translated for ‘nature’, a very loose and reductive translation, according to Heidegger. To stress the importance of that concept let’s see Leclerc’s understanding of it: ‘I became increasingly convinced of the central importance of the concept of “physis”, nature, which the genius of Greek thought had discovered. This concept involves a basic reference to that which exists, that which is to be regarded as the existent in the full sense. But it also includes in its connotation that whereby the existent is what it is. Hence we speak of “the nature of . . .”.’[5] The interpretation of ‘phusis’, or ‘physis’ (the latter is the transliteration used in the book by Leclerc, to point out the originary connection between the Greek φύσις and the English ‘physics’; therefore, from now on I will use that transliteration), is so pervasive that it will run underneath the explanation of other fundamental concepts, such as the concept of the infinite, matter, space, place, etc. In agreement with what we have considered in the past two articles, ‘that which exists… in the full sense’ has to be intended in the sense of ‘beings’, or ‘essents’ — that which is ‘present-at-hand’, Heidegger would say, that is the modern connotation of the ‘physical’. However, Leclerc says, ‘physis’ also tells us of ‘that whereby the existent is what it is’, that is, reconnecting to the Heideggerian interpretation of physis, but in a sense a bit more restrictive than in Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics (the domain of the term is broader, deeper and more articulated in Heidegger), it also tells us of ‘being’ understood as ‘beingness’, ‘that which is’. All things considered, the basic importance of physis, and the possibility to consider that which is concrete and that which is abstract as connotations implicit in the originary early Greek interpretation of the term is an aspect distinctive of both Leclerc and Heidegger. This basic and twofold aspect characterizing Leclerc’s interpretation of physis is also evident in the following passage where he says that the very title of the book — The Nature of Physical Existence — ‘aptly reflects the primary issue of the inquiry, namely the problem of what is that which is to be taken as the natural, the physical existent. But the identification of the existent cannot be made in separation from… the problem of what its nature [physis] is’.[6] Ultimately, to say it with Heidegger, we have to understand ‘What is the status of physis?’ Therefore, the elucidation of the concept of ‘physis’ is necessary and primary since it has implications on the sense of other basic concepts.
Since the beginning, in agreement with what I consider Leclerc’s fundamental intention, I call your attention to the importance of not reading old concepts and theories with modern presuppositions that surround those concepts and, therefore, are reflected in the interpretations of old theories: if we want to appreciate the original meanings of concepts and do not want to be misled by fatal (modern) interpretations, which my halt or block our current understanding of the phenomena of nature (whether we speak of physical, architectural or other phenomena), we must reconstruct how the meanings of concepts and their relative theories come to be, that is, we must reconstruct the temporal passages through which concepts and theories were formulated. This is what Leclerc is proposing with his investigation into The Nature of Physical Existence.
The Nature of Physical Existence: INTRODUCTION
Leclerc opens the introduction to The Nature of Physical Existence by returning to the question of the development of a new conception of nature, which is beyond scientific and philosophical evidence for more than one century; in this regard, he explicitly speaks of ‘a new era of thought’:[7]
That the great developments in physical science which began towards the end of the nineteenth century have advanced us into a new era of thought is generally accepted. That this has involved a transformation of some fundamental concepts is also acknowledged. But the precise nature and extent of the changes in thought is still very much in dispute.
From here, the necessity to reconsider the presuppositions that surround fundamental concepts — such as matter, time, space and place — derives (this is also the necessity that I felt, and the argument I used to introduce this website to the readers — see my Preliminary Notes). Those concepts are (and were) necessary to understand and explain the surrounding happenings. Leclerc proposes an interesting analogy between our current epoch and the period between the XV and XVII centuries, where thinkers were forced to reconsider old presuppositions behind certain Aristotelian, scholastic, and medieval concepts, in order to propose a new vision of the world (that is, in order to propose a new understanding of nature/physis). So, for instance — Leclerc observes — the same way the presuppositions regarding the Aristotelian concept of substantial form continued well into the seventeenth century, so the presuppositions in regard to the modern concept of space (a conflation of Newtonian and Cartesian elements) continued in the following centuries, and, I would say, they are still conditioning people’s mind, regardless the twentieth-century scientific advances. The question regarding the presupposition behind concepts, and the necessity to remove them to get to another level of knowledge is the continuous thread which guides Leclerc’s entire work.
Regarding the concept of space, Leclerc observes that it had special importance for our understanding of nature, because, with a complex process (which we have already examined in the past historical articles Place and Space: A Philosophical History, Space and Place: A Scientific History – Part One and Part Two) it came to be conceived as ‘one of the fundamental factors in the constitution of the universe… an ultimate kind of existent not reducible to any of the other fundamental factors, namely matter, time and motion.’[8] Space, Leclerc notes, became the specific object to study for Euclidean geometry — which became ‘the science of space’. The introduction of a geometric concept of space, in the Cartesian sense, was an important factor in the development, formalization and final triumph of the Newtonian concept of space and, with it, of a new model of nature. It was the finalization of a very long and difficult question to disentangle, between physical and mathematical (ideal) conceptions of nature, and of the basic elements nature is made of. However, that long process, which took to this peculiar modern understanding of the concept of space, was completely removed and forgotten; space came to be accepted as an ultimate and indispensable concept, ‘necessary to the understanding of the universe.’[9]That concept became a tacit presupposition and, Leclerc continues, scholars fallaciously began to interpret old notions like Hesiod’s chaos, Plato’s chōra, Aristotle’s topos, Democritus’s kenon, or even Lucretius’s vacuum ‘all as “space” in the modern sense’.[10]
I have taken the image below to offer you a striking example of a common, fallacious interpretation of the concept of space due to the modern presupposition that still surrounds that concept.
Image 1: This popular page on WIKIPEDIA is a striking example of a common (but fallacious) presupposition concerning the concept of space: modern understanding of the concept of space is projected back into Euclid’s Element so that we eventually read that ‘Euclidean space was introduced by ancient Greeks as an abstraction of our physical space’. That is misleading if not a real mistake: from different sources, we know that the ancient Greeks had no concept of space at all in the three-dimensional, geometric and ‘physical’, or ‘quasi-physical’, sense that we usually attribute to the term ‘space’; neither they had a word to express that concept. Among others, I often quote Einstein and Heidegger to show how false that popular and still diffused presupposition on space is, among scholars.[11] Three-dimensional space, as a neutral and immersive continuum, is a modern conceptual invention. Analogously, the concept of physical space is an invention too — I often call it ‘an unwarranted oxymoron’: no physical space really exists, if, by the term ‘physical’, we mean something concrete, material, actual, corporeal, or ‘present-at-hand’ – Heidegger would say; as such, the attribution of a ‘physical’ space to ancient thought is even more misleading.
The very term ‘spatium’, in use in pre-eighteenth-century thought, is still subjected to such modern presupposition — Leclerc observed (in this sense, the articles that I presented on the interpretation of the concept of space in architecture are a transversal proof of how sound the position of Leclerc on the concept of space is). With almost no distinction between scientists or philosophers, social scientists, artists or architects everybody is at risk of falling victim to such presupposition: ‘not only in general scholarship but in physical science too this presupposition continues its hold’ — Leclerc says, and he continues — ‘… although following Minkowski and Einstein space has come to be held to be relative and not absolute, and has been brought into close relation with time in a “four-dimensional continuum”, the presupposition continues that it is itself some kind of ultimate existent. The question has to be faced, however, whether the twentieth-century physical theories do not entail the complete abandonment of that presupposition of some kind of ultimate existent which is “space”.’[12] Isn’t space some kind of special notion for an old scheme that is going to be surpassed, instead of ‘an ultimate existent’? That is Leclerc’s final consideration concerning space, in his introductory section; a consideration I completely agree with, and which presents many analogies with the pronunciation of the theoretical physicist Julian Barbour, see Space and Place: A Scientific History – Part One. A consideration which is one of the pillars I have used to reformulate my understanding of nature in a complementary placial and spatial sense. Space — I’m maintaining through the pages of this website — is not an ultimate ‘physical existent’, if by the term ‘physical’ we mean something material, corporeal, as in many modern accounts on space (from physical to philosophical, from anthropological to social, political or even architectural accounts); in this sense, space is not ‘physical’ at all. As such, that is, as a ‘physical existent’ in the material or corporeal sense, space does not exist, it is an illusion. We’d better understand that physical existent, which we erroneously call ‘space’, as a state of place, or a place ultimately, understood as an event — the actualization of a chain of processes. Space can only be thought of as an abstract entity, a fiction of men’s powerful imagination; therefore, something immaterial. Any reference to space as an active agent in the physical/material sense, or, more generally, its use in physical contexts (and, in this sense, I also include its excessive metaphorical usage) should be used cum grano salis, if not abandoned at all.
However, we know from Leclerc, space is not the only fundamental concept which the tacit presuppositions of antecedent schemes still apply to: the same holds for the concepts of time and motion, and, even more, for a fundamental concept such as the concept of matter. This is a difficult problem to bypass, Leclerc says: ‘By their very nature presuppositions are not easily detectable.’[13]One of the basic difficulties we have to face, Leclerc notes, is the scission between scientific and philosophical concepts (and, more in general, the scission between science and philosophy), which, in the past epochs, and especially at the time when the first questions concerning the nature of reality aired (with the early Greeks), were one and the same. After Kant, Leclerc continues, the philosophy of nature became an exclusive domain of the sciences — ‘nature’ was the new object of inquiry for the brand new ‘natural science’; the concept of ‘nature’ was accepted as it was, and it was not subject to philosophical scrutiny anymore: ‘Our peculiar difficulty stems from the interruption of that tradition, for this has meant the loss of philosophical grasp and comprehension of what fundamentally is at issue, of the essential and ultimate problems… We are thus, in the present historical context, in a uniquely difficult position with regard to the inquiry into the fundamental concepts.’ [14]
Our peculiar difficulty stems from… the loss of philosophical grasp and comprehension of what fundamentally is at issue, of the essential and ultimate problems…
To overcome those epistemological difficulties, Leclerc proposed to go back to the investigation of antecedent epochs, where, according to him, the modern vision of nature had its origin and development; an epoch where thinkers struggled against Aristotelian presuppositions to advance towards a new scheme of nature: therefore, Leclerc proposes a survey of the work of the philosophers of nature and the medical men of the XVI and XVII centuries (Paracelsus, Fracastro, Cardano, Scaliger, Gilbert, Sennert, Basso), who gave an impetus to the development of modern thinking, with regard to the concept of matter especially, contributing to the rise of a new philosophical and scientific interpretations of the concept of nature (and, therefore, of the concepts of place and space) in authors like Telesio, Patrizi, Bruno, Bacon, Galileo, Gassendi, Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz.
Why that uncommon account of the work of the medical men of the late XV and XVII centuries? Because ‘already in the Middle Ages the province of “nature” had come to be the particular preserve of the medical men — so much so that already the word “physicus” had come to have the meaning of “medical practitioner”, whence “physician” in English’, Leclerc says.[15] The treatment of illness necessitated the knowledge of the composition of the physical world, as well as the knowledge of the composition of the human body; the first theories of the elements, the first theories of chemical combinations, were untenable within the Aristotelian ‘qualitative’ paradigm of nature; a passage towards a quantitative, mathematical understanding of nature was needed for the affirmation of the new models. As Leclerc observed: ‘during the sixteenth century it was becoming increasingly clear to thinkers that the rejection of the Aristotelian conception of matter and of physical substance entailed the necessity of a reassessment of the nature and the status of the mathematical.’[16] Concerning the latter aspect, the theoretical contributions of Bruno and the scientific results of Galileo especially highlighted the important question concerning ‘the identification of the mathematical and the physical’;[17] it was this question, precisely, which was elaborated in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, by the philosophies of Descartes, Gassendi, Leibniz, Newton and Kant. These fundamental questions concerning matter and the nature of reality (physis… the physical and the mathematical) were bound up with questions already faced by Aristotle, whose answers were determinative of subsequent thought: the problem of divisibility and indivisibility, of continuity and discontinuity, and the related question of the nature of infinity and finitude. It was especially the development of a new conception of the infinite — ‘which constitutes the ultimate foundation upon which the entire edifice of modern science and philosophy has been raised’ — [18] which will shake the roots of men’s understanding of nature, creating a line of demarcation between modern and previous epochs. As epitomized in the well-known book by Alexandre Koyré — From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe — men passed from a conception of the Cosmos understood as a closed world, symbolized by the Aristotelian cosmology and by his theory of place (topos), to the conception of an infinite universe, symbolized by the new concept of space, ‘spatium’, which eventually evolved into modern (absolute) space, in the cosmological model of Newton.
According to Leclerc, it is of the utmost importance to understand the shift of connotation that the word ‘infinite’ (or ‘infinity’) had. Contrarily to Koyré, who commenced his famous historically-based inquiry with Nicolaus Cusanus, Leclerc decided to explore the meaning of the concept of infinity beginning with antecedent thought to see the vital changes that occurred to that concept, in the Greek epoch, and, later, in the late scholastic period, before Cusanus could take over that concept in the XV century, and construct a new philosophy of the infinite and, with it, a new philosophy of nature, which was explored in the following centuries.
PLEASE NOTE: Due to the detailed exposition and considerable length of PART I and PART II in the original version of this article, what follows is just an abridged version of those two parts. Conversely, in regard to PART III, which has a special focus on the main argument of this website — the concepts of space and place — I’ve decided to publish the integral version. If you are interested in reading the integral version of this presentation of Leclerc’s work, including the detailed survey of PART I and PART II, contact me via the CONTACT page, in the menu above.
The Nature of Physical Existence: PART I – The Concept of the Infinite (Summary)
Leclerc begins the survey of the concept of the infinite with the analysis made by Aristotle. Three different interpretations of the infinite were considered by the Stagirite: the infinite understood as an ‘ousia’, i.e., a self-subsistent existent (Plato and the Pythagoreans); as an attribute of an actual existent (the Milesians); as a multitude of elements (the Atomists). All three possibilities were rejected as logically untenable. However, the acknowledgment of the necessity of the concept of the infinite in regard to mathematical questions and time (infinite divisibility, and, concerning time, the belief it had no beginning or end), prompted Aristotle to find an alternative position: ‘the infinite is not as such an actual entity or being. The infinite… exists as potential, and the potentiality pertains not to a thing… but it pertains to a process’.[19] Two important consequences derived from the Aristotelian hypothesis of the infinite pertaining to potentiality: 1) the cosmos had to be considered actually finite; 2) the elements of the cosmos were finite as well (thereby, the atomic hypothesis had to be rejected).
The decadence of the Greek culture and ideals, the empowerment of Christian thought, and the parallel lack of confidence in the power of reason directed men to look at the divine and the transcendent to find answers to fundamental questions. This new mode of thinking determined a shift in men’s understanding of nature and, therefore, a corresponding shift of the concepts necessary to come to terms with nature. Religious or transcendent ingredients began to connote the concept of the infinite.
Thinkers like Philo (c. 20BC—c. AD50) and Plotinus (c. 204/5—270), who tried to mix traditional Greek values with the conception of a new transcendent God, were exemplary of that passage. God was now thought to be eternal and transcendent, if not yet properly infinite, while everything else was considered perishable and dependent upon God. That was almost a reversal of the traditional Greek thought, where the limited or that which is finite (and God as well, as an example of perfect definiteness) was considered fundamental. Now, the infinite was becoming to be determinative of the finite. Therefore, the traditional Greek understanding of the infinite was not compatible anymore with the presence of a transcendent God.
The doctrines elaborated by the first Christian theologians were focused on adapting the meaning of the old concept of the infinite to the new understanding of a transcendent God. At first, this passage is exemplified by Leclerc considering authors like Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–c. 253) and Augustine of Hippo, later known as Saint Augustine (354–430): God was explicitly denied a corporeal substance, and he was attributed a spiritual being, consequently the concept of the infinite could be finally detached from the concept of the corporeal, with which it was often united in ancient Greek thought (e.g., the Milesians, the Atomists). Augustine made the bold step of conceiving the infinite as actual and separating it from any reference to the universe; again, this was a partial reversal of the traditional (Aristotelian) Greek way of thinking about the relation between the infinite, God and the cosmos: while the cosmos could be thought of as extensively finite (like Aristotle), the infinite was considered actual (unlike Aristotle) and pertaining only to God (in Aristotle’s doctrine as well God was pure actuality, being considered ‘perfect definiteness’).
Later medieval thinkers like Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274), Henry of Ghent (1217?–1293), and Duns Scoto (1265/66–1308) made important advancements in the interpretation of a new concept of the infinite, modeled on the presence and activity of the Christian God: the infinite, in conjunction with God, came to acquire a positive, self-standing existence, and a fundamental connotation; thereby, we can speak of ‘the positive assertion of the supreme and ultimate perfection of being’, out of which the finiteness and contingency of the world emerged.[20] However, it was only with the new doctrine of Cusanus (1401–1464) and, later, Bruno (1548–1600) that a new understanding of the relation between God and infinity determined the definitive abandonment of any remnants of the old Aristotelian vision and, in parallel, the adoption of a different conception of the infinite, which implied a new understanding of the cosmos. The passage from the closed world to the infinite universe was thus foreshadowed, for the first time, in the late Medieval period.
According to Leclerc, the removal of any reference to the conception of the infinite to the universe and the conception of the infinite as a positive notion were the prelude to the development of Cusanus’ doctrine, based on the conception of ‘the maximum’ as ‘coincidentia oppositorum’.[21] According to this theory God, the infinite being, was ‘the maximum’ which had in itself all finite things ‘complicans’, that is, enfolded in him; this meant that from the contraction of God, i.e., ‘contractio Dei’, physical entities as self-subsistent existents were created (they were ‘explicans’, i.e., ‘unfolded’, as a consequence of God’s contraction).[22] This vision of Cusanus implied: 1) a renewed interest in the things of nature (a typical character of modern science), as a way to know God; 2) understanding the Universe — the product of the immediate contraction of the infinite God — as ‘interminatum’ (against any previous understanding of the Universe as finite and closed), that is endless extensiveness, which, according to Cusanus, was explicable in mathematical terms, just like any other element of nature deriving from God and ‘arranged by God, who created all things according to number, weight and measure’;[23] 3) the removal of man (that is, of Earth), from a central position in the Universe, as a consequence of the lack of its boundary (being the universe ‘interminatum’ — not infinite, since infinity was only an attribute of God).
Those instances were developed further by Giordano Bruno who embraced Cusanus’ doctrine of God as ‘coincidentia oppositorum’, extending it to the Universe: starting from God, the focus gradually shifted to the universe and what was a prerogative of God — infinity — became a prerogative of the universe (which passed from being considered ‘interminatum’ to ‘infinite’). Bruno, challenging Aristotle’s view, answered the old question regarding the ‘beyond’ of the universe, arriving at the identification of this beyond with an extended existentemptied of bodies, different from the body, but necessary for bodies to exist and move; a void, or empty place with a new name: space. Bruno maintained this extended existent was the universe itself from which all dimensionality derived.
Image 2: The End of the World: elaboration based on a wood engraving by an unknown artist. The image of the original wood engraving was also used as the representation of the old Archytian argument (e.g., in Richard Sorabji’s book Matter, Space & Motion: Theories in Antiquity and Their Sequel): ‘If I came to be at the edge, for example at the heaven of the fixed stars, could I stretch my hand or my stick outside, or not?’
Then, according to Bruno’s vision, ‘the universe as the infinitely extended existent is not of a particular geometrical form or size, but it is that which has all particular geometrical sizes, shapes, and dimensions “complicans [i.e., enfolded in it]… that from which all dimensionality derives.’[24]
We are witnessing the complete reversal of the traditional Aristotelian perspective: now, the infinite pertains to the actual universe, the physical, and not to the mathematical, as in Aristotle’s hypothesis. To clarify the important relation between the actual, the physical, and the mathematical, a careful investigation of the notion of the physical and of matter (which is derivative of the physical) is necessary: this is the subject of PART II.
The Nature of Physical Existence: PART II – The Concept of the Physical (Summary)
To understand the development of the meanings of the concept of the physical, Leclerc went back to its originary source, the Greek term φύσις — ‘physis’. In the origin, by that term the ancient Greeks denoted 1) the natural things, that is that which is extended, hence bodily, and have in itself the reason for being, growing, changing, etc., i.e., the principle of its own existence or archē (that was the sense by the Milesians, or the Presocratics, in general). The application of the term ‘physis’ to 2) an ethereal existent like ‘psyche’, soul, or to other finest actual entities (by the Atomists, the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus), and the introduction of the category of non-bodily existents (by Plato and Aristotle), enlarged the connotative horizon of ‘physis’ in a more abstract sense, and made explicit the intrinsic possibility of that term to define 3) the immanent character of things, that is their ‘nature’, as we still say today (the Latin term for nature — ‘natura’, from the verb ‘nascor’ — translates the Greek term physis, from the verb ‘phúō’, which means ‘to bring forth, produce, put forth; to beget, engender; to grow, wax, spring up or forth’).[25] This complicated somewhat the range of meanings of the word ‘physis’. Some elucidation was necessary, and Aristotle took charge of that.
Aristotle believed that apart from ‘extendedness’, there was something more basic intrinsic to natural things: their constant change or movement (kínēsis), which he identified through a variety of kinds (‘genesis’, generation or coming-into-being; ‘phthora’, perishing or going out of existence; change of character or quality, and size, or shape; ‘phora’, translation or change of place).[26] Given that change is always related to some self-subsistent existent, it means that the self-subsistent existent which had in itself the source of change or motion was the natural being, physis. According to Aristotle, the process of change/motion of a natural being regarded its potentiality — dynamis — to reach for an end — entelecheia —, not the end in its actuality — energeia. The question was now to establish what extended existent potentiality was referred to, what was the nature — physis — of the extended entity. Aristotle said that the ‘physiologoi’ (those who studied physis, the natural things, e.g., the Milesians) identified it with ‘hylē’ — matter. Yet, matter, in the original sense, had a very different connotation with respect to our modern understanding of it. According to Aristotle, matter, hylē, was devoid of determinateness (here, the sense is close to that of ‘substance’ in the sense of raw material necessary for the construction of something, just like the ‘timber’ – which is a possible translation for that Greek term – as the ‘that out of which’ something is made), therefore it could not be the essence of natural beings, as the ‘physiologoi’ believed (it could not be the subject of potentiality, and therefore, the true cause of motion; moreover, it could not be a direct subject of knowledge, being undetermined, therefore unknowledgeable), unless it was related to form, ‘eidos’. Therefore, according to Aristotle, form, imprinting on matter and allowing it to become actual, was the true reference of potentiality, that is, the true source of motion/change, and, as such, the very beingness of the natural beings (physis). Aristotle’s conception of the physical, which became a reference for the centuries to come, was a correlation of matter to form (we could speak of ‘formed matter’) where potentiality had a basic role; therefore, matter as such, was seen as the subordinate part of a wider process (form and, consequently, potentiality had a basic active role), rather than a (passive) self-subsistent corporeal actual existent, as we understand it now.
Leclerc now examines the different historical passages that determined that shift of meaning. The first important shift regarded the passage from the Greek ‘hylē’ to its translation into the Latin ‘materia’, since Latin became the official language of Christianity, and the scholastic period. Now, the question of the subsidiary nature of matter, the heritage of the traditional Greek view, was maintained on the basis of religious arguments: rather than form, matter needed a Creator to be used in making/creating things. This view also accorded well with the Platonic image of God as a demiourgos, therefore, that conceptualization was taken over by Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430) and by other medieval thinkers. Unlike Aristotle, Augustine believed that matter was pure passivity, which needed the action of God, who, by implanting form into matter, let it acquire its actual and definite status (before the intervention of God, matter was ‘not-being’, like in Aristotle). We are now witnessing the polarization of contrasting Aristotelian and Platonic views: matter is suspended between not-being and being, between potentiality and actuality. The tentative coexistence of these contrasting views was a characteristic trait of the next group of thinkers taken into consideration by Leclerc.
The Arab thinker Avicenna (980 – 1037) took the Aristotelian perspective to the extreme, by according to form ontological primacy and, indirectly, loosening its tie with matter, with the result that their correlation began to weaver: the quasi-independence of one (form) entailed the quasi-independence of the other (matter). This tendency was countered by two Spanish thinkers: Avicebron (1021? – 1069/70?), and Averroes (1126 -1198). The first developed a sophisticated system of thought, initially influenced by Aristotle, where a universal primary matter was correlated to a universal form to constitute a universal entity (essentia), which existed in potency; when it took specific forms that ‘essentia’ could be said to exist in act, as a spiritual matter or corporeal matter. As Leclerc notes, that was ‘a basic step in the development of the conception of the independence of matter.’[27] Another fundamental step in that direction was made by Averroes who, like Aristotle, believed in the correlation of form to matter, but made the bold step of considering form not merely hidden or latent in matter, or implanted from the outside, but immanent in it, that is ‘intrinsic to the potentiality of matter’.[28] If, on the one hand, this re-established the Aristotelian vision of the correlation of matter to form, and the belief in the potentiality of matter, on the other hand, it paved the way for matter to become a direct object of knowledge (contrarily to Aristotle, or, to a certain extent, Augustine, who believed that matter, as ‘not-being’, originally, was unknowable), and therefore, as Leclerc observes, ‘Averroes’ conception of matter strengthened the tendency to elevate the ontological status of matter to the point of conceiving matter per se as the physical existent.’[29] We have to remind that, in that historical moment, physis, the physical, the physical existent, was still related to the traditional Aristotelian meaning of that which had in itself the principle of motion; therefore, we are assisting at the transformation of ‘the physical’ into matter; in certain sense, we are assisting at the transformation of an entity — ‘physis’, ‘the physical’ as the physical-existent or the natural-existent — into an attribute: ‘physical’ as a quality of matter (in contrast with ‘spiritual matter’).
In the late thirteenth century, this tendency to consider matter no longer ontologically subordinate to form was also the guiding principle of thinkers like Richard of Middleton (1249 – c. 1308), Roger Bacon (c. 1214 – c. 1292), Henry of Ghent (1217? – 1293), and John Duns Scotus (1265/66 – 1308), who contributed to the affirmation of the concept of matter as independent, not derivable from form, and, therefore, having its own essence and actuality. Even if in a still different way from other thinkers, along this line of reasoning, which favoured the conception of matter as an independent existent, we find Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274). According to Aquinas matter was more than that which receives form: the individuation of matter was in respect of separate bodies (sensible beings), therefore it was essentially extensive stuff: for Aquinas, there was ‘corporeality by virtue of matter as extensive stuff’.[30] Even if matter still necessitated the co-participation of form (and the active agency of God), its individuation as extensive stuff, and not merely as receiver of form, was just a few steps away from the possibility to characterize it as ontologically independent, extensive and inert stuff — a conceptualization which eventually emerged in the early seventeenth century. There was another important historical passage before that could happen: the development of the ‘Renaissance conception of Ensouled Matter’, in the sixteenth century.
The affirmation of the Neoplatonic polarization ‘matter versus form’, contributed to the independence of the two principles, until matter was eventually accorded the ultimate status. The doctrine of Cusanus (1401-1464), which we already consideredin PART I — the universe as explicatio Dei —, favoured the conceptualization of individual existents as ‘ensouled matter’: in the universe, as a contraction of the infinite God, was also contracted the spiritus mundi, the world soul, which, by further contractions resulted into individual ensouled existents. It was especially Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) who developed this line of thought starting from Cusanus’ doctrine, which he extended to matter. Bruno’s universal matter had in itself everything ‘complicans’ (enfolded in it), and by its contractions, corporeal or spiritual beings could derive. According to Bruno, and differently from the Thomistic tradition, this universal matter was ‘extended, but not in the sense of extension being an attribute or quality of stuff; rather it is extendedness per se, ultimate mathematical extendedness which has all particularities of extension, dimensions, shapes, etc. “complicans”.[31] Leclerc observed that his conception of matter, having an ultimate mathematical status, will be especially carried over by Descartes, More, and Newton. Bruno also made further steps towards a new conception of matter: by extending Aristotle’s correlative principle of matter and form to include God’s action, he was able to explain how the coordinate principle of matter and form could work and, with it, the attainment of actuality from potentiality. However, contrarily to Aristotle, Bruno believed matter had ontological priority, containing forms from within: ‘It is in matter, not form, that all potency is to be found. It is matter which contains in itself, and is, the principle or source of activity or motion and thus of being.’ [32] In this way Bruno, having identified the principle of motion in matter, was able to identify matter with the natural existent, physis. The elevation of the ontological status of matter, and its understanding as ‘ensouled matter’ — deriving from God’s ultimate contraction, and, therefore, having in itself the principle of motion — were steps necessary ‘to the seventeenth–century development of the concept of matter as an independent existent, and of soul as another, but separate existent.’[33] Hence, the difference between the physical, conceived of as an attribute of matter, and the spiritual, another attribute of matter.
Unexpectedly, the final steps to get this new understanding of matter happened thanks to the activity of medical men, in the XVI and early XVII centuries; their interests were focused on the theory of elements and their chemical combinations since these had a direct influence on their practical activities (the knowledge of the composition of bodies and their elements were necessary to heal bodies). Leclerc elucidates the historical passages concerning those two subjects — the theory of elements, and the theory of chemical combination — which eventually contributed to the complete affirmation of the modern concept of matter.
1) Concerning the theory of elements, Aristotle is the first author taken into consideration by Leclerc. The Stagirite’s inquiry into the nature of bodies started with the simple phenomenic observation that different kinds of change concerned bodies, and that these changes suggested bodies were complex, ‘composed of other bodies as their elements’, which were finite in number, given that bodies were also finite existents.[34] Change pertaining to bodies was characterized by ‘contrariety’ and ‘continuity’, which Aristotle considered the principles of change — the latter representing the substratum, the subject of change (otherwise it is impossible to determine if change pertained to a certain body or another body). ‘Contrariety’ was a principle contesting the Atomic hypothesis, according to which the simple association elements (atoms) could account for the variety of bodies. For Aristotle, the elements, or substances, emerged from the substratum (hylē, matter) impressed with form; the substratum, once informed, had ‘the capacity to become or generate, and the contraries are “what” are generated, that is, the character which comes into being’.[35] The agency of the contraries — hot/cold, wet/dry — and the four basic elements to which contraries applied — fire, air, water, and earth — could account for every other compound body constituting the experienced physical existent.
Aristotle’s theory of elements and compound bodies was fundamentally a qualitative theory. Since the early XVI century the necessity was felt to introduce some quantitative corrections; the German physician, theologian and occult writer Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486–1535), under the influence of Pythagorean, Platonic and Cabbalistic thinking, was one of the first thinkers to introduce some quantitative characteristics into the Aristotelian theory of elements. However, it was not until Paracelsus (1493–1541), a Swiss physician, alchemist, and philosopher, that meaningful changes to the theory of elements, were made in a quantitative sense. Paracelsus rejected the four basic Aristotelian elements, namely fire, air, water, and earth, and introduced ‘three primary substances (“tre primae substantiae”), sulphur, mercury, and salt, which he conceived having its own ‘spirit of life’, an active power which animated all existing things.[36] The parallel affirmation of the concept of ‘ensoluled matter’ against the Aristotelian and medieval conceptions of substantial form, and the success of Paracelsus’ doctrine, according to which primary substances remained essentially unchained when in combination (therefore basic elements were considered in themselves changeless) was a further step forward towards the adoption of a new conception of matter, or substance, understood as an independent existent, inert stuff, properly (here, we are also assisting at the transformation of a metaphysical concept, substance, into a physical concept: substance as a corporeal element). This final step, which determined a new conception of physis, nature, and of ‘the physical’, as matter, (the two being inherently related), was accomplished thanks to the reconsideration of the theory of chemical combination in the light of the new understanding of elements, per se changeless.
2) Concerning the combination of elements, again, Leclerc starts by considering Aristotle’s theory, who believed synthesis and krasis (or mixis) were the two forms of combination: the first was ‘a putting together of ingredients’, which remained unchanged after the combination, the second ‘a blending or mixing’, where the resulting mixture was ‘actually’ different from the original ingredients, which could ‘potentially’ be what they were before the combination.[37]Aristotle’s doctrine, even if criticized (it was not clear how the ingredients of a mixture could ‘potentially’ be what they were before the combination), survived for a long time. We have to wait until the first quarter of the XVII century before a big change in the theory of chemical combination could happen. Two main aspects were preliminary for that change: the elements in the theory of combination conceived as themselves changeless; the concept of matter as an autonomous concept (that is, independent from form). Ultimately, that is a strong revision of the Aristotelian perspective.
Those two aspects had implications on the theories of medical men like Basso and Sennert, who are the exemplary thinkers considered by Leclerc. The French physician and natural philosopher Sebastian Basso (1577?- post 1625) rejected the Aristotelian and scholastic conceptions of form and matter, in favour of an atomistic conception. He maintained ‘matter “per se” was substance, that is, a self-subsistent existent, the instances of this being the elementary constituents of all compounds. These elementary substances — which […] he referred to as “atoms” — he conceived as created by God as unchanging and unchangeable, all of them remaining what they are, whether they exist separately or in combination […]. Basic to this conception was the conviction that all natural bodies evident to our senses are compounds […] constituted by certain elementary bodies, which must accordingly be the true substances.’[38] Other authors, Leclerc says, arrived at this conception of material substance in the year 1620 — Abraham Gorlaeus, Francis Bacon, and Daniel Sennert, who called ‘corpuscola’, corpuscles, rather than atoms, those elementary bodies. What was radical with that conception was that those elementary corpuscles or atoms could be identified with matter —they were thought of as the true corporeal substances, inert stuff, which constituted all compound bodies.
This new vision had an immense consequence, which cannot be overstated: the fact that bodies were seen as aggregate compounds of changeless, primary elements meant that those bodies were constituted by the different grouping of such elements, that is, by their different dispositions. This also meant that the principle inherent in matter – ‘change or movement’, that which defined physis according to the old Aristotelian vision – could be reduced to a change of place, or locomotion (of the different types of change that characterized the ‘natural existent’ according to Aristotle, only ‘phora’, change of place, survived; furthermore, in the new conception of matter as fully actual, the role of potentiality was definitely dismissed). As Leclerc pointed out: ‘Here we have the basic position of the mechanistic conception of nature.’ [39] This position was reinforced by the possibility of understanding qualitative change too in mechanistic and dynamic terms: it was Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), in Il Saggiatore (1623), who appreciated that implication by maintaining that heat was nothing other than the motion of particles, likewise other sensible qualities which only existed in the sensibility of the perceiver.[40] Locke’s theory of primary and secondary qualities, Leclerc concludes, had its philosophical foundation in this new conception of matter.[41]
I close this summary by putting into evidence an important passage by Leclerc, which powerfully resumes the main sense of PART II:
… the modern conception of nature, of the physical, was born. Taking over from Aristotle that the natural, the physical, is that which has the principle of motion in itself, since the only motion possible in the new theory is locomotion, this meant that the concept of nature, of the physical, is the concept of the ultimate constituents of compounds, as in themselves changeless substances, undergoing change of place. This is what is meant by the mechanical conception of nature, which is that nature is completely understandable in terms of changeless substances and their locomotion. In this conception of nature, of the physical, the science of nature, physics, becomes the study of the laws of motion of these corpuscular substances — in other words, physics becomes mechanics.[42]
The Nature of Physical Existence: PART III – The Modern Concept of Nature
12. Matter, Motion, and the Concept of Place
Leclerc opens PART III by proposing, with different words, the resume of the modern conception of nature, which we have just considered at the end of Part II.[43] That resume contains the starting point for the following analysis, which is focused on the investigation of the concepts of place, the void, space, and their developments, from Aristotle to Newton, and beyond. This is a logical implication of the fact that, now, with the modern conception of matter, nature was understood in terms of simple, changeless, constituents of compounds, whose characteristics (whether quantitative or qualitative) were determined by the locomotion of the constituents. Therefore, as Leclerc says: ‘Since locomotion is change of place, it is evident that the concept of place is basically involved in the concept of motion.’ [44] So, again we are facing a basic question which runs frequently at RSaP: What is place?
Again we are facing this basic question: What is place?
And, again, as in the case of the concepts of physis and the related concepts of matter and motion, the starting point was Aristotle, namely Aristotle’s theory of place, which the Stagirite developed in Physics, book IV. Leclerc shows, in brief, the arguments considered by Aristotle, and I will follow them. Aristotle understood before anyone else that, ‘with regard to locomotion (phora), the crucial concept is that of “topos”, place, since locomotion is that kind of motion which is constituted by a change from one place to another’.[45] So, here, the question is to establish the nature of topos, place, that is,what kind of entity place is, and how to define it.
To begin with, we have to keep in mind that it is evident, from ordinary experience, that place is connected to motion as well as to body, therefore, the first series of considerations made by Aristotle is focused on the relation between place, body and motion: ‘First, we recognize place by the fact of bodies changing positions with each other. A second connection is that when a body is occupying a place the magnitude of the place must be the same of the body [there is the logical impossibility for a body to occupy a place smaller than its extension; conversely, a place of a larger magnitude than the body would imply that that place would not be strictly the place of that body]… But because there is this dimensional coincidence between place and body, it does not follow that place and body are therefore to be identified. Place is not something corporeal… place must be separate and distinct from body, since it can be left behind by body in locomotion. Further, we speak of a body being “in” a place, so place must be what in some respect “contains” the body.’[46]
On the ground of these phenomenological considerations, Aristotle tried to establish the precise nature of place, its ontological status, which is neither body nor matter or form — neither is it an extension between bodies: ‘It is something dimensional, and yet it is not either itself corporeal or to be identified with the body it contains. Also, it cannot be incorporeal, for nothing incorporeal can make up an actual dimensional extent. In general, place cannot be an actual existent, an “ousia”. But might it not be form, “eidos”? … But place cannot be form, since form is necessarily the form of an actual existent (“ousia”) and this means of body; and because place is not an “ousia” it is thus not able to have a form. For a like reason, place cannot be identified with “hylē” either. Another possibility is that the interval (“diastema”), extent or extension, between the extremities is what place is. But this too must be rejected, since an extension cannot exist by itself, not being an actual existent. An extension could exist only as the extension of an actual existent [but this cannot be place].’[47]
A brief pause, here, just to point out that Aristotle, in the last proposition, is openly rejecting two ‘modern’ conceptualizations: ‘simple location’ (place by itself), and ‘space’, as we, modern people, understand it (for the sake of linguistic and philological precision, he his rejecting the notion of an actual extended existent per se) : what is space if not mere extension? An extension cannot exist by itself… According to many (… erroneous interpretations or attributions – we will see, later), Newton built his system on those concepts.
Coming back to Aristotle, after having proposed and rejected several possibilities only one further possibility remained; Aristotle argued ‘that the extremities of place, which are coincident with but not identical with those of the contained body, are those constituted by the interior limiting surface of a containing body.’[48] This finally led Aristotle to his famous, synthetic definition of place: ‘the innermost motionless limit of the container, that is place’.[49]
… Place (topos) is the innermost motionless limit of the container
Since its formulation, Aristotle’s definition of place has been the subject of lively debates and criticism, down to the sixteenth century. The primary reason for rejecting it, Leclerc notes, was its main implication: any conception of the void, namely the Greek to kenon (the Latin vacuum), was impossible within Aristotle’s schema, and with it, many difficulties aroused; it was believed that ‘the void was required as the necessary condition of locomotion’ and also, Leclerc adds, as a condition of the phenomena of condensation and rarefaction, which, in Greek and medieval thinking especially, were phenomena implied with the conception of matter.[50] That’s why the concepts of place and the void, and later, the concept of space, required a renewed analysis.
13. Place, the Void, and Space
Since the early Atomists, the void, to kenon, was considered a condition necessary for motion: that was a prominent argument in ancient Greek thought; therefore, Leclerc says, Aristotle subjected that concept to a careful analysis showing its connection with the concept of place. Let’s see, through Leclerc’s words, how Aristotle characterized the differences and similitudes between the void and place, and why he rejected the concept of the void.
According to Aristotle, by the term ‘the void’, its proponents meant ‘that in which there is no “this” or “ousia” which is bodily’.[51] This meant that the void was understood as a different entity with respect to the body — a separate existent. This also meant that the void could be seen as ‘a sort of place deprived of body’ and, consequently, that the concept of placewas intrinsic to the concept of the void.[52] However, for Aristotle, the concept of place as a separate, merely extensive existent couldn’t exist; therefore, the same conclusion had to be adopted for the concept of the void: that conception had to be rejected. But, Leclerc says, Aristotle’s argument for the rejection of the concept of the void was not simply based on the identification of the void and place; the real question, here, regarded the important ontological question of the impossibility for an independently existent extent to exist, that is: no extension could exist as an “ousia”, or being, apart from the extension of a body (‘an extensional interval or extent is not something capable of existing simply by itself; for in order to do so it would have to be some kind of individual being, “ousia”, and mere dimensional extent per se plainly cannot be an “ousia”);[53] that’s why the conception of the void had to be rejected. This is also the reason why — I add — it is nonsense to translate or to understand — as many scholars do —, the Aristotelian topos as ‘space’, unless one believes that space is something material, which is even more absurd if we have a basic knowledge of the history of spatial concepts.
Another important physical/metaphysical implication deriving from this argument was Aristotle’s overall conclusion on nature: ‘the universe must necessarily be a bodily plenum’.[54]
Before continuing with the resume of Leclerc’s work, allow me a brief parenthesis to underline the impact that Aristotle’s thinking on place, the void, and their implications on the concept of nature had on me: in the foregoing passages, I found the metaphysical ground to justify my reformed understanding of spatial/placial concepts, which contributed to change my view on nature. With Aristotle, I also believe the universe is a plenum, that is: NATURA ABHORRET A VACUO — this is the tagline (the line running below the title, see Image 01, in the article Being as Place: Introduction to Metaphysics – Part One) I adopted for this website for many years before I recently changed its graphic appearance to the present version. This plenist vision of nature, physis, hinges on the concept of place, and the rejection of the concept of space as an individual self-sufficient existent (in the physical sense); to state it with a more Aristotelian tone: being space a mere dimensional extent, we must reject that notion, whenever it is used as a referential term for a physical existent, whether that existent is the surrounding physical context, the physical environment, or place. This means that space can only be admitted as an abstract notion, a dimensional notion to begin with (therefore, a figment of our imagination). In fact, physis, nature, is the carrier of many characters in addition to the dimensional character that we usually attribute to space, but which actually belongs to the elements that compound a place, environment, or physical context (that is, any extension is always the extension of something, it does not exist per se, as Aristotle said). Therefore, no ‘physical space’ exists the same way no ‘spacetime’ can be curved by the mass of a body: bodies, which are physical existents, do not curve ideal or mental entities, such as space or, its more contemporary version — ‘spacetime’. Those are spatial expressions, which rest on a fallacious, modern presupposition, if we accept the aforementioned Aristotelian arguments or if we believe — as I do — that space is an abstract object. On the same bases, if I turn my attention to architecture and urban planning, we should say that ‘urban spaces’ only exist in the minds of architects, planners, politicians, stakeholders, etc.; actually, any urban territory or city is made of places, it is a set of real places; despite that, we rarely hear of ‘urban places’ the same way or with the same frequency with which we hear or speak of ‘urban spaces’. Are those who speak of ‘urban spaces’ interested in the cognitive dimension of space (somehow projected into or abstracted from real places), or are they interested in the concrete processes that happen in real places and territories? Whenever we speak of ‘urban spaces’ the risk is to leave aside many important characters that determine the overall value of a real territory, or place (that value is determined by the different processes that happen in a place or territory — physicochemical, biological, social and symbolic processes, to begin with); if we do not want to leave aside those characters, but, on the contrary, we are interested in them, we’d better speak in terms of ‘urban places’ rather than urban spaces (this is a question I’ve already dealt with in the article Urban Spaces or Places?).
In the conflation between space and place we lose orientation because we are no more able to attribute the correct meaning and value to words: as Leclerc’s text shows, we understand concepts of space and place as the result of modern presuppositions; these are an obstacle to the current explanation/comprehension of natural and human-based processes (from physical to ecological, from generically social, to specific urban or architectural processes). This has repercussions on the way we manage our cities and territories, that is, on the way we manage the places we live in. The choice between space and place is not a mere choice between similar terms; there is much more: as I’ve said elsewhere, the modern, fatal disconnection between man and the environment was facilitated by the adoption of a reductive understanding of place and the parallel intrusive presence of space for questions that are better explicable and manageable in terms of place — especially a reformed notion of place in the systemic, processual and choral sense that I’m showing at RSaP, and not the reductive notion we have inherited at the beginning of the modern epoch, or its more recent amended version in the social sense only. As it is evident from this article, concepts are functional to the overall understanding of nature, therefore it should now be clear that a different conception of nature (a different approach of man to nature like the one we are currently witnessing), requires a different understanding of the concepts that we use to express what we mean by nature. We are living in a time of epochal changes, and we know that epochal changes already determined a shift of meaning to some fundamental concepts through which we expressed our understanding of nature.
One final remark before continuing with the resume of Leclerc’s work: the careful reader has noted that I have associated my conception of nature with that of Aristotle, and I have also extended his considerations on the void to the untenability of the concept of space, as a ‘physical’ being; yet — the careful reader has also probably noted — I have skipped the equally important question that the concept of place I advocate for diverges from that of Aristotle in one fundamental aspect: even if, like Aristotle, I take the notion of limit as a founding notion for the concept of place (whenever there is a limit we are in the realm of concrete places; where the limit is absent, I say, we enter the domain of abstract places and/or spaces), I do not consider place different from the body contained in it, if not in a conceptual sense (this was already argued for by Descartes). This takes to the identification of place and body (or matter), which was a point explicitly rejected by Aristotle. I’m showing the reasons for my position in the different articles of this website, which has the scope to elucidate differences and continuities between my understanding of spatial and/or placial concepts and that of thinkers who came before me or are contemporary to me. As I have said elsewhere, with the adoption of the concept of space and place by an author or by another, it is not a question to see who is wrong or right in the definition of that concept (Aristotle or Plato? Descartes Leibniz or Newton? Or Einstein?), but is a question of seeing which concept is more functional to the explanation of newly discovered phenomena, in a certain epoch. Given that the phenomena we are living are specific to our epoch, and are very different from the epochs before, they require a re-examination of the old concepts that we use to observe and explain those phenomena. For this reason, we cannot simply take or choose an old concept and re-propose it to explain new phenomena. That’s why the concept of place I’m arguing for at RSaP is indebted to that of Aristotle (or Descartes, for certain aspects, and Plato for others), but also presents differences, which are sensitive to the historical context, which is unique.
After this detour on the influence that some Aristotelian arguments played on my understanding of nature and of spatial/placial concepts, let’s return to Leclerc.
Given that Aristotle was the main reference for the debate concerning the controversy between place and the void, it was clear to the sixteenth-century thinkers — Leclerc suggests — that ‘it was the concept of place which was in need of reconsideration’, and not the concepts of the void or space.[55]
it was clear to the sixteenth-century thinkers that it was the concept of place which was in need of reconsideration
Specifically, given the importance attributed by past thinkers to the conceptualization of the void for questions of motion, what pre-modern thinkers were looking for was a concept of a ‘void place — a place without body in it, into which a body could move’, [56] which could explain the nature of motion.
what pre-modern thinkers were looking for was a concept of void place — a place without body in it, into which a body could move, which could explain the nature of motion
That was impossible as long as the Aristotelian definition of place was accepted; therefore, a new definition of place had to be found.
The main line of attack against the Aristotelian definition of place, Leclerc says, was that that definition was too closely related to the concept of body, so dependent on it that place itself was almost without an identity of its own. Place, the adversaries said, was not that which contained the body, but the surface of the containing body, that is, a body containing another body. According to the proponents of the void, or, better, according to the reformers of the Aristotelian notion of place, to allow the movement of bodies place had to be logically and ontologically distinct from bodies: that was the line of research of the early sixteenth century-thinkers.
One of the earliest attempts in this sense was made by Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484 – 1558), an Italian physician who lived the second part of his life in France. Like many before him, Scaliger too argued for the existence of the void on the ground that it was necessary for the motion of bodies. He was convinced that the great error made in antiquity with respect to the conceptualization of the void was that it was exclusively conceived of as an extent empty of body. Conversely, he maintained a conception of the void as an extent with [the possibility of]body in it, that is a conception of an extent ‘in which’ the body is. This had the following implication: ‘void and place are the same and do not differ except in name. For unless there be a void, there will be no place. Therefore void is an extent (“spatium”) in which there is body. For its nature is of such a kind that if a body yields to another, a void comes into being and is filled. Therefore void is the principle of motion.’ [57]
According to this new connotation, with the identification of the void and place, Scaliger obtained the required ontological separation of place from body. The error made in antiquity and by Aristotle, Scaliger argued, was that too much emphasis was put on the interior bounding surface of the containing body, completely ignoring the extent within those bounds: that interior extent was place, or in Scaliger’s own words: ‘place is not the encompassing surface of the exterior body; but it is what is contained within this surface.’ [58] Given that this extent had to be distinguished from the extent belonging to the body, Scaliger finally arrived at the separation between body and place (or the void, or space; here, their differences are wavering to the eye of a modern interpreter: there is a real ‘muddle’ here, between place and space, to use an expression by Edward Casey — see Place and Space: A Philosophical History, notes [43] and [44]).
According to Scaliger, void and place were the same and did not differ except in name; for him, place was not the encompassing surface of the exterior body, but it was what is contained within this surface
On this account, the separation between body and place, the next thinker considered by Leclerc was the Italian, naturalist philosopher Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588). Like Scaliger and many others before them, he also believed in the necessity and independence of the void for the movement of bodies. Again, place, rather than the void (or space), was the subject of his inquiry — the subject under revision: ‘place should instead be identified with the extent (“spatium”) which bodies occupy and which they leave behind in moving. Place must be regarded as a certain capacity to receive bodies, and it must be without any agency of its own. When a body moves place stays constant.’[59]As Leclerc says, Telesio did not identify place with the void, like Scaliger did, and, unlike Aristotle, he argued for the possibility to conceive of place without bodies in it; that meant that an empty extent, i.e., ‘vacuum spatium’, was possible.
According to Telesio, ‘place should be identified with the extent (“spatium”) which bodies occupy and which they leave behind in moving’.
Leclerc considered these two thinkers, Scaliger and Telesio, as representative thinkers of the sixteenth-century debate, after which a change in the concept of place finally happened, ‘removing the Aristotelian emphasis upon the exterior bounding surface of the body and putting emphasis instead on the whole interior extent, maintaining that place must be identified with the extent (“spatium”) within those bounds… Thus… in this way was achieved… the separation, not only logically but also ontologically, of the concept of place from body.’ [60]
But, Leclerc says, it was Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600), who, with his penetrating analysis, advanced more than other thinkers towards a new conceptualization for those extents vacant of bodies. More clearly than others, he saw the ontological implications of those ‘extents or intervals vacant of bodies… necessary to enable movement of bodies to occur’.[61] According to Bruno, the very fact that those extents were called ‘vacuum’, void, to differentiate them from bodies was an implicit pronouncement on the importance of the ontological question behind the two entities. To begin with, Bruno agreed with the Aristotelian position concerning the logical and ontological inconsistency of the void, if, by that term, ‘what was meant was a completely empty extent, that is, strictly an extent of “nothing” is a non-existent extent, since “nothing” cannot be extended.’ [62] Therefore, if there were to be an extent deprived of body, in order for that extent to exist — an existent extent — and be nothing, it had to be the extent of something, yet, something non-bodily which had extension as its main character. Bruno maintained that such an extensive existent was present in his philosophical system, which he derived from Cusanus.
Let’s see how Bruno characterized that extensive existent.
The starting point was his understanding of the universe as explicatio, or contractio Dei (see PART I), as the contraction of God’s absolute infinity, that is: God’s infinity is contracted to the infinite extension of the universe; this infinite extension was ‘the extension of the universal matter of the universe’, which was in itself neither corporeal nor spiritual, but it had ‘body’ and ‘spirit’ complicans, that is potentially present, with the possibility for that potentialities to be contracted in act; in fact, bodies, physical bodies, derived from the contraction of that universal matter. Yet, contrarily to the plenist vision of Aristotle, this contraction did not imply to be extended everywhere (which would have entailed the presence of extended physical bodies everywhere, as in the plenist hypothesis of Aristotle), but that infinite matter could be contracted here and there, that is contracted in certain places and not in other places, so that we could have universal matter with respect to body in a certain place (where there was a contraction), and universal matter with respect to the extent vacant of body in other places (where no contractions occurred); these latter places of universal matter, where no contractions happened, that is, places vacant of bodies, were not called by Bruno using the term vacuum, void, but were called ‘variously as “aether”, “aer”, and “spiritus”… And when he was referring to this extent purely as such, and not in respect of its content (in which case it would be called “aether”, etc.), he used the Latin word for extent or interval, namely, “spatium”. Here we have a new use of the word “spatium”, space, in a technical sense, and this sense was the beginning of what was eventually to develop into the modern concept of space’.[63]
[With Bruno], we have a new use of the word “spatium”, space, in a technical sense, and this sense was the beginning of what was eventually to develop into the modern concept of space
After the explanation of what Bruno meant by the term ‘spatium’, space, Leclerc makes a brief linguistic survey on that term. Before that, allow me some personal considerations.
Among the authors cited by Leclerc as representatives of the spatial/placial vicissitudes of the sixteenth century, I miss the inclusion of the work of another philosopher of nature active in that century: Francesco Patrizi from Cres, (1529-1597). For certain aspects, he held a position on the nature of those vacant extents similar to that of Bruno (at least in the physical sense, and having God as an ultimate source), Scaliger and Telesio, were it not for the fact that in some specific writings (De spacio physico, and De Spacio Mathematico, contained in Nova de Universis Philosophia, 1591, and in Della Nuova Geometria, 1587, – On The New Geometry), to denote those vacant extents Patrizi adopted the term space, ‘spacium’, with more ‘ease’ and frequency than other thinkers. This is not a secondary question to consider, given that the recurrent use of certain terms instead of others shows how the linguistic habit and knowledge concerning placial/spatial notions was changing in that period. Despite that, as Casey explained in The Fate of Place, with regard to the thinkers of the sixteenth century, including Patrizi, ‘any significant distinction of place from space is left unclarified’,[64] and this is perhaps the main reason why Leclerc did not include Patrizi as another representative thinker of that century. In the end, just like the other thinkers presented here, he did not reverse the fact that, in that epoch, space and/or the void, were just different versions of place, and not yet new clear-cut independent notions; as Leclerc said elsewhere, ‘what was in controversy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries […] was not “space”… The relevant controversy […] was concerning “place”.’ [65] Anyway, innovative thinker as he was, Patrizi’s concept of space looked forward to Gassendi and Newton, as Casey also said;[66] Similarly, to highlight the specificity of Patrizi’s position, it has been claimed that ‘two strains, empirical and Platonic, so prominent in Newton’s conception, are already blended in Patrizi, who can thus claim to be the ancestor of the Absolute Space of early modern science.’ [67]
Concerning Bruno’s peculiar spatial/placial conception of the universe, it came to my mind the article Place, Space, and the Fabric of Reality, where I presented certain images on the nature of what, at that time, I called ‘the continuum’ of reality (the analysis of the continuum is the specific argument of the next chapter by Leclerc); I cannot help but point out a certain resonance between the explanation offered by Giordano Bruno, concerning the contraction of universal matter into physical bodies and the Images 4, 5, 6 of that article. By analogy, the universal matter of Bruno corresponds to what in those images I called ‘the continuum’: there, I have used the term ‘intension’ (as the abbreviation for ‘inward tension’) to characterize the action of localized forces within the continuum, which can be finally actualized into determinate physical entities; here, instead of ‘actualized’, I could have used forces contracted into bodies, to use an expression from the vocabulary of Cusanus or Bruno. I redirect you to that article, which could be useful in two senses: 1) to have a characterization of the passage from the metaphysical conception of place as a continuum, to its physical interpretation as the place of processes actualized into physical entities; 2) at the same time, those passages could be a possible explanation/visualization of Bruno’s doctrine of explicatio or contractio Dei with respect to the spatial/placial notions which are the subject of our discourse.
Before introducing Leclerc’s linguistic analysis of the word ‘space’, spatium, I also take the opportunity to say that I’ve also spoken about the linguistic origins of space, in greater detail, in the article Back to the Origins of Space and Place. Most of the linguistic information given by Leclerc is also contained in that article (other than in the article What is Place? What is Space?). Like other scholars who have dealt with the concept of space and its linguistic origin, no specific connection was made by Leclerc between the origin of space and agricultural practices, which, as far as I know, and as I showed in Back to the Origins of Space and Place, are the ultimate source of meaning for the word ‘space’, from the Greek ‘spadion’ (in Attic Greek ‘stadion’).
Turning back to Leclerc’s explanation, to introduce the important linguistic question concerning space, he first notes that the way the word ‘spatium’ was understood in the sixteenth century was not different from the Roman and medieval epochs. ‘The word “spatium” — Leclerc says —derives from the root “spa-”, to draw (from the Greek σπάω, to draw, draw out) cognate with “span-”, to stretch (cf. German “spannen”). In its original use “spatium” meant “a certain stretch, extent, or area of ground, an expanse”, and it was frequently employed in specific reference to such a stretch or expanse used for running races. It is thus closely related to the Doric Greek σπάδιον, (στάδιον in Attic Greek), a race course, a stadium. In classical Latin the general meaning of “spatium” was that of “a stretch or extent or interval”, and we find this as the earliest use of ‘space” in English in the fourteenth century.’ [68] Then, Leclerc considered some derivative Latin meanings, from the main sense of the term, as stretch, or extent: 1) ‘the place, an expanse, in which to walk’ — in Latin ‘de loco, in quo ambulatur’;[69] from here derived the reference to the act of walking (in German ‘spazieren’, in Italian — I add — ‘andare a spasso’); 2) another derivative meaning, Leclerc says, was that of ‘interval between places’ hence, ‘distance’ — in Latin ‘de intervallo loci’, what in Greek was called ‘διάστημα’; 3) in a more generalized sense, Leclerc observed, ‘spatium’ also meant ‘magnitude, size, bulk, bigness’;[70] 4) ‘spatium’ as ‘an interval and stretch of time’ — in Latin ‘intervallum et longitudinem temporis’ —, which was one of the most frequent uses of the word ‘spatium’, whence the English expression ‘space of time’ derived, since the fifteenth century; 5) the last important derivative meaning mentioned by Leclerc was that of ‘an enclosed area or extent or interval’, as in the case of a dwelling, a connotation which corresponds to the English room (here Leclerc, in a note accompanying the text, considered its connection with the German ‘raum’, and, in turn, with the Latin ‘rus’, open country: those terms maintain the connection with the basic meaning of stretch, expanse, interval, etc.).
So, after this brief linguistic survey, by reminding the basic meaning of spatium/space — as extent, stretch, or interval — still in vogue in the sixteenth century, and connecting it with Bruno’s understanding of the existent extent vacant of body and filled with universal matter, ‘his new use of “spatium” becomes clear’ — Leclerc says, reporting a quote from Bruno’s De Immenso : ‘Space is a certain continuous physical quantity consisting in a triple dimension, in which the magnitude of bodies is captured, by nature before all bodies, and subsisting without all bodies, indifferently receiving all things, without conditions of action and passion, intermixed, impenetrable, not formable, not locatable, exteriorly embracing all bodies, and incomprehensibly within, containing all bodies.’[71]
Space is a certain continuous physical quantity consisting in a triple dimension, in which the magnitude of bodies is captured, by nature before all bodies, and subsisting without all bodies…
Following Leclerc, we can now make a recap of the results of this sixteenth-century investigation into a new definition of place, which was needed to take a distance from the old Aristotelian conception. Those thinkers maintained that a three-dimensional extent, distinct from body, was necessary as the place where body was situated or where body could be, therefore allowing motion; that place was not to be identified, as Aristotle did, with the exterior bounding surface of the body, but with the extent within that bounding surface. Because of that different conception, Leclerc says, it was not a surprise that another word — spatium — was convenient to identify that ‘extent or room in which body is or might be as the place of body’, and not be confused with the body itself.[72] To remark that place (and not, the void, or space) was the ultimate subject of that investigation, Leclerc reminds the reader that until the controversy on the nature of space and place was settled (with Newton), ‘we frequently find the phrase “spatium vel locus internus”, space or internal place, as for example in Descartes.’ [73]
Beyond all the controversies on the use of the terms place, void or space, the fundamental question regarded the ontological status of the void versus place, a question which will be specially conditioned by resurging forms of atomism behind the new conception of matter (the elementary compounds of matter, called atoms, corpuscola, elementary bodies, etc.), with authors like Basso, Gorlaeus, Bacon, Sennert, etc. So, in the early seventeenth century, Leclerc says, we find different authors that deny the existence of the void, next to authors who totally or partially accept it, or have conflicting views on the argument. This question was inextricably related to the question of the composition of the continuum in its connection with the new, atomistic, conception of matter. This question on the nature of the continuum is the subject of the next two chapters.
14. The Theory of Atomism and the Problems of the Continuum
In the seventeenth century, emerged the conviction that macroscopic bodies were compounds of basic elements, or elementary bodies no further divisible (hence, the Greek term atom, which means indivisible, to identify those elementary entities). Yet, Leclerc notes, that raised a big problem: given that the character of a body is that of being extensive, and given that extensiveness implies (infinite) divisibility, how can it be that there are ultimate indivisible bodies? This question was already raised by Aristotle: ‘It is impossible for what is continuous to be composed of indivisibles’.[74] These are some argumentations taken by Aristotle to deny the existence of atoms, thereby rejecting atomism: if a microscopic body is continuous to our senses and if continuity implies infinite divisibility (‘every continuum is divisible into divisibles that are always divisible’),[75] that body cannot be composed by atoms. If atoms are truly indivisible, they have no parts, therefore they have no extension, which means they could not be bodies; conversely, if they are bodies, they must be extensive, and, as such, an extensive magnitude is infinitely divisible, which means that bodies cannot be made of atoms.
Those were objections that thinkers of the XVI and XVII centuries had to counter. For that, they relied on two arguments, especially: first, the phenomenic evidence that bodies were compound of elementary constituents, or corpuscola. In this regard,Leclerc says,medical men were directly responsible for the resuscitation of atomic theories: they referred back to an ancient medical doctrine that ‘maintained that the body is a porous structure, the pores (poroi) being formed by the interstices between the ongkoi, corpuscles, which constituted the bodily whole, health depending upon the proper relation between the width of the pores and the corpuscles’.[76] In the origin, those corpuscles or extensive bodies were called ‘ongkoi’, bulks, and not ‘atomoi’, to avoid the problem of indivisibility associated with atomism (a question considered by Aristotle). The word ‘corpuscola’ was introduced by Sennert, who was also responsible for a second important argument to counter Aristotle’s objection to atomism: here, the question relies on the difference between that which is physically indivisible, and that which is mathematically divisible into infinite magnitudes; there is an evident conflict between the two, and Sennert maintained that ‘Aristotle had mistakenly ascribed characteristics of the mathematical continuum to the actual physical existents. Mathematically a continuum certainly is divisible ad infinitum; but the divisibility of a physical body ends in certain minimal bodies, not themselves further divisible.’[77] That argument was embraced by many, even if, Leclerc says, there was insufficient awareness of what the separation of the physical from the mathematical entailed.
Now, the issue concerning the relation between the physical and the mathematical becomes a central question to elucidate the nature of the relation between matter and place or space. On the side of matter, and especially the understanding of bodies as compound bodies (a derivation from the theory of atomism), it regarded the problems of the relation between parts and whole; while in spatial terms, it regarded the problem of the continuum, that is the problem of continuity and discontinuity, of divisibility and indivisibility, of the finite and the infinite. The full awareness of these argumentations and their philosophical implications came only in the late XVII century.
…the issue concerning the relation between the physical and the mathematical becomes a central question to elucidate the nature of the relation between matter and place or space.
Bruno was well-aware of the philosophical problems involved in the adoption of atomism and the question of the relation of the physical to the mathematical. As we have seen in the previous PART II, Bruno was influenced by the doctrine of Cusanus, who understood the universe as ‘a mathematical structure, and this, prima facie, seemed to imply the identification of the mathematical and the physical’.[78] On his part, Bruno believed in the phenomenic evidence that body was a composite, but for him, the necessity to admit the existence of atoms was more logical before than physical: ‘if the body is a composite, there must be minima as the necessary beginning of any composite’.[79] Therefore, he understood the concept of the atom as that of an indivisible minimum, a true unite, an ultimate unite, for which he used the term ‘monas’, or even ‘minimum’, which, for him, had physical and metaphysical significance at the same time: from a metaphysical point of view, they were ‘the primary individual existents which constitute plurality’, while from a physical point of view they were ‘the primary physical existents.’ [80] And given that he considered the universe, the macroscopic, as an extension derived from God, the monads, as the ultimate contractions to unity, had to be ‘indivisible units of extensiveness’, which, Bruno maintained, from a mathematical point of view, were identified as geometrical points.[81] Therefore, as in Cusanus’ doctrine, we have here a complete identification of the physical and the mathematical: ‘there is no distinction in “re”, but only a distinction in thought.’[82]
Bruno’s position — Leclerc observes — raised the grave difficulty of the extensiveness of atoms as also of geometrical points. He tried to overcome these difficulties by introducing the distinction between ‘a minimum’ and ‘a terminus’ (i.e., boundary): ‘A minimum is that which has no parts but which is itself an ultimate part of a composite. But its not having parts does not preclude its having a boundary (terminus), since a boundary is not a part but is that which separates either two parts or two wholes.’[83] Therefore, Leclerc continues, following Bruno’s hypothesis, an atom is a minimum which has no parts, but which has a boundary; as such, having a boundary it can be in contact with other minima and constitute a continuum. However, Leclerc points out the inconsistencies of Bruno’s attempt: ‘in the contact of two minima their termini must either coincide or be distinct. If they be coincident…there could not be two strictly discrete entities as the atomistic theory presupposes. On the other hand, if the termini be distinct… there is not strictly a continuum… In that case the concept of continuity would require a redefinition.’[84]
These were all difficulties later thinkers had to confront, given that the conclusions offered by Bruno were not satisfactory. In this regard, Galileo and Descartes, among others, explored alternative theories, which are the subject of the next chapters.
15. The Continuum, the Physical and the Mathematical
During the XVII century, the belief in the mathematical structure of the universe was rapidly affirming. As we have just seen, Bruno was one of the exemplary thinkers who believed in the identification of the physical and the mathematical continuum. Yet, this identification entailed philosophical problems Aristotle was well aware of: a distinction between the physical and the mathematical had to be remarked given that, after all, physics and mathematics are different subjects. This raised the question of the ontological status of the mathematical, which especially came to the fore again in the XVI and XVII centuries, with the discussions about the problem of the continuum.
Again, to begin that analysis, Leclerc considers the position held by Aristotle who believed bodies were continuous magnitudes, even if composed of different parts; but such parts — the Stagirite argued — cannot be considered as ‘beings’ in themselves, that is ‘physical bodies’. Since a body is a physical entity, it must be divisible; yet, according to Aristotle, such divisibility pertains to potentiality and not the actual body, or, to state it with Leclerc: ‘when we are considering the divisibility of a continuum — as opposed to its actual division — we are dealing with potentiality and not actuality.[85] The physical continuum is actual; mathematical divisibility is potential. Two difficult questions emerged from the position held by Aristotle: first, the ontological status of the mathematical; second, the status of potentiality.
Concerning the first aspect, Aristotle had a different opinion with respect to Plato — who believed mathematical entities had their own status and identity, that is, they were conceived of as actual existents ‘distinct and separate from the physical’.[86] For Aristotle, the mathematical was not an actual existent but an abstraction (of properties) from the physical: ‘the mathematical while not in itself an actual existent, is a form of the actual physical existent.’[87] According to Aristotle, there was a close relationship between the physical and the mathematical, not an identification: the mathematical existed in the physical ‘as a form in and of the physical’.[88] Therefore, concerning the nature of the continuum (of a body), a distinction between the mathematical continuum, which is infinitely divisible, and the physical continuum, which is divisible but not infinitely, had to be remarked.
Coming to the second aspect, the status of the potential related to the mathematical, and the status of potentiality as such, again, as in the case of the relation between potentiality and matter, which we examined in the previous PART II, many controversies did not solve the complexity and difficulties of the question. Since the medieval period, out of these debates — Leclerc notes — emerged a controversy between realists and nominalists, which continued down to the XVII century. The Platonic revival in the Renaissance reinforced the tendency to consider the universe a mathematical structure. In the background of these questions between the physical and the mathematical understanding of nature, and the different solutions offered by different thinkers, Galileo Galilei is the next author considered by Leclerc.
In this regard, the relation between the physical and the mathematical, for certain aspects, Galileo (1564 –1642) held a position similar to Aristotle: as a mathematician, he also believed in the infinite divisibility of the continuum, and he also rejected the possibility of the void as an actual existent (‘the concept of the void as an extent of nothing is untenable’);[89] yet, differently from Aristotle, he believed in a form of atomism, a corporeal atomist, where matter was conceived of as a physical, corporeal existent. To bypass the problems of the continuum in respect of the physical, and to maintain the corporeal atomism in respect of the void and motion, Galileo believed all these problems were resolved ‘by a strict identification of the physical, conceived explicitly as matter, and corporeal, with the mathematical. In his doctrine the ultimate nature of matter… is its mathematical character.’[90]
… a strict identification of the physical, conceived explicitly as matter, and corporeal, with the mathematical. In his [Galileo] doctrine the ultimate nature of matter… is its mathematical character.
That entailed geometrical extension was the fundamental attribute of matter, and since geometrical extension implies continuity, that meant no interstices between parts, therefore, no void at all. Furthermore, continuity, as an intrinsic characteristic of geometrical extension, admitted infinite divisibility, and with it the possibility to conceive of particles having infinite sizes and shapes. Finally, to maintain his belief in corporeal atomism, given that infinite divisibility admits no minimum extension, Galileo hypothesized the possibility of the existence of atoms of infinite smallness: in this way he offered an argument to counter Aristotle’s position about the rejection of atomism on the base of infinite divisibility. Contrarily to Aristotle, for Galileo infinite divisibility pertained to the physical; in this way, he also bypassed the difficulty concerning the nature of potentiality, given that, according to him, infinite divisibility pertains to actuality. The belief in the existence of infinitely small pieces of physical, corporeal matter was synthesized with the following proposition: ‘Atomi, non quanti’.[91] As Leclerc notes, that position was not without difficulties: ‘since… atoms are without size they must also be without any bulk whatever, and how can constituents which are themselves without bulk constitute a body with bulk?’[92] This question entailed a re-examination of the ontological status of the body (and of matter), which we have already examined in PART II. Galileo’s reduction of the physical to the mathematical constituted a radical departure from the standard view of corporeal atomism developed by different thinkers at the beginning of the XVII century.
Let’s see with Leclerc how other thinkers have dealt with the problems that emerged from the identification of the physical and the mathematical. In this regard, the next authors considered by Leclerc are the French philosophers and mathematicians Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes.
Like Galileo, Gassendi (1592 –1655) maintained corporeal atomism; yet, the two thinkers developed a completely different strategy: for Gassendi, atoms were solid bulks rather than infinitely small pieces of corporeal matter, without bulk, and characterized by being geometrically extended. Therefore, to maintain corporeal atomism, concerning the relation of the physical and the mathematical, he developed an almost opposite strategy with respect to Galileo: he held that ‘the problems of the continuum could be successfully solved by a clear and definite separation of the mathematical and the physical.’[93] Gassendi’s atomism looked back at the ancient atomism of Democritus rather than at more recent variations. An important consequence was the necessity to admit the metaphysical existence of the void as the counterpart of atoms: in his view, Leclerc says, atoms and the void — ‘the absolute full and the absolute empty’ —[94] were the ultimate principles. This fact entailed that infinite divisibility (of the physical, corporeal body) was not possible because of the presence of the void (down to a certain point of the division we meet the void, therefore it is not possible to precede anymore with the division). Gassendi’s absolutely solid atoms were characterized by: 1) magnitude (quantity of stuff, which implied extension); 2) shape; and 3) weight. This latter character, which almost had no physical and metaphysical significance in Galileo, had a very relevant physical and metaphysical role in Gassendi’s system: weight ‘is constituted by and reducible to the inner power or “impetus”, whereby the atom moves. This power or “impetus” derives from God at the creation of each atom; and since it is a donation of God this impetus is constant and unchangeable, whatever the direction of motion’.[95] Apart from the implications on the discipline of dynamics and the concept of space (see the paragraph where Julian Barbour mentions Gassendi in Space and Place: A Scientific History – Part One), Gassendi’s position re-opened a dialogue with Aristotle’s conception of kinesis, motion, as the principle that characterizes physis, the natural or the physical (the difference is that for Aristotle kinesis was an internal principle, while for Gassendi it was ‘external’ in the sense that it was instilled by God).
Apart from the implications on the discipline of dynamics and the concept of space, Gassendi’s position re-opened a dialogue with Aristotle’s conception of kinesis, motion, as the principle that characterizes physis, the natural, the physical…
Let’s see, with Leclerc, the philosophical consequences of this separation of the mathematical from the physical entailed in Gassendi’s corporeal atomism, in reference to the problem of the continuum. By rejecting the identification of the mathematical and the physical, Gassendi explicitly believed geometry was a speculative science, ‘having its truths in itself; geometry is thus not to be carried over into the physical material or sensible.’[96] This position, Leclerc notes, was directly inherited by Plato’s distinction of the intellectual from the sensible. Apart from these considerations on the nature of geometry, other important difficult questions aroused from the division of the mathematical from the physical: first, how can the mathematical be related to the physical (is there a relation at all?), Leclerc asked. Second, that division was merely formal, in the end: in fact, solid atoms are extended, and ‘to be extended is “ipso facto” geometrical’;[97] this implied infinite divisibility in actual terms, therefore discarding the tenability of corporeal atomism. Furthermore, there was another important implication in Gassendi’s discourse, which goes directly to the core of the spatial question that interests us: being atoms and the void conceived of as actual entities, and being actual entities geometrically extensive, what is the ontological status of geometrical extensiveness if, at the same time, it embraces matter (the physical) and the void (the non-physical)?
… there was another important implication in Gassendi’s discourse… being atoms and the void conceived of as actual entities, and being actual entities geometrically extensive, what was the ontological status of geometrical extensiveness if, at the same time, it embraced matter (the physical) and the void (the non-physical)?
16. Descartes’ Theory of the Physical: “Res Extensa”
The philosophical analysis of the relation between the mathematical and the physical was on the agenda of Descartes (1596–1650), who adopted a position derived from the tradition of Cusanus: according to Descartes, the identification of the mathematical and the physical was fundamentally correct. The problem with Galileo, Leclerc says referring to Descartes’ position, derived from the identification of the physical (that is matter) with the corporeal; therefore, Leclerc continues, Descartes ‘took the bold step of distinguishing, of separating, the corporeal from matter.’ [98] It was a bold step since, as we have seen in the previous PART II, until that moment, corporeal matter was considered by many as the fundamental physical existent. The physical, in Descartes, was considered as essentially mathematical; and given that what is physical is extended, extensiveness was the very essence of the physical; and ‘because matter in its fundamental nature is mathematical, the extensiveness of matter must be continuous and of one kind, that is completely homogeneous. Hence the physical existent or matter must be one single continuous “res extensa”.’[99] Continuity also entailed res-extensa to be regarded as boundless and indefinite (as Leclerc explains in a note the attribute ‘infinite’ was reserved only to God).
… because matter in its fundamental nature is mathematical, the extensiveness of matter must be continuous and of one kind, that is completely homogeneous. Hence the physical existent or matter must be one single continuous ‘res extensa’
Infinite divisibility also implied ‘res extensa’ to be homogeneous, and the impossibility of the void — ‘there can be no extended nothingness… Matter is the sole extended… the extendedness of the universe is the mathematical, actually existing.’[100] As we are going to see, it is out of the process of divisibility from matter that corporeal bodies come into existence. Matter, in virtue of its mathematical essence, is extended, it has dimensionality, but, per sè, it does not have a particular dimension ‘since its parts are not, qua matter, distinguished into discrete size and shapes’.[101] Matter is not body, rather it is the ‘out of which’ body is created, the source of body; this puts matter and the (corporeal) body on two different levels: bodies are ontologically derived from matter. If matter is the fundamental level of existence, bodies are derivative from it. So, now, the question is: how does body emerge from matter in Descartes’ system? Reminding of Cusanus and Bruno, who considered physical elements as ‘explicatio’ or ‘contractio Dei’ (that is, physical bodies, derived from the contraction of universal matter, which was the extension of God), in Descartes’ system something analogous happens: it is God, with his infinite power, that instils motions into matter; the differential motions in the parts of the one res extensa are the cause of successive divisions, collisions, etc., out of which corporeal bodies of different sizes and forms emerge. So God, the deus ex machina, is the principle of motion. And from motion everything else results. This had very important consequences: ‘Since motion is change of place (locomotion), the precise analysis of motion necessitates the definition of the concept of place.’ [102]
God instils motions into matter; the different motions instilled by God in the parts of the one res extensa are the cause of successive divisions, collisions, etc., out of which corporeal bodies of different sizes and forms emerge. So, for Descartes, God is the principle of motion, deus ex machina, and from motion everything else results. ‘Since motion is change of place (locomotion), the precise analysis of motion necessitates the definition of the concept of place.’
Descartes maintained there is an internal place, locus internus, which is nothing other than thespace or extent, spatium, occupied by a body, that is: a locus internus or spatium is ‘equivalent to the volume of the body and coincident with it.’ [103]Here, there is an evident echo of the definitions of place given by thinkers like Scaliger and Telesio in the early XVI century; going against the Aristotelian tradition, they emphasize the internal content of the boundary, rather than the external bounding surface of the containing body.
Yet, a difficulty is evident here, Leclerc notes:given that if a body moves it takes with itself its ‘internal place’, the connotation of place must also include situs, situation, to establish the true nature of the movement of a body from one place to another, otherwise the movement would be undetectable; that’s why, to give an account of motion, Descartes introduces the concept of ‘external place’, which is identical to Aristotle’s definition of place (‘external place is rightly taken to be the superficies of the surrounding body’, Descartes says).[104] The difference between the two thinkers/notions is that while in Aristotle, within the grand picture of a definite and closed universe, movement can be determined with reference to the universe itself, in Descartes’s picture there is no such opportunity since the universe is interminatum: motion has to be determined with reference to other bodies only, therefore Descartes’ system is ‘committed to a complete relativity of motion and place’.[105] However, Leclerc says, this was not enough to identify the motion of bodies with absolute certainty (if bodies move, and there is not a fixed reference, how can we establish the exact nature of their motions?). In this respect, Leclerc speaks of ‘ontological imprecision in the concept of motion’, and observes that Newton will start from these considerations to devise his system, proposing a concept of place ‘exempt from relativity’.[106]
Before proceeding with the analysis of Newton’s conception of nature, Leclerc spends a few words more on Descartes’ philosophical conception of nature and the separation of the physical from the mathematical. The sense of Leclerc’s observations — which I agree with — has the scope to mitigate misplaced attributions of unbridgeable dualism (and consequent negative effects on men’s understanding of nature) to the philosophy of Descartes; attributions which are sometimes caused by an erroneous or limited interpretation of his theories, rather than the direct effect of Descartes’ true position. Since this is an important question, open to frequent misunderstandings, I will directly report here a quite extensive passage from Leclerc:
‘The two kinds of substance, “res extensa” and “res cogitans”, are […] for Descartes not wholly different in essence. They are both, in a fundamental respect, mathematical: one is the mathematical existing in actual extension, and the other is the mathematical existing in intellectual manifestation. The influence of the “Timaeus” of Plato is clear […]. There is also the influence of the doctrine of Cusanus […]: the universe exists as mathematically extensive […] which means that the mathematical extensiveness of the universe is the manifestation of the infinity of God; but God manifests himself not only in the mathematical extensiveness of the universe, but equally so in the mathematical ideas which are the intellectual grasp of the actual mathematical extensiveness […]. In Descartes’ doctrine it is not only the physical which in its essential nature is mathematical; equally so is the mental. This being his position it is fully intelligible that Descartes was not disturbed by the claims of critics that his ontological dualism had disastrous epistemological consequences. With his conception of the physical as mathematical, and knowledge also as mathematical, Descartes avoided the kind of insuperable epistemological difficulty involved in theories which identified the physical with the corporeal and grounded knowledge in the sensory.’ [107] It was the difficulties involved with Descartes’ theory of motion and bodies, rather than epistemological difficulties concerning his doctrine, which took other thinkers to propose alternative models.
17. Infinite Place and the Principle of Motion
One of the achievements since Descartes’ theory was the diffuse awareness of the science of physics as the science of bodies in motion; since then, physics has been established as the knowledge of the physical, or nature. It was with Christian Huygens (1629-1695), Leclerc says, that ‘the most extensive and consistent development of this science as an atomic kinetics, in which all phenomena were accounted for on the basis of atoms and their motion’ was achieved.[108] According to Leclerc, even if Descartes’ theory did not offer an appropriate solution to the physical and philosophical questions involved in the new science of motion, nonetheless it offered ‘a vital contribution’ to its development: Newton’s final settlement of old physical and philosophical questions regarding motion and bodies, ‘was the outcome of a direct line of development from Descartes via Henry More’, Leclerc says;[109] therefore, Henry More (1614 – 1687) is the next thinker considered by Leclerc.
Even if More was ‘strongly affected by Descartes’ thought’ he eventually criticized two aspects of Descartes’ philosophy, especially: first, he believed the essential character of bodies was hardness or solidity, rather than extension alone – res extensa; second, very important for the development of More’s peculiar system, he did not limit the character of extension to matter alone, but he also believed extension pertained the non-material or, better, the ‘spiritual’, which is a conceptualization that eventually evolved into a new conception of space, taken over by Newton.
Leclerc begins the analysis of More’s system by considering his ‘theory of extension’, which had its foundation in the traditional conception of matter, during the XVI and the early XVII centuries. At first, the concept of ensouled matter (to offer a solution to the question of the origin of motion), then, the development of the concept of corporeal matter as a completely self-subsistent substance which required an external agency (God) to account for motion were the referential background arguments for developing his alternative system. More believed that the principle of activity of matter, which he considered fully actual and corporeal, couldn’t be itself material; therefore, he elaborated on the conception of ‘spiritus mundi’, already existing in the XVI century, to maintain what he called the ‘spiritus naturae’ as ‘the principle of activity of matter, that is, of the physical, of nature.’[110] Unlike Cusanus’ and Bruno’s doctrine of ‘explicatio Dei’ according to which the extensive character of the universe deriving from God could contract into individual existents, the extensive character of the spirit of nature — spiritus naturae — remained ‘one and unitary… alive (vitalis), ordering matter according to certain general laws. Constituting the manifestation of God’s wisdom… a substance incorporeal […] pervading the whole matter of the universe, and exercising a Plastical power therein according to the sundry predispositions and occasions in the parts it works upon, raising such “Phenomena” in the World, by directing the parts of the Matter, and their Motion, as cannot be resolved into mere Mechanical powers’.[111]
Leclerc briefly summarizes the essential characteristics of this ‘spirit of nature’ which is: unitary, extended, diffused everywhere and, therefore, capable of penetrating matter, that is, inclusive of matter. This conception of More’s ‘spiritus naturae’ had some important implications: 1) the spirit (its extension) is more general than (the extension of) matter; 2) being one and unitary, this spirit also exists where bodies are absent. This had far-reaching consequences for the solution of the quagmire concerning the void and the motion of bodies (and, therefore, the tenability of corporeal atomism): if Aristotle and Descartes were right in believing that no extent of nothingness could exist (either you call it the void or space), their theories had deficiencies concerning the question of motion (this is the recurrent position maintained by Leclerc, especially in regard to Descartes’s complete relativism); More’s ‘spirit of nature’ was an alternative solution to the problem of the void and motion since this ‘spirit’, being extended everywhere, ‘extends and fills the spaces in between bodies’, therefore allowing motion.[112] 3) being one, unitary, and extended everywhere, also entails the spirit being homogeneous and, most of all, infinite in extent; 4) from all this, it also follows that the spirit of nature cannot move, it is immobile; this means: 5) it hosts the motion of bodies, without being movable, that is: ‘this spirit of nature must constitute the ultimate place, the locus, of motion.’[113]
…this spirit of nature must constitute the ultimate place, the locus, of motion.
To sum up, according to More’s conception, the spirit of nature is an explanation for the activity of matter and the problems concerning locomotion. If Descartes’ theory entailed a complete relativity of motion (which Leclerc calls ‘a fatal imprecision’), things are different with More; these differences can be reduced to just one fundamental question: a different conception of place. This is the basic argument with which Leclerc concludes the recognition of More’s doctrine. Since it is an argument of the utmost importance (also for the general vicissitudes of this website and for my position on spatial/placial concepts as well), I will consider Leclerc’s analysis of More’s concept of place in detail.
The questions of place, body and motion are deeply entangled; since Aristotle’s definition of place, his critics pointed out the necessity of a clear division between body and place on the one hand, and the necessary presence of an extent deprived of bodies that could allow bodies to move, on the other hand. As we know, according to their critics, Aristotle’s and Descartes’ theories missed those two requirements. What their theory missed, More maintained, was: 1) a concept of ‘locus internus’, immovable in itself, which could give a precise account of motion without falling into complete relativism; 2) a clear distinction between place and body (for Aristotle they were correlated entities, they could have no independent existence; while for Descartes place was distinguished from body only in thought). More believed the ‘spiritus naturae’ could solve both problems: this infinitely extended spirit, ‘distinct from matter… One, Simple, and Immovable’, constituted the place — the ‘spatium vel locus internus’ — in which bodies were (located) and could move; a place at the same time absolute and distinct from bodies.[114] Finally, after a very long debate, More’s doctrine, and specifically the conception of ‘spiritus naturae’ offered what physics needed: namely, ‘a clear and definite concept of place, distinct from and not dependent upon matter, as a requisite basis for the concept of motion as change of place’, a concept that will be later developed by Newton.[115]
More’s doctrine, and specifically the conception of ‘spiritus naturae’, offered what physics needed, namely ‘a clear and definite concept of place, distinct from and not dependent upon matter, as a requisite basis for the concept of motion as change of place’.
Here, among an uncountable number of contemporary scholars who have dealt with questions of space and place from different philosophical and physical perspectives, I want to point out the uniqueness and sensibility of Leclerc, for having spotted the concept of place (and not space, or the void) as the central issue to elucidate the relation between matter/bodies and motion, from the XVI century (beginning with authors like Scaliger and Telesio), onward (culminating in the theories of Descartes, More and, we are going to see, quite unexpectedly, Newton).
I want to point out the uniqueness and sensibility of Leclerc, for having spotted the concept of place (and not space) as the central issue to elucidate the relation between matter/bodies and motion
Concerning this spatial/placial question, with respect to More, Leclerc says: ‘It has been usual to interpret More as having […] propounded the concept of “space”… The consequence of such an interpretation, however, is that the fundamental problem, which More and after him Newton saw to be at issue, is lost sight of. More’s explicit concern was the concept of place and the problem of the ontological status of place.’[116] In a note following the aforementioned passage, Leclerc is even more explicit: ‘To read “space” for More’s “place” — as has been usual during the last hundred years — is to fall prey to the error of projecting on to earlier thought, conceptions which belong to a later period.’[117]
More’s explicit concern was the concept of place and the problem of the ontological status of place…To read “space” for More’s “place” — as has been usual during the last hundred years — is to fall prey to the error of projecting on to earlier thought, conceptions which belong to a later period.
Therefore, here, the basic argument is the elucidation of the ontological status of place: ‘What sort of existence or being could place have?’[118]
What sort of existence or being could place have?
While Aristotle’s theory of place regarded it as a bounding surface, several authors, in the XVI century, regarded it as the interior volume of the body: locus internus — this is the first characterization of space as a three-dimensional extent; therefore, at the origin of any ‘spatial’ debate, space is place… space is derivative from place, not the other way around like we are now used to consider the relation between space and place (it was to give a different name to place to avoid confusion with the traditional, Aristotelian understanding of place; place was the subject, the entity under consideration; space was the name given to the new characterization of place – I redirect you to the next Chapter, where this characterization of place as space is also explicit in Newton, against any common presupposition). The main problem with Aristotle’s definition of place was that it was completely tied to body, while Descartes alternative view of place had the further limitation of being an infinite extent — res extensa — which implied a complete relativity of place and motion. Granted that place had the character of extensiveness, More, like Aristotle and Descartes, believed place couldn’t be an extent of nothingness (that was a conceptualization beyond logic: the void and space as mere extents of nothing are illogic notions); therefore it had to be the extent of something: preferably, something non-corporeal, yet actually existent, to avoid the identification of place and matter, and therefore, to avoid the known problems concerning motion (an extent deprived of bodies is necessary…). Such an extent, Leclerc says, is what More’s theory provided: ‘This existent, because it is infinite and immobile, constitutes the infinite “locus internus” for the motion of all bodies.’[119] The only possibility for this extended existent to be — the ultimate and infinite place (locus internus) of motion —, was the extendedness of a spiritual entity: this is the ‘spiritus naturae’, properly. More enumerates a long list of twenty attributes (‘twenty titles’) ‘which fit the immobile extended [entity] or internal place (locus)…: One, Simple, Immobile, Eternal, Complete, Independent, Existing In itself, Subsisting by itself, Incorruptible, Necessary, immense, uncreated, Uncircumscribed, Incomprehensible, Omnipresent, Incorporeal, All-penetrating, All-embracing, being by its essence, Actual Being, Pure Act.’[120]
Overall, Leclerc rightly observes, this doctrine was a variation of Cusanus’ and Bruno’s ‘explicatio Dei’: ‘More’s “spiritus naturae” is God “explicans”; that is, it is God existing everywhere, in an actual manifestation of himself.’[121] In this way, Leclerc concludes, in addition to the solution to the problem concerning the relation between body, place and motion, More also provided a principle of activity for matter and the motion of bodies (that is their locomotion or change of place).
This was the physical and philosophical background available to Newton before he could fix inconsistencies, elucidate the issues, and develop his system — the final stage for the modern conception of nature.
18. Newton: The Physical Existent and the Mathematical Existent
Leclerc briefly mentions the influence that More’s doctrine exerted on Newton (an argument already discussed by Alexander Koyré in From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe). Leclerc believes that such influence should be preferably judged on philosophical rather than religious grounds, as it has often been done. It was More’s concept of place especially, and not the ambiguities behind Descartes’ theory of extension, which served to arrive at a clear exposition and intelligibility of the problems regarding the motion of bodies. That final elucidation was necessary for the definitive affirmation of the new science of physics, as the mathematical analysis of the motion of bodies. Newton’s Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica was exemplary for that, even in the title. But even if Newton was quite explicit about the mathematical background of his work, he was well aware of the philosophical problems involved in the question of motion: he made important advancements in developing More’s doctrine, as evidenced by Joseph Raphson — a mathematician and a younger contemporary of Newton — in his ‘De Spatio Reali seu Ente Infinito conamen Mathematico Metaphysicum’ (1702). Fundamentally, the development brought by Newton, Leclerc says, consisted in adding the mathematical characteristic to those ‘twenty titles’, or characters, already ascribed by More to his ‘spiritus naturae’. That addition had important implications on the intelligibility of the nature of the infinitely extended existent: as Leclerc says, Newton’s work determined ‘a vital change in More’s conception of extension’.[122]
The point, here, is the relation of the mathematical and the physical, a question More did not face directly. According to Leclerc, More ‘implicitly assumed from Descartes the correlation of the mathematical with the extension of matter, but did not see the difficulty presented when matter was identified with body…: More maintained that matter is divisible, but not infinitely so; division terminates in certain indivisible units or atoms of matter, called by him “monades physicae”. But […] if body be intrinsically mathematical it must be infinitely divisible, which means that atoms are impossible.’[123]
Descartes, as we have seen in the previous chapter, rejected any form of atomism and avoided the identification of the mathematical and corporeal body. In Descartes’ doctrine, body is different from matter: body, i.e., that which is corporeal, derives from matter, the physical — res extensa — which is the ultimate existent, and has a mathematical character (it admits divisibility, it is extended, homogeneous…), so we have an identification of the physical and the mathematical, but, at the same time, we have a distinction of the physical from the corporeal body (e.g., timber, is the physical, considered as matter; the object made of timber is the corporeal entity or body, deriving from the physical, or matter — the two, the physical and the corporeal, stay on different ontological levels).
For Raphson, as for Descartes, extensiveness was mathematical. Therefore, in regard to More’s spiritus naturae, being that spiritus extensive, it was considered essentially mathematical; moreover, being the spiritus infinitely extended, and being infinity an attribute of Divinity, and, as such, connoting absolute perfection (a position Raphson inherited from Cusanus, Leclerc says) it meant that anything infinitely extended, such as More’s spiritus naturae, ‘could only be divine’;[124] that is: the position at which Raphson arrived (as also More and Newton) was that ‘the distinction […] between God and the primary extended entity tends to disappear’.[125] This had some important implications Raphson was aware of: ‘Because infinity connotes perfection, and extension is infinite, extension is perfect… This perfection of extension can only be that of the infinite spirit. The doctrine that extension is of the essence of matter must be rejected as implying either pantheism or atheism… it is from the infinite as creator that all the finite derives…’[126] This identification of extension and the spiritual argued for by Raphson, is even more pronounced than in More’s doctrine.
The identification of extension with the spiritual (God) — a position which has also an echo in Bruno, other than in More and Raphson — and the ontological separation of the mathematical from matter, or the physical — a position in contrast to Descartes, who identified the mathematical and the physical —, is the fundamental position maintained by Newton, distinguishing him from all other thinkers.[127]
The identification of extension with the spiritual (God), and the ontological separation of the mathematical from matter, or the physical, is the fundamental position maintained by Newton
Leclerc now considers how these two characteristic moments evolved in Newton’s thought, by analysing the Opticks and the Principia Mathematica.
First, Leclerc observes that the basic concepts used by Newton for the development of his theory — concepts such as ‘matter’, ‘motion’, ‘place’, ‘space’, ‘time’ etc. that we find in the Scholium — were abstractions from the philosophical debates we have considered so far (‘abstractions […] necessary for the purposes of the mathematical principles’),[128] and which Newton was well-aware of. As a matter of fact, Leclerc adds, Newton couldn’t avoid entirely that philosophical debate: that is proved by the addition of philosophical statements to later editions of both the Principia and the Opticks. This question — Newton’s philosophical pronouncements and related theological ingredients present in his theory — has been soon dismissed as irrelevant to physics by later interpreters; yet, Leclerc notes, this caused ‘the loss of comprehension of the full extent and depth of the philosophical problems and issues involved in the modern scientific developments’.[129] Then, Leclerc starts with the enunciation of the main philosophical problems considered by Newton, which were often overlooked by later interpreters.
The question of the ‘principles of motion’ is the basic argument which evolved into other philosophical issues. Concerning this question, while Aristotle considered the principle of motion (kinēsis) inherent in the physical existent, a considerable number of authors (among them Descartes and Gassendi) considered motion was caused by an external agent — i.e., God as a deus ex machina —, while others(like Cusanus, Bruno or More) had more articulated positions concerning the agency of God for questions of motion. In this regard, Leclerc considers Newton’s position, starting from the acceptance of the conception of material atomism, expressed in the Opticks: Newton believed solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable Particles had inherent in them a ‘vis inertia’ , a ‘power of inactivity’, that is, he thought particles were capable of being moved by attractive forces and repulsive forces, or by active Principles such as Gravity (‘by which Planets and Comets keep their Motions in their Orbs, and Bodies acquire great Motion I falling’)[130] and that which causes Fermentation (‘by which the Hearth and Blood of Animals are kept in perpetual Motion and Heat, the inward Parts of the Earth are constantly warm’d…’).[131] But, Leclerc continues, Newton believed these principles that could move bodies were just external: the manifestation of an ultimate principle — the ultimate cause of motion. Newton’s understanding of this ultimate cause was based on the acceptance of More’s theory of extension pertaining to spirit, so that in the Opticks we read of ‘a certain most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies; by the force and action of which spirit the particles of bodies attract one another at near distances, and cohere if contiguous; and electric bodies operate to greater distances, as well repelling as attracting the neighbouring corpuscles; and light is emitted[…] and heats bodies; and all sensation is excited, and the members of animal bodies move at the command of the will…’.[132] Therefore, according to Newton, the ultimate principle, the source of all motion, is an all-pervading spirit acting everywhere. If More, by relying on the already established conception of spiritus mundi, called that spirit ‘spiritus naturae’, Newton is more explicit rejecting that view and explicitly attributing the nature of spirit to God. In this regard, Leclerc proposes a passage from the Opticks, which is illuminating (and famous for proposing the iconic image of this divine spirit as sensorium Dei): here, we read that the parts and functions of bodies ‘can be the effect of nothing else than the Wisdom and Skill of a powerful ever-living Agent, who being in all Places, is more able by his Will to move the Bodies within his boundless uniform Sensorium, and thereby to form and reform Parts of the Universe, than we are by our Will to move the Parts of our own Bodies.’ [133] Therefore, as Leclerc acutely observed, this God — Newton’s God — is not a deus ex-machina, an agent acting on the universe, or nature (a machine! Concerning the development and affirmation of the universe understood as a machine, see Chapter 5 of the article Space and Place: A Scientific History – Part One) from the outside; rather this God is ‘integral to the world machine’ (we could say: a deus in-machina).[134] In the General Scholium of the Principia, this understanding of spirit as God is formulated in even more detail, with an evident suggestion for this ‘divine’ spirit to be understood in spatial/placial terms (as Leclerc rightly affirms, in Newton’s doctrine there is a very close relation between the concept of spirit and the concept of place… or space). Let’s consider an important passage directly from Newton’s General Scholium: ‘This Being governs all things […] and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God Παντοκράτωρ, or universal Ruler… He is eternal and infinite […] that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity, his presence from infinity to infinity…’.[135] Leclerc observes that this characteristic presence of God is in agreement with More’s ‘all-pervading extension of the divine spirit’ and, even more important, Leclerc continues, it recalls Newton’s spatial/placial pronouncement in the first Scholium, which may suggest the identification between spirit, or God, and place: ‘Now no other places are immovable but those that, from infinity to infinity, do all retain the same given position one to another; and upon this account must ever remain unmoved; and do thereby constitute, what I call, immovable space.’ [136]
Now no other places are immovable but those that, from infinity to infinity, do all retain the same given position one to another; and upon this account must ever remain unmoved; and do thereby constitute, what I call, immovable space
The close connection — not to say the identification — between the spatial (or placial) and God is evident in the following passage from the General Scholium: ‘He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite… and, by existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space.’[137]
Following Leclerc, from those passages we can evince a couple of considerations of the greatest importance — two questions that will be completely overlooked, if not totally dismissed by later interpreters: first, it is place and not space the primary subject of Newton’s spatial/placial thinking (space is a derivative notion, that is, it derives from immovable places); second, ‘time and space are not as ontologically distinct and separate from each other as they become to subsequent thinkers who accepted Newton’s physics but repudiated his philosophy.’[138]
… first, it is place and not space the primary subject of Newton’s spatial/placial thinking; second, ‘time and space are not as ontologically distinct and separate from each other as they become to subsequent thinkers’
Leclerc develops his arguments concerning the concepts of space and place: the concept of space valid at the time of Newton and his contemporaries, such as Leibniz, derived its meaning from the early XVII century conceptualization of locus internus (therefore, as we have already seen, the subject of theorization and confrontation was place, while space was merely a derivative notion from place); with the work of Newton, space ‘enlarged’ its connotation to mean the ‘totality of places’, but preserved its ontological subordination to place (as we have said, it is place – the totality of places, precisely – that constitutes space). In the late XVIII century, this derivative, ontologically subordinated meaning of space became lost and space became a self-subsistent entity, or, using Leclerc’s own words, ‘space came to be conceived as itself some kind of existent’.[139] The importance of these passages cannot be overstated, because they are a sentence on how partial the general comprehension of past and present scholars regarding Newton’s main conceptualization (absolute space) is. In this regard, Leclerc concludes: ‘It is a serious error, in the last couple of centuries almost universally pervasive, to read this latter conception into Newton’,[140] that is: it is a serious error to read Newton’s (absolute) space as a kind of separate existent or a self-subsistent existent, given that, for Newton, the extensive character of space ultimately belongs to place, which is intimately connected to the activity of God; it is place which retains its position every time and everywhere, not space (space retains its absolute position because of the prior presence of place). Therefore, the basic extensive notion is absolute place, with respect to which motion becomes clearly intelligible.
To understand that, and, therefore, to put Newton’s abstract Definitions and the Scholium in the right interpretative perspective, we cannot dismiss as irrelevant Newton’s philosophical and theological arguments. To the question ‘What is place?’, ‘Newton’s answer is: place is ‘where’ God is active’, (as well as time is ‘when’ God is active).[141] Leclerc analyzes other passages from the General Scholium, where Newton’s philosophical position on spatial/placial and temporal concepts is more explicit. Place is in respect of God’s activity, but it is not to be identified with that activity; therefore, place (and time as well) manifests the extensive structure of that activity — together, space (the name given by Newton to the totality of immovable places) and time ‘manifest the infinite structure of God’s activity in distinction from God as such’.[142] Then space or place and time are virtues of God and, as we already know, ‘virtue cannot subsist without substance’ (God is the referential substance).[143] At the same time, on the one hand, this is an explicit pronouncement made by Newton on the impossibility to read space or place and time in separation from God or, better, in separation from God’s activity; on the other hand, this is also an important distinction from More’s theory which identified place with the divine spirit, therefore as a manifestation of God, and not as a manifestation of the activity of God, as Newton argued.
To sum up, from the complementarity and distinction between God and space or place in the theory of Newton, following Leclerc, we can draw a couple of important conclusions: first, the distinction between space or place and God does not imply that space or place is some kind of separate existent, as it has been interpreted by subsequent thinkers ‘who accepted Newton’s physics but rejected the [philosophical and theological] basis upon which he had constructed it… these thinkers […] assumed space as some kind of actual, but of course non-material, existent. It was this latter conception — Leclerc continues — which so quickly became mistaken for Newton’s doctrine and which Leibniz and Kant rejected as philosophically untenable’.[144] Concerning the erroneous or partial interpretations made in regard to Newton’s concept of space, Leclerc speaks of a ‘supposedly Newtonian conception of space’.[145]
Concerning the erroneous or partial interpretations made in regard to Newton’s concept of space, Leclerc speaks of a ‘supposedly Newtonian conception of space’
Second, (again a consideration which is contrary to any traditional interpretation of Newton’s space) ‘it is not space which is extended but it is God who is extended’, this fact meaning that space is not a kind of (self-subsistent) existent: Newton clearly saw that extension is an attribute and, as such, it cannot exist by itself: ‘attributes cannot exist without substances, and extension is an attribute.’[146] The extension pertains to God and his activity (God is the substance, God is extended), therefore space or place (and time as well) is ‘the abstract structure of the where of God’s activity’.[147] Therefore, in Newton’s doctrine, we must be careful in distinguishing the relation between extension as an attribute (of God, not of space!), God, who is the extended substance, and space, which is the locus (the place!) of God’s activity.
At the end of this important Chapter, Leclerc draws other conclusions from the confrontation between Newton and other thinkers. Concerning the main point of the entire question, the nature of the infinitely extended existent, considered as ‘one, simple, homogeneous and mathematical’ (that infinitely extended existent draws together questions of matter, motion, space, place and time), Bruno, Descartes and Newton had different positions: for Bruno, that entity was a metaphysical existent derived from God; Descartes identified that existent with the physical or matter — res extensa; while for Newton that infinitely extended existent was God.[148] As for the derivation of the physical bodies from that mathematical extensive existent (all three authors agreed on the mathematical nature of extension), Newton’s position diverged significantly from that of Bruno and Descartes: for Bruno, physical bodies derived from God’s action, as contractio Dei. Being a contraction of an infinite, mathematical entity the physical body was intrinsically mathematical (and this is in contradiction with Bruno’s belief in atomism). For Descartes, the physical was a derivation from the different kinds of motion taking place in the res-extensa. Against Descartes, Newton maintained that matter, or the physical, was corporeal, and, following More, he also maintained the derivation of bodies in connection with the activity of a divine entity or power (spiritus naturae for More, God for Newton): starting from More’s conception of place (an absolute place, in the end) Newton believed it was from the particular occupation of different places that different bodies derived. To sum up, ‘for Newton there is one fundamental infinite mathematical extensiveness, from which the particular, finite mathematical extensive features derive to bodies, that is, to matter, the physical… Newton separated [the ultimate extended entity] from matter, identifying matter with body and regarding the infinitely extended existent as spiritual.’ [149]
The conclusion of this chapter is reserved for a brief recognition of the concept of infinity with which Leclerc opened the book. According to Leclerc, Newton’s conception of infinity was the culmination of a long development that commenced with the ancient Greeks: Aristotle showed the concept of infinity could not belong to physical actuality, rather it could only be conceived of as potentiality, as the mathematical; during the Medieval period the concept of infinity was associated to God, ‘the source and origin of physical actuality’, even though a hiatus between ‘infinity as pertaining to God and infinity as pertaining to mathematics’ remained.[150] Cusanus’ doctrine of the world as explicatio Dei, brought together the physical and the mathematical, but only with Newton we have a complete identification of the divine and the mathematical infinite.
19. The Modern Conception of Nature
Leclerc closes PART III with a chapter dedicated to the resume of those basic issues that eventually developed into the modern conception of nature. The new conceptualization of nature was a conflation of three main systems: Cartesian, Newtonian and Leibnizian systems, with the elimination of incompatible aspects and of arguments hard to accept (e.g., the Cartesian theory of vortices, Newtonian theology, or the Leibnizian theory of pre-established harmony).
The new conceptualization of nature was a conflation of Cartesian, Newtonian and Leibnizian systems, with the elimination of incompatible aspects, and of arguments hard to accept
The focus on partial aspects of those doctrines and the abstraction from their general premises was parallel to ‘the rapid loss in the eighteenth century of an adequate grasp of the fundamental issues of the philosophy of nature.’[151] The decline of interest in the philosophical issues concerning nature was favoured by the increasing success of the new science of physics — Newtonian physics — the mathematical science of the motion of bodies. Being physical questions settled (at least, Leclerc observes, that was the belief after the success of Newtonian physics) philosophers turned their attention to the mental or spiritual aspects, leaving specialists — ‘who came to be known as “scientists”, from “science”, “knowledge”’ —[152] the realm of the physical. One consequence was the increasing bifurcation between the physical and the mental, which came to have an independent substantial status, just like the physical. Concerning this question, Leclerc noted that ‘Hume set out explicitly to do for human nature what Newton had done for material nature.’[153] Therefore, Leclerc continues, from the disastrous separation of the physical and mental domains, there was ‘the gradual emergence, increasingly freed from philosophical criticism, of a new conception of nature.’[154]
From the conflation of Cartesian, Newtonian and Leibnizian systems, three characteristic aspects of the modern conception of nature emerged: 1) a new conception of space; 2) a new conception of matter; and 3) the concept of absolute time.
1) The new concept of space was fundamental to the affirmation of the modern concept of nature. Cartesian and Newtonian elements combined to the affirmation of this new concept of space. As already observed in the previous chapter by Leclerc, ‘Newton’s concept of space was widely misunderstood even in his lifetime’, and Leibniz’s interpretation made no exception.[155] According to Leclerc, what was so controversial, open to misunderstanding and, eventually, not acceptable for Newton’s interpreters was the derivation of space from God, space as the place of God’s activity (which means, in Newton’s intention, that God is extended, God is the subject of extension, not space, which is derivative from God’s activity, therefore a conception of space untenable as a self-standing notion). In the Clarke-Leibniz correspondence this question comes to the fore: in the Fifth Reply, Clarke, who, according to Leclerc, was one of the few interpreters who grasped all the connotations of Newton’s concept of space, is explicit in showing Leibniz the peculiarity of Newton’s concept: ‘God does not exist In Space, and In Time; but His Existence causes Space and Time. And when […] we say that he exists in All Space and in All Time; the Words mean only that he is Omnipresent and Eternal […] and not that Space and Time are Beings distinct from him, and IN which he exists.’[156] Therefore Leibniz, who had previously shown the untenability of space as an attribute of God, and as a creation of God missed the target of his criticism (Newton), showing he did not interpret appropriately Newton’s conception of space: according to Newton, space was neither an attribute nor a creation of God, therefore, in these respects, there was not a distance between Leibniz and Newton; space was the where (the place) of God’s activity. As I said in a passage before, we must be careful in distinguishing the relation between extension as an attribute (of God, not of space!), God, who is the extended substance, and space, which is the locus (the place!) of God’s activity (taking this interpretation to the extreme we arrive at the questionable identification of God and space or place). Leclerc shows that Leibniz, as well as many other interpreters of Newton’s concept of space, did not see those important different connotations.
Leclerc continues this important question elaborating on the connotation of the word space more in detail.
Space, in the origin, meant ‘extent, stretch, interval’ — and this is the primary meaning which continues to our days.[157] Later, beginning with the XVI century, space also connoted ‘the extent in which body is or might be as the “locus internus”, the internal place of body.’[158]The two meanings conflated to identify the new XVII-century connotation of space ‘in the sense of extended place in general or in totality.’[159] Then, in the XVII century, space was used to signify ‘an extent’, an ‘internal place’ or, simply, ‘place’ alone.
Leclerc notes a curious coincidence and, at the same time, an important difference between Newton’s and Leibniz’s conceptions of space: as we have seen, in the Principia, Newton explicitly understands space as the totality of places. The same consideration is made by Leibniz when he defines space in the Fifth Letter to Clarke: ‘… Lastly, space is that which results from places taken together.’[160] Therefore, both authors seem to attribute place ontological primacy with respect to space, a derivative notion. How can Leibniz fail to understand Newton’s concept of space if both start from those apparently identical premises? Simply — Leclerc says — for Leibniz space exists with reference to things (‘Space is the order of coexisting things’, Leibniz maintained),[161] while for Newton space exits with reference to God (with reference to his presence and activity). If Leibniz missed that important aspect (and this is the main reason for his erroneous interpretation of Newton’s conception of space, according to Leclerc), we cannot be surprised that ‘Newton’s conception failed to be understood by all but a very few.’ [162] That’s why certain aspects intrinsic to Newton’s original conceptualization were rejected, changing the overall meaning of the Newtonian concept of space (and that’s why Leclerc, on a few occasions, speaks of a ‘supposedly Newtonian conception of space’ – at pages 220, and 230). Let’s see what Leclerc says in this respect: ‘Newton’s conception of God not being accepted by many, the conception of space as an attribute of God was rejected, and the other alternative, that of space as a self-subsistent existent was gradually and increasingly accepted despite the criticism…’.[163] Apart from the rejection of the theological component, the (supposedly Newtonian) conception of space indirectly co-opted the Cartesian conception of res extensa to conceive of space as a self-subsistent existent of mathematical origin; as Leclerc says: ‘the virtues of Descartes’ conception of a one, infinite, mathematical extended, were not lightly to be given up.’[164] In the conflation of Newtonian and Cartesian ingredients, which determined a new conception of space, the mathematical separates from the physical (as in Newton’s intention, and contrarily to what Descartes argued for) so that infinite (mathematical) divisibility could be ascribed to space, which became an ‘infinitely extended continuum’, while the finite character of matter became the expression of the physical, so that the atomic hypothesis could be preserved, being exempted from infinite divisibility. This understanding of space as ‘self-subsistent existent […] immutable and changeless, constituting the absolute places of things’ [165]was in full accord with what Newton expressed in the first Scholium, provided we completely forget the derivation of space from place (and God), which also Newton expressed in the Scholium. And here we are, at the complete reversal of the relative status of place and space, which they originally had in Newton’s doctrine.
here we are at the complete reversal of the relative status of place and space, which they originally had in Newton’s doctrine.
Given the importance of this issue, which often goes unnoticed, and which is at the base of modern and contemporary erroneous interpretations of space, I report a rather extensive passage from Leclerc:
Newton had maintained that place is derivative from God’s activity, from God’s presence, as the “where” of God’s activity, and space is the totality of places since God’s presence is “everywhere”. That is, in Newton’s doctrine place is the fundamental concept and space is derivative. In the new eighteenth-century doctrine space supplants God […] and place becomes the derivative. It is not only in Newton’s doctrine that place is a fundamental concept in the philosophy of nature; we have seen that it was so all the way back to Aristotle. The new doctrine is thus an inversion of all antecedent thought. As a consequence the concept of place fell into the background; indeed in the new doctrine it virtually disappeared, the concept of a geometrical point functioning in its stead. Its elimination as a fundamental concept is manifested too in the scholarship of the last century and a half failing almost entirely to recognize the significance of the status of place in the antecedent philosophy of nature, with the result that “place” is read as meaning “space”, and indeed even in commentaries on and translations of Aristotle topos, “place”, is rendered as “space”. Nevertheless, despite this deposition of the concept of place, it has not become wholly lost; it persists, for the most part unrecognized, as a subordinate ingredient in the connotation of the term “space”, evidenced by the fact that in many occasions of the contemporary use of the term it is with the meaning of “place”. [166]
Among other important implications of the new conception of space, two, at least, have to be highlighted, according to Leclerc: first, the new connotation of geometry, which was now to be regarded as ‘the science of space’, removing any trace of the etymological heritage of the term (which was explicit in the Aristotelian view of geometry as ‘the science of the extensive features of bodies’),[167] and acquiring the Cartesian connotation, which was behind the purely mathematical essence of the res-extensa as a self-standing entity (therefore, we speak of Cartesian space, Euclidean space, non-Euclidean spaces, etc.).
Another important implication was that this new space, as a some-thing extended (an extended existent, that is… an extent) without material consistence, could overcome the difficult notion of the void, bypassing the embarrassing question of an extended nothing, while retaining the requisite of an empty place for the occurrence of the motion of (atomic) bodies.
2) The latter consideration, on the motion of bodies, takes us to the second important characteristic implied with the modern conception of nature: a new conception of matter. In the previous PART II, we have seen that the XVII century conception of matter as fully actual and changeless did not have an inherent principle of motion; this led to the necessity of a deus ex machina (God) as the principle or source of motion of matter. This solution was often criticized if not explicitly rejected by many. To overcome that difficulty, Leibniz believed a new conception of matter was necessary, having in itself the principle of motion.
Before briefly exposing the main traits of the Leibnizian concept of matter, which contributed to the affirmation of the new, modern conception of matter, Leclerc proposes a synthetic historical resume of the main passages concerning the problematic vicissitudes of the relation matter-motion.
It was Galileo — Leclerc says — who gave direction to modern physics as the science of the motion of bodies, proposing a very different picture with respect to Aristotle. The Stagirite believed matter had the principle of motion in itself (kinesis), and considered motion a process of transition (of matter) from potentiality to actuality. The XVII-century concept of matter as fully actual, eliminated the concept of potentiality from the physical, and motion became locomotion, that is the passage of a material body from one place to another. Yet, from this picture emerged the problem of the nature of motion, given that matter, now in itself inert stuff, was merely ‘movable’, as Newton said. Two alternative solutions were proposed: the first accorded motion ‘a quasi-independent, absolute or ultimate status’, considering bodies simply in motion, so that through the study of the different types of motion was possible to explain different physical phenomena – this is physics as pure kinetics (Galileo and Huygens were the chief proponents of this vision).[168] The second alternative rejected the possibility to understand motion in itself as some kind of actual existent: ‘motion is the motion of something’;[169] thereby, the necessity to give an account of the origin, source, or principle of motion: how bodies come to be in motion? What is the cause of their motion? To answer those questions, Leclerc turns to Leibniz: like Newton he believed in some kind of “active principle” as the source of motion, but unlike Newton (and Descartes) he rejected as untenable the possibility to look for that active source outside body or matter — here, according to Leibniz, originated ‘the fallacy of a deus ex machina’.[170] The only alternative was to look inside matter or body to find that principle: matter had to have this principle inside, inherent in itself, a force, or power — dynamis in Greek— capable to produce its own motion; for this reason — Leclerc says — Leibniz called his physics ‘dynamics’, to distinguish from the kinetic physics of Huygens and Newton, and from the phoronomic physics of Descartes.[171] Leclerc explains the main feature of Leibniz’s conception of matter pointing out the differences with respect to previous conceptions: in the atomistic theory (Basso, Gassendi, Huygens, Newton) the physical was identified with matter, conceived as bodily (inert, solid stuff); Descartes’ rejection of atomism entailed a different conception of matter: he identified the physical with matter, whose characteristic aspect was extension — res extensa —, while body was a derivation from (the different types of) motion, not a derivation from matter. Leibniz incorporated some elements from traditional atomism and some from Descartes, ‘accepting atoms as the fundamental physical existents, as substances, but he introduced a radically different conception of atoms. His atoms – which he came to call “monads” – are non-extensive, non bodily, and non material; he identified them rather with the “res cogitans” of Descartes. In Leibniz’s new doctrine extension, body, and matter are conceived as derivative from the atomic substances […] by aggregations of atoms.’[172]
The introduction of Leibniz’s concept of matter was necessary for Leclerc to demonstrate that the modern concept of matter, just like in the case of the concept of space, was an aggregation of different ingredients removed from their original contexts: in fact — Leclerc says — while many aspects of Leibniz’s doctrine were discarded, one main aspect was retained in the new conception of matter: the conception of atomic substances as active, as agents sources of motion, which conflated with the traditional vision ‘of material atoms as solid extended bodies’.[173] This activity intrinsic to atoms, which for Leibniz had a strong philosophical or spiritual connotation, was ‘pragmatically’ associated with certain Newtonian ingredients — the active principles as ‘forces’, such as gravitational forces — removing even in this case the philosophical and theological aspects which were integral parts to the Newtonian doctrine. Leclerc concludes: ‘by this arbitrary combination of Leibnizian and Newtonian conceptions there arose the eighteenth-century theory of “dynamic” matter […] this theory of matter had the additional advantage of being able to accommodate the physical concept of “energy”, and thus to be in consonance with the Galileo-Huygens conception of the ultimacy of motion.’[174]
3)The other important character that contributed to the formalization of the modern conception of nature was the concept of absolute time, which is commonly attributed to Newton. This concept too came to acquire the meaning of an ultimate independent existent, that is independent of other ultimates such as matter, motion and space. But, as we have just seen in the previous chapter, the attribution of that concept to Newton, sic et simpliciter, is erroneous; as Leclerc says: ‘Newton accorded only matter an independent status, as the physical existent, as substance. For him neither space nor time were independent existents; the concepts were abstract derivatives as the “where” and “when” of God’s activity. And since God is one, space and time are not separate from each other; for as Newton said in the General Scholium, since God necessarily “exists always and everywhere”, therefore “every particle of space is always, and every indivisible moment of duration is everywhere.’[175]
So, in the XVIII century, in addition to matter, space and time as well were considered independent existents. Leclerc asks: ‘What kind of existents are they? Are they also to be regarded as ‘physical’? – for they were not regarded as mental or spiritual.’[176] Those questions give Leclerc the possibility to elucidate the ‘new’ meaning of the term ‘physical’ which, in the XVIII century, ceases to have any philosophical relevance in connection with its etymological Greek root, ‘physis’, and came to signify the mere attribute from ‘physics’, the science of the motion of bodies, even if — it seems to me — a certain (reduced) connotation from the old ‘physis’ remained latent in the term, as that which is sensible and concrete (while the correlative, more abstract connotation of physis existing in the old term, was completely lost, or, better acquired a connotation outside of the physical as the intrinsic character – the nature- of a body).
What kind of existents are they [space and time]? Are they also to be regarded as ‘physical’?
With regard to space and time, Newton’s original intuition concerning their unity (in the name and presence of God), was vindicated in the XX century by Einstein and Minkowski. ‘Recent thought — Leclerc adds — has also brought matter and motion into closer relation with space and time… But what precisely is the relation between them is by no means clear.’[177]
Here we are at the frontier of a new conceptualization of Nature and of the concepts that are necessary to envision it (in this line of thought I put the argumentation of this website, which proposes a reformed understanding of the concepts of space and place as a way to a new conception of nature). Interrogatives surpass answers. Is spacetime to be regarded as fundamental, and matter, or the energy field derivative? ‘What precisely is here being identified as the physical existent [that is physis, or nature] and how is it to be conceived?’ Leclerc asks.[178]
What precisely is here being identified as the physical existent and how is it being conceived?
These considerations, which conclude PART III of The Nature of Physical Existence, are, at the same time, the introduction for the next PART IV, in which Leclerc investigates, through different criticisms to the modern model of nature, how physical existence is to be understood in the twentieth century, by considering similitudes and differences between Leibniz’s and Alfred N. Whitehead’s thinking, and by developing his own metaphysical thinking.
Given the considerable length of this article, I have included PART IV and the most relevant issues considered by Leclerc in the book The Philosophy of Nature (1986), in the forthcoming article — Place, Space, and the New Conception of Nature: here, we will follow Leclerc’s development of metaphysical and physical arguments for a new conception of nature, in the light of post-Newtonian and contemporary research and criticism.
I conclude by reminding those of you who are interested in the integral version of this article, with the detailed presentation of PART I and PART II, that you can ask for it contacting me via the CONTACT page.
Notes
[1] Ivor Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1972; Ivor Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986). The latter publication mostly contains previously published essays, which cover the basic arguments Leclerc exposed in the book The Nature of Physical Existence; in addition to those essays, the book presents a new section investigating problems and issues concerning ‘how physical existence is to be understood in the twentieth century’, and containing the development of Leclerc’s own metaphysical thinking, introduced in the previous book. Leclerc’s conclusions present some points of contact with the processual and systemic definition of place I have already introduced, and — taking the due distance between a philosopher and an architect — with the outline of the ‘metaphysics of place’ that I am merely sketching @rethinkingspaceandplace.com in broad strokes, e.g., see the articles The Place of Being and Becoming, Being as Place: Introduction to Metaphysics Part One and Part Two (I suspect this affinity is the result of Whitehead’s fruitful legacy, a common reference and a starting point for both Leclerc and me). Concerning the other essays by Leclerc I have mentioned, ‘The Relation Between Natural Science and Metaphysics’ is included the book edited by Richard F. Kitchener, The World View of Contemporary Physics: Does It Need a New Metaphysics? The essay ‘Concepts of Space’ is included in the book edited by Paula R. Backsheider, Probability, Time, and Space in Eighteenth-Centuty Literature.
[2] Ivor Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 97.
[3] Ibid., 97.
[4] Ibid., 98.
[5] Ivor Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1972), 15. Underlined parts of the text are mine.
[6] Ibid., 15.
[7] Ibid., 29.
[8] Ibid., 29.
[9] Ibid., 30.
[10] Ibid., 30.
[11] see also note [19] in the article Place, Space, and the Fabric of Reality.
Concerning space and geometry, Albert Einstein said: ‘Euclid’s mathematics, however, knew nothing of this concept [space] as such; it confined itself to the concepts of the object, and the spatial relations between objects. The point, the plane, the straight line, the segment are solid objects idealized. All spatial relations are reduced to those of contact (the intersection of straight lines and planes, points lying on straight lines, etc.). Space as a continuum does not figure in the conceptual system at all. This concept was first introduced by Descartes, when he described the point-in-space by its coordinates. Here for the first time geometrical figures appear, in a way, as parts of infinite space, which is conceived as a three-dimensional continuum’; in Albert Einstein,‘The Problem Of Space, Ether, and The Field in Physics’, in Ideas and Opinions (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1954), 279.
Analogously, concerning the understanding of space in the classical Greek world, Heidegger said: ‘The Greeks have no word for “space”. This is no accident, for they do not experience the spatial according to “extensio” but instead according to place (“topos”) as “chōra”, which means neither place nor space but what is taken up and occupied by what stands there.’ In Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 69. See also note [111] in Being as Place: Introduction to Metaphysics – Part One.
Another work I often quote, to unveil the (fallacious) presupposition still carried over by the concept of space is that of Professor and mathematician Salomon Bochner: in his Introduction to the entry ‘space’ in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, he says that the concept of ‘background space’ — the continuum in which things exist — did not belong to the ancient Greek thought, but it was the result of a long historical process that reached its apical moment in the modern era, with the works of Descartes and Newton — see: Solomon Bochner, ‘Space’, in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Volume IV (New York: Charles Scribner’s Son, 1973), 295. That long historical process Bochner refers to, where geometry mixes with astronomy, I have narrated, through the work of Julian Barbour, in the article Space and Place: A Scientific History – Part One.
More recently, historian of philosophy and science Vincenzo De Risi, in his excellent introduction of the book ‘Mathematizing Space’, explicitly discusses the argument, maintaining an analogous position to those I have just mentioned: ‘the definition of geometry as the science of space, however standard, is properly speaking modern. Should we go through the thirteen books of Euclid’s Elements, or in fact the entire corpus of ancient mathematics, we would find almost no occurrence of spatial concepts or terms. Were we to follow the millennial development of Classical geometry in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, we would still not find any reference to space’, in Vincenzo De Risi, Introduction to Mathematizing Space: The Objects of Geometry from Antiquity to the Early Modern Age, ed. Vincenzo De Risi (Cham: Springer, 2015), 1.
[12] Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence, 30.
[13] Ibid., 32.
[14] Ibid., 33.
[15] Ibid., 34.
[16] Ibid., 35.
[17] Ibid., 36.
[18] Ibid., 36.
[19] Ibid., 56.
[20] Ibid., 68.
[21] Ibid., 74.
[22] Ibid., 75.
[23] Ibid., 81-82.
[24] Ibid., 96.
[25] Ibid., 102-103.
[26] Ibid., 106.
[27] Ibid., 127.
[28] Ibid., 128.
[29] Ibid., 128.
[30] Ibid., 129.
[31] Ibid., 133.
[32] Ibid., 133.
[33] Ibid., 134.
[34] Ibid., 135.
[35] Ibid., 137.
[36] Ibid., 139.
[37] Ibid., 141-142.
[38] Ibid., 144.
[39] Ibid., 146.
[40] Ibid., 146-147.
[41] Ibid., 147. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke discerned between primary qualities of bodies (solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number), and secondary qualities (colours, sounds, tastes, odours), the latter being ‘nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities’. In, John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: Ward, Lock, & Co., 1689), 85.
[42] Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence, 147-148.
[43] This is the quotation at the beginning of PART III: ‘Foundational in the modern theory of nature is the concept of matter as an independent actual existent or substance, in itself devoid of any internal process of change or becoming, and capable only of change of place, that is, locomotion. Nature is basically understood in terms of this matter and its locomotion’, page 151.
[44] Ibid., 152.
[45] Ibid., 152.
[46] Ibid., 153.
[47] Ibid., 154.
[48] Ibid., 154.
[49] Ibid., 154.
[50] Ibid., 154.
[51] Ibid., 155.
[52] Ibid., 155.
[53] Ibid., 156.
[54] Ibid., 156.
[55] Ibid., 156.
[56] Ibid., 156.
[57] Ibid., 157.
[58] Ibid., 157.
[59] Ibid., 158.
[60] Ibid., 159.
[61] Ibid., 159.
[62] Ibid., 159.
[63] Ibid., 160.
[64] Edward Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 127.
[65] Ivor Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 98.
[66] Edward Casey, The Fate of Place, 127.
[67] Benjamin Brickman, ‘On Physical Space’, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1943), 225.
[68] Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence, 161.
[69] Ibid., 161.
[70] Ibid., 161.
[71] Ibid., 162.
[72] Ibid., 162.
[73] Ibid., 163.
[74] Ibid., 165.
[75] Ibid., 166.
[76] Ibid., 167.
[77] Ibid., 169.
[78] Ibid., 169.
[79] Ibid., 169.
[80] Ibid., 170.
[81] Ibid., 170-171
[82] Ibid., 174.
[83] Ibid., 172.
[84] Ibid., 172.
[85] Ibid., 175.
[86] Ibid., 175.
[87] Ibid., 176.
[88] Ibid., 176.
[89] Ibid., 177.
[90] Ibid., 177.
[91] Ibid., 179.
[92] Ibid., 180.
[93] Ibid., 181.
[94] Ibid., 182.
[95] Ibid., 183.
[96] Ibid., 183.
[97] Ibid., 184.
[98] Ibid., 186.
[99] Ibid., 187.
[100] Ibid., 188.
[101] Ibid., 188.
[102] Ibid., 191.
[103] Ibid., 192.
[104] Ibid., 192.
[105] Ibid., 193.
[106] Ibid., 194.
[107] Ibid., 195-196.
[108] Ibid., 197-198.
[109] Ibid., 199.
[110] Ibid., 200-201.
[111] Ibid., 201.
[112] Ibid., 202.
[113] Ibid., 202.
[114] Ibid., 203.
[115] Ibid., 203.
[116] Ibid., 203.
[117] Ibid., 203.
[118] Ibid., 204
[119] Ibid., 204
[120] Ibid., 205.
[121] Ibid., 205.
[122] Ibid., 208.
[123] Ibid., 208.
[124] Ibid., 209.
[125] Ibid., 209.
[126] Ibid., 209.
[127] Ibid., 210.
[128] Ibid., 211.
[129] Ibid., 211.
[130] Ibid., 213.
[131] Ibid., 213.
[132] Ibid., 215.
[133] Ibid., 215.
[134] Ibid., 216.
[135] Ibid., 216-217.
[136] Ibid., 217.
[137] Ibid., 217.
[138] Ibid., 218.
[139] Ibid., 218.
[140] Ibid., 218.
[141] Ibid., 218.
[142] Ibid., 220.
[143] Ibid., 220.
[144] Ibid., 220.
[145] Ibid., 220.
[146] Ibid., 221.
[147] Ibid., 221.
[148] Ibid., 221.
[149] Ibid., 223.
[150] Ibid., 224.
[151] Ibid., 226.
[152] Ibid., 226.
[153] Ibid., 227.
[154] Ibid., 227.
[155] Ibid., 227-228.
[156] Ibid., 228.
[157] Ibid., 229.
[158] Ibid., 229.
[159] Ibid., 229.
[160] Ibid., 229.
[161] Ibid., 230.
[162] Ibid., 230.
[163] Ibid., 230.
[164] Ibid., 230.
[165] Ibid., 231.
[166] Ibid., 231-232.
[167] Ibid., 232.
[168] Ibid., 233.
[169] Ibid., 234.
[170] Ibid., 235.
[171] Ibid., 235.
[172] Ibid., 236.
[173] Ibid., 236.
[174] Ibid., 237.
[175] Ibid., 237. In the original statement by Newton the terms that I underlined correspond to terms in italics.
[176] Ibid., 237.
[177] Ibid., 238.
[178] Ibid., 238.
Works Cited
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Brickman, Benjamin, ‘On Physical Space’. Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1943), 224-245.
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Image Credits
Featured Image by Bernd Dittrich on unsplash.com: dead camel thorn tree in the Deadvlei area, Sossusvlei, Namibia.
Image 1, Euclidean Space, on wikipedia.com
Image 2, elaboration based on a wood engraving by an unknown artist, first documented in Camille Flammarion’s book, L’atmosphere: météorologie populaire, 1888.
