"Fixing Fit Limits to Nature": William of Conches and the Quest for "Naturalistic" Disorder in Medieval Natural Philosophy

Abstract

The question of the continuity of "science" has dogged historians of science at least since Pierre Duhem argued that "if we must" locate the scientific revolution, we should locate it in the condemnation of 219 "Aristotelian" theses by the Archbishop of Paris on March 7, 1277. Duhem’s thesis has been under continual challenge ever since it was first put forward. It has been pointed out - inter alia - that the elements of Newtonian mechanics which are supposedly anticipated are quite different from those medieval ideas which they supposedly anticipate, that it does disservice to medieval natural philosophy to see it as a part-way house to Newton, and more recently, that neither in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, nor in the sixteenth were people engaged in "science" but rather in natural philosophy, which is a different activity, and more directly engaged with theology. Indeed, Amos Funkenstein, and more recently Peter Harrison,- have argued that the natural philosophy of the sixteenth century is a secularization of theological theses. Further, some of the supposed post-1277 "anti-Aristotelians" saw themselves as Aristotelians, and it would not be difficult to show that Ockham and Scotus are as deeply committed (indeed perhaps more so) to Aristotelian theses than are Albert and Thomas. To the extent that they criticize Aristotelian theses, this is already a feature of pre-1277 thought.

Nonetheless, shorn of its problematic assumptions concermng “science” and of the early modern project, there remains an attractiveness to the Duhem argument that there is a continuity between the medieval natural philosophical project and that of the early modern period. It has been demonstrated that Galileo, for example, borrowed significantly from medieval natural philosophical ideas. Likewise, the theological history of natural philosophy which Harrison and Funkenstein outline demonstrates considerable continuity with the Middle Ages.