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Medieval Natural Philosophy and Modern Science—Continuity and Revolution

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Medieval Natural Philosophy and Modern Science—Continuity and Revolution MEDIEVAL NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN SCIENCE—CONTINUITY AND REVOLUTION André Goddu Introduction In his perfectly succinct summary of William of Ockham’s approach to natural philosophy, Stephen Brown identified and explicated Ock- ham’s most important philosophical move.1 In citing Obadiah Walk- er’s seventeenth-century exaggeration that Ockham alone made a keen study of the theory of language, Professor Brown wanted to emphasize by contrast how Ockham’s views fit in with those of his predeces- sors. Ockham’s claim that words immediately, properly, and primarily may signify things themselves, Brown shows, follows a tradition that includes Roger Bacon, Peter John Olivi, John Duns Scotus and Walter Burley among others. Not very far into his summary, however, Brown turns to Ockham’s contribution to this area of linguistic theory. In his theory of supposition, Ockham claimed not only that terms or words typically signify things rather than concepts, but also that even common terms signify individual, not universal, things. Individuals are the only significates; universals are concepts or words, and they can signify only individual things. This is “the basic reversal”, that, in Brown’s words, “Ockham brings about in supposition theory”.2 With that move, Ockham introduced an interpretation of the Aristotelian categories that he did not fully explain, and that has led to controversy ever since. His distinction between absolute and connotative terms has led most readers to interpret Ockham’s account in an extremely reduc- tionistic way. Ockham’s failure to explain himself clearly has obscured both his meaning and his influence. Brown emphasizes clearly that for Ockham terms expressing all of the categories other than substance and abstract quality terms “signify something real but not a distinct thing existing subjectively in singular substances like individual inhering 1 Cf. S. Brown, “A Modern Prologue to Ockham’s Natural Philosophy”, in: W. Kluxen / J. Beckmann, et al. (edd.), Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter (Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13/1), Berlin–New York 1981, pp. 107–129. 2 Ibid., p. 112. 214 andrÉ goddu qualities”.3 Although I consider it unlikely that Ockham was as reduc- tionistic as most readers have concluded, my evaluation here focuses not on his theory but on how Ockham applied it and how others reacted to it. His application of the theory, especially his criticisms of contemporaries based on his theory, provided a foundation for some of the most important developments in fourteenth-century natural philosophy. As Brown also notes in interpreting passages from Ock- ham’s Summa logicae I, chapter 51, the Sentences, and his commen- taries on the Physics, connotative terms must at times be replaced by descriptions, and this is particularly true in natural philosophy.4 There are two parallel stories to relate here, however. One has to do with the relationship between late-medieval and early modern natural philosophy, and the other between late-medieval and early modern science. Although these are themes somewhat removed from Stephen Brown’s principal interests, he has in the tradition of all great founda- tional studies provided the inspiration for interpretations of late- medieval and early modern thought that lead to conclusions that transcend his explicit goals. Where Ockham fits in this reconstruction is complicated by the use to which seventeenth-century readers put his ideas.5 Brown began his essay by reference to a seventeenth-century revival and application of Ockham’s logic but quickly returned to the four- teenth century. I want to retain both poles in this essay, and examine transitions. This essay represents the latest revisions of reflections from earlier papers, one of which was given at Rome in 1996 and published in 2003,6 and the second from a conference at Maynooth in 2005 that both Brown and I attended. It is with gratitude and pleasure that I dedicate this latest effort to Professor Brown. 3 Ibid., p. 120. With respect to metaphysics, Brown, too, regards Ockham’s overall program as too reductionistic. 4 Ibid., pp. 121–124. 5 By focusing on his texts and his readers, we have to acknowledge at least three ‘Ockhams’—the Ockham of the fourteenth century, the Ockham available in editions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the Ockham constructed by contem- porary historiography. ‘Ockham’ is, so to speak, a connotative term. 6 The conference was organized by Alfonso Maierù, and my paper, dedicated to the memory of Amos Funkenstein, was in the session devoted to philosophy of nature and modern science as part of the VI Convegno di Studi della Società Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale and entitled Pensiero medievale e modernità, Rome 1996. A member of the session, Dino Buzzetti, later arranged to have the essay in a revised form translated by his daughter into Italian as “Filosofia della natura medie- vale e scienza moderna: Continuità e rivoluzione”, in: Dianoia (Annali di Storia della Filosofia, Dipartimento di Filosofia—Università di Bologna) 8 (2003), pp. 37–63..
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