Part 1 (2/2)

preserved the solution of the first of the Ionian physiologists: ”Thales too ... seems to suppose that the soul is in a sense the cause of movement, since he says that a stone has a soul because it causes movement to iron.” Plato turned to a similar animistic explanation in his dialogue, _Ion_.[12] Such an animistic solution pervaded many of the later explanations.

[11] Aristotle, _On the soul_, translated by W. S. Hett, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, London, 1935, 405a20 (see also 411a8: ”Some think that the soul pervades the whole universe, whence perhaps came Thales' view that everything is full of G.o.ds”).

[12] Plato, _Ion_, translated by W. R. M. Lamb, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, London, 1925, 533 (see also 536).

That a mechanical explanation is also possible was shown by Plato in his _Timaeus_.[13] He argued that since a vacuum does not exist, there must be a plenum throughout all s.p.a.ce. Motion of this plenum can carry objects along with it, and one could in this manner explain attractions like that due to amber and the loadstone.

[13] Plato, _Timaeus_, translated by R. G. Bury, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, London, 1929, 80. It is difficult to determine which explanation Plato preferred, for in both cases the speaker may be only a foil for Plato's opinion rather than an expression of these opinions.

Another mechanical explanation was based upon a postulated tendency of atoms to move into a vacuum rather than upon the latter's non-existence. Lucretius restated this Epicurean explanation in his _De rerum natura_.[14] Atoms from the loadstone push away the air and tend to cause a vacuum to form outside the loadstone. The structure of iron is such that it, unlike other materials, can be pushed into this empty s.p.a.ce by the thronging atoms of air beyond it.

[14] Lucretius, _De rerum natura_, translated by W. H. D.

Rouse, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, London, 1924, bk. VI, lines 998-1041.

Galen[15] returned to a quasi-animistic solution in his denial of Epicurus' argument, which he stated somewhat differently from Lucretius. One can infer that Galen held that all things have, to a greater or lesser degree, a sympathetic faculty of attracting its specific, or proper, quality to itself.[16] The loadstone is only an inanimate example of what one finds in nutritive organs in organic beings.

[15] Galen, _On the natural faculties_, translated by A. S.

Brock, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, London, 1916, bk. 1 and bk. 3.

A view similar to this appeared in Plato, _Timaeus_, 81 (see footnote 13).

[16] This same concept was to reappear in the Middle Ages as the _inclinatio ad simile_.

One of the few writers whose explanations of the loadstone Gilbert mentioned with approval is St. Thomas Aquinas. Although the medieval scholastic philosophy of St. Thomas seems foreign to our way of thinking, it formed a background to many of Gilbert's concepts, as well as to those of his predecessors, and it will a.s.sist our discussion to consider briefly Thomist philosophy and to make its terminology explicit at this point.[17]

[17] The background for much of the following was derived from Annaliese Maier, _An der Grenze von Scholastik und Naturwissenchaft_, ed 2, Rome, 1952.

In scholastic philosophy, all beings and substances are a coalescence of inchoate matter and enacting form. Form is that which gives being to matter and which is responsible for the ”virtus” or power to cause change, since matter in itself is inert. Moreover, forms can be grasped intellectually, whence the nature of a being or a substance can be known. Any explanation of phenomena has to be based upon these innate natures, for only if the nature of a substance is known can its properties be understood. Inanimate natures are determined by observation, abstraction, and induction, or by cla.s.sification.[18]

[18] St. Thomas' epistemology for the natural inanimate world was based upon Aristotle's dictum: that which is in the mind was in the senses first.

The nature of a substance is causally prior to its properties; while the definition of the nature is logically prior to these properties.

Thus, what we call the theory of a substance is expressed in its definition, and its properties can be deduced from this definition.

The world of St. Thomas is not a static one, but one of the Aristotelian motions of quant.i.ty (change of size), of quality (alteration), and of place (locomotion). Another kind of change is that of substance, called generation and corruption, but this is a mutation, occurring instantly, rather than a motion, that requires time. In mutation the essential nature is replaced by a new substantial form.

All these changes are motivated by a causal hierarchy that extends from the First Cause, the ”Dator Formarum,” or Creator, to separate intellectual substances that may be angels or demons, to the celestial bodies that are the ”generantia” of the substantial forms of the elements and finally to the four prime qualities (dry and wet, hot and cold) of the substantial forms. Accidental forms are motivated by the substantial forms through the instrumentality of the four prime qualities, which can only act by material contact.

The only causal agents in this hierarchy that are learned through the senses are the tangible qualities. Usually the prime qualities are not observed directly, but only other qualities compounded of them. One of the problems of scholastic philosophy was the incorporation, into this system of efficient agents, of other qualities, such as the qualities of gravity and levity that are responsible for upward and downward motion.

Besides the causal hierarchy of forms, the natural world of St. Thomas existed in a substantial and spatial hierarchy. All substances whether an element or a mixture of elements have a place in this hierarchy by virtue of their nature. If the material were removed from its proper place, it would tend to return. In this manner is obtained the natural downward motion of earth and the natural upward motion of fire.

Local motion can also be caused by the ”virtus coeli” generating a new form, or through the qualitative change of alteration. Since each element and mixture has its own natural place in the hierarchy of material substances, and this place is determined by its nature, changes of nature due to a change of the form can produce local motion. If before change the substance is in its natural place, it need not be afterwards, and if not, would then tend to move to its new natural place.

It will be noted that the scholastic explanation of inanimate motion involved the action and pa.s.sion of an active external mover and a pa.s.sive capacity to be moved. Whence the definition of motion that Descartes[19] was later to deride, ”motus est actus entis in potentia prout quod in potentia.”

[19] Rene Descartes, _Oeuvres_, Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, Paris, 1897-1910, vol. 2, p. 597 (letter to Mersenne, 16 Oct., 1639), and vol. 11 (Le Monde), p. 39. The original definition can be found in Aristotle, _Physics_, translated by P. H. Wickstead and F. M. Cornford, Loeb Cla.s.sical Library, London, 1934, 201a10. Aquinas rephrases the definition as ”_Motus est actus existentis in potentia secundum quod huius modi._” See St. Thomas Aquinas, _Opera omnia_, Antwerp, 1612, vol. 2, _Physicorum Aristotelis expositio_, lib. 3, lect. 2, cap. a, p. 29.

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