Premodern science considered nature through Aristotle's definition of an intrinsic principle, driving species and individuals towards perfection, in a less or more regular manner which allows scientific knowledge. However, sometimes things go wrong-nature incidentally makes mistakes. Can natural errors (like "monsters") be amended? This panel addresses the tensions between regularity and exceptions, description and manipulation of nature in premodern times. How did premodern thinkers justify the exceptions to the regularity of nature? What were the conditions for their assumption that an exception to that regularity was "unnatural"? How did they think they could achieve a manipulation of nature? By "manipulation" we mean the propelling of natural regulated changes towards a preconceived goal. Which presuppositions enabled them to consider the possibility of such manipulation? What was the metaphysical, epistemological, and theological frame that supported this kind of thinking? Nicholas Aubin explores the relation between nature, art, and medicine in the Muslim tradition as expressed in al-ʿĀmirī's thought. Marienza Benedetto addresses the birth of monsters in the Jewish tradition, as found in Maimonides medical works. Nicola Polloni examines patterns of regularity and irregularity of nature in Hermann of Carinthia of the Latin-Neoplatonist tradition. The Latin-Aristotelian tradition of the manipulation of nature is investigated by two papers, both focused on Roger Bacon. Yael Kedar speaks about Bacon's conception of natural legality, and asks whether this new conception fostered ideas of controlling nature, and Jeremiah Hackett investigates the theological aspect of Bacon's "experimental science".
Organized by Yael Kedar
Drift 25, Rm. 105History of Science Society 2019meeting@hssonline.org
Premodern science considered nature through Aristotle's definition of an intrinsic principle, driving species and individuals towards perfection, in a less or more regular manner which allows scientific knowledge. However, sometimes things go wrong-nature incidentally makes mistakes. Can natural errors (like "monsters") be amended? This panel addresses the tensions between regularity and exceptions, description and manipulation of nature in premodern times. How did premodern thinkers justify the exceptions to the regularity of nature? What were the conditions for their assumption that an exception to that regularity was "unnatural"? How did they think they could achieve a manipulation of nature? By "manipulation" we mean the propelling of natural regulated changes towards a preconceived goal. Which presuppositions enabled them to consider the possibility of such manipulation? What was the metaphysical, epistemological, and theological frame that supported this kind of thinking? Nicholas Aubin explores the relation between nature, art, and medicine in the Muslim tradition as expressed in al-ʿĀmirī's thought. Marienza Benedetto addresses the birth of monsters in the Jewish tradition, as found in Maimonides medical works. Nicola Polloni examines patterns of regularity and irregularity of nature in Hermann of Carinthia of the Latin-Neoplatonist tradition. The Latin-Aristotelian tradition of the manipulation of nature is investigated by two papers, both focused on Roger Bacon. Yael Kedar speaks about Bacon's conception of natural legality, and asks whether this new conception fostered ideas of controlling nature, and Jeremiah Hackett investigates the theological aspect of Bacon's "experimental science".
Organized by Yael Kedar
al-ʿĀmirī on Nature and the ArtsView Abstract Organized SessionMedicine and Health09:00 AM - 09:30 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2019/07/24 07:00:00 UTC - 2019/07/24 07:30:00 UTC
This paper explores the view of Nature expounded by the tenth-century Muslim philosopher Abū al-Ḥasan al-ʿĀmirī (d. 992). al-ʿĀmirī’s understanding of Nature—concerning both its identity and its activity—is a hybridization of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Neoplatonic metaphysics. This background understanding informs his modal account of the beings and events which occur in the natural, i.e. sublunar world. al-ʿĀmirī’s natural world is characterized by ‘natural possibility,’ an imperfect regularity which falls short of the perfection and necessity of the heavens. al-ʿĀmirī presents a complicated network of relationships between the arts and Nature, and between (individual) nature and the soul. al-ʿĀmirī speaks of the arts as assisting Nature in its activity, as in the cases of agriculture and medicine. He also speaks of the influence of Nature on the arts, by engendering ‘natural’ dispositions in the artist. Elsewhere al-ʿĀmirī develops a view of soul and nature in the individual, according to which the soul of an especially spiritual individual will overpower the base nature within him, thus alleviating him of medical care altogether. I examine how his philosophical reflection on this point is connected to the Greco-Arabic medical tradition, its sources and practices. In particular, I consider the context of his view of ‘psycho-therapeusis’ by comparing it to popular Arabic medical accounts from the period, and contrast it with a medical work by Abū Sahl al-Masīḥī (d. after 1025) which emphasizes the dependence of psychological states on the body.
Monstrous Births in Medieval Jewish PhilosophyView Abstract Organized SessionMedicine and Health09:30 AM - 10:00 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2019/07/24 07:30:00 UTC - 2019/07/24 08:00:00 UTC
My paper engages with a rather specific and yet understudied case of natural irregularity: the phenomenon of monstrous births within the Medieval Jewish tradition. How did Premodern Jewish scientists and philosophers consider bodily defects that were evidently disagreeing with the regularity of Nature? What kind of justifications – if any – did Medieval Jewish thinkers provide in order to explain this particular phenomenon in its manifold expressions? Indeed, different theoretical justifications to the incidental irregularity of nature appear to have implied different practices to amend the corporeal exceptionalities of this kind of bodies. But what these practical measures were? And could they actually be implemented? My paper will discuss these central points, focusing in particular on the crucial contribution offered by Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides, c. 1134 – 1204) in his medical works.
Matter as Epistemic Object: Intellection, Manipulation, and Particularisation in the 13th CenturyView Abstract Organized SessionPhysical Sciences10:15 AM - 10:45 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2019/07/24 08:15:00 UTC - 2019/07/24 08:45:00 UTC
The paper explores the richness of scientific and philosophical approaches to matter in the thirteenth century. The twelfth-century Arabic- and Greek-into-Latin translation movements provided, in a relatively short time, Latinate audience with different accounts of matter as epistemic object proper to diverse disciplines—natural philosophy, logic, metaphysics, as well as alchemy, medicine, and astronomy. I will discuss tensions and implications arising from a consideration of such a plurality of meanings and theories of matter and materiality in the thirteenth century.
Presenters Nicola Polloni Institut Für Philosophie, Humboldt Universität Zu Berlin
Laws of Nature and Nature’s Use and Manipulation According to Roger Bacon (ca. 1220-1292)View Abstract Organized SessionPhysical Sciences10:45 AM - 11:15 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2019/07/24 08:45:00 UTC - 2019/07/24 09:15:00 UTC
The idea of a general legality in nature is found in the writing of Roger Bacon already in the thirteenth century. Bacon moved towards a new conception of nature by rendering natural regularities into laws. He wrote of the law of reflection, the law of refraction, the law of the gravity of water and the laws of stars. He explained dissenting phenomena by appealing to the law of universal nature, which overrules the laws of particular natures when necessary. In this paper I ask whether Bacon suggested ways by which the knowledge of the laws of nature can foster man’s control of nature and its manipulation. Indeed, the search for laws belongs, according to Bacon, to the practical part of science, since their application can enhance human lives. Specifically, he argued that according to the laws of reflection and refraction, a mirror can be shaped, so that one group of soldiers will appear as multiplied, and thus would terrify the enemy. He also suggested using the laws for the production of powerful weapons, such as consuming, unquenchable fire, defeating sounds, blinding flashes and poisons. Did the use of the laws of nature as suggested by Bacon bring him close to the early modern idea of dissecting nature, controlling and manipulating it? I argue that for Bacon the discovery of laws resulted in the idea of the usefulness of the knowledge; he did not, however, entertain yet the idea of a planned experiment in which nature is “forced” into “unnatural” situations.
Roger Bacon's Scientia Experimentalis as Technological Manipulation of Nature in Premodern EuropeView Abstract Organized SessionPhysical Sciences11:15 AM - 11:45 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2019/07/24 09:15:00 UTC - 2019/07/24 09:45:00 UTC
Roger Bacon's Scientia experimentalis is driven by a new apocalyptic Christian vision of reform and renovation on earth. It involves the manipulation of light and sight in the production of new technologies of war. It involves a new vision of Chemistry/ Alchemy in the renovation of the human body. Since the body is closely united to the intellectual soul, in a non-Platonic manner, the material, physical world is taken up and transformed in a renewed human world in its return to the divine. This Re-creation of life is the reditus side of the original creation.
Nicholas Aubin
Nicola Polloni
Yael Kedar