Magic and the physical world in thirteenth-century scholasticism.
The turn to modern science in the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century is typically characterized as dependent on the novel adoption of a mechanical hypothesis for operations in nature. In fact, the Middle Ages saw a partial anticipation of this phenomenon in the scholastic physics of the thirteenth century. More precisely, it was just the two factors, denial of action at a distance and an emphasis on the primary materiality of causation, that constituted this early mechanism--or "protomechanism." The latter's emergence can be seen most clearly where scholastic thinkers-here, William of Auvergne, Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome--confronted the theoretical limits of natural cause and effect in their efforts to determine the reality of magic and locate its place in the natural world.
Marrone
Steven P
SP
Department of History, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA. steven.marrone@tufts.edu
D015984:Causality; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D008273:Magic / Q000266:history*; D010684:Philosophy / Q000266:history*; D012586:Science / Q000266:history*