Much Ado about Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution

471 Pages·2011·49.59 MB·English

by  Edward Grant

MUCH ADO
ABOUT
NOTHING
Theories of space cm<1 vacuum
Jrom the Miclille A^jes to the Scientific
Revolution
EDWARD GRANT
CAMBRIDGE UMVHRS1Y PRHSS
^Aduch ado about nothing
Theories of space and vacuum from the Middle Ages
to the Scientific Revolution

MUCH ADO
ABOUT NOTHING
theories of space and vacuum
from the Middle Ages to the Scientific
Revolution
EDWARD GRANT
Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and History
Indiana University
Qam bridge University Tress
Cambridge
£>ondon TSiew Yor\ TSiew T^ochelle
^Melbourne Sydney
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S3o Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521229838
© Cambridge University Press 1981
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1981
This digitally printed version 2008
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Grant, Edward, 1926—
Much ado about nothing.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Space and time - History.
2. Vacuum - History.
3. Science - History.
4. Science - Philosophy.
I. Title.
QCI73.59.S65G72 530. II 80—13876
ISBN 978-0-521-22983-8 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-06192-6 paperback
To
MARSHALLCLAGETT
PIERRE DUHEM
ALEXANDRE KOYRfi
ANNELIESE MAIER
who taught me the meaning of conceptual history

Contents
Preface page xt
Part I Intracosmic space
Scope of study 3
1 Aristotle on void space 5
2 Medieval conceptions of the nature and
properties of void space 9
1. What is vacuumP 9
2. Two types of void space: external and internal
i4
a. Internal space M
b. External space J7
3. External void space always occupied by body x9
a. The distinction between material
and immaterial dimensions J9
4. External void space unoccupied by body and the
application to it of the distinction between
material and immaterial dimensions 2I
2
2
3 The possibility of motion in void space 2
4
1. The problem of instantaneous motion

2. Resistant media and finite, natural motion in a vacuum 4
3. The distantia terminorum argument as justification 2
of finite, natural motion in a void 5
a. The distantia terminorum identified as resistance 2
7
to motion in a void ex parte medii
2
b. On the possible origins of the 8
distantia terminorum argument 3
4. Criticisms of the distantia terminorum argument 9
3
5. Resistance in the void ex parte mobilis
1
a. Averroes’ explication of the relationship of motive 8
4
and resistive forces in one and the same body
6. Violent motion in the void ex parte mobilis 40

7. Natural motion in the void ex parte mobilis
41
a. The natural motion of elemental bodies

44
Vll
5
Viii CONTENTS
b. The natural motion of mixed bodies 49
c. How the concept of mixed body destroyed
the homogeneity of the vacuum 55
d. On the equality of velocities of homogeneous,
mixed bodies falling in void space 57
8. Motion in a vacuum in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries: Galileo and the medieval tradition 60
4 Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum 67
1. Formulation of the concept 67
2. Universal and particular natures 69
3. The evidence for and against nature's abhorrence
of an interstitial vacuum ^vacuum imbibitum) 70
a. The problem of condensation and rarefaction 71
b. Nicholas of Autrecourt’s defense
of the interstitial vacuum 74
4. The evidence for nature's abhorrence of a
separate vacuum (vacuum separatum) 77
a. The burning candle in an enclosed vessel 77
b. Liquids in reeds, siphons, and sealed vessels 80
c. The bellows 82
d. The clepsydra 83
e. The separation of two surfaces in direct contact 86
5. The significance and brief subsequent history
of the experiments and experiences demonstrating
nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum 95
Part II Infinite void space beyond the world
Largely a theological problem 103
5 The historical roots of the medieval concept
of an infinite, extracosmic void space 105
1. Aristotle’s rejection of extracosmic
void and the reaction in Greek antiquity 105
2. The Condemnation of 1277 108
3. Did a void space exist before the
creation of the world? no
4. Where is God? 112
6 Late medieval conceptions of extracosmic
(“imaginary”） void space 116
1. The meanings of the term “imaginary”
in the expression “imaginary space” 117
2. The God-created, independent, separate,
extracosmic void space 121
CONTENTS ix
a. Is extracosmic， created void dimensional and
are measurements possible within it? 123
b. Can God create an actual infinite vacuum? 127
3. The God-filled, dependent, extxacosmic void space 135
a. Bradwardine’s first corollary 135
b. Bradwardine’s second corollary 136
c. Bradwardine’s third corollary and the medieval
dictum that “God is an infinite sphere whose
center is everywhere and circumference nowhere” 138
d. Bradwardine’s fourth corollary 141
e. Bradwardine’s fifth corollary 141
f. Bradwardine’s legacy 142
4. Medieval opposition to a God-filled, infinite void 144
7 Extracosmic, infinite void space in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century scholastic thought 148
1. John Major as a possible link between medieval
and early modern scholastics 148
2. In defense of God’s omnipresence in
extracosmic, infinite space 152
a. Francisco Suarez 153
b. Pedro Fonseca and the Coimbra Jesuits 157
c. God’s immensity and space as privation or negation 163
d. Bartholomeus Amicus 165
e. Emanuel Maignan: imaginary space
as virtual extension 174
f. Franciscus Bona Spes: imaginary space as
true space 178
8 Infinite space in nonscholastic thought during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 182
1. The impact of the new Greek treatises 182
2. The infinite universe of Lucretius and
the Greek atomists: Giordano Bruno 183
a. The relations of God and space in Bruno’s thought 190
3. Finite void space and the influence of John Philoponus 192
a. Bernardino Telesio 192
b. Tommaso Campanella 194
4. Infinite space in the Stoic tradition 199
a. Francesco Patrizi 199
b. Pierre Gassendi 206
c. Gassendi, Otto von Guericke, and the
scholastic tradition on space 213
d. Extended space as God’sa ttribute: Henry More 221