Albertus Magnus: Matter, Motion, and the Heavens

Abstract

327 The Thomist 78 (2014): 327-50 ALBERTUS MAGNUS: MATTER, MOTION, AND THE HEAVENS STEVEN BALDNER St. Francis Xavier University Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada WO OF THE most difficult concepts in natural philosophy are those of matter and motion. It is difficult to think about matter because the reality to which it refers is not any actual thing, but our concepts naturally focus on actual things. Matter is the principle of potentiality, the principle by which an actual thing might be something other than it is. What we know, however, comes from what is actual; the potential is an extension of the actual into an otherness that is not known. Immediate potentialities are fairly easy to recognize (this cold water could be hot), but their underlying principle— the pure potentiality of matter—is very hard to conceptualize. Matter, however, as it is understood in the Aristotelian tradetion , 1 is precisely this pure potentiality that is opposed to actuality. It is potentiality for change and motion, and nothing more than that. It is a real principle of material things, but is not itself a thing. Matter is fundamental to everything that we experience, but it is not itself something that we experience. It is only when we think of it in relation to form that we can conceptualize it at all, but form, the principle of actuality, is the very opposite of matter. Albert says that we have no proper 1 This is already a problematic claim; some scholars do not find a doctrine of matter as pure potentiality in Aristotle. See Christopher Byrne, “Matter and Aristotle’s Material Cause,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (2001): 85-112; William Charlton, “ ‘Prime Matter’: A Rejoinder,” Phronesis 28 (1983): 197-211; Hugh R. King, “Aristotle without Prime Matter,” Journal of the History of Ideas 17 (1956): 370-89. T 328 STEVEN BALDNER concept (proprius intellectus) of matter; it is understood in relation to form, and only insofar as we can remove from it any ideas of form.2 Motion is equally hard to conceptualize, but for a different reason. Our concepts are static: they focus on this and not that; they define, limit, put boundaries around, freeze our experience . But the world we experience is one of constant motion, change, and alteration: it is never only this and not that, but always this becoming that. Our mental world, too, is one of change, even though its concepts and propositions are static. We may say that our understanding changes or develops, but we say so not because concepts change or develop but because we replace one concept with another. We define something more accurately by adding or subtracting conceptual notes to the definition , but the conceptual notes themselves do not change. The fundamentals of the mental world are atomistic, but the world of our experience, both inner and outer, is a world of real change and motion. Albertus Magnus (1200-1280) was the first Scholastic philosopher to have taken Aristotle’s philosophy as a whole into the service of theology. It is for reason of this service that Albert commented extensively on the whole of Aristotle’s work. In the reception of Aristotle, along with Avicenna, Averroës, Maimonides , and many other commentators, the thirteenth century underwent a scientific revolution. A new scientific way of under-standing the universe was given to the Christian West, and it was Albert’s genius to have been among the first to recognize the full value of this new learning. He welcomed Aristotle and the Aristotelian entourage eagerly, recognizing that this new science would enrich the understanding of the faith, but his welcome was not uncritical, for he knew that Aristotle had to be corrected and supplemented on numerous points. Fundamental to this project of bringing Aristotelian 2 References to the works of Albert are to one of two editions: Opera Omnia, ed. E. Borgnet, 38 vols. (Paris: Vives, 1890-99); Alberti magni Opera Omnia, ed Institutum Alberti Magni Coloniense (Münster: Aschendorff, 1951-). The latter, critical edition is known as the “Cologne” edition. Albert, Summa de creaturis, p. 1, tr. 1, q. 2, a. 2 (Borgnet, ed., 34:323a-b). MATTER, MOTION, AND THE HEAVENS 329 science...