Medicine and Philosophy in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: The Problem of Elements

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MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES: THE PROBLEM OF ELEMENTS T HE cultivation of the liberal arts and the sciences during the twelfth century developed new methods and investigated new subject-matters. What was achieved in theory and interpretation is obscured by the further transformation of problems and enlargement of data during the succeeding period, the hundred years between the middle of the twelfth and the middle of the thirteenth centuries, when the scientific and philosophical works of Aristotle and a vast body of accompanying commentary, elaboration, and speculation were translated for the first time. The problem of universals and the problem of elements are two highly ambiguous signs of the intellectual activity of a period of distinguished cultural and scientific renaissance. The grammarian, rhetorician, and dialectician of the early twelfth century studied texts that had long been available more constructively and imaginatively-Latin grammars and rhetorics, translations of Aristotle's Categories and On Interpretation , Porphyry's Introduction, and Boethius' logical treatises and commentaries-and the twelfth century Book of Six Principles attributed to Gilbert de la Porree was assimilated with Porphyry's Introduction to the canon of Aristotle's Organon . Even the problem of universals was familiar in the widely known three questions of Porphyry. After the translation of the last four books of Aristotle's Organon the work of twelfth century logicians like Abailard had little pertinence to the continuing problems; and, in general, the liberal arts of the trivium were turned from interpretative applications and constructive theories to demonstrative and speculative systematizations. ~11 212 RICHARD MCKEON The encyclopaedist and the cosmologist of the twelfth century likewise worked on texts long available but neglectedChalcidius ' translation of Plato's Timaeus and his commentary on it, the works of the Platonists Apuleius and Macrobius or of Martianus Cappella who furnished bits of the theories of Hermes Trismegistus, and finally the eleventh century translations of works on medicine or on the nature of man, like those of Constantine the African or Alfanus of Salerno in which the problem of elements is stated. Thierry of Chartres, Peter Abailard, William of Conches (one of whose works is sometimes called On the Elements of Philosophy), and their critic William of St. Thierry as well as many other philosophers of the early twelfth century used the elements as beginning points and ordering principles in their expositions of composites as man, the universe, and the sciences; and elements were continued in that function in the encyclopaedias of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, such as Alexander Neckham 's On the Natures of Th{ngs, Thomas of Cantimpre's On the Nature of Things, and Bartholomew of Glanville's On the Properties of Things. After the translation of Aristotle's scientific work and of commentaries which put varying interpretations on his conception of things, neither the data nor the theories of these organizations of knowledge were useful in the continuing investigations; and, in general, encyclopaedic organizations of the sciences were turned from the classification of the nature and properties of things to the ordering of motions and functions according to principles. The problem of elements is the counterpart of the problem of universals. (1) Science is of the universal; (2) .it is derived from and applied to particulars; (3) examination of universal predicates is therefore involved in questions of existence and being, of experience and reason. Conversely, (I) wholes or complexes are composed of parts and ultimately parts are composed of simple parts; (2) the nature of parts depends on how the whole is conceived; (3) determination of simples is therefore involved in a complex of related questions concerning MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY-11TH AND 12TH CENTURIES 213 the indivisibility of the element, such as, whether the compound is divided actually or intellectually; whether the elements so produced are corporeal or incorporeal; whether they are individuals or classes; and whether they are infinite or finite; whether they are characterized only by properties like size, shape, weight, and motion or also by other qualities. Questions about universals arise from the opposition of different conceptions of logical and scientific method. Questions about elements arise in the opposition of different interpretations of data. The problem of universals...