The medieval period was one of sometimes enlight-
ening elaborations of inherited theories of matter
rather than of significant innovations.
As philosophers became increasingly theological and
the pagan Empire increasingly Christian, the dominant
metaphysical paradigm was that of Plato. In fact one
finds in the Neo-Platonists, the Gnostics, and the
Manichaeans more radical statements of the hostility
of matter to perfection, intelligibility, and order, and
of its derivation from non-being than are to be found
in Plato himself. In one respect, however, patristic
thought can perhaps be said to be rather Aristotelian,
though historically the origins lie in Judaism. Jews,
Christians, and, later, Muslims were bound by biblical
revelation to a doctrine of creation ex nihilo, a creation
including that of matter and pronounced by God to
be good. This left a generous but still limited latitude
for variations. For one thing, if there was to be intel-
lectual accommodation for both God and the world,
organism must not be emphasized so far as to swallow
up the creature, nor the independence of parts em-
phasized, as it was in atomism, to the extent that it
would obviate the need of a Creator. Again, the Pla-
tonic characterization of the material world as “insub-
stantial appearance” might, if overstressed, undermine
the genuineness of the creation; on the other hand the
fully actual substances of atomism neither would need
to be nor could be created. Finally, though there was
no explicit theory of creation in Aristotle, his plurality
of substances would at least permit an independently
actual Creator and a dependently actual creation. Still,
however much this may have impressed later medieval
thinkers, the Patristics more immediately felt the ten-
sion of two inspirations: the Timaeus tradition of the
artist-God achieving levels of order with materials that
were not good, and the Judaic heritage in which all
hierarchy in the material world (like Aristotle's be-
tween celestial and terrestrial spheres) was thrown in
the shade by its universal creatureliness.
Alchemy, intrigued by the frequently dramatic
transformations of matter and dedicated to redeeming
it from its baser states, must probably be credited with
the most sustained program of empirical investigation
and with enough concrete discoveries so that both
Newton and Boyle paid it the compliment of serious
study. As to its theory alchemy represented a persisting
tradition of interpreting the physical and chemical
behavior of matter through biological, psychological,
and even theological models: matter could be “begot-
ten” in different species, induced to be more “noble,”
and “spiritualized” into its “essences.” But its principal
contributions to techniques and apparatus for fermen-
tation, sublimation, distillation, and the like were
matched by a multitude of scientifically advantageous
technological advances in such fields as engineering,
optics, metallurgy, and navigation, and historians have
had increasingly to recognize the extent and sophis-
tication of scientific inquiry within the universities
from the thirteenth century onwards.
Although Robert Grosseteste's brief treatise De luce
is of the mid-thirteenth century it illustrates impres-
sively the “light metaphysics” that was a special form
of the Neo-Platonic emanation-doctrine of the earlier
Middle Ages. The first material substance created (after
the “separate substances” which were pure forms) was
light. It enjoyed this priority because of, in one direc-
tion, its kinship with intelligibility and, in the other,
its tendency to uniform, instantaneous, and infinite
self-plurification. It thus engendered a three-dimen-
sional, spherical mass rarified at the periphery, con-
densed at the center, and within it the nine celestial
spheres took form, each inner ring being related to
the next outer as matter to form. The ninth, lowest,
and sub-lunar sphere was that of the four elements:
their differential weight behaviors sprang respectively
from the “self-assembling virtue” prevalent in earth
and water, and the “self-dispersing virtue” prevalent
in air and fire. Grosseteste found anticipations of this
cosmological system in pagan myth, speculating, for
example that “Cybele” was etymologically derived
from cubus and symbolized solidity. The theory also
had its quantitative (or numerological) aspect: light,
in which all other bodies were virtual, contained 4
basic constituents, and since the sum of its factors
(1, 2, 3, 4) was 10, “it is clear that 10 is the full number
of the universe.”
The advent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
of texts of Greek science, including predominantly the
physical, astronomical, biological, and metaphysical
texts of Aristotle, brought both a great upsurge in
scientific interests and the beginnings of a new scientific
orthodoxy. While sheer intellectual inertia no doubt
played its role in the authority that Aristotle came to
enjoy, the medievals were probably initially well ad-
vised to adopt a body of science far in advance of
anything with which they had been previously ac-
quainted, and thereafter the staying power of the the-
ory was to a considerable extent the result of its range
of use and success. But there also were developments
within, and departures from, the imported doctrines.
