'the Infinite Variety of Formes and Magnitudes'

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'THE INFINITE VARIETY OF FORMES AND MAGNITUDES':

16TH- AND 17TH-CENTURY ENGLISH CORPUSCULAR PHILOSOPHY AND ARISTOTELIAN THEORIES OF

MATTER AND FORM

STEPHEN CLUCAS Birkbeck College, University of London

Recent historiographical reflections on the 'cultural topogra- phy and geo-politics' of the Scientific Revolution, prompted by Roy Porter and Mikulis Teich's The Scientific Revolution in Nation- al Context,1 have led some historians of science to reconsider the global narratives of synoptic histories of the rise of modern science in favour of local studies which stress 'the role of particular and disparate national and cultural traditions of thinking and mental work,' and the 'special filiation' of scientific traditions within 'distinct national contexts.'2 While Porter and Teich acknowledge the importance of 'internationalism' and 'cosmo- politanism' in early-modern scientific endeavour, they stress the mediation of these trans-national scientific developments by 'indigenous language, education, communication networks, insti- tutions, economics, social relations, politics, religious confession, patronage and other comparable elements that can be called [...] "national context"'.3 The rise of corpuscularism (or atomism) is an aspect of the 'new science' which, as I have argued elsewhere, benefits from being studied in terms of an 'independent English atomistic milieu,'4 which is characterised by particular syntheses of late mediaeval and Renaissance Aristotelian and non-Aris- totelian thought. In his study of English atomism, Robert Kargon laid particular stress on the importance of Descartes and Gassen-

1 R. Porter and M. Teich (eds.), The Scientific Revolution in National Context (Cambridge, 1992).

2 Ibid., 2-4. 3 Ibid., 4-6. 4 S. Clucas, "The Atomism of the Cavendish circle: a reappraisal", The Seven-

teenth Century, 9 (1994), 247-273; 256.

? Koninklijke Brill, Leiden, 1997 Early Science and Medicine 2,3

252 STEPHEN CLUCAS

di in the development of English atomism, dismissing earlier corpuscular developments as the marginal products of an isolated coterie.5 Stressing atomism as a radical break with the past, a 'new world picture [...] different from the view of previous centuries, and [...] close to that of the XIXth century and our own',6 Kar- gon emphasised what he saw as the definitively modern anti-Aris- totelianism of the Northumberland circle atomists.7 A less whig- gish view of the development of corpuscularism within a national context is to be found in Ugo Baldini's study of the rise of seventeenth-century Italian corpuscularism, 'I1l corpuscularismo italiano del Seicento. Problemi di metodo e prospettive di ricerca,'8 which considers the complex emergence of a particular 'tem- atica corpuscolare [...] italiana' out of the Aristotelian tradition of minima naturalia and other traditions.9 Baldini stresses the per- sistence of the ontological, linguistic, and conceptual categories of the Aristotelian tradition in new Renaissance philosophies such as corpuscularism,'0 which still lacked a 'deep' model of explanation ('un modello "profondo" di spiegazione') comparable to the peripatetic concepts of form and quality.11 As Baldini rightly points out, the criteria for a critique of the Aristotelian doctrine of 'forms' were neither obvious nor natural to seventeenth-century philosophers,12 and the history of the disentanglement of mechanism from Aristotelian physics is complex and difficult.

Baldini's historiographical cautions are equally pertinent to the situation in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England, although the 'English corpuscular thematic' involves a very different kind of disentanglement from Aristotle. English natural philosophers at this time were becoming increasingly critical of Aristotelian physics as a tool for understanding the structure, qual-

5 R. H. Kargon, Atomism in England: from Harriot to Newton (Oxford, 1966), 63, cf. Clucas, "Atomism", 247.

6 R. Kargon, "Thomas Harriot, the Northumberland Circle and Early Atom- ism in England", Journal of the History of Ideas, 27, 1966, 128-136; 128.

7 Kargon, Atomism, 7, 13, and "Thomas Harriot", 128, 134-6. 8 U. Baldini, 'II corpuscolarismo italiano del Seicento. Problemi di metodo

e prospettive di ricerca' in U. Baldini, G. Zanier, P. Farina, F. Trevisani, Ricerche sull'atomismo del Seicento. Atti del Convegno di studio di Santa Margherita Ligure (14-16 ottobre 1976) (Florence, 1977), 1-76.

9 Ibid., 7-8. 10 See "Alcune implicazioni semantiche della transizione dall'Aristotelismo al

Corpuscolarismo", 22-55 (esp. 32-5). Ibid., 57.

12 Ibid., 57 fn.94

Lucian

INFINITE VARIETY OF FORMES AND MAGNITUDES 253

ities and motions of the material universe. The increased interest in experimentalism and observation, and exposure to an array of alternative explanations for physical phenomena-from alchemy, medicine, neoplatonism, atomism, to the new critical philosophies of nature put forward by continental philosophers such as Tele- sio, Patrizi, Doni, Campanella and Bruno-led to a willingness to formulate new conceptions of physical phenomena which diverg- ed from the Aristotelian traditions. For the most part, however, these new explanatory principles did not constitute a revolution- ary break with the Aristotelian inheritance, but rather a critical synthesis. The conceptual framework for describing 'depth phenomena' or 'kinetic-energic' phenomena, which involved hidden, invisible or indiscernible processes, or processes which involved mutation, growth or generation from one physical state to another, posed particular difficulties for natural philosophers seeking to develop matter theories based on corpuscular or mechanical principles. It is significant perhaps that these were the last areas of natural philosophy to be divested of an Aristotelian conceptual framework. The theoretical complexity and sophistication of the Aristotelian doctrine of forms as it was developed between the thirteenth and the sixteenth century, provided a subtle and nuanced array of conceptual tools for philosophers seeking to dis- cuss dynamic processes. In this paper I look at the course of Eng- lish natural philosophy in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the writings of Walter Warner, Francis Bacon and Nicholas Hill, viewing them as transitional formulations between traditional Aristotelian hylomorphic theories and the new mechanical corpuscular modes of explanation of natural phenomena, before going on to consider Robert Boyle's more critical formulations of 1666 as the expression of a post-1650 movement away from peripatetic eclecticism towards full corpuscularian explanations.

Francis Bacon, 1561-1626

Bacon, Hill and Warner, who were all associated (in different ways) with the intellectual circle of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland,- 1 all gave serious consideration to corpuscular-

's On Hill and Northumberland see H. Trevor-Roper, "Nicholas Hill the Eng-

254 STEPHEN CLUCAS

ism as a means of explaining various physical phenomena,14 and all three continued-in varying degrees-to use concepts and theoretical distinctions inherited from the Aristotelian tradition in their explanations of physical processes. Bacon, in his Advance- ment of Learning, was severely critical of the 'kind of learning that did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen' who had 'sharp and strong wits', but 'being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator)' they knew little 'history, either of nature or time' and so 'did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us [...] laborious webs of learning' which were 'admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.'15 But despite his repeated attacks on the schoolmen, he did not hesitate to retain a doctrine of forms, albeit of a strictly defined and delimited kind. Even at the level of epistemology, Bacon inherits the Aristotelian articu- lation of the field of knowledge, arguing that natural philosophy should be divided into 'Physic', which 'inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes' and 'Metaphysic' which 'handleth the formal and final causes.'16 The field of 'Physic' is sub- divided into three subfields, 'whereof two respect nature united or collected, the third contemplateth nature diffused or distrib- uted.' That is to say, it deals with nature both as homogeneity ('one entire total') and as heterogeneity ('the [...] principles or seeds' of nature). His physics then implies a view of nature as the 'configuration' and 'contexture' of seminal (or corpuscular) principles.17 Above these material and efficient causes are the material forms and final causes which are the subject of Metaphysics. Despite the 'received and inveterate opinion, that the inquisition of man is not competent to find out essential forms', Bacon insists

lish Atomist", in Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth-century essays (Lon- don, 1987), 1-39; esp. 11-12. On Bacon and the Northumberland circle see Kar- gon, Atomism in England, pp. 43-4.

4' See Kargon, Atomism in England, 5-17, 43-53, and "Thomas Harriot", art. cit.; J. Jacquot, "Harriot, Hill, Warner and the New Philosophy", in Thomas Har- riot, Renaissance Scientist (Oxford, 1974), 107-128; G. Rees, "Atomism and Sub- tlety in Francis Bacon's Philosophy", Annals of Science, 37 (1980), 549-71, and S. Clucas, "Atomism".

15 F. Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, ed. A. Johnston (Oxford, 1974), 28 16 Ibid., 90. Bacon repudiated this position in the 1620s, claiming in a letter

of June 1622 that 'When true physics have been discovered, there will be no Metaphysics. Beyond the true Physics is divinity only.' cit. Johnston, Advancement, 271 n.

17 Johnston, Advancement, 91.


natural philosophy

Opus quod operatur Deus a principio usque ad finem 'the summary laws of nature'

I\ I \

I \ I \

Staphy 4

physic

natural history

1. Knowledges are as pyramides ...

that 'the invention of forms is of all other parts of knowledge the worthiest to be sought.'8 Metaphysics in its search for forms, he says, does the most to 'abridge the infinity of individual experi- ence' and so is at the apex of a 'knowledge pyramid' [See fig.1]:

For knowledges are as pyramides, whereof history is the basis. So of natural philosophy, the basis is natural history; the stage next the basis is physic; the stage next the vertical point is metaphysic.19

'That knowledge is worthiest', Bacon said, 'which is charged with least multiplicity, which appeareth to be metaphysic.' It is metaphysics which he sees as the principal instrument of his util- itarian insistence on 'fructiferous' works and practise: 'Metaphysic [...] doth enfranchise the power of man unto the greatest liberty and possibility of works and effects,' by helping him to avoid the 'narrow and restrained ways' of physics, which is distracted by the 'accidents of impediments' innate in the 'ordinary flexous courses

18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 93

256 STEPHEN CLUCAS

of nature'.20 By locating and defining forms, man is better equipped to act on nature-for 'whosoever knoweth any form, knoweth the utmost possibility of superinducing that nature upon any variety of matter.'21

Bacon is quite emphatic, however, in distinguishing his concept of form from others, in particular that of Plato, who, Bacon says, 'lost the real fruit of his opinion' (i.e. 'that forms were the true object of knowledge') 'by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined by matter.' In doing this, Bacon felt that Plato 'turn[ed] his opinion upon theology' which 'infected' his natural philosophy.22 It is clear, then, that Bacon's concept of form is restricted to that of material forms, rejecting both Aristotelian and Platonic tendencies to view form as abstract from matter. While he claimed that 'the forms of substances [...] are so perplexed, as they are not to be inquired,' he argued that the simple forms of 'natures and qualities' are knowable:

to inquire the form of a lion, of an oak, of gold; nay of water, of air, is a vain pursuit: but to inquire the forms of sense, of voluntary motion, of veg- etation, of colours, of gravity and levity, of density, of tenuity, of heat, of cold [...] [qualities] of which the essences (upheld by matter) of all crea- tures do consist [...] is that part of metaphysic we do now define of.23

According to Bacon, the lack of success in establishing 'true forms' is a product of impractical, overtheoretical knowledge which has made 'too untimely a departure and too remote a recess from particulars.'24 It is precisely the emphasis on final causes in metaphysics which he sees as the major obstacle in the investigation of natural phenomena. Plato, Galen and Aristotle, had all 'fall[en] upon these flats of discoursing [of] causes', which are 'remorae and hindrances to stay and slug the ship from further sail- ing and [...are the reason why...] the search of the physical causes hath been neglected.'25 In this respect Bacon finds the 'natural philosophy of Democritus' in its treatment of 'particularities of physical causes more real and better inquired than that of Aris- totle and Plato' who both 'intermingled final causes' in their phys-

20 Ibid., 93 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 91 23 Ibid., 92 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 94


ical explanations 'the one as part of theology, and the other as a part of logic.'26 In making the treatment of final causes 'imperti- nent' and a 'prejudice of further discovery' in natural philosophy, Bacon also circumscribes his concept of form, which is strictly tied to the nature and consistency of matter. It was his reflections on dynamic processes, and particularly physiological processes, which led Bacon to dilate and develop his ideas on material form and 'natural motion'. In his 1609 essay on Cupid in De Sapientia Veterum, where he expounds the myth of Cupid as an allegory of 'the natural motion of the atom,' Bacon critically appraises 'the philosophy of the Greeks [...regarding...] the material principles of things', and particularly 'the principle of motion, wherein lies all vigour of operation'. He finds the Greeks 'negligent and lan- guid on this point', and the 'opinion of the Peripatetics' to be 'blind babbling' and 'little more than words.'27 Democritus, Bacon said, had 'considered the matter more deeply', but he rejects the Democritean clinamen theory on the initial cause of atomic generation as 'a narrow theory, and framed with reference to too few particulars', which would be inadequate as an explanation of complex natural phenomena such as 'the motion of heavenly bodies in a circle, or the phenomena of contraction and expansion,' while Epicurus' theories on 'the declination and fortuitous agitation of the atom' he considered to be 'a relapse to trifling and ignorance.' While Bacon approves those of his contemporaries 'who refer [the original impulse of matter] to God', he accuses them of 'ascend[ing] by a leap and not by steps.' The natural philosopher's task, he thought, was to locate the 'single and summary law in which nature centres and which is subject to and subordinate to God'.28 In his search for the subordinate (but material) laws of natural process, Bacon developed an eclectic matter theory which would account for a variety of dynamic physical processes. Beginning with an atomism that saw atoms as particles possessing 'matter, form, dimension, place, resistance, appetite, motion and emanation,'29 Bacon moved toward a neo-Paracelsian position, where all material bodies are seen as containing 'spirits

26 Ibid., 94-5 27 F. Bacon, De Sapientia Veterum (London, 1609), The Works of Francis Bacon,

ed. J. A. Spedding, R. L. Ellis and D. D. Heath, (London, 1857-1874), 6: 730. 28 Ibid. 29 F. Bacon, Cogitationes de Rerum Natura, c. 1605, Spedding, 10: 387.

258 STEPHEN CLUCAS

or pneumaticalls,'30 in dynamic interaction with the heteroge- neous parts of tangible matter. Thus the human body is seen as the battleground between restraining and preserving 'vital spirits' and destructive 'inanimate spirits' or subtilized tangible matter, whose qualities are determined by particle size and distribution.3' These spirits play a formative role in organic bodies: '[it] gives them shape, produces limbs, digests, ejects, organizes and the like.'32 Bacon's spirits, then, take over some of the causative and dynamic functions of Aristotelian form, whilst retaining a corpuscular focus on the internal organization of the parts of matter.

It was precisely the search for explanations of the internal con- figurations of substance, and the 'severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes' that led Bacon's contemporaries back to a variety of concepts of form which were not strictly reducible to matter. In the remainder of this section I will consider two atomists traditionally associated with the 'Northumberland circle'-Walter Warner (author of an extensive series of manuscript notes on space, matter, time, heat and cold) and Nicholas Hill, author of the Philosophia Epicurea published in Paris in 1601.

Walter Warner, 1562-1643

For Walter Warner, whose natural philosophical writings spanned the first two decades of the seventeenth century, 'the severall things of the universe' were 'but severall portions of matter distinguished and individuated by severall formes.'33 'Formes', he said, 'do determyne and distinguish, and diversifie the indiffer- ency of the matter [...] [matter] is indeed the cheef subiect of

30 Spedding, 4: 219. 31 On Bacon's eclectic matter theory see G. Rees and Ch. Upton, Francis

Bacon's Natural Philosophy: A New Source. A transcription of manuscript Hardwick 72A with translation and commentary (Chalfont St Giles, 1984), 33-57, and G. Rees, ed., Philosophical Studies c.1611-1619, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 6 (Oxford, 1996), xlii-xlviii, liv-lxv. While Kargon believes that Bacon began with a system which 'resembles that of Democritus and Epicurus' which was then 'discarded [...] sometime in the period after 1612 and before 1620' (Atomism, 45-7), it would perhaps be more accurate to see Bacon as developing an eclectic, 'neo-atomist' response to the exigencies of his natural philosophical investigations.

32 Spedding, 8: 275. S3 British Library, Add.MS 4394, f. 385r.


formation.'34 He maintained the scholastic distinction between internal form and external figure (sive internam et formalem sive externam et figuralem)35 in discussing atomic composition. He also utilised the Aristotelian and scholastic concepts of 'formall quid- dity' and 'sphere of activity', as well as a number of dynamic developments of the Aristotelian theory of form derived from mediaeval and more recent sources which involved the propagation, emanation or transmission of forms.

In his corpuscular explanations of the cohesion of solid bodies, inflammation and animal physiology, Warner makes free use of specific notions of form which he adapts from the Aristotelian tradition. Thus in his notes on animal physiology, while he argues that the vital spirits are composed of 'single parts or atoms' or 'atomical parts', he also maintains that spirits and all material things which have 'any operation or operative virtue in them' con- tain 'two kindes of formes':

the one as it were informant, the other assistent, the one resulting ex inter- na crasi elementorum materialium (quasi forma materiationis) the other super- venient and as it were infused ab extra (quasi forma formationis) the one stable and [as it were] dead: the other in perpetuall motion and lively and as it were animate.36

That is to say, they are subject to two kinds of formation-a passive material formation, according to the nature of the substance and its internal combination or mixture of parts (a 'mere accident of the matter'),s7 and an active, quasi-vital 'forming form' which enters matter from outside. The first presumably compre- hends certain corpuscular arguments for the qualities of matter, but the second (the assistant form) seems to gesture towards some extra-corpuscular principle, or a force acting on the corpuscles, but not reducible to them. Nonetheless, he sees these assistant forms as quasi-material: 'this forme assistent' he says, 'is a thing substantiall [...] and <hath> his owne <peculiar> matter or substance wch is <quiddam> materiae analogum.'38 Warner inherits this distinction

34 B.L. Add. MS 4425, f. 4r-v. cf. Sion Arc.L 40.2/E 10, f. 88v.: "The only subiect of forme is matter. Matter formed is called a body."

35 B.L. Add. MS 4395, f. 53V" 36 British Library, Add. MS 4394, f. 229r. 37 B.L.Add.MS 4394, f. 228r. 38 B.L. Add.MS 4394, f. 228r: "[There is] a great difference betwene these two

formes for that the forme of materiation or informant of the matter is a mere accident of the matter and hath [...] no subsistence of it self but only an insis-

260 STEPHEN CLUCAS

from the Aristotelian tradition. In his commentary on De Anima, published in 1605, for example, Jacopo Zabarella discusses the relationship between informing forms and assistant forms, refer- ring the reader to the previous commentaries of Averroes and Philoponus. According to Zabarella, Averroes, in his fifth commentary on Book 3 of Aristotle's De Anima, designated the sen- tient and vegetative part of the soul as an informed form, and the rational soul as an assistant form, having the same relationship to man's soul as the celestial sphere has to the intelligence which inhabits it.39 Philoponus, Zabarella explains, made a similar distinction, judging that the rational soul was not

an act of the body according to its substance, but according to its operation, like a sailor in a ship. [...] he denies therefore that the rational soul is an informing form, but maintains that it is an assistent form, and results from operation and not from substance.40

Warner's assistant forms are thus a spirit-like substance which actively shape matter, reacting with the matter informed. Objects, Warner says, have their 'assistent forms infused, as far as their substance and emanations reach into the matter of the object informed.'41 It seems likely that Warner drew the concept of informing and assistant forms directly from Averroes, as he also

tence in an other, whereas this forme assistent is a thing substantiall per se [...] subsistens et alteri tantu[m] assistens, and <hath> his owne <peculiar> matter or substance wch is <quiddam> materiae analogu[m] and his owne proper forme though dependent on the forme insistent of the fundamentall matter because it is a substance per se interminabilis et informabilis but per terminos et formam alterius." (The use of arrowed brackets <> indicates a superlineal insertion in the original manuscript).

39 j. Zabarella, In Tres Aristotelis Libros de Anima Commentarij (Venice, 1605), 20V: "Animam rationalem non esse formam hominis, qua homo sit homo, sed esse formam assistentem, sicuti orbi coelesti assistit intelligentia, existimauit Aver- roes, vt legere apud eum possumus in commentario quinto libri tertij de Ani- ma, vbi dicit nomen actus de anima rationali & de alijs partibus animae dici serme aequiuoce, quoniam de anima sentiente, & de vegetante significat formam informantem, de rationali vero significat non informantem, sed assistentem solum."

40 Ibid. 21r: "Videtur etiam huius sente[n]tiae fuisse loannes Grammaticus; nam in sua Praefatione in secundum librum de Anima, & in declaratione 1. context. eiusdem libri, aperte dicit animam rationalem non esse actum corporis secundum substantiam, sed solum secundum operationem, cuiusmodi est nauta in naui; alias vero animas esse actus etiam secundum substantiam; negat igitur animam rationalem esse formam informantem, & asserit esse solum assistentem, & dantem operationem, non dantem esse substantiale."

41 B.L. Add. MS 4394, f. 227r: "obiects haue their formas assistentes <fundatas> [...] quod ad [...] <substantiam> et emanationem attinet in obiectoru[m] materia."


holds other Averroist positions, including the controversial belief in the eternity of the world, which he regards as uncreated and indestructible:

That matter is aeternall it is true, eternall I meane both in respect of beginning and end and first for the beginning. Yf matter be not eternall but had [...] beginning then it was made or created. [...] but that it should be made or created is impossible for a thing can be said to be made but in 2. senses. Ether of matter or of no matter [...] of matter it can not be made for we are [...] reiected into an infinit progresse, and if it be said to be made of no matter, it must be made of some thing els besides matter [...] wch is but a vaine and nugatory affirmatio[n] [...]. Wherefore it resteth that matter be made ether absolutely ex nihilo [...] or not to be made at all. Yf it should be made of nothing it must be made in an instant for betwene nothing and hoc aliquid there is no degrees or meane and to be made in an instant it can not [...] it is manifest that matter was not nor could ever be made. And the same resons being thereto applied do sufficiently proue that it can not be destroied or haue an Ende. And beside these proofes there is this corollary. Yf matter or any part thereof the smallest portion or ato- mus that may be imagined might perish or be annihilated, it would follow that the Vniversall masse thereof whether it be supposed finite or infinit or howsoever had ben destroied and brought to nothing long agoe.42

As Jan Prins has suggested, Warner's idea of the assistant form is closely integrated with the scholastic notion of the sphera activitatis, and the related mediaeval idea of the multiplicatio specierum. Assistant forms are, according to Prins, 'actively or passively operative qualities plus their spheres of activity,'43 although Warner seems at points to regard them as synonymous, or rather to see the sphere of activity as a particular form of assistant form." Thus when explaining the transmission of light and its reception by the eye, Warner speaks of the reflection of light as an 'extension or emanation [...] formed according to the superficiall formation of the [...] [reflecting] body'. This emanating substantial form is 'sphericall according as the bodies of the vnivers from wch the light is incident are [...] <to the obiect> spherically circumstant or ambient.' This 'sphericall extension or emanation of luminos- ity', he adds 'is comonly called the sphere of actiuity'. Light is not 'merely imaginary but substantiall', and so the sphere of activ-

42 B.L. Add.MS 4394, f. 382r'. 4aJ. Prins, Walter Warner (ca. 1557-1643): Notes on Animal Organisms, (Published

Ph.D, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, 1992), 104 and fn. 90. (Currently in press with Kluwer Academic Press, Dordrecht).

44 See B.L. Add. MS 4394, f. 227v: "the light spherically reflected [...] may be not improprely vnderstood to be one and the same sphere of actiuity or forme assistent."

262 STEPHEN CLUCAS

ity is considered to be a 'forme assistent', in so far as it 'pene- trates, or is immersed in, or forms matter.'4 This formation also obtains for other spheres of activity ('whether it be vnderstood of light or of any other of like conditions') at work in the universe which are 'actiue or alteratiue or motiue of matter'.46 The assistant form is not only found in the emanating light, but also in the objects which reflect that light, and in the 'visory spirits' in the organ which receives the light.47 All 'qualities sensible,' War- ner argues here, such as colour, sound, taste, odour, are not '<mere> accidents, or affections or conditions [...] of substances themselus', they are not 'substantiall or materiall formes', but 'ought to be vnderstood to be [...] very formes assistent'.48

In the physiological processes involving atomized vital spirits (such as vision), Warner gives assistant forms the role of an active, organizing, kinetic principle which interacts with the atomical parts of the stable (but not entirely passive) matter.49 In later formulations of Warner's corpuscularism, this organizing principle was redesignated 'vis' (or 'power'), whilst retaining the idea of the force as a radiative projection or emanation (like the sphera actiuitatis). Warner's vis is an 'effect or power or vertue which may be called liet [i.e. "light"] whether sensibell or insensi[bell]' found in all bodies, 'all wayes extensiue or impulsiue', a 'vertue radiatiue' which, although immaterial and insensible was (like the assistant form) a substance analogous to matter-it possessed extension, could form a plenum, and could be quantified.50 Warn- er described it as 'the squarer and cutter of atomi',51 a motive, alterative force which acts on and organizes the discrete parts of matter. Matter itself he now saw as incapable of self-motion: 'vnac- tiue,'52 'not moveable per se [...] or apt to move it selfe Wth out

45 B.L.Add.MS. 4394, f. 228r: "quatenus insidet seu immergitur seu assistit materiae."

46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., f. 226v: "as the obiects haue their formas assistentes [...] <fundatus>

quod ad [...] <se substantiam> [...] et emanatione[m] attinet in obiectoru[m] materia and depending quod ad formalitatem attinet [...] on the formes insistent of the said obiects, so haue the organs likewise their formes assistent, fundatus quod ad modu[m] assistentiae attinet in materia ipsoru[m] organoru [m]."

48 Ibid., f. 227r. 49 B.L. Add. MS 4394, f. 225v: "matter is as well reactiue and proactiue as pas-

sibilis", cit. in Prins, Warner, 103. 50 B.L. Add. MS 4394, ff. 384r and 401v. 51 Add.MS 4394, f. 397r. 52 B.L. Add. MS 4394, f. 388r.


the operation of some externall movent.'53 Vis is responsible for 'the production of all the species, motions, alterations and effects Wch are actually apparant in the Universe.' Because 'no alteration can be wth out locall motion', and because the 'phaenomena' of alteration cannot be 'salued by the solitary existence of matter' he acknowledges 'a fo<u>rth thing as a cause of motion wch may therefore well be termed vis or power [...] by the quality of his office'54 and whose 'cheef condition' was 'to cause <locall> motion.'55 Warner used vis to explain atomic cohesion in solid bodies, and physical qualities like colour and weight.56 In this new phase of Warner's thought, the interaction between insistent and assistant forms was replaced by a variety of energic processes, and form itself was now reduced to atomic constructure (the 'seuer- all graduations or dispositions of matter according to diuerse qua[n]tity or formes <or mixture> of <the> atomi or partes thereof)57 and the proportions of matter, vis and vacua in a given body.58

While the question of the atomic formation of solid bodies was relatively uncomplicated, dynamic questions involving alteration and generation demanded an order of explanation, a vocabulary and a conceptual language that corpuscularism was not yet able to provide independently of Aristotelian ideas of form. When discussing chemical resolution, for example, Warner invokes the idea of the instantaneous transition of forms (actus vero instantaneus re- solutionis est transitus de forma ad formam) despite the fact that his chemical philosophy is essentially based on corpuscular particles. His account of inflammation, which confronts physical processes of a similar order of complexity, also makes ample use of sophis-

53 Add. MS 4394, f. 396v. 54 B.L. Add. MS 4394, f. 389v. 55 Ibid. 56 B.L. Add.MS 4395, f. 399r. 57 Ibid., f. 396rv. 58 B.L. Add.MS 4394, f. 384V: "so longe as the same designed space doth con-

taine one and the same designed matter and vis in one and the same sort formed and situated both in respect of their owne parts and mutuall one to an other [...] and of both to the space contine[n]t so long it hath one state. This state is infinitly specified according to the infinit variety of forme and situation, and <every species> singularized by numerall diuersity of matter and vis contayned. [...] The combination of plenu[m] and vacuu[m] whether the plenitude be of matter or vis is subiect to the same variety of cases [...] as the former of matter and vis mutatis mutandis."

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ticated post-mediaeval conceptualizations of form. Although Warner includes atomization (atomizatio), amongst the faculties of the igneous spirit, fire had many properties which seemed inexplicable in terms of the collision and contact explanations of the atomistic hypothesis. Thus he also numbers 'autogenesis' (autoge- nesia) amongst fire's properties, because, he says, 'many times we see that fire conceives itself per se without any actual contact with a flame at all.'59 He also notes fire's 'faculty of transcursion', its continual and rapid movement (continua transcursio), which he glosses as a spirit whose propagation is 'sphericall or omnique'- it is a 'sphere of actiuity' in the mediaeval sense. However, Warn- er interprets the sphere of activity in corpuscular terms: 'the sphere of actiuity of the igneous spirit doth extend vsque ad ces- sationem motus [...] individuorum ab originali ignario emissorum.60 That is to say, the boundaries of the sphere are co-identical with the point at which the individua or corpuscles emitted from the point of origin lose their motion. It is however, the spherical projection of the calorific spirit or vis (fire's Extensivitas sphaerica seu facultas omniquoque extensiua et motiua)61 which is the causal vehi- cle for fire's energic properties. Warner sees this 'calorific force' or vis as analogous to, but distinct from, the transmission of light:

It is to be noted that the heat of a fire, whether it is incorporated or unre- strained, whether it is perceived by the senses or communicated to corpo- real bodies issues forth from the fire not as far as the light extends, but as far as the [igneous] spirit extends. This is self-evident, both because the calorific force [vis calorificae] exists after the light is extinct, and because the spiritual sphere of activity of the calorific force does not extend very far beyond the fire's point of origin, whereas the radiative force of light extends itself over immense distances.62

Warner was not alone in formulating accounts of physical phenomena which interfused corpuscular and Aristotelian modes of

59 B.L. Add. MS 4395, f. 50v.: "multa eni[m] videmus ignem [...] per se concipere absque ullo ignis actualis contactu."

60 B.L. Add. MS 4395, f. 49v. 61 B.L. Add. MS 4395, f. 55r. 62 B.L. Add.MS 4395, ff. 51-: "Notandu[m] est calore[m] qui ab igne siue

libero siue incorporato vel sensu percipitur vel obiectis corporibus communi- catur non a lumine sed ab ipso spiritu materiali, non ab eo <igne> quatenus luminoso sed quatenus spirituoso provenire, quod manifestu[m] est, tu[m] quia vel non existente lumine, existit tamen vis calorificae vel manet haec extincto illo; tu[m] quia vis calorifica ambitum sphaerae actiuitatis spirituosae [...] <non transcendat> eamque principio ignario bene proximu[m] cu[m] luminositatis vis radiatiua ad longe immensiore[m] distantia[m] [...] protendatur."


explanation. Kenelm Digby in his treatise Of Bodies, first published in 1644, for example, re-interprets the sphera activitatis in atomistic terms not dissimilar to those of Warner's account of the igneous spirit. The sphere of activity, he says, is

an orbe of emanations of the same nature which the body is of, within com- passe of whiche orbe, when any other body cometh that receiveth an immu- tation by the little atomes whereof that orbe is composed [...]. And because the orbe (regularly speaking) is in the forme of a sphere, the passive is said to be within the sphere of the other's activity.63

When faced with dynamic physical processes such as physiological change or inflammation, Warner made full use of his Aris- totelian resources, although he did make some efforts to relate formal properties to various corpuscular properties, thus building a tenuous bridge between corpuscularian and Aristotelian concepts of matter. Warner's recourse to the conceptual apparatus of forms and spheres of activity can perhaps best be understood as a response to the complexity and subtlety of various natural processes, which required explanatory models more flexible and versatile than those offered by collision, reflexion, contiguity, and other purely mechanical actions. As Jan Prins has noted, Warn- er's natural philosophy seems to bridge the gap between the earlier Aristotelian traditions in which he was educated at Oxford, and newer modes of explanation:

On the one hand his purely speculative approach as well as his explanations [...] in terms of matter, form, potency and faculties and their objects attests to his dependence on the Aristotelian and Scholastic tradition. On the other hand his rationalism as well as the blurred distinction between bodily and mental processes suggest an influence of Italian natural philosophy from the last quarter of the 16th century [...] based on the idea of the universe as [...] a "cosmic organism" or "ensouled mechanism".'64

For an eclectic Aristotelian like Warner, corpuscularianism was intially a relatively unknown philosophical quantity, and one that necessarily involved him in an engagement with Aristotelian notions of form and formation, that is to say with a cluster of ideas he could not (or would not) dispense with entirely.

63 K. Digby, Two treatises Of Bodies and of Man's Soul, (London, 1669), 138. 64 Prins, Warner, 77-8.

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Nicholas Hill, 1571-c. 1621

Nicholas Hill, author of the redoubtable collection of aphorisms Philosophia Epicurea, Democritiana, Theophrastica proposita simpliciter, non edocta, first published in 1601, pursues a corpuscular natural philosophy which obviates the necessity of engagement with Aris- totelian forms. Like Warner, Hill conceives of the universe as com- pounded of solid, indivisible and solid particles of various shapes,65 whose motions and interrelations are governed by a force - vis - which radiates in a manner analagous to light. Unlike Warner, however, Hill 'infects' his natural philosophy (as Bacon would say) with theology, identifying vis with the providential power of God acting on the universe. For him vis is

the efficient, active, universal cause, and the simple absolute essence. The foundation and root of all material power is God, to whose name every- thing bends its knee, and to whom all power and energy returns, who binds the wandering planets together into a structure, and contains in himself the first principles of all species."

Atoms in Hill's scheme are not the lifeless objects of a physical force, but the 'ends of divine actions in nature.'67 A tiny amount of vis is required, Hill says, to propagate an infinite motion through the atomic fabric of matter, thereby 'deifying' it.68 The agency of God's power, of course, does not require Hill to develop a set of causative or kinetic principles. God wills certain qualities and properties, and the atoms obey. Warner's account, by contrast, which never mentions God (or any of his hypostatic substitutes), must of necessity devise a completely

65 N. Hill, Philosophia Epicurea, Democritiana, Theophrastica proposita simpliciter, non edocta (Geneva, 1619), 30, aphorism 116: "Prima corpuscula sunt verb soli- da, impenetrabilia, inalterabilia, multiformia."

66 Philosophia Epicurea, 28, aph. 110: "Prima vis, causa rerum efficiens, actiua, vniuersalis, simplex, absoluta essentia, materiale virtutum fundamentum Deus est, & radix, ad cuius nomen omne genu flectendum, & ad quem iure postlim- inij omnis virtus, & energia redit, soluta mundi compage, & dissitis a se primis principijs specieru[m]."

67 Ibid., 30, aph. 116: "divinae actioni in natura terminos." 68 Ibid., 54. aph. 200: "Minima vis per materiam atomicam in motum prouis-

simam effectiue infinitatur materiam deificans quodammodo." In his preface (p. 5), Hill responds to the imagined criticism that his philosophy deals with an "Impious immersion of God into matter" (Dei immersionem materiae impiam) by suggesting that the "first efficient physical cause" can be interpreted metaphys- ically as a 'hypostasis'.


orginal set of causative and kinetic principles, or (as he does) improvise within a peripatetic framework. By invoking God as a providential organizer of material process, Hill is free to advance a critique of the doctrine of forms. For Hill form is 'the state and condition of things, resulting from the connection of material principles'; it is 'a constitutive and not an operative principle.'69 He rejects the view held by the 'schools' (scholae) that all natural bodies can be analyzed into form and matter, but insists instead that essences are 'the coalition and consistency of individual parts'70 His view of 'natural motions' is also unequivocally corpuscular, with no reference to spheres of activity, or transmission of forms. 'Generative, alterative, diminutive, corruptive and local motions', he says, are a function of atomic constitution, not immaterial operations: 'Nothing can change in substance or quality, otherwise than by the ebb and flow of parts and metathesis, that is, the transposition of indivisible or uncuttable atoms.'71 Hill's account of the 'ebb and flow' and 'transposition' needs no further conceptual elaboration, as it is referred simply to the 'vis' of God's foresight and providence, by which he acts 'mediately and immediately on prime corpuscles'.72

Hill in fact reserves his fiercest remarks against the peripatetic philosophers for some of the more recondite aspects of Aris- totle's doctrine of forms, such as the infusion of special forms, the pre-existence of forms in generation, the extinction or dis- appearance of forms, and the invention of hypostatic forms of external motion (heterokinesia), condemning them as 'absurd and incomprehensible figments'.73 Interestingly enough, however, he

69 Ibid., 13-14, aph. 35: "Forma est status, & conditio rei, resultantia princip- iorum materialium connexorum, principium constituens, non operans."

70 Ibid., 60-61, aph. 230: "Essentia est omnium coalitus, & consistentia, quae in singulis sunt indiuiduis, non superstes post analysim, forma, & materia, illae enim communi scholae sensu rerum tantummodo basis."

71 Ibid., 153-154, aph. 432: "Motus naturalis [...] generatiuus, alteratiuus, diminutiuus, corruptiuus localis & ceteris idem sunt reductiue, nec enim res quoad substantiam, aut qualitatem mutantur aliter, quam per partium effluxum, influxum & atomorum metathesin, i. indiuisibilium siue insecabilium transposi- tionem."

72 Ibid., 40, aph. 154: "Deus agit in omnibus mediate & immediate, primis corpusculis."

73 Ibid., 71, aph. 259: "[F]ormarum specialium infusio, formarum praeexis- tentium in generationis principio, medio, sine instantanea in aduentu, vltimae formae extinctio, aut aufugium. [...] omnium hypostasium heterokinesia, i. alienus motus, Primi efficientis separata a rebus existentia [...] absurdissima sunt & intel- lectui exercitatio [...] incomprehensibilia figmenta."

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preserves the peripatetic doctrines of form when discussing the reception of sense data into the intellect, preferring, for example, to see our perception of starlight as 'the admission of forms [...] rather than the emission of rays' (admissione formarum, non [...] emissione radiorum), quoting Aristotle in the original Greek.74

'Our ignorance of the processes of nature in particular generation [...] should not inhibit our investigation of first principles', Hill believed, although he realized that the invisibility of such processes was largely to blame for such inhibitions. His solution was to rely on an analogical chain of connections between the visible and invisible worlds-the analogy which obtains between the invisible first principles and visible solid bodies would allow the parts hidden in the depths to come to light.75

Robert Boyle, 1627-1691

As long as new narratives of connection between the unseen and the seen were lacking, natural philosophers continued to avail themselves of the compelling conceptual armoury of the doctrine of forms as 'faculties' and 'principles' which filled the blanks in the logical chains of analogy. During the course of the seventeenth-century, the necessity of the doctrine of forms became steadily less compelling as other narratives-those of 'force'- became more predominant. Robert Boyle, in his treatise on the The Origins of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Phi- losophy, published in 1666, is characteristic of late seventeenth-century attempts to dispense with form as an explanatory principle by replacing it with corpuscular interaction:

that which is commonly called the form of a concrete, which gives it being and denomination and from whence all its qualities are, in the vulgar philosophy, by I know not what inexplicable ways, supposed to flow, may be in some bodies but a characterization or modification of the matter they consist of, whose parts, by being so and so disposed in relation to each other constitute such a determinate body, endowed with such and such properties.76

Although 'for brevity's sake' Boyle retains the term 'form', he

74 Ibid., 43-44, aph. 166. 75 Ibid., 46, aph. 174. 76 R. Boyle, The Origins of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Phi-

losophy (Oxford, 1666), ed. M.A. Stewart, Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle (Manchester, 1979), 90.


radically redefines it: 'I would be understood by it not a real substance distinct from matter, but only the matter itself of a natural body, considered with its peculiar manner of existence which [... may... ] be called either its specifical or its denominating state or its essential modification-or [...] its stamp.'77. Rejecting what he saw as the confused, ill-defined and poorly conceptualized notion of substantial form as it was developed by the modern peripatetics as 'not comprehensible,'78 Boyle argued that physical nature could be sufficiently explained by 'the three [...] primary and most catholic moods or affections of the insensible parts of matter' (i.e. bulk, figure and motion/rest).7? The vexed question of process or 'alteration' is, in Boyle's scheme, explained by the vagaries of 'local motion'. '[W]hen one inanimate body works upon another, there is nothing really produced by the agent in the patient', Boyle argued, 'save some local motion of its parts or some change of texture consequent upon that motion.' These 'local motions' or 'mechanical changes of texture' are 'principal amongst second causes, and the grand agent of all that happens in nature,'80 and effectively replace the function of peripatetic form as a 'kind of soul, which, united to the gross matter [...] acts in it by the several qualities to be found therein.'8' Thus while the peripatetic could explain natural processes as the actions of a variety of substantial forms, Boyle explains them as the action of a variety of local motions or 'active qualities,'82 which are seen as comparable to the ancient atomistic concept of synkrisis and diakrisis ('the convention and dissolution and alterations [...of...] atoms') as the cause of the generation and corruption of bodies.83 The idea of local motions as a constructive and destructive 'transposition of

77 Ibid., 39-40. Baldini notes a similar linguistico-conceptual transformation at work in Galileo's critique of qualities or forms in the Discorso intono allUe cose and the Massimi Sistemi ("11 Corpuscolarismo italiano", 56-7).

78 Ibid., 53-5. Boyle notes that the "more candid of the peripatetics" (he cites Scaliger) acknowledged that "the true knowledge of forms is too difficult and abstruse to be attained by them" (54).

79 Ibid., 51. 80 Ibid.,19. Cf. also p.44: "local motion hath, of all other affections of matter,

the greatest interest in the altering and modifying it, since it is not only the grand agent or efficient among second causes, but one of the principal things that constitutes the form of bodies."

81 Ibid., 38 82 Ibid., 40. "Form", he says, "usually comprises several [active qualities] which

have convene[d] in one body." 83 Ibid., 44

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parts', naturally raises another set of questions with regard to causation. Boyle's world is 'not a moveless or indigested mass of matter, but an automaton or self-moving engine, wherein the greatest part of the common matter of all bodies is always [...] in motion.' But this 'automatic' functioning is referred (like Hill's vis) to the divine cause of causes:

[T]he first and universal, though not immediate, cause of forms is none other but God, who put matter into motion (which belongs not to its essence) and established the laws of motion amongst bodies, and also [...] guided it in divers cases at the beginning of things.84

Boyle objects to 'schoolmen and philosophers' who have 'derived forms immediately from God' (which is to 'put Omnipo- tence upon working I know not how many thousand miracles every hour'),85 suggesting instead a mediated creation, with a pre- ordained set of mechanical laws and second causes which are tractable to natural philosophical investigation in a sphere sepa- rate from a consideration of final causes. In this Boyle is not unlike Bacon, who exhorted his contemporaries to proceed by the 'steps' of second causes rather than 'ascend[ing] by a leap' to God as final cause.86 While Bacon's insistence on the separability of second causes was not a unique gesture (it had been a characteristic apologetic trope of natural philosophers in previous centuries), the seventeenth century saw the systematic widening of this separation as an epistemological break. The independent investigation of second causes as 'mechanical affections' broke first with immaterial forms and pneumatology, and ultimately with divine causation itself. 'Forces' or 'active principles' (such as 'spirits', 'forms' or 'local motions') entered natural philosophy as the mediate agents of a divine creator, but 'by steps' (debates over autokinetic matter, revived pneumatology, and later hylozoism) became self-sufficient explanatory principles. While dynamic or energic models of atomic interaction increasingly replaced form as an explanatory device in the latter half of the seventeenth century, I think the earlier 'transitional' corpuscularians such as Hill and Warner (and later eclectics such as Kenelm Digby and Guy Holland87) are especially imperative for historians of early-mod-

84 Ibid., 69. 85 Ibid., 56-7. 86 See footnote 27. 87 See especially his Grand Prerogative of Humane Nature (London, 1653).


ern English science to study. In these thinkers the substitution has not yet become a full possibility. Their vision of natural process had still to be negotiated through theoretically eclectic conceptual vocabularies. It is the delicate conceptual renegotiations of these tenuous sub-visible boundaries-between particulate constructure and dynamic process, between soul-like substantial form and mechanical force (or local motion)--which are in need of careful examination, for it is here, if anywhere, that a scientific revolution in natural philosophy took place.

ABSTRACT

In this article, I argue that the interest on the part of Bacon, Hill, and Warner in corpuscularian interpretations of natural phenomena and their similarity to certain views later held by Digby or Boyle offer a strong indication for the existence of an 'independent English atomistic milieu', a view that fits more closely Porter & Teich's recent model of national contexts for early modern science than Kargon's traditional picture of English atomism as a foreign import. In the course of this article, I consider Francis Bacon's anti-Aristotelian polemic in the light of his continued adherence to a conception of material form and his essentially Aristotelian metaphysics, as well as the relationship between his conception of form and his corpuscular theories of matter. This is followed by an examination of Walter Warner's natural philosophical manuscripts. Particular atten- tion is paid to his Averroist distinction between assistant form (which has the role of an active, organizing, kinetic principle) and insistent forms (passive material formation, according to the nature of the substance and its internal combination or mixture of parts) in his treatment of the atoms of vital spirits and of the transmission of light, an idea that has interesting links to the scholastic notion of the sphaera actiuitatis. It is shown how Warner replaced the assistant form/sphere of activity with an energic principle, which he called vis and which took over many of the characteristics of the formative principles it replaced. I then compare Warner's use of vis with Nicholas Hill's, for whom it represented a hypostatic principle, i.e. an instrument of divine agency in the physical world. Such a strong view of divine causation enabled Hill to undertake a more radical critique of Aristotelian form than was available to Warner. My discussion ends with a look at Boyle's critique of the modern Aristotelian doctrine of forms, and his re-interpretation of form in terms of atomic configuration and the modifi- cations of local motion. I end by suggesting that the 'phasing out' of Aristotelian notions of form, and their replacement with ideas of force or local motion opened the way for a similar 'phasing out' of divine causation, by making force a self-sufficient explanatory principle.

'the Infinite Variety of Formes and Magnitudes'

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