PHIL1070 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Natural Philosophy, Celestial Spheres, Primum Mobile
22 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
Twelfth century cosmologists stressed the unified, organic character of the cosmos, ruler by a world soul and bound together by astrological forces and the macrocosm microcosm relationship. The cosmos came into existence when god created a dimensionless point of matter and its form, a dimensionless point of light. The point of light instantaneously diffused itself into a great sphere, drawing matter with it and giving rise to a corporeal cosmos. Subsequent radiation and differentiation (as the light made a return trip toward the center) gave rise to celestial spheres and the characteristic features of the sublunar region. The heavens are made of finer stuff than are terrestrial substances, but the difference is quantitative rather than qualitative. Aristoletelians, like platonists, conceived the cosmos to be a great but unquestionably finite sphere, with the heavens above and the earth at the center. They believed god could have created multiple worlds. Aristoletelian world picture displaced the platonic on issues of disagreement.
