Article ID: CBB760551012

‘Natures’ and ‘Laws’: The Making of the Concept of Law of Nature – Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168–1253) and Roger Bacon (1214/1220–1292) (2017)

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Contemporary scholars set the Greek conception of an immanent natural order in opposition to the seventeenth century mechanistic conception of extrinsic laws imposed upon nature from without. By contrast, we argue that in the process of making the concept of law of nature, forms and laws were coherently used in theories of natural causation. We submit that such a combination can be found in the thirteenth century. The heroes of our claim are Robert Grosseteste who turned the idea of corporeal form into the common feature of matter, and Roger Bacon who described the effects of that common feature. Bacon detached the explanatory principle from matter and rendered it independent and therefore external to natural substances. Our plausibility argument, anchored in close reading of the relevant texts, facilitates a coherent conception of both ‘natures’ and ‘laws’.

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Authors & Contributors
Raizman-Kedar, Yael
Cunningham, Jack P.
Antolic, Pia A.
Chen-Morris, Raz
El-Bizri, Nader
Fidora, Alexander
Journals
Micrologus: Nature, Sciences and Medieval Societies
History of Science
Perspectives on Science
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Publishers
Akademie-Verlag
Springer
University of Notre Dame
Concepts
Science and religion
Philosophy
Optics
Physics
Light
Natural laws
People
Grosseteste, Robert
Bacon, Roger
Albertus Magnus
Thomas Aquinas, Saint
Avicenna
Duns Scotus, Johannes
Time Periods
Medieval
13th century
Ancient
Renaissance
Places
Rome (Italy)
Greece
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