{"title":"Innovative Conceptions of Substantial Change in Early Fourteenth-Century Discussions of Minima Naturalia in advance","authors":"Roberto Zambiasi","doi":"10.5840/acpq202398284","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article contains a case study of some innovative early fourteenth-century conceptions of the temporal structure of substantial change. An important tenet of thirteenth-century scholastic hylomorphism is that substantial change is an instantaneous process. In contrast, three early fourteenth-century Aristotelian commentators, first Walter Burley and then John Buridan and Albert of Saxony, progressively develop a view on which substantial change is linked to temporal duration. This process culminated, in Buridan and Albert of Saxony, with the explicit recognition of the temporally extended nature of some (if not most) instances of substantial change. This article sheds light on this neglected episode in the history of late medieval hylomorphism taking as its point of departure these commentators’ discussions of the issue of minima naturalia, i.e., the issue of the lowest possible limit of any division of substantial forms coming about through the potentially infinite division of the matter they inform. In short: is there a piece of matter so small that no substantial form can possibly inhere in it?","PeriodicalId":44497,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"AMERICAN CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq202398284","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article contains a case study of some innovative early fourteenth-century conceptions of the temporal structure of substantial change. An important tenet of thirteenth-century scholastic hylomorphism is that substantial change is an instantaneous process. In contrast, three early fourteenth-century Aristotelian commentators, first Walter Burley and then John Buridan and Albert of Saxony, progressively develop a view on which substantial change is linked to temporal duration. This process culminated, in Buridan and Albert of Saxony, with the explicit recognition of the temporally extended nature of some (if not most) instances of substantial change. This article sheds light on this neglected episode in the history of late medieval hylomorphism taking as its point of departure these commentators’ discussions of the issue of minima naturalia, i.e., the issue of the lowest possible limit of any division of substantial forms coming about through the potentially infinite division of the matter they inform. In short: is there a piece of matter so small that no substantial form can possibly inhere in it?
这篇文章包含了对14世纪早期一些关于实质性变化的时间结构的创新概念的案例研究。13世纪经院哲学的一个重要原则是,实质性的变化是一个瞬时的过程。相比之下,14世纪早期的三位亚里士多德评论家,首先是沃尔特·伯利,然后是约翰·布里丹和萨克森的阿尔伯特,逐渐发展出一种观点,认为实质性变化与时间持续时间有关。这一过程在布里丹和萨克森的阿尔伯特(Albert of Saxony)达到高潮,他们明确承认一些(如果不是大多数的话)实质性变化的实例具有时间延展性。这篇文章揭示了中世纪后期词形学历史上这一被忽视的事件,以这些评论家对最小自然问题的讨论为出发点,即,通过他们所告知的物质的潜在无限分裂而产生的任何实质性形式的分裂的最低可能限制的问题。简而言之:有没有一种物质如此之小,以至于它不可能包含任何实体形式?