Albert the Great on Climatic Determinism

Abstract

The concept of ‘climate’ has evolved from its original meaning as an astronomical and geographical reality to a contemporary vision in which it appears as an entity that can be changed and affected by human beings. Long before arriving at the current state of affairs, the thirteenth-century notion of clima was closely related to the influence exerted by the heavens and the supra-terrestrial realm on terrestrial bodies that underwent generation and corruption. It is in this particular sense that we may speak of climate determinism: involving the formative and non-accidental action upon natural beings by climatic or regional conditions that were determined from above. This paper explores Albert the Great’s account of climatic determinism by relating the astronomical notion of clima with a pair of notions belonging to natural philosophy: locus and locatum. For this purpose, it will rely on the theory of natural places that Albert developed in De natura loci and in his other works of natural philosophy.