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Gučetić’s Commentary on Averroes’ De substantia orbis, Agostino Nifo and a View Ahead
Mihaela Girardi-Karšulin
; Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
Aimed at establishing the influence of Agostino Nifo’s commentary on Averroes’ treatise De substantia orbis on Nikola Gučetić’s commentary of the same treatise and following in the footsteps of »Kommentare zu der Schrift des Averroes De substantia orbis in der Bibliotheca Amploniana« by Ivana B. Zimmermann, this article traces the possible impulses that may have arisen from Averroes’ treatise Sermo de substantia orbis and from his Renaissance commentaries, impulses that led to the rejection of Aristotle’s fundamental view that in nature mathematical strictness cannot be found, and for that reason should not be sought. The article begins with an analysis of Averroes’ concept of matter in the sublunar world, the world of four elements. This matter is characterized by dimensiones interminatae, matter with interminated dimensions, and is opposed to Aristotle’s understanding of matter as nothing or almost nothing. Averroes’ concept of dimensiones interminatae owes its construction to an attempt undertaken within the Peripathetic school to clarify certain ambiguities and obscurities regarding the multitudiness and alteration of the forms in matter, i.e. the difficulties of motion or change.
The article further examines the genesis of Galileo’s idea that the mathematical science of nature is not only possible, but that mathematical science of nature is the only possible science. The article traces the genesis from Galileo’s third letter to Marco Welser dated 1 December 1612, in which Galileo rejects the natural sciences of essences and understands natural science as a science of properties to Galileo’s idea mente concipio, i.e. the understanding of experiment. In mente concipio Galileo first presupposes that material figures and bodies in movement (triangle, sphere) fully correspond to mathematical notion of these figures and bodies. On the basis of this supposition, Galileo deduces strict mathematical conclusions and adds the following supposition: if it is possible to establish that the deduced mathematical conclusions have their confirmation in the experience, then that mathematical deduction does not only imply to the principally mathematically conceived movement, but equally so to the empirical movement. The mente concipio introduced by Galileo is a presupposition and condition for the ideas that both philosophy and nature are written “in mathematical language” (Il Saggiatore).
Having elucidated Galileo’s mente concipio, the article goes on to prove that Galileo’s idea that the study of nature should start from a presumption, then proceed with mathematical proof, and lastly examine if such proof can be empirically confirmed is based on an idea of matter which can be imagined as an ideal methmatical figure or body. Material figure or body which corresponds to the mathematical concept must be imaginable or at least conceivable. The idea that corresponds to these conditions, the idea of the interminatedly dimensioned matter, was first conceived by Averroes, and further elaborated by the Renaissance philosophers in their commentaries of Averroes’ Sermo de substantia orbis.
Finally, the article addresses certain additional analyses:
1. Besides Kant’s analysis and far more thoroughly, the role of Galileo in pioneering early modern natural science “in mathematical language” has been examined by Edmund Husserl, who considers Galileo ‘a discovering and concealing genius’ (entdeckender und verdeckender Genius). This formulation does not discredit Galileo or early modern natural science, but rather indicates that philosophy differs from the mathematical natural science.
2. Ernst Cassirer warned about the importance of the new concept of matter introduced by Galileo, yet failed to make any reference to Averroes and made no attempt to define the new concept of matter.
In his major and mature works, Galileo does not mention Averroes (or at least I have not detected it, as he certainly makes no mention of Averroes in the context of his notion of matter), but in the early treatise De motu Galileo mentions Averroes’ thesis that a sphere does not physically touch the plane in one point. The critique of the mentioned Averroes’ thesis plays an important role in Galileo’s concept of the experiment, his mente concipio, since one could say that Averroes influenced Galileo in the way that the latter, in the least, took a critical viewpoint of one of Averroes’ theses.
Ključne riječi
Nikola Vitov Gučetić; Averroes; Agostino Nifo; Galileo; matter; dimensiones interminatae; mathematical language of nature
Hrčak ID:
175725
URI
Datum izdavanja:
19.12.2016.
Posjeta: 1.725 *