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Francesco Patrizi da Cherso's concept ofspace and its later influenceJohn Henry aa Faculty of Arts, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA,EnglandPublished online: 22 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: John Henry (1979) Francesco Patrizi da Cherso's concept of space and its laterinfluence, Annals of Science, 36:6, 549-573

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ANNALS OF SCIENCE, 36 (1979), 549--575

Francesco Patrizi da Cherso's Concept of Space and its Later Influence

JOHN HENRY

Facu l ty of Arts, The Open Univers i ty, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, Eng land

Received 19 March 1979

Summary

This study considers the contribution of Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (1529-1597) to the development of the concepts of void space and an infinite universe. Patrizi plays a greater role in the development of these concepts than any other single figure in the sixteenth century, and yet his work has been almost totally overlooked. I have outlined his views on space in terms of two major aspects of his philosophical attitude: on the one hand, he was a devoted Platonist and sought always to establish Platonism, albeit his own version of it, as the only eurreet philosophy; and on the other hand; he was more determinedly anti-Aristotelian than any other philosopher at that time. Patrizi's concept of space has its beginnings in Platonic notions, but is extended and refined in the light of a vigorous critique of Aristotle's position. Finally, I consider the influence of Patrizi's ideas in the seventeenth century, when various thinkers are seeking to overthrow the Aristotelian concept of place and the equivalence of dimension- ality with corporeality. Pierre Gassendi (1592=1652), for example, needed a coherent concept of void space in which his atoms could move, while Henry More ( 1614-1687) sought to demonstrate the reality of incorporeal entities by reference to an incorporeal space. Both men could find the arguments they needed in Patrizi's comprehensive treatment of the subject.

Contents

1. Introduction ........................................................................................ 549 2. Patrizi's Platonism and his ideas on space ........................................... 552 3, Patrizi's anti-Aristotelianism and his concept of space ........................ 559 4. The influence of Patrizi's ideas about space ......................................... 566 5. Conclusion ............................................................................................ 571

1. Introduct ion Francesco Patr iz i da Cherso's role in the history of science has not been

adequate ly evaluated, and yet thanks to the mult i far ious facets of his work historians have tbund it difficult to ignore him completely. He holds a permanent

place among the ranks of those humanist scholars who made Greek works avai lable in Latin. He translated works by Proclus,1 John Phi lophonus z and Aristotle, 3 and made a new translat ion of the Hermet ic Corpus and the Chaldean Oracles of

1 Proelus, Elementa theologica et physiea fecit Iatine Y. Patricius (1583, Ferrara), 2 John Philoponus, Expositiones in omnes X l l 1 A ristoteleos libros, eos q'ui vocantur metaphysiei, quas F.

Patricius de graeeis latinas fecerat (1583, Ferrara). 3 Aristotle, De iis quae sub auditum cadunt interprete F. Patricio. This was included in the Discus'siones

peripateticae (1581, Basle), vol. 1,90-94, and has since reappeared in A ristotle's works edited by I. Bekker (1831, Berlin), vol. 4,388-391. Patrizi also published, as an appendix to his Nova philosophia, a neo- Platonic work based on Plotinus's Enneads IV-VI known as the Theology of Aristotle. Patrizi gives it the title: Mystiea Ae~jyptiorum a Platone dictata, ab Aristotele excel)ta, et perseripta philosophia.

2L2 00(}3 3790/793606 0549 S02'O0 9 1979 Taylor & Francis lad

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550 John Henry

Zoroaster. 4 He wrote poetry himself and became embroiled with no less a poet than Torquato Tasso in a dispute about poetic theory. 5 He wrote works on rhetoric and military history, and a treatise on love. 6 One of his earliest works was a series of dialogues on historiography and the philosophy of history which has been described by a modern scholar as 'the first manifesto' of a 'truly Copernican revolution . . . in the field of historical theory'.7 His two most substantial works, however, are philosophical and they neatly illustrate two distinct but closely related features of Patrizi's philosophical outlook. The Discussiones peripateticae is a monumental work in which he sets out to undermine if not dismantle the vast super-structure of Aristotelianism which had been erected over the centuries before his time; s while the Nova de univemis philosophia is Patrizi's own would-be replacement system which is clearly heavily influenced by Platonic thinking. 9 It is this combination of Platonism and vehement anti-Aristotelianism which led to his most original contribution to philosophy.

Since it offered itself as a new system of philosophy, many historians of science have dipped into the Nova philosophia in order to glean some of Patrizi's thinking on particular topics; but there has been no detailed examination of his natural philosophy. 10 Patrizi is the least studied of the four late Italian Renaissance nature philosophers with whom he is consistently grouped. 11 Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella have been very well served by historians, and even Bernardino Telesio has had three new editions of his major work published since 1910.12 The latest edition of Patrizi's Nova philosophia appeared in 1640, and even this did not bear his name on the title page. 13 It would, no doubt, take many pages to

4 Francesco Patrizi, Magia philosophia .. . Zoroaster et eius CCCXX oracula chaldaica. Asclepii dial@us et philosophia magna. Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander. Sermo sacer. Clavis. Sermo ad fdium. Sermo ad Asclepium. Minerva mundi et alia miscellanea ( 1593, Hamburg); also published as appendices to the Nova pholosophia.

5 L'Eridano in nuovo verso heroico (1587, Ferrara) was an attempt, by poetic flattery, to gain the patronage of the Este family. The polemic with Tasso began with Patrizi's Parere in difesa dell' Ariosto (1585, Ferrara) and Tasso's Discorso sopra il Parere fatta dal Sit , F. Patricio (1585, Ferrara); it continued in Patrizi's I1 Trimerone .. . in risposta alle oppositioni fatte dal Siq. T. Tasso . . . (1586, Ferrara). See Bernard Weinberg, A history of literary criticism in the Italian Renaissance (1961, Chicago), 600~603.

6 Della retorica dieci dialoghi (1562. Ferrara); La militia romana di Polibio, di Tito Livio e di Dionigi Alirar~asseo (1583, Ferrara): and Paralleli militari (1594, Rome). The L'amorosafilosofia was unpublished in Patl'izi's lifetime but has no~ bee~l edited by Jolm ('. Nel~(m (1963. Florence). See also J. C. Nelson, 'L'amoro~a ,filosofta di Francesco Patrizi', Rina,scime~do. 2 (1962). S9 106.

Della historia dieci dialoghi (1560, Venice). See Giorgio Spi,fi, 'ttistoriography, the art of history in the Italian Counter-Ref'ormation'. in E. (Iocln'ane (ed.), The late ltaliatt Remti,~sam'e (1525-1630) (1970. London), 91-133.

s The first volume was printed in 1571 at Venice but the complete work appeared as Discussionttm peripateticart~m tomi IV (1581, Basle).

9 First published at Ferrara in 1591 and then, after condemnation by the Congregation of the Index, in a second edition from Venice in 1593. See L. Firpo, 'Filosofia italiana e eontroriforma', Rivista difdosofia, 41(1950), 150-173.

lo For a very full bibliography of works which often only mention Patrizi in passing, see Vladimir Premec, Franciskus l>atricijus (1968, Beograd). The fullest treatment of Patrizi's Nova philosophia concentrates on his metaphysics rather than his physics: Benjamin Brickman, An introduction to Francesco Patrizi's 'Nova de universis philosophia' (1941, New York).

11 See, for example, P. O. Kristeller, Eight philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (1964, Stanford); B. Brickman, 'Francesco patrizi on physical space', Journal of the history of ideas, 4 (1943), 224-245; and J. O. Riedl (ed.), A catalogue of Renais~sance philosphers (1940, Milwaukee).

12 Bernardino Telesio, De rerum natura iuxta propria principia (ed. V. Spampanato), (3 vols., 1910- 1923, Modena); with an Italian translatinn by Luigi de Franco (3 vols., 1969, Cosenza); and: a facsimile of the 1581 edition (1971, Hildesheim).

13 This'edition is carefully described by Paola Zambelli, 'Aneddoti Patriziani', Rinascimento, 7 (1967), 309-318.

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Patrizi'~" Concept of Space and its Later Influence 551

account for this imbalance, but we cannot pursue the whims of historians here. Bruno and Campanella, for example, have come to be seen as symbols of intel lectual integr i ty in the struggle against oppression, yet it should not be forgotten that many of their works were written in I ta l ian and so could enjoy only a l imited influence. Certainly the amount of a t tent ion paid to them by historians is out of all proport ion to their influence among their contemporaries. 14 Similarly, Telesio's influence was no greater than Patrizi 's, yet, thanks to his influence on Campanelta and the fact that Francis Bacon dubbed him 'first of the moderns' and wrote an extended critique of his De rerum natura,15 historians have been quick to examine Telesio while Patrizi remains ignored.

Patr iz i 's difficult and prolix Lat in and his rambl ing over-scholarly approach- -he often considers all earlier theories on a part icular matter before giving his own- - must also bear some of the blame for the lack of enthusiasm shown by modern historians. However, as I hope to show in this paper, this lack of interest is total ly undeserved, for his concept of space, in particular, is a highly significant new development in philosophy which was to become very influential.

Before turn ing to our main theme it would be as well to outl ine briefly Patr iz i 's new system so that we can see how his ideas on space fit into the whole. His new philosophy is expounded in four parts with the unfami l iar titles of Panaugia, Panarchia, Pampsychia, and Paneosmia. These headings are in fact inspired by the neo-Platonist Philo Judaeus, who used the word 'Panaugia ' in his De opificio mundi. 17 Panaugia is a term referring to the divine source of l ight and the light or brightness emanat ing from it. This places Patrizi f irmly in the tradit ion of neo- P latonic light metaphysics in which light is seen as the closest analogy to God in the physical world. 18 Using Phi lo's term as his model, then, Patrizi coins the other words to signify equivalent concepts. Panarchia is a study of all first principles which, like light, stem from God. Pampsychia is a study of all souls, from the irrational souls of plants and animals to the world soul and the human soul. Pancosmia is a study of the whole physical world and as such contains Patr iz i 's natura l philosophy. 19

Patrizi seeks to replace the four Aristotel ian principles of hot, cold, moist and dry with his own natura l principles, which he believes can equal ly well account for all

14For an indication of the range of material on Bruno see V. Salvestrini (revised by L. Firpo), Bibliografia Bruniana (1958, Florence). For Campanella see L. Firpo, 'Cinquant'anni di studi sut Uampanella, 1901-1950', Rinasrimento, 6 (1965), 209-348.

15 De principiis atque originibus secundam fabulas Cupidinis et Coeli: sive Parmenidis et Telesii el praecipue Democritiphilosophia, tractata infabuli de Cupidine. This can be consulted in J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis and D. D. Heath (eds.), The works of Francis Bacon (14 vols., 1877 1887, London), vol. 5,461-500.

16 Kepler found this aspect of Patrizi's work useful when t1~dng to establish his mechanism for planetary motions. He examined all earlier theories on the causes of the tides which were set out by Patrizi in book 29 of the Pancosmia (see Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke (ed. Max Caspar: 1951, Munich) vol. 15,387 ) Bruno, on the other hand, found Patrizi's work rather exasperating, in fact he described Patrizi as 'a truer excrement of pedantry who has soiled many pages with his "Discussiones peripateticae" ' (Sidney Greenberg, The infinite in Giordano Bruno (1950, New" York), 127).

17 The word appears in section 31. See Works, translated by F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker (1929, London), vol. l, 24~5.

18 See in particular book l0 of Panaugia: De fonte ac patre luminum, 22 23. Here Patrizi quotes a number of authorities for this view including Zoroaster, Proclus and, of course, the Bible.

19 For a fuller account see Brickman's Introduction (footnote 10). There is a very useful examination of Patrizi's light metaphysics in E. E. Maechling, 'Light metaphysics in the natural philosophy of Francesco Patrizi da Cherso' (1977, University of London: M. Phil. thesis).

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552 John Henry

physical phenomena. The new principles are space, l ight, heat and a mat ter principle which is ca l ledf luor . Heat is a special sort of l ight, and these two act onf luor to form the different k inds of physical bodies, including of course the Ar istote l ian elements (earth, water, air and fire) which Patr iz i retains. Space p lays no act ive role but its impor tance for Patr iz i cannot be overstated. I t is prior to everyth ing else metaphys ica l ly and temporal ly . :~ The opening three books of the Pancosra ia are devoted to a detai led discussion of space, and so it is given a fuller considerat ion than any of the other natura l principles, which are deal t with in one book each. Fur thermore , all three of these books had been publ ished in substant ia l ly the same form in 1587, four years before the appearance of the complete system. 21 I t would seem, therefore, that Patr iz i 's concept of space real ly was prior to the rest of his natura l phi losophy. Certainly, it was the most original and the most inf luential par t of his phi losophical system.

2. Pat r i z i ' s P la ton ism and h is ideas on space In an autob iographica l let ter wr i t ten to Baccio Valori in 1587 Patr iz i recorded

how he first set out on his phi losophical career: ' . . . on hearing a Franc iscan fr iar support ing the P latonic conclusions he was enamoured of it, and so he made fr iends with him and asked him whei~ he should look for the "l i fe" of P lato. The fr iar proposed F ic ino 's Theology as the best way, to which he turned with great eagerness; and such was the beginning of that s tudy which he has taken ever since'. 2z

According to his own test imony, then, Patr iz i was a P latonist ; indeed, he was to become a very dist inguished Platonist . For while F ic ino must be credited with the revival of P la ton ism in Renaissance I ta ly (his P laton ic Academy in F lorence was founded in 1462), he never held a Univers i ty pqst, and judged from an inst i tut ional po int of view P la ton ism is v i r tua l ly non-existent unt i l 1577 when Patr iz i became the first Professor of P latonic phi losophy at the Un ivers i ty of Ferrara. 23 Fur thermore , in 1592, just after the publ icat ion of his Nova ph i losoph ia , he was invi ted to Rome as the first Professor of P latonic Phi losophy at the Sapienza itself. In the Ded icatory Epist le at the beginning of his New ph i losophy he urged Pope Gregory X IV to replace Ar is tote l ian ism with P la ton ism in the schools as an impor tant feature of tRe Church's counter- reformat ion struggles. The Germans and other schismatics could be brought back to the fold by reason rather than by force, he claimed, and went on to suggest that the Jesuits should be used in this educat ional reform. 24

The point is that , for Patr iz i , the P laton ic phi losophy is much more concordant with Chr is t ian i ty than the prevai l ing Ar istote l ian phi losophy. I f phi losophy is the

20 This can be seen in the opening words of Patrizi's discussion, which are quoted below in section 4. 21 Books 1 and 2 appeared as De rerum natura libri I I priores, alter de spacio physica, alter de spaeio

nmthemntico ( ! 587, Ferrara); book 3 is a latin version of Della nuova geometria libri X V ( 1587, Ferrara). For a complete translation of De spacio physico see: B. Brickman, 'Francesco Patrizi on physical space,' Journal of the history of ideas, 4 (1943), 224-245. I have used this translation here, making changes occasionally if it seemed necessary.

22 'Autobiografia di Francesco Patricio (1529-1597)', edited by A. Solerti in Arehivio storieo per Trieste, l'Istria ed il Trentino, 3 (1884-86), 275~280: Francesco Patrizi, Lettere ed opuscoli inediti ed. D. Aguzzi-Barbagli: 1975, Florence), 45--51.

23 For a useful account of the development of Platonism in Universities, see P. O. Kristeller, 'Francesco da Diacceto and Florentine Platonism in the sixteenth century', in his Studies in Renaissance thought and letters (1956, Rome), 287-327; and C. B. Schmitt, 'L'Introduction de la philosophie platonicienne dans l'enseignement des universit@s ~ la Renaissance', in Platon et Aristote d la Renaissance. X Vie Colloque International de Tours (1973) (1976, Paris), 93-104.

2r Dedicatory Epistle, recto of second sheet.

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handmaiden of religion, then surely P latonism is the more suitably pious: 'Why is it that only those parts of Aristotle's philosophy which are most harmful to God and his Church are taught in the schools? Arc there no pious handmaidens? Surely Hermes' l ittle book on piety and philosophy contains more philosophy than all of Aristotle's work'. 25

So, when he was invited to Rome, Patrizi went 'with great hopes and grand designs '26 that perhaps such an educational reform would be brought about. His hopes were soon dashed. Jus t six months after his arrival in Rome he was summoned to appear before the Congregation of the Index. In spite of apologies and hurried init ial emendat ions his work was put on the Index 'unless corrected by the author ' (nis i fuer i t ab auctore correcta), z7 Moreover, after Patr iz i 's death in 1597, Roberto Bel larmino, newly appointed counsellor for the Holy Office, recommended the suppression of his chair on the grounds that P latonism was more dangerous than Aristotel ianism because of, rather than in spite of, its similarities with Christ ianity. I t was more insidious in the same way that heresy was more insidious than paganism, zs The Pope did not go so far as to suppress the chair completely but appointed Jacopo Mazzoni, who was well known for his attempts, as Professor at

Pisa and in his writings, to reconcile the differences between p lato and Aristotle. 29 I t should be realised that for Patrizi and his contemporaries P latonism was a

much more Syncretic, even eclectic philosophy than it is for modern scholars. Many of the similarities between Platonic thought and Christ ianity, which Renaissance P latonists felt could only testify to the t ruth and wisdom of the Church, and which the Church itself felt were too dangerous, arose more from the selective emphasis on various post-Christian neo-Platonic writ ings than from the works of P lato himself. For Renaissance philosophers there was no dist inct ion between P latonist and neo- Platonist; indeed, men like Ficino and Patrizi saw themselves as the latest figures in the longest unbroken chain of philosophers stretching back to the t ime of Moses or even, as Patrizi claimed, to Noah. 3~

2s Ibid. Patrizi is referring here to the first book in his own collection of the Corpus hermetieum. Patrizi arranged the different parts of the Corpus into what he considered to be their correct order. In so doing he placed one of the Hermetic fragments recorded by Stobaeus (I.41.[) before the Poe~xtnder and gave it the title De pietate et philosophia. See W. Scott (ed.), Hermetica, The ancient Greek and Latin writings which contain religious or philosophic teachings ase,~ibed to Hermes Trismegistus (4 vols., 1924, Oxford), vol. I, 40, and vol. 3,321.

26 So said Pier Francesco di Nores of Patrizi in a letter of May 1592 (see Tullio GregoiTr 'L'Apologia e la Declarationes di Francesco Patrizi', in Medioevo e rinascimento." studi in onore di Bruno Nardi (1955. Florence), 387-424 (p. 388)).

z7 The history of Patrizi's fight against the Congregation of the Index has been very well documented in Gregory ibid., and L. Firpo, 'Filosofia italiana e controriforma' (footnote 9). See also Francesco Patrizi (ed. P. O. Kristeller), 'Emendatio in libros suos novae philosophiae', Rinascimento, 10 (1970), 215-218.

28 L. Firpo ibid., 165-166. 29 As can be clearly seen in the title of one of his major works: In universam Platonis et Aristotelis

philosophiam praeludia, sive de comparatione Platonis et Aristotelis (1597, Venice). There is an excellent study of Mazzoni and the 'Comparatio' tradition in F. Purnell Jnr., 'Jaeopo Mazzoni and his comparison of Plato and Aristotle' (1971, Columbia University: Ph.D. thesis).

3o See the Diseussiones Peripateticae (footnote 8), vol. 3,292-293, where Patrizi traces the origin of the sciences b~'k to Noah, and Zoroaster is said to be a grandson of Noah. For further discussions of Patrizi's contributions to the prisca .sapientia tradition, see K. H. DannenfMdt's articles: 'Hermet.iea philosophiea' and 'Oraeula chaldaica', Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, 1 (1960), 137-164; and F. Purnell Jnr., 'Francesco Patrizi and the critics of Hermes Trismegistus', Journal of medieval and Renaissance studies, 6 (1976), 155 178. More general treatments of the tradition are: E N. Tigerstedt, The decline and fall of the neo-Platonic interpretation of Plato (1971, Helsinki); and D. P. Walker, The ancient theology, Studies in Christian Platonism from the 15th. to the 17th. Century (1972, London).

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F ic ino 's genealogy of theology is wel l-known: beginning with Hermes Tr ismegistus or Zoroaster the myster ies were passed on to Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras , Phi lo laus and then to Plato. 31 Simi lar ly, Patr iz i argues that 'all the Greek phi losophies, the Pythagorean, the P laton ic on divine things, and also the Ar is tote l ian on the dogmas of morals, and the Stoics on physics and even the first pr inciples of medicine, these phi losophies were taken from their [Hermes's and Aselepius's] books and from others which are lost'. 32 On a more specific point we are told that 'P la to was not the first teacher of " Ideas" . For before him Parmenides and his Eleat ic school, the Pythagoreans and Pythagoras , who perhaps [learnt] it from Aglaophemus, an Orphic phi losopher, held this doctr ine. For in many places Proclus and Damaseius interpret certain Orphic songs spoken by him as being about " Ideas" . . . Certa in ly the whole doctr ine comes from the Chaldeans and Zoroaster ' . 3a

Patr iz i ' s thought , therefore, is steeped in the wr i t ings not only of P la to but also of the later neo-Platonists: Plot inus, Proelus, Iambl ichus and Porphyry as well as the Hermet ic and Zoroastr ian texts. In these writ ings we can often see the origins of Patr iz i ' s view of space even if they are never taken as far as Patr iz i was to do. P la to 's own account in the Timaeus, for example, is very close to Patr iz i 's notion. Space is recognised as one of the pr imary factors required for a full descr ipt ion and classif ication of the World. Ideas, Forms and Space are the first recognisable features in the Chaos. a4 Space is descr ibed as being 'ever last ing, not admit t ing destruct ion; provid ing a s i tuat ion for all things that come into being', a5 So space is ' the receptable, as it were the nurse, of all becoming' , a6 In other words, space is recognised as being prior to all things, a necessity in order for anyth ing else to exist. Patr iz i puts it this way: 'this must be prior to all else; when it is present all other things can be placed in it, when absent all others are destroyed. 'av

Fur thermore , i fa physical ent i ty is not in space then it is considered not to exist. As P la to says, 'This, indeed, is that which we look upon as in a dream and say that anyth ing that is must needs be in some place [r6=o~] and occupy some room [){&p~], and that what is not somewhere in earth or heaven is nothing. 'as Or, as Patr iz i would say, ' if they exist they cannot exist nowhere. Hence they exist somewhere and so in some place, and so in space', a9

31 See his Opera omnia (1576, Basle; repr. 1962, Turin) vol. 1, 1736 (in the preface to his translation of the Corpus Hermeticum), and 386 (in his Platonic Theology).

32 This is taken from the historical preface to Patrizi's edition of the Hermetic works, 3r. 33 Book 12 of Panarehia: De divinis unitatibus, 25r. 34 The most convenient translation of the Timaens is probably F. M. Cornford, Plato's cosmology ( 1937,

London). 35 Timaeus, 52B; ed. tit., 192. 36 49A; 177. ~v Pancosmia, 61a. From now on I will designate all citations from Patrizi's Nova philosophia as N.p.'.

The sheets are printed in double columns, which I will label as 'a' and 'b' on the recto side and 'c' and 'd' on the vet, so.

3s l'imaeus, 52C; 192. 39 N.p. 61a.

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Having said this it has to be admitted that the differences between Patrizi 's ideas and those of his 'divine P lato' are quite fundamental; but these differences are largely due to obscurities and inconsistencies in Plato's account. For example, on the one hand he describes space as unchangeable, and so is fully in accord with Patrizi, while on the other hand he seems to suggest that space is a characterless base which takes on the properties of whatever is occupying it at any time. He makes an analogy here with scents or perfumes which are mixed into a base liquor which is as odourless as possible so as not to affect the perfume. 4~

The difficulty here is of a general kind in ancient phi losophy and not just confined to Plato. The failure to distinguish clearly between corporeal and incorporeal entities seems to lie at the heart of many of the problems in ancient natural philosophy. 41 The same failure arises in Aristotle's own thinking, as we shall see, as well as in his perhaps overhasty inference that Plato's view of space is roughly equivalent to his own view of prime matter before it is endowed with form. 42 The main problem arising from this is that, as one corporeal ent i ty cannot be in the same place at the same time as another, space cannot be an extended thing in which another body is conta ined- - the missing inference being that extension implies corporeality. The beginnings of a solution to this problem appeared in the works of the Epicureans, who declared that space could be extended but incorporeal, and the Stoics, who met the problem head on by accepting, even insisting, that material objects can and do interpenetrate. According to the Stoics pneuma was a material substance composed of fire and air which pervaded the whole universe, continuously, even within the depths of solid bodies. 4a For the Stoics the incorporeal is only a subtle and rarefied form of the corporeal. The neo-Platonists were clearly influenced by both opinions though both were considered to be too materialist. Syrianus, for example, rejects the Stoic view in his commentary on the Metaphysics:

9 we should not look to the Stoics and pay attention to what they say, for they do not even reject [the concept that] material masses can subsist within one another; we should rather turn to those who suppose that space ranges throughout the whole cosmos, and receives all the nature of corporeality into itself; they declare that it does not divide [things] nor is it divided, as it is shared by the air and other bodies, but unbending and firm and immovable and forced from every change stretches throughout the whole cosmos. 44

On the other hand, the neo-Platonic author of Libellus I I of the Hermetic Corpus rejects the Epicurean concept of void while at the same time ai~irming that space [Z6TCo~] is incorporeal. When Asclepius asks Hermes: 'What, then, is that incorporeal thing?', Hermes is made to reply that 'it is Mind, entire and wholly self- encompassing . . . imperturbable, intangible, standing firm-fixed in i tsel f . . . ' . Similarly, in the dialogue known as the Asclepius void is denied on the grounds that

40 Compare Timaeus 50B-C, 182, with 50D-E, 186. For a fuller account of Plato's concept of space Cornford's commentaIs~ should be consulted.

41 See for example G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The pre-Socratic philosophers (1971, Cambridge), 247 and 249.

a2See Physics, IV, 2 (209b ll) and IV, 7 (214a l0 15). 43 On the Stoic natural philosophy see S. Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (1971, London); Emile

Brehier, La th~orie des incorporels dans l'aneien stoieisme (1963, Paris)i and Josiah B. Gould, The philosophy of Chrysippus (1970, Leyden).

44 Syrianus In metaphysicam commentaria (ed. Guilelmus Kroll: 1902, Berlin), 84-86.

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556 John Henry

all space is always full of 'things apprehensible by thought alone'; in other words, by some spiritial, incorporeal entity. In this way the Stoic concept ofpneuma became transformed into a genuinely incorporeal yet extended entity, as The so-called intelligible world, the higher spiritual world, became the true reality tbr the neo- Platonists while the physical world was but a poor reflection. So three dimensional and yet insubstantial or immaterial entities like space and light become important as analogues of the spiritual world. Space and light became border-line entities between the realms of matter and spirit. Plotinus (205-270), for example, il lustrates the relationship between the One and Nous (roughly equivalent to the world of Forms and Ideas in the Platonic sense) by analogy with the relationship between the Sun and light. Nous is an emanation from the one in the same way that light is an emanation from the Sun. 1,ight is said t

Patrizi 's Concept of Space and its Later Influence 557

Patrizi was personally famil iar with the work of all these men. He cites each of them in the Nova philosophia s3 and we know that he once owned works by Proclus and Plot inus as well as other neo-Platonists, s4 He translated Phi loponus's com- mentary on the Metaphysics into Latin, and it is inconceiyable that he did not read his commentary on the Physics which was pr inted in Lat in eight t imes between 1539 and 1581.5s Patr iz i could use these thinkers as an inspirat ion and an author i tat ive backing for his own views on space and its relationship to metaphysics and physics. His t reatment of space, however, was not confined in his own mind to these two sciences. As a P latonist he felt bound to treat of another impor tant science which was closely related to the concept of space: mathematics.

After all, one of the maj or differences between Aristotle and Plato was considered to he their disparate att i tudes to mathematics. Mazzoni in his Comparison of Plato and Aristotle, for example, declared ' that Plato believed that mathemat ics was part icular ly suited to physical investigations. On account of which he often applied it to revealing the mysteries of physics. But Aristotle seems to have felt entirely different, and he ascribed Plato's errors to his love of mathemat ics ' , s6

I t is not surprising, therefore, that Patrizi devotes two of his three books on space to 'mathemat ica l ' and 'geometrical ' considerations. 57 The major influence here is the shadowy figure of Pythagoras rather than Plato himself, though, of course, Patrizi cannot forbear from reminding us that 'r ightly was it set on the doors of the divine Plato's school: "let no one enter who is ignorant of Geometry" ,.ss Believing, as he does, in an ' intell igible' world which is more real than the physical world and which is populated with Ideal Forms, it is easy for him to accept the reality of numbers as self- existent entities which, like geometrical figures, in some sense underl ie physical entities. So, whereas an Aristotel ian will tend to reject the usefulness of mathematics because it only deals with abstract ions and not with real objects, a' P latonist will see mathemat ica l operations as proof of the existence of the Ideal Forms.

Renaissance P latonism has been cited by some notable modern historians as an important feature in the mathemat izat ion of science and the development of the quant i tat ive approach. 59 While there are certainly elements of t ruth in this, it must always be borne in mind that there are two dist inct tradit ions: one of mathemat ica l

53 Although there is no index to the Nova philosophia there is a 'Catalogus autorum qui hoc novae philosophiae opere citantur'.

54 We know this because there are seventy-five Greek manuscripts in the library of the Escorial which used to belong to Patrizi. He had to sell them during a period of insolvency. The list includes a number of Platonic works. See B. E. C. Miller, Catalogue des manuscrits grecs de la Bibliothbque de l'Escurial (1848, Paris: repr. 1966, Amsterdam); and E. Jacobs, 'Francesco Patrizi und seine Sammlung griechischer Handschriften in der Bibliothek des Escorial', Zentralblatt Fir Bibliothekswesen, 25 (1908), 19-47.

55 See footnote 2 for reference to Patrizi's translation. There' were two translations of Philoponus's commentary on the Physics; one by G. Dorotheus printed in 1539, 1546, 1550 and 1554, and the other by J. B. Rasarius printed in 1558, 1559, 1569 and 1581, all at Venice. For full references see CI B. Schmitt, 'A fresh look at mechanics in 16th century Italy', Studies in history and philosophy of science, 1 (1970), 161- 175.

56 Jacopo Mazzoni (footnote 29), 187. s7 See footnote 18. 5s N.p. 68b. 59 The two most well-known proponents of this view are E. A. Burtt, The metaphysical foundations of

modern science (1924, London); and Alexander Koyr4, 'Galileo and Plato', Journal of the history of ideas, 4 (1943), 400428. But see also E. Cassirer, 'Galileo's Platonism', in M. A. Montague (ed.), Studies and essay~ in the history of science (1946, New York), 277 297.

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558 ,John Henry

science and one of mathematical mysticism or 'metamathematics ' . There is a world of difference between the 'mathematical ' ramblings of Patrizi and the work of men like Galileo and Kepler (though Kepler has a foot in both traditions). Admittedly, Patrizi recognises the importance of mathemat ics- -he even tells us that 'Aristotle's assertion that mathematics has neither aim nor use was false'6~ he has no clear grasp of the use of mathematics in developing his own universal philosophy. Indeed, the word 'mathematics' has, for modern minds, an almost unrecognisable mean- ing. 61 I t is worth quoting a long passage from the De spacio mathematico to get something of the flavour of Patrizi's version of mathematics:

And the Pythagoreans, most learned of the older thinkers were correct in saying that Two, which was the first number, corresponded to a line; Three, the second, corresponded to the surface; Four, the third, to the body, with the nature of things persuading and compelling, though silently. This nature did not allow continuous quantity to proceed beyond the number four (from which Ten the ultimate of numbers is made), nor beyond body, which is itself within four. For just as the part of space which is held between two points is a line, and that between three points is the first surface: a triangle, so the part of space which is contained within four points, form the first body, a pyramid. Subsequently, if a space be contained within five points, or six, or any larger number, they will not form any thing other than body, that is the threefold dimension, long, broad, and deep, by which we measure the parts of infinite space (for, the whole being infinite we do not measure). And with great wonder it must be realised that two points enclose a line, three a surface, and four a body, the three parts of space . . . . Within the same four consists Ten, the most perfect number beyond which there is repetition of the same things ... and no less deserving our admiration is it that ten is produced in yet another way: from the continuous quantities constituting the first body, namely six lines and four surfaces- the three sides and base of a pyramid. Yet between such points and lines and surfaces, even if many more be taken for forming figures of bodies, there can be enclosed only three spaces, long, broad, and deep, which make one and every body. And so it was rightly said by the Pythagoreans that the three embrace all, and so are perfect. And so as nature leads us through the degrees of things in order, we have been led to points, to lines, to surfaces, to bodies, to unity, to numbers. But among the sciences these things constitute the whole of that which the ancients called mathematics. 62

60 It is not clear what Patrizi has in mind here. He may be confusing Aristotle with Aristippus (see Metaphysics B, 2,996a, 32-36, and M,3, 1078a, 32-b, 5: I am grateiul to Dr. A. G. Molland for making this suggestion). Or it may be that Patrizi has been so enraged by Aristotle's serious criticisms of Plato's number theory in the last two books of the Metaphysic:s that he leaps to the conclusion that Aristotle is opposed to any theo~T of nurr~ber and so to mathematics. For a recent assessment of Aristotle's critique of Plato's number theory see the introduction to Julia Annas, Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' Books M and N (1976, Oxford).

61 This is not unique to Patrizi: there is a general problem arising from the fact that mathematics was seen as a science relying on abstraction and so dealt only with imaginary things. Plato's ideal mathematical forms, for example, are found in the intelligible world of the neo-Platonists and not in the physical world. So, Telesio, in his l)e rerum natura (1586, Naples), 40 rejects the notion of space as a 'mathematical body, in our imagination only . . . ' . ,John Buridan, in his Questions on the physics, even refers to simple ' thought experiments' as 'experiences of' a mathematical kind' simply because they are imaginary and not because there is any quantitative analysis of results (see E. Grant, So~l'ce bo~k on )ttedieeal .vcience (1974, Cambridge, Mass.), 326). I hope to deal more fully with Patrizi's ideas on 'mathematical space' in another paper.

62 N.p. 66c~l.

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Patrizi's Concept of Space and its Later Influence 559

We can conclude, therefore, that Patrizi is wholeheartedly Platonist, adopting, as he does, the emanative light metaphysics already propagated by Plotinus, Proclus and others (even, nearer Patrizi 's own time, Ficino and Palingenius), 63 and the number-mysticism of the Pythagoreans. Often, however, the treatment of space given by his Platonic predecessors is only cursory and could only serve as a starting point for Patrizi. The primacy of space in his new system meant that the concept had to be developed in detail, and thanks largely to the other dominating facet of his philosophical outlook, to which we now turn, he was able to propound his ideas in an often strikingly original way.

3. Pat r i z i ' s ant i -Ar i s to te l ian ism and h is concept of space As Patrizi well knew, it was not sufficient to promote a Platonic notion of space

when everyone else was firmly entrenched in Aristotelian place. He had to show that Aristotle's position was untenable, in the hope that his own version could supersede it. Besides, Patrizi needed very little excuse to attack Aristotle. He was arguably the most vehement and unrelenting critic of Aristotle even at a t ime when anti Aristotelians were making themselves heard all over Europe. Indeed, had he not been given a chair in Platonic philosophy it seems doubtful that he could have worked within the University system. He would surely never have been content to hold a position like that of his contemporaries Franeeseo de'Vieri 64 and Jaeopo Mazzoni, who ran courses on Plato at Pisa, but only as a small part of their teaehing duties which, of course, concentrated on the philosophy of Aristotle.

His antipathy to Aristotle is, no doubt, partly due to jealousy on behalf of his divine Plato. As he tells us himself, he 'fell greatly in love with Plato and all his followers, and dedicated himself wholly to them. And so it was that he always preferred them to Aristotle'. 65 Often, when expounding his fondly held notion of replacing Aristotle by Plato in the schools, he emphasises the irreligious aspects of the Stagirite's philosophy: 'it would be far more advantageous, more well considered for Christian men and far more useful if the Hermetic teachings were more powerful than the Aristotelian which spout out great impieties everywhere.. / .66

As far as Patrizi was concerned, if the Platonist philosophy agreed suprisingly well with Christian theology, Aristotle's was almost entirely detrimental to the faith. At one point he asks 'who would not pursue with great hatred an impious man and enemy of (~od~' . 67 Patrizi rarely minces his words when discussing Aristotle:

Common men laugh indiscriminately at Philosophers with this saying, which is now a eommonplaee: this man is a philosopher, he does not believe in

63 For an example of light metaphysics in Ficino see his Liber de sole in vol. 1 of his Opera omnia (footnote 31). Palingenius wrote a philosophical poem called Zodiaeus vitae which has appeared in many editions. A convenient reprint is: Marcellus Palingenius, The zodiake of life . . . translated by Barnabe Googe (t947, New York). See also F. W. Watson, The 'Zodiacus vitae' of Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus: an old school book (1908, London).

64 Compare Francesco de'Vieri, Vere conelusioni di Platone, eonformi alla dottrina christiana eta quella d'Aristotile (1590, Florence).

65 This appears on the first page (un-numbered) of the last appendix to the Nova philosophia ealled Veritatis studiosis. This is an apologia for Patrizi's anti-Aristotelianism and is partly a reproduction of the opening chapter of tome 3 of the Discussiones peripateticae.

66 Hermes Trismegist~s, 3r-v. 6 ~ Veritatis studiosis.

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God. And not without cause. For they see in every school in Europe, in every gather ing of monks, only the phi losophy of Ar istot le is taught , for great rewards, and with great fame. Yet they know and learn that only this phi losophy deprives God of his omnipotence and providence. 6s

As, well as being an enemy of God, Ar istot le shows other unsavoury charac- teristics. He was impl icated in the plot to kill A lexander the Great; he was an ungrateful disciple who turned against his teacher P la to and 'tore him to pieces for poster i ty ' ; and perhaps most serious of all, ' I t is handed down that for the most par t he burnt the books of his predecessors to steal their ideas from them, so that they would seem to be his own discoveries'. 69 And when he does not plagiarise from his predecessors he often does 'not report their th ink ing fa i thful ly but destroys them by jeering and soph is t ry - - th i s is typical of him'. 7~ In short, Ar istot le was ' tota l ly concerned that no-one should seem wiser than himself ' . 71

I t is the combinat ion of this virulent ant i -Ar is tote l ian ism with the metaphys ica l impor tance of space in Patr iz i ' s thought that leads him to pay careful a t tent ion to the prevai l ing views on Ar istotel ian place and systemat ica l ly to reject v i r tua l ly every one of Ar istot le 's conclusions. And it is here rather than in his more overt ly P laton ic not ions that Part iz i ' s work takes on its great significance. The gradual overthrow of Ar istote l ianism cont inued for many years after Patr iz i ' s death, 72 and many th inkers made use of his erudit ion and scholarship in a number of fields; 73 but most impor tant ly a new concept of space was needed for the proper estab l i shmeot of the mechanical phi losophy, and Patr iz i ' s arguments provided by far the ful lest t reatment up to that t ime.

Now, the not ion of space as we th ink of it, hard ly appears at all in Aristot le; instead he confines himself to a discussion of place [~6uo~] which he quickly establ ishes in the Phys ics as, so to speak, a ' techn ica l term'.74 This technical term is so careful ly defined that many of the features of Pat r i z ian space seem self- cont rad ic tory when viewed from an Ar istotel ian posit ion. For Aristot le, all ent it ies can be analysed in terms of substance and accident, and where a body is at any given moment is nothing to do with its essence but is merely accidental to it. So it is the concept of 'place' or locat ion which he sets out to define. After careful considerat ion he asserts that the place of a body is the l imit ing surface of the surrounding or contain ing body. 75 Patr iz i , however, is unimpressed; ' For what is his locus', he

68 Dedicatory Epistle, verso of first sheet. In fact there is actually a recorded instance of this saying used specifically--if unfairly--against Patrizi. in Giordano Bruno's trial proceedings Zuan Mocenigo reported that Bruno had said: 'I know that Patrizi is a philosopher and believes nothing' (see F. A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic tradition (1964, London), 345),

69 Veritatis studiosis, recto of first sheet. 70 N.p. 67b. 71N.p. 66d. 72 That is was a gradual overthrow must now he recognised. See, for example, C. B. Scbmitt, 'Towards

a reassessment of Renaissance Aristotelianism', History of science, 11 (1973), 159 193; or, taken from another point of view, Edward Grant, 'Aristotelianism and the longevity of the medieval world view'. History of science, 16 (1978), 93-106.

73I briefly mention just a few of these below in section 4. 74 Aristotle's concept of place and rejection of the notion of space can be found in the Physics, 4,

chapters 1 9,208a, 27-217b, 28; and in De caelo, 1, chapters 5-9, 271b 279b, 3. 7s Physics, 4, 4,212a, 5-10. I have used the Loeb edition translated by P. H. Wicksteed and F, M.

Cornford (1970, London), 313. In future I will give the page reference in brackets.

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Patrizi 's Concept of Space and its Later Influence 561

demands, 'other than space, with length and breadth, even if in locus he himself foolishly overlooked depth, which is more properly locus'. 76 Patrizi has made two points here. Firstly, Aristotle's place is only a particular sort of space. He expands the argument for us: 'When the same space contains a body it is called locus; but if it contains no body it is called a vact~.~m. But really these things are the same thing: vacuum, spacium, plenum, and locus... And on this account vacuum like locus, must consist of the three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth. And this very vacuum is nothing other than three dimensional space'. ~

His second point is that the Aristotelian definition is inadequate because a three- dimensional object is said to be contained in only two dimensions. Aristotle is even accused of inconsistency here first attributing three dimensions to place and then denying it: 'For he does deny it when he says: "locus must be the boundary of the enclosing body, with which it touches the body enclosed". On this account he defines locus as the surface of the surrounding body'. 7s

Within the terms of his own paradigm Patrizi is making a good point when he asks how the depths of a body can be meaningfully said to occupy a surface rather than a space. But it is hardly a fair criticism of Aristotle, whose concept of place is primarily concerned to locate a body, describing where it is in relation to other objects; in which case consideration of a closed surface is entirely adequate. However, it will not do to characterise these arguments in terms of the incompat- ability of paradigms, because Aristotle actually considers what is very much like the Patrizian concept and rejects it:

What makes 'place' appear so mysterious and hard to grasp is its illusive suggestion now of matter and now of form, and the fact that while the continent is at rest the transferable content may change, for this suggests that there may be a dimensional something that stays there other than the entering and vacating objects--air too contributing to this last illusion since it looks as if it were incorporeal--so that the 'place' instead of being recognised as being constituted solely by the adjacent surface of the vessel, is held to be the dimensional interval within the surface, conceived as 'vacancy'. 79

The problem here is that proposed by the perennial confusion between corporeal and incorporeal. This is clearly shown when Aristotle argues that because a void is non-material an encroaching object like a cube of wood cannot displace it, as it could displace water and so has to interpenetrate with the void. This is held to be impossible, for it means two objects are occupying the same place at the same time. The fact that the void is incorporeal ought to make a difference to the argument, but Aristotle fails to see this. He seems to be objecting that the void is not material enough to be displaced by the wood but too material to exist in the same place at the same time as the wood. s~ Any 'dimensional entity' for Aristotle is corporeal: he cannot accept the incorporeal three-dimensional space of the atomists, sl

v6 N.p. 61a. v~ N.p. 62d. Aristotle had anticipated this point: 'Thus "place" and the "filled" and the "vacant"

would all be one identical entity under varying aspects or conditions of existence' (Physics, 213a, 15-20 (p. 329)).

7s N.p. 62a. ~9 Physics, IV; 4, 212a, 7-15 (p. 313). s~ IV, 8,216a, 35-216b, 4 (p. 359). slPhysics, IV, 6, 213a, 30 sq. (p. 331).

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562 John Henry

Consider by way of contrast Patr iz i ' s version of d isplacement: 'Therefore, in order that the locat ing body may now receive the located body, it is necessary for it to w i thdraw complete ly from this place leaving the space, which is immobi le there, empty so that it may be fil led with the encroaching body. And when this [body] in turn wi thdraws completely, that same space which is there immobile, may receive another enter ing body' , s2 Hav ing said this, Patr iz i now reveals, in complete contrad ict ion to Aristot le, that he believes this is the only way to avoid interpenet- rat ion of bodies: 'Space always the same, and a lways immobi le must remain long, wide, and deep in order to release all leaving bodies and to receive all enter ing bodies. Or else penetrat ion of bodies occurs and this is impossible' . 83

I t is thanks to his P latonic concept of an incorporeal corporeal, then, that Patr iz i avoids gett ing into confusion about what is a mater ia l ent i ty and what is not. However, as an extended ent i ty can be either mater ia l or immater ia l , Patr iz i has to eharacter ise a corporeal body by reference to something other than its extension. Patr iz i ' s answer is the obvious one for the modern mind: ' I t is antitypia which they also call anteresis which is proper to a body, in so far as it is a natura l body. This is resistance. This resistance needs that three d imensional space for its existence', s4 Patr iz i ' s opinion was to be re-emphasised in the seventeenth century in arguments against the Cartesian definit ion of mat ter as res extensa. Descartes, l ike Ar istot le, could not conceive of d imensional i ty wi thout corporeal i ty , s5

A fur ther problem arising from this phi losophical confusion was the possibi l i ty of void space. Aristot le, as is well known, was forced into denying the existence of void space even in principle. After all, place is an a t t r ibute of body. Nevertheless, even scholastic phi losophers used to argue against Ar istot le on this one, though only secundum imaginat ionem, almost as a menta l exercise, s6 U l t imate ly they would usual ly return to the Ar istotel ian fo ld - - they were not dr iven to overthrow Ar istot le because of a love for P lato, like Patr iz i , or because of a need to account for the universe in mechanical terms, l ike Gassendi, Boyle and Newton.

u2 N.p. 62c. s3 Ibid. s4 N.p. 62e-d. s5 Indee~t, one could almost say Descartes was more Aristotelian than Aristotle on this point. See

Principles 4-22 in Descartes's Principles of philosophy, which is conveniently presented in E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (eds.), The philosophical works of Descartes (2 vols., 1967, Cambridge), vol. l, 255-265.

s6 There is an excellent series of articles by Edward Grant on the concept of void space in the Middle Ages. It comprises: 'Motion in the void and the principle of inertia in the middle ages', Isis, 55 (1964), 265- 292; 'Medieval and seventeenth century conceptions of an infinite void space beyond the cosmos', Isis, 60 (1969), 39-60; 'Medieval explanations and interpretations of the dictum that "Nature abhors a Vacuum" ', Traditio, 29 (1973), 327-355; 'Place and space in medieval physical thought', in P. K. Machamer and R. G. Turnbull (eds.), Motion and time, space and matter: interrelations in the history of philosophy and science (1976. Columbus, Ohio), 137-167; and 'The principle of the impenetrability of bodies in the histol)" of concepts of separate space from the middle ages to the seventeenth centu .ry', 1sis, 69 (1978), 551-57l. See also A. Koyr~, 'Le vide et l'espace infini au XIVe smele', Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire dn mbyen-af]e, 24 (1949), 45-91.

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Patrizi's Concept of Space and its Later Inflnence 563

In his own discussion Aristotle distinguished three species of void: the intra- mundane void, the inter-particulate void, and the extra-cosmic void. Following suit, Patrizi considers each of these in turn. The intra-mundane void refers to large-scale vacua that might be formed inside blocked bellows, clepsydrae or water clocks, sealed bludders or other containers, and even much larger voids which could be left behind if God destroyed everything beneath the sphere of the moon but kept that sphere supported, s7 Now, even Patrizi admits that this sort of void is not found natur~lly, but he believes that such could be produced artificiMly. Unfortunately, albeit interestingly, Patrizi lets the whole burden of his argument rest on certain 'experiments' (experientiae) which he describes, with no consideration of the theoretical objections proposed by Aristotle. This is particularly disappointing because Aristotle's most strenuous objections rely on his assumption that motion would be impossible in a vacuum, and it would have been interesting to see how Patrizi surmounted these obstacles. However it was left to other thinkers to argue for a new dynamic theory and this is one of the major failings of his otherwise comprehensive critique, ss

The possibility of motion in a void only becomes an issue for Patrizi when he is arguing for the second sort of void: the interparticulate or interstitial void said to exist between the particles of matter. Following the arguments of Lucretius in De return natura s9 Patrizi insists that only on this assumption can motion and condensation and rarefaction take place:

The air, likewise, yields to my body when I change my position in it. As it gives way it is either destroyed or else withdrawn into its other neighbouring particles and thus, either one part penetrates into another, or else it withdraws into the empty spaces interspersed within it. But we must not say that it was destroyed without any previous transformation. Nor is the inter-penetration of one part of the air with another ~dmissable. Therefore, we must admit that it betook itself into the empty spaces of the nearby air. And it is in this sense that certain of the wisest of the ancients, well informed on the nature of things found in the vacuum the reason for density and rarity; and also maintained that the motion of bodies took place through the void, the object met giving way and withdrawing into the nearest empty little spaces. 9~

Of course, all this had been vigorously denied by Aristotle, but as far as Patrizi was concerned his carefully thought out arguments were merely a 'dross of sophisms'. Meanwhile, he is so carried away by his own speculations that he asks: 'Why can we not maintain that there is as much vacuum in the world as there is

87 Patrizi does not discuss the last example, but it does appear in the scholastic literature and even in Walter Charleton's Physiologia Epicuro Gassendo-Charletoniana (1654, London), 63. For a medieval example see E. Grant (tbotnote 61), 325, where Albert of Saxony's Questions or~ the Physics of Aristotle is considered.

8s For an excellent discussion of these experiments see C. B. Schmitt. 'Experimental evidence for and against a void: the sixteenth century arguments', isis, 58 (1968), 352 366. For Patrizi's discussion see N.p. 63b-c. On the relationship between dynamical theories and the concept of void, see E. Grant., 'Motion in the void (fnotnote 86). See also M. ('.lagett, The s~:ienee of mechanics in the Middle Ages (1959, Madison, Wis.), 509-512. Philoponus also deserves recognition on this score: so far his work has to be properly ~ssessed, but see C. B. Schmitt (fontnote 55).

s9 Lucretius, On the "~mture of the univer.se (1951, Harmondsworth), Book I, l l . 32,%417. 9~ N.p. 63a.

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plenum ~'.91 In ther words, 'These interspersed empty spaces are real ly as extensive and as nmnerous as the filled spaces [of the world]. For it is a plenum to the senses and in popular parlance, but according tt'the world is empty . . . ' .02 Once again Patr iz i has hit upon a notion that will be taken up again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, part icu lar ly after the inspirat ion of Isaac Newton's speculat ions in the Quer ies appended to his Opt icks . 9 3

The final type of void is the extra-cosmic void beyond the outermost sphere of the heavens. Arguments had been put forward on its behal f v i r tua l ly cont inuously from the pre-Socrat ics to the Renaissance in spite of Ar is tot le 's best efforts. The famous, and t ru ly ubiquitous, a rgument runs something l ike this:

9 let it be assumed that someone standing motionless at the ext remi ty [of the world] extends his hand upward 9 Now if his hand does extend they take it that there is something there beyond the sky to which the hand extends 9 But if the arm could not be extended then something will exist outside that prevents the extension of the hand; but if he then stands at the ext remi ty of this and extends his hand the same question as before [is asked] since nothing could be shown to exist beyond that being: 94

Patr iz i 's own version is somewhat more sophist icated but the same point is made, namely that the world must have an outer surface which must present itself to an external surrounding space. His st ratagem is to consider one of the signs of the zodiac (he takes Aries) which covers an area del ineated by arcs of 30 ~ and 12 ~ on the innermost surface of the heaven. Now, these bounding lines can be extended through to the outside surface, which must exist, otherwise the heaven would be a body with no surface or not a body at all. I f we consider all the signs of the zodiac in s imilar fashion, then we have to conceive a band 12 ~ wide running r ight around the world. Fur ther , we can extend the lines div iding one sign from the next upward and downward to each pole, so that the world is d iv ided into twelve equal parts like a melon. Patr iz i is t ry ing to give the reader a menta l p icture of what the world must look like if it could be seen from outside the sphere of the fixed stars. The outer surface must be contiguous with an ambient space and the world as a whole must exist, l ike everyth ing else ( including melons), in an encompassing space. 9s

Fur thermore , this space must be infinite in extent . Patr iz i is quite insistent about th i s - - the void is not merely indefinite but infinite, and infinite in actua l i ty not s imply i n potent ia . After all, space cannot be bounded by itself nor by any other corporeal incorporeal , which would be indist inguishable from space, so it must be bounded by an incorporeal or a body. An incorporeal , however, would have to have a surface in order to bound space and so could not be incorporeal and a body has to exist i n space and so could not bound space. So, space is infinite. 96 And it cannot be

9 91 N.p. 63b. 92 N.p. 64c. 93 See A. Thackray, '"Matter in a nut-shell': Newton's Opti

Patrizi's Concept of Space and its Later Influence 565

said to be infinite only in potential while actually finite, for that would mean it is r

actually bounded, which is impossible by the same reasoning we have just been through, so space is actually infinite. 97 Patrizi is now in a position to summarily dispose of one awkward scholastic problem: can the world as a whole be moved? Certainly it can, and it does indeed leave a void behind it as it moves into another part of the infinite space. 9s

A related Aristotelian problem concerns the place of the world as a whole. Aristotle led himself into a tight corner on this issue when he said that 'if a body is encompassed by another body external to it, it is "in a place", but if not, it is not ' . 99 The outermost sphere or the world as a whole could not be said to be surrounded by an external containing body, so the commentators had to make a special case and define this place in terms o f the surrounded limit. 1~176 The place of the outermost sphere was, therefore, the external surface of the penultimate sphere. Strictly speaking, Patrizi is once again perfectly free to dispose of this argument; but his Platonism leads him to agree with Aristotle for once, and he feels it incumbent upon himself to establish that the earth, which is the centre of the world (he was no Copernican1~ is in the centre of the universum spacium. Of course, as an infinite extension, the universum spacium should have no definable centre, and Patrizi begs the question completely by saying that if we draw imaginary lines out in all directions from the centre of the earth as far as the boundary of the world, they will be equal but finite in length. I f we extend them further they remain equal even to infinity and so the world is in the centre of the universal space. 1~

From one point of view this is a weakness which prevents Patrizi from being hailed as a truly modern thinker, 1~ but as a Ptatonist he was bound to believe in a hierarchy, the great chain of being from matter to spirit and up to God. The rational soul of man was another corporeal incorporeal for Patrizi, a mid-point between the world of nature and the world of spirit, and so it seemed fitting that man's place on earth should be central, with the base matter of earth below him and the heavens above him. 104 So everything is ordered: 'the principal bodies of the world have the power of being fixed each in its own place and rank and of not being dislodged

97 Ibid. 9s N.p. 63d. This argument about the world moving was raised by the Aristotelian Alexander

Aphrodisiensis as an objection to the Stoic concept of an ambientvoid. His objection was simply that this sort of motion is meaningless and yet is allowed for by the Stoic concept, therefore their concept is in error. The Aristotelian, however, has overlooked the principle of sufiqcient reason which can be invoked by the Stoics to account for the immovabil ity of the world: for why should it move one way rather than another? See S. Sambursky (footnote 43), 113. This argmnent was still going strong in the seventeenth century between Leibniz and the Newtonian Samuel Clarke. This debate may be conveniently followed in H. G. Alexander (ed.), The Leibniz-('larke correspondence (1956. Manchester): see Leibniz's 3rd paper and Clarke's 3rd reply, for example.

99physic~s, IV, 5, 212a, 32- 5 (p. 321). too For a brief discussion of this problem see, H. A. Wolfson, Crescas' critique of Aristotle (1929,

Cambridge, Mass.), 45-46 and Note 54 on Proposition 1, part. 2, 432441. ~0~ Although he did, like so many others, accept the rotation of the earth about its own axis (compare

N.p. 104d). 102 N.p. 64c. 103 E. E. Maechling (footnote 19) considers this to be the reason why A. Koyr6 omitted Patrizi from his

From the closed world to the infinite universe (1957, Baltimore). For Patrizi believed in a closed world in an infinite universe. Koyr~'s omission is, nevertheless, unfortunate in view of Patrizi 's great importance.

lo4 For hierarchies in Patrizi's Nova philosophia see B. Briekman (footnote 10), 32-39.

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therefrom. And so it happens that the centre of the world is a lways in the centre of space, the earth remains immovable in the same space around the centre, and l ikewise water, air, and the entire heaven'. 1~

In the closing lines of his book on physical space, then, Patr iz i i ronical ly comes close to an acceptance of Ar istotel ian natura l places and the non- isotropie space that it implies. He continues: 'But if this is so, the bodies of the world, the heaven and the elements, occupied from the beginning the parts of space appropr ia te to each, in which they might remain forever. Jus t as these bodies differ in nature from one another so can the parts of space that underl ie each of them seem to differ from each other' . 106

Patr iz i has a l ready said that the differences in parts of space arising from different located bodies are merely accidental to it and not par t of its proper at t r ibutes , and yet now he admits that space could be given speeiM propert ies l ike those impl ied by the Ar istotel ian doctr ine of natura l plaees. Thus, instead of arguing against. Ar istot le he declares that if ' it should be proved that those parts of space were so ar ranged from the beginning that the one holding the earth is incapable of holding the air, and the one holding the water is unable to hold the heaven, air or earth, and that each part received bodies peeul iar to itself ' , then it follows that 'this p roper ty must have been given each one of the parts of space by some other superior power. But whose power that is, and what sort of power it is, will be looked into thoroughly in its own place' . l~

Even if Pat r i z i ' s t reatment of physical space ends on this quasi -Ar istote l ian note, the major i ty of his arguments have a l ready been sutEeient to underl ine the inadequacy of the Ar istotel ian account. 1~ Dr iven by his love of the P laton ic phi losophy and his adherence to its metaphys ica l principles, he has set out to show that Ar istot le 's reject ion of the popular opinion that there is a 'k ind of d imensional ent i ty ' which is 'd ist inct from body' is misconceived, 1~ and at the same t ime to establ ish this popular opinion as the correet one by careful phi losophieal analysis. The str ict ly re lat ional concept which for Ar istot le was merely one of the ten categories of the objects of thought 1 lO became for Patr iz i a real self-existent ent i ty .

4. The inf luence of Pat r i z i ' s ideas about space In the late s ixteenth and ear ly seventeenth centur ies Patr iz i was general ly

regarded as one of the world's leading phi losophers. There are numerous passing references to him, as well as a number of longer discussions by writers all over Europe. One of his early works was even abr idged and adapted in an English work of

10s N.p. 65d. t06 Ibid. ~o~ Ibid. lo8 Besides. Patrizi goes

Pat r i z i ' s Concept of Space and its Later In f luence 567

1574. i l l G i lbert , 112 Bacon, 113 Kep ler l l4 and F ludd i i s knew his work; Mersenne

took pa ins to re ject his l ight metaphys ics in Quaest iones in Genes im, i16 and John Comenius put Pat r i z i ' among the greates t ph i losophers of his t ime ' a longs ide Bacon and Descartes . i 1~ Thomas Hobbes includes a number of Pat r i z i ' s works in a l ist of books which he bel ieves shou ld compr ise an ideal l ibrary. 1 is Kene lm D igby actua l ly had a copy of the Nova ph i losoph ia in his l ibrary and when his co l lect ion was sold at auct ion in 1680 Pat r i z i ' s book ach ieved one of the h ighest prices at s 6s. 6d1119 Var ious C~mbr idge P la ton is ts were fami l ia r w i th his work, as we might expect : Herber t of Cherbury 12~ and Joseph G lanv i lP 21 f requent ly cite h im. Glanvi l l even

paraphrases Pat r i z i in his Letter to a f r iend Concern ing Ar istot le , which is very closely mode l led on a shor t piece by Pat r i z i cal led Veri tat is studios is . 122 Henry More also knew Pat r i z i ' s work 12a and, as we shall see, was heav i ly in f luenced by it.

The most impor tant inf luence, however , and one of the most fu l ly documented , was undoubted ly on P ier re Gassendi . The great F rench ph i losopher even abandoned work on one of his own works because, so we are to ld by a note at the end of the manuscr ip t , he learned that 'exact ly the same argument is found in F rancesco Pat r i z i ' s Per ipatet ic D isqu is i t ions ' . ~ ~ I t may well be that the d i scovery of such a k indred spir i t led Gassendi to examine more of Pat r i z i ' s works and so brought h im eventua l ly to ponder over Pat r i z i ' s concept of space. Needless to say, as the rev iver

of the Greek a tomis t theory of Democr i tus and Ep icurus , Gassendi was commit ted to a vacu is t concept ion of space and so had to re ject the Ar i s to te l ian posit ion.

l l2He mentions Patrizi once or twice in his De mundo nostro sublunari philosophia nova (1651, Amsterdam), 127-128 and 139.

~13 In a letter to an Italian priest, Re

568 John Henry

Gassendi therefore devotes the second book of his monumenta l Syntagma ph i losoph icum to a discussion of space and time. 115 St ra ightaway similar it ies of approach become apparent . L ike Patr iz i , Gassendi wants to assert that 'P lace and t ime are not included in the division of things or beings into substance and accident'.126 After all, he suggests, place and t ime ' t ranscend the universe in some fashion and encompass it ' . 127 They are not s imply accidental qual it ies of body which d isappear if the bodies do: 'Since it appears to us that even if there were no bodies, there would stil l remain both an unchanging place and an evolving t ime, it is therefore apparent that place and t ime do not depend on bodies and are not corporeal accidents. And they are not therefore incorporeal acc idents . . , but they are certain

incorporeal natures of a different k ind from those ord inar i ly called substances and accidents' . 128

Patr iz i puts it this way:

. . . if i t [space] is something, it is e ither substance or accident. And if it is substance it is e ither something incorporeal or a body. But if i t is an accidens it is e ither a quant i ty , a qual i ty , or some such thing. But we say that space itself per se, since it precedes the world and is outs ide the world, is not one of the things in the wor ld , i. For the world is a body, but space is not in the least a body, therefore space is not embraced by any of the categories, it is before them all, and outs ide them all. i29

Later he adds that space 'is accidental to no wor ld ly thing, be it e i ther body or non-body, substance or accident, it is pr ior to all these'. 13~ SPace is a substance, he admits , but a 'different sort of substance outs ide the categor ies ' . l 3 i And everyth ing is acc idental to space: 'As all things come to be in it, so they are accidental to it; so that not only those things called accidents in the Categories, but even those which are substances there, are accidental to it [space]'.132

Patr iz i ' s space is, therefore, substant ia l extension. Gassendi follows on: 'And we must admi t that space is a quant i ty , or some sort of extension, namely the space or interval made up of the three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth, in which it is possible to hold a body, or through which a body may travel . But at the same t ime it must be said that its dimensions are in60rporeal, so that place is an interval , or incorporeal space, or incorporeal quant i ty ' . 133

We need not pursue Gassendi 's arguments any further, but it should be remarked that the s imi lar i ty of ideas cannot be a t t r ibuted to coincidence. After his discussion Gassendi gives a br ief account of earl ier ideas and when he gets to Patr iz i he says that 'about this space or place, whose three dimensions length, breadth, and depth coincide, be propounds nothing other than that what we ourselves have argued about it above' . 134 Certa in ly he was well acqua inted with Patr iz i ' s Nova ph i losophia .

125 Pierre Gassendi, Syntag~t~ztis philosophicum pars seeunda, quae est Physiea, liber I1, 17~228, in Opera omnia (1658, Lyon: repr. 1964, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt) voh 1.

126 Ibid., 179. 1271 have taken the translations, where possible, from Craig B. Brush (ed.), The selected works of Pierre

Gassendi (1972, New York); this line is from page 383. Hereafter this will be cited as Selected works. 12s Selected works, 384. 129 N.p. 65a. 13~ N.p. 65b. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid. 133 Selected works, 385. 134 Syntagma philosophicl~m, 246a.

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Pat r i z i s ( 'oncept o f Space and it,~' Later h~f luenee 569

At one point in his outl ine of Patr iz i 's ideas he slips into paraphrase: 'Vult enim id

pr imum, quod Opifex summus extra se produxit esse spatium, ut sine quo esse caetera non possint, et possit ipsum tamen esse sine caeteris'. 13s This can be

compared with Patr iz i 's 'Quid autem illud fuit, quod summus Opifex pr imum

omnium extra se produxit? Quid aut debuit, ant expedi it prius produci, quam id qno omnia alia. ut essent eguerunt, et sine quo esse non poterunt, ipsum autem sine aliis esse poterat ' . 136

Patr iz i 's influence on Gassendi is an important detail in the history of science. In a recent paper J . E. McGuire has stressed the influence of Gassendi on Isaac Newton, whose views on space became firmly established as the scientific or thodoxy unti l replaced by Einstein's concept in our own century. 137 According to Voltaire,

Newton, notor iously re luctant to acknowledge debts, actual ly declared that: 'He , regarded Gassendi as a very accurate and very wise mind, and he used to pride himself that he was entirely of his opinion in all the things of which we have just spoken: space, time, and atoms' . 13s

Hi therto the more general consensus among historians has been that Newton's ideas on space were influenced by the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More. 139 So once again, by a separate route, we can infer the indirect influence of Patr iz i on Newton, for Henry More's views on space clearly show the influence of his Platonising

predecessor. Like any typical neo-P latonist More wanted to prove that the world of the

spiritual is more real than the physical. I t is precisely this which leads him so strenously to oppose Cartesian dualism. I t seemed to be all too easy for the Cartesians and other mechanists to ignore the res eog i tans , and God himself, as being unrelated to the physical world. Yet More did not reject the Cartesian res extensa as the correct criterion for existence in the physical world, but instead widened it to include even incorporeal entities: 'For to take away all extension is to reduce a thing only to a mathemat ica l point which is nothing else but pure negat ion or non-ent i ty

and there is no medium between extended and non-extended no more than there is betwixt ent i ty and non-ent i ty. I t is plain that if a thing be at all it must be extended' . 140

135 Ibid.: For he maintains that the first thing which the supreme Artificer produced apart from Himself was space, as other things could not exist without it, yet it could itself exist without other things'.

136 N.p. 61a. : 'What, then. was it that the supreme Artificer" produced first of all, apart from Himself? What ought to be produced or what is more fitting to be produced first than that which all things needed that they might exist? and without which they could not exist, yet it could itself exist without other things?'.

137j. E. McGuire, 'Existence. actuality and necessity: Newt

570 John Henry

More has gone further than Patr iz i here because he has, in effect, re jected the not ion of pure incorporeal i ty. Using Patr iz i ' s terminology, for More there are only corporeals and corporeal incorporeals, or extended mater ia l entit ies and extended immater ia l entit ies. In seeking to prove the real existence of God, More embraces the concept of space, rather than l ight, 'as the closest ana logy with God in the physical world. He must, therefore, reject the Cartesian scheme and show that mat ter differs from spir i t by some factor other than extension. The dist inct ion he requires has a l ready been made by Patr iz i ; it is, of course, resistance which dist inguishes the two sorts of existence. Thus, in The immortal i ty of the soul More suggests that 'we div ide Substance in general in to these first Kindes, viz. Body and Spir i t and then define Body: a substance impenetrab le and discerpible. Whence the contrary K ind to this is apt ly defined, a substance penetrable and indiscerpible'.141

Hav ing given a more restr icted definition of Descartes 's res extensa, More could now expand the terms of reference of the original Cartes ian d ic tum to include souls, spirits, and God as extended immater ia ls or, as Patr iz i would have said, corporeal incorporeals. He had a l ready said as much:

Likewise Life, and that soul which is called 'sensit ive' , if it is d is t r ibuted among the organs of the body will extend through spaee. And if Reason and the Mind of the soul inform the body then, l ike other forms they too are extended throughout bodies. If, however, the soul is in the body not as form but as form-giver, then sinee the body is in space the soul too will be in space. But if the body is in the soul, then the soul, if divis ible will exist in divis ible space: if indivisible, in indivisible spaee. 142

Simi lar ly, both men, bel ieving as they did that to exist meant to exist somewhere and that what is nowhere does not exist, insisted that even God is extended in space. The Cartesians, in fact, were d isparaged by More as nul l ibists who branded themselves as atheists by denying God a place in which to exist. So, for More it was 'clear that God is extended in His manner just because He is omnipresent and occupies in t imate ly the Whole machine of the world as well as its s ingular par t i c les . . . God, therefore, extends and expands in this manner; and is, therefore, an extended thing'.143

Patr iz i , as we might expect, is more c i rcumspect but his meaning is clear: ' I f the universal de i ty is indivisible, as it is, it will be in indivis ible space. Similar ly, if it is nowhere it cannot be conceived wi thout space [8i nuUibi item sit, sine spacio non cogitatur], 1,,a if it is anywhere, either in the topmost heaven or above, it will certa in ly be in space. Indeed, if it is everywhere it cannot be said not to be in space'. 145

141 ibid., 21. 142 N.p. 6lb. The odd notion that body may be in the soul is an acknowledgement of a concept

proposed by Plotinus (Enneads, 4,3). Compare R. T. Wallis, Neo-Platonism (1972, London), 51. 143 Henry More, Collection of several philosophical writings ( 1662, London). This is taken from the first

of the Letters to Descartes, 62. 144 It is not clear what Patrizi means at this point. It may be he is simply saying that incorporeal

beings which do not occupy space cannot be conceived by the imagination. Even Aristotle in the De caelo seems to have spoken about a space beyond the world in spite of his best efforts. Consider this quotation from 279a, 15-25: 'It is obvious, then, that there is neither place nor void nor time outside the heaven, since it has been demonstrated that there neither is nor could be body there. Wherefore neither are the things there born in place, nor does time cause them to age, nor does change work in any way upon any of the beings whose allotted place is beyond the outermost motion...', Similarly, Henry More in his Divine dialog~les (1668. London). 104. insists that Space cannot be 'dis-imagined'. Mom's argument here has been likened to Kant's in the Tral~,~cemle~dal a~..~tlletic (see ,l. T. Baker (footnote 139), 10).

145 N.p. 61b-c.

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Patrizi'~" Concept of Space and its Later Influence 571

As is welt known, More goes on from here virtually to identify space and God. 146 Patrizi, living in counter-reformation Italy, could never have gone so far even if he so wished. It should be remembered, however, that God was an incorporeal in Patrizi's hierarchy and so could not be identified with a corporeal incorporeal. This difficulty does not arise for More, who has done away with the concept of the purely incorporeal, as far as Patrizi would have understood the term. Nevertheless, Patrizi does say that 'in the universe empty space is the physical entity closest to God'. 147 Furthermore, when More gives a checklist of divine attributes which he believes are also proper to space, most of them are exactly consonant with Patrizi's ideas. The attributes are these: 'One, Simple, Immobile, Eternal, Complete, Independent, Self- existent, Self-subsisting, Incorruptible, Necessary, Immense, Uncreated. Uneircumseribed, Incomprehensible, Omnipresent, Incorporeal, Permeating and Surrounding all Things, Ens per Essentiam, Ens actu, Purus Actus') 4s

So, in spite of differences in philosophical vocabulary 'and in prevailing theological ideas, More's attitudes arc, in general, strikingly reminiscent of Patrizi's. Just as Patrizi insists that God must create space first, so More says: 'we must either acknowledge that there is a certain extended entity besides matter, or that God could not create finite matter'. 149 Patrizi quotes Hermes as saying that 'a body that is moved is moved through an immovable medium', 15~ and More in his Divine dialogues declares that space forms an immovable medium for the motion of matter. TM Finally, it is perhaps worth noting that while both men formed their initial conceptions of space in Platonist terms as an emanation from God, the details were worked out in a critical response to the prevailing philosophical notions: Aristotelian for Patrizi, and Cartesian for More.

5. Conclusion The Ari