Seminario de San Jose

Tiniguiban, Puerto, Princesa City

5300 Palawan Philippines
JOHN VINCENT DARYL VELASQUEZ

UNDERSTANDING COSMOS WITHOUT GOD

Aristotle philosophy remained dominant until the second half of the sixteenth

century, however due to the revival of Plato’s philosophy some of the former’s concept

were undermined. Nevertheless, his philosophy maintained its stronghold on the

cosmological explanation of the universe in the mentality of the people by that time.

Many philosophers still held on to his teachings, on the finiteness of the universe, the

spherity of the cosmos, the heterogeneity and heirarchy between sublunar and

supralunar worlds, and the earth as the central and unmoving body of the universe or

geocentrism. Aristotle’s concepts also took hold on the church’s theology. Its root grew

deeper into the heart of Catholism who was the sole teaching authority of that time.

Science and technology was emerging by that time. When Galileo invented the

telescope he discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe, instead the

sun was. This discovery consequently led to his excommunication by the church which

would receive an apology from from the church 300 years later. By 1543, Copernicus

published his book entitled, Six books on the Revolution of the celestial spheres, which

proposed a new calculus of planetary motion based on a several new hypothesis.

Among them, heliocentrism and a mobile earth. It also proposed a new cosmology

consonant with those hypothesis and the immobility of the ultimate sphere of the
universe. At that time the dominant to his work was treated solely as an astronomical

hypothesis and ignored its cosmological implication.

That was a major challenge on aristotelianism, the latter founded on speculative

knowledge and the former on science, facts and proofs. Copernicus was also branded

heretic by the church thereby meeting the same fate as that of Galileo. Consequently, at

least until the first adherent of Copenicus’ cosmology began to publish in the 1570’s and

the Aristotelian representation of the universe continued to be challenged despite the

fate of the proponents of the theory. A challenge on Aristotelianism meant also a

challenge on the church for it is couched on the very language of aristotelianism.

Discoveries and technology continued to emerge hence a lot of questions and

arguments were also posited against aristotelianism. In this light also how Bernardino

telesio formulated his own philosophy contra-aristoteliansm. Let me present his

philosophy on nature after a breif background on his life.

Bernardino Telesio was born at Cosenza in Calabria in 1509 as the son of a

noble and quite wealthy family. Having been educated by his uncle Antonio Telesio, a

humanist of note, he studied in Milan, Rome and the famous university of Padua, which

he left in 1535. There is no evidence that Telesio gained a doctorate. Instead of

undertaking a university career, he spent several years in a Benedictine monastery

(1535–44) without taking oaths. Telesio dedicated his whole life to establishing a new

kind of natural philosophy, which can be described as an early defense of empiricism

bound together with a rigorous criticism of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Galenic

physiology. Telesio blamed both Aristotle and Galen for relying on elaborate reasoning
rather than sense perception and empirical research. His fervent attacks against the

greatest authorities of the Western philosophical and medical traditions led Francis

Bacon to speak of him as “the first of the moderns” (Opera omnia vol. III, 1963, p. 114).

He was perhaps the most strident critic of metaphysics in late Renaissance times. It

was obviously due to his excellent relationships with popes and clerics that he was not

persecuted and was able during his own lifetime to publish his rather heterodox writings,

which went on the index shortly after his death.1

Telesio was an arent critic of aristotelian metaphysics, which he accused of

perverting philosophy from very foundation due to its highly abstracted nature. He,

therefore wanted to erect his own philosophy, particularly natural philosphy. He wanted

to reformulate the explanation of cosmos in a new light.

In his book de rerum natura iuxta propria principia (on the nature of things in their

own principles), he tried to erect his own philosophy or science of nature upon the

bases of;

1. Natural principles alone independent of theology, marginalizing in particular

metaphysics, which he understood to be too abstract and,
2. Sensory experience, which produces the said natural principles and in
general, all of the information perataining to the natural philosophy.for telesio
sensory experience, to which one must subordinate oneself, is the foundation
that supports that a posteriori exercise of reason.
Although Telesio is very hostile to the parepatetic tradition, he, for the most part,

proceeds alon with aristotelia line of thought. In order for him to establish the firt

principles, which is one of his foundations in establishing his natural philosophy, he

1
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/telesio/#LifWorInf (oct. 19 2017)
reduced everything to an exclusively natural forms of principles of change, namely,

matter, heat and cold.

MATTER

on the one hand Aristotle thought matter to be the substance of change, form

and privation which, on the other hand for Telesio was excessively abstract. Note here

that Telesio was an ardent critic of Metaphysics for, for him that is too abstract. That is

why he wanted to establish a philosophy based on the natural principle alone. Telesio

then transformed the conception of matter, from being excessively abstract to a more

concrete conception, as a physical mass which is absolutely unmoving and inactive,

totally passive, uniform throughout, invisible and black.

HEAT

Heat for Telesio is the principle of movement; making the corporeal matter into

which it penetrates, tenuous, rarefeid and light. This principle of heat is real, present

and fundamentally produced by the sun, its universal source, perepheral in general nad

the heavens which encircles the earth.(de rerum natura, 1568. 1. 1-9). This conception

of heat by Telesio is very much different from that of aristotle. Heat for aristotle is absent

in the heavens and present only in the world because of the friction produced by the

movement of the celestial spheres.

COLD

in contrast to heat, cold is the principle of immobility, and it renders the matter its

influences, dense and heavy. This principle of cold reside in the immobile earth.

Telesio presumed that in the beginning God had created two primary globes, the

sun and the earth, the sun being the seat of heat, the earth that of coldness, and that

He had separated them with such a distance in space that they could not extinguish

each other (DRN book I, ch. IV). All natural things result from the battle of these

antagonistic forces for the possession of matter. They are in peroetual struggle to

dominate and exclude the other. In order for these two to create a stable and permanent

univeres, the contrasting principles must be kept away from each other yet in a way that

they may still act upon each other to maintain the natural worl in a dynamic equilibrium

of perpetual motion. This means that when taken together with a creativea nd provident

divinity, the deduction of whose existence from sensory experience is, nevertheless,

highly questionable and is best accepted a priori that the universe is finite and the two

opposing principles are located in its opposing regions. The main region of that creative

battle is the surface of the earth, where they create metals, stones and animate beings.

The primary activity of warmth is to move fast and to dilate and rarefy matter, whereas

that of cold is to hinder movement and to condense matter. Things differ according to

the amount of heat or cold they possess (and therefore according to their density and

derivative qualities such as velocity and colour). The quantity of matter is not changed

through the action of these forces upon it. The role of heat, cold and matter as ‘natural

principles’ had been highlighted before by Girolamo Fracastoro in the first version of the
Homocentrica and in the dialogue Fracastorius sive De anima (Lerner 1992), as well as

by Girolamo Cardano in his Liber unicus de natura.2

The following passage (from De rerum natura [1586 edition], 1, 5) sums up

Telesio’s scheme: “Three principles ûprincipia] of things altogether must be posited: two

active natures ûagentes naturae]. heat and cold, and a bodily bulk ûcorporea moles]....”

This “bulk” or “matter” is described as being “inert” and “dead,” all actions or operations

being foreign to it. Aristotle had given a somewhat similar account of heat and cold

in De generatione et corruptione (at 329b23), where he identifies “the hot” and “the

cold,” “the wet” and “the dry” as primary (tangible) qualities. In keeping with Aristotelian

texts such as this, heat and cold were called primae activae qualitates by such

contemporary Aristotelians as Zabarella. But for Aristotle the active and the passive

qualities make up the four elements (fire being a combination of the hot and the dry, and

so on), whereas for Telesio wetness and dryness are not primary but derivative. New

explanations are thus required for the traditional “media,” water and air.3 The three

principle of Telesio he made use to substitute that of aristotle’s Matter and Form.

Though he retained the term matter, he nonetheless, made a change on his concept of

matter. Here he established his principles for a humble interpretation of the of nature

based on empirical observations for fictional worlds.

2
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/telesio/#Cos (october 20, 2017)
3
http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/philosophy-biographies/bernardino-telesio
SPHERES

Telesio's cosmology puts an end to metaphysical explanations. Telesio thought

space to be absolute (DRN book I, ch. XXV–XXVIII), thus abolishing the Aristotelian

notion of a bipartite cosmos divided into a sublunary world, in which generation and

corruption take place, and a supralunary sphere with eternal regular movements. He

however, retains the celestial spheres of Aristotle., which he considered to be solid

bodies composed of the same igneous matter as the stars(though less substantial and

dense, therefore not heat-emitting). He also believed them to be true source of celestial

motion, responsible for propelling the stars (to whom Telesio ceded no more than the

ability to rotate upon themselves). He thought stars to be a divine celestial animal.

Telesios celestial spheres are not impenetrable, contrary to Aristotle, as can be

deduced from the final version of theory of comets. In his book on comets and the Milky

Way, he defined milky way as unusually condensed celestial matter in the spheres of

the fixed stars. Comets are sublunar exhalations, to be sure, ibut they are elevated to

the heavens where they shine in response to the sun’s illumination. Thus, Telesio offers

contemporary celestial novelties that are completely natural, without recourse to

miraculous intervention of God or to the eschatological overtones so frequent that time.

The existence of vacuum within space is also admitted, but things are said to

have a natural inclination to avoid empty space. In the cosmological chapters of book IV

Telesio criticized the Aristotelian explanation of the movement of the sky by a

transcendent telos, the God of Aristotle's metaphysics: the sky doesn't move because of

a desire for a being more perfect than itself, but because it is its own nature to move

and thus to sustain its own life (DRN book IV, ch. XXIV; Aristotle, Metaph. XII, ch. 6–7).4

TIME AND SPACE

Telesio also rejected the Aristotelian conception of space and time as accidents

of corporeal substance.

SPACE

telesio argues that space is distinct from the material of the bodies it contain,

conceptually anterior to them and independent, though always full of corporeal matter.

Incorporeal in the space can be defined as the capacity to receive bodies. Space is

homogenous; it possesses an identical character in all of its regions. Nevertheless it is

not infinite and its reach is limited to the spherical world that it must contain.

TIME

Time is independent of the object within it and of their movements; it exist for

itself and must be understood as independent of the motion that constantly occurs

within it.

4
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/telesio/#Cos (october 20, 2017)
CONCLUSION

Although Telesio did what he set up to do, some of his works were seen as

theologically dangerous. For example , in his book DE RERUM NATURA, he stated

that the things of nature are not created, governed and sustained by divine providence.

In Telesio's philosophy, there is no such thing as a transcendent mind or idea. All things

act solely according to their own nature, starting from the primary forces of cold and

heat. The Epicurean chance is enclosed in Telesio's Stoic-influenced philosophy of

nature (Kessler 1992): everything can produce everything, an idea which was soon to

be sharply rejected by Francesco Patrizzi da Chierso, one of the most important

contemporary readers of Telesio (“Obiectiones”, in the appendix of Telesio'sVarii libelli,

p. 467 f.). In order to sustain themselves, these primary forces and all beings which

arise through their antagonistic interaction must be able to sense themselves as well as

the opposite force, that is, they must sense what is convenient and what is inconvenient

or damaging for their survival and well-being. Sensation, therefore, is not the property of

embodied souls. Telesio's philosophy can thus be described as a pansensism in the

sense that all beings, animate or inanimate, are said to have the power of sensation,

above all, his conception of animal and human soul as spirits enduced from the seed

and necessarily mortal.

This made his book be included on the index of prohibited books published in

rome in 1596 with the clause donec expurgetur or until it shall be purged of error.