A Last Word

Author(s): Andrew Cunningham

Source: Early Science and Medicine , 2000, Vol. 5, No. 3 (2000), pp. 299-300
Published by: Brill

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/4130188

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 A LAST WORD

ANDREW CUNNINGHAM
University of Cambridge

The editors have allowed me one page for my final wo

dispute-at least in this forum. So I will venture only
ments on Grant's response.
In the first place, Grant had been claiming that (pace
ham) natural philosophers did not say that natural philoso
about God and His creation, and nor was this evident in their
practice. But I had produced some of them saying just this. Now
Grant denies that they meant what they said! If we can't even agree
on what might count as evidence, then his and my interpretations
are likely to remain far apart.
Secondly, the issue I have been raising is that of the identity of
natural philosophy-including the ways in which it differed as a
practice from modern science. In his response Grant seems to be
denying that there is or was any significant difference in identity,
and claims that in the 191 century natural philosophy and science
are simply alternate names for one and the same practice. So from
his point of view my question is evidently a false one. However,
there is still a little light on the horizon for my question. For in-
stance another scholar, Edith Sylla, in a recent survey article on
medieval natural philosophy, has pointed out how selectively his-
torians of different present-day allegiances have investigated natu-
ral philosophy. Her comments seem-to me-to have something
in common with my own question:
What we now know about medieval natural philosophy is not a mirror re-
flection of what happened in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, be-
cause modern scholars have chosen to study those subjects and individuals
relevant to their own present situations [e.g. Dominicans have studied Do-
minican natural philosophers, Franciscans have studied Franciscan ones,]
historians of science have studied those individuals who had something to
say about the subjects of modern science such as bodies, forces, velocities
and resistances, logicians have studied logic, and so on. Because natural phi-
losophy as such is not the focus of attention of many modern philosophers
or other scholars, much medieval natural philosophy remains unread ...1

] Sylla, E. D. (1998). Natural Philosophy, Medieval. Routledge Encyclopedia of

Philosophy. ed. E. Craig. London, Routledge. 6: 690-707. The quotations are from
pages 691 and 701. I am not acquainted with Prof. Sylla personally and I do not

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2000 Early Science and Medicine 5, 3

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 300 OPEN FORUM

I hear Sylla saying here that

losophy that we currently
partial and interested (that is
of a particular interest in vie
logicians. To my eyes the eff
science have emphasised tho
losophy which sound most
any differences between th
question of the identity of n
Now, the rounded view of m
fessor Sylla wants may very
discipline which was (in my
But in the overview she of
medieval natural philosophy
what was being consciously
phers was the universe as G
writes, for

nearly everyone in the later medieval university ... Aristotelian natural phi-
losophy was understood to describe the cosmos as established by God's or-
dained power ... God is the first cause of everything that happens, but, ex-
cept for creation and miracles, events also have secondary causes that act
instrumentally according to the patterns described by Aristotelian natural
philosophy.

For the moment I say, Amen to that.

want to suggest that she remotely agrees with my point of view, if she even knows
about it. She may well disagree with me as thoroughly as Grant does.

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