Kenelm Digby On Quantity As Divisibility PDF

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Kenelm Digby on Quantity as Divisibility

Martine Pécharman
Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage (cral),
École des hautes études en sciences sociales (ehess) & Centre national
de la recherche scientifique (cnrs), Paris, France
martine.pecharman@ehess.fr
Abstract
Kenelm Digby’s Two Treatises, of the Nature of Bodies and of the Nature of Mans Soule
(1644) defends quite an idiosyncratic approach to mind-body dualism. In his use of the
divisibility argument to prove that the human soul cannot be a material substance,
Digby takes an uncompromising stand for merely potential material parts. In his
Treatise of Bodies the present article focuses on the mode of construction of the defini-
tion of quantity as divisibility and on its links to two distinct fundamental arguments
against the actual material parts doctrine. The first, positive, argument consists of a
semantic reason drawn from Digby’s general doctrine of meaning, whereas the second,
negative, argument, addresses the traditional question of the composition of the con-
tinuum. The latter, the author contends, does not build on the medieval controversy
itself, but on Digby’s opposition to Galileo’s claim of indivisibilism in his Dialogues
Concerning Two Sciences (1638).
Keywords
body – continuum – Digby – divisibility – part – quantity – whole
1 Introduction: An Outsider Defense of Mind-Body Dualism
In seventeenth-century projects in natural philosophy, both mechanism and

the struggle against strictly mechanistic principles can be found to be associ-
ated with the metaphysical thesis that minds are different from bodies. For René
Descartes (1596-1650) pre-eminently, an uncompromising pro-mechanical hy-
pothesis in the explanation of material substances and their properties was
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/15685349-12341384

192 Pécharman
the correlate of the metaphysical principle of substance dualism as the only

permissible distinction between the material and the mental. Now, the way
Descartes drew this distinction was very special. The Sixth Meditation (1641)
deduced the real distinction of mind from body from my clear and distinct
conceiving of thinking as my essential property and of extension as the essen-
tial property of body. In this approach, the cornerstone of mind-body dualism
did not consist in a thesis concerning the material substance’s composite na-
ture.1 Later, in the Principia philosophiae (1644), when defining real distinction
as a distinction between substances, Descartes asserted that every part of a
corporeal substance is really distinct from its other parts.2 Yet the division of
any body (and the subdivision of any portion of that body) into substances
distinct from one another was not on the front line of the demonstration that
the mind is not something corporeal. The Principia did not place emphasis
on the ‘divisibility argument’. Instead, the criterion for demonstrating the im-
materiality of the mind was our referring all mental properties to a principal
attribute, thought, which we clearly and distinctly conceive by distinguishing
it from the principal attribute, extension, to which we refer all corporeal prop-
erties.3 Descartes’s preferred option was the ‘conceivability argument’. A ver-
sion of the divisibilibity argument was present, though, in the Meditations. In
the Sixth Meditation, indeed, Descartes insisted on the contrast between my
understanding of a thinking thing as something not compound and that of an
extended thing as something divisible into parts. But his conclusion was that
this argument would be by itself sufficient to demonstrate the complete differ-
ence of mind from body only if it were not already established from another
source.4 Divisibility could merely constitute in the Cartesian model a second-
rank argument for asserting the real distinction of mind from body.
1 Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia v (Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. C. Adam and P.

Tannery [= AT], revised edition, 11 vols., Paris, 1964-74, vol. vii, 78); The Philosophical Writings
of Descartes, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch (Cambridge, 1984-91), vol.
2, 54. For a reconstruction of Descartes’s ‘Real Distinction Argument’: Marleen Rozemond,
Descartes’s Dualism (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 1-37.
2 See Descartes, Principia Philosophiae i, §60 (AT viiiA, 28); Philosophical Writings, vol. 1, 224.
As to the problematic status of Descartes’s declaration on parts of matter as separate sub-
stances: D. Garber, Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics (Chicago, 1992), 175-176.
3 See Descartes, Principia Philosophiae i, §53 (AT viiiA, 25); Philosophical Writings, vol. 1, 210
(cf. i, §8, 7; trans., 195).
4 See Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia vi (AT vii, 85-86); Philosophical Writings,
vol. 2, 59 [translation by ‘even if’ for the beginning of the phrase ‘si nondum illud aliunde satis
scirem’ should be corrected]. The Synopsis of the Sixth Meditation presents the divisibility
argument as a ‘confirmation’ of the conceivability argument (13; trans. 9).
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Kenelm Digby on Quantity as Divisibility 193
The scenario for this distinction was quite different in the book The True
Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), published by the Cambridge Platonist
Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) to defend corpuscular physics against all atheistic
implications of mechanism. Cudworth attempted to promote a version of nat-
ural philosophy accounting for “mental causality” in the world.5 His engage-
ment with Descartes’s anti-finalism consisted in the hypothesis of a spiritual
agency of nature operating on passive matter according to God’s design – he
called “Plastick Nature” this incorporeal “Subordinate Instrument” of the divine
ends.6 It was essential for Cudworth’s hypothesis to devise a new metaphysical
dualism in response to Descartes’s restriction of thought to conscious thought.
The basic ontological divide had to be between matter and an energy – life, or
cogitation in an enlarged non-Cartesian sense – either unconscious (the Plastic
Nature) or conscious (the mind).7 Unlike Descartes, moreover, Cudworth held
that the infinite divisibility of body was the most prominent argument for the
metaphysical scheme of substance dualism. Invoking the authority of Plotinus
in the Fourth Ennead, in the Seventh Tractate On the Immortality of the Soul,
Cudworth emphasized the contradiction between the extended substance, a
mere multiplicity of substances, and the monadic nature of the substance re-
quired as the subject of perception.8 Plotinus, he stressed, advanced against
the materiality of the soul the argument that no perception could be unified
if its subject had the kind of unity of a body, namely, the unity only of a mul-
tiplicity of parts taken together. What is many cannot bring about what is one.
Now, the unity of perception constitutes an uncontroversial datum of our con-
sciousness. Therefore, the soul cannot be something extended. Cudworth ad-
opted as the strongest argument for substance dualism the Neoplatonic version
of the divisibility argument, claiming that whereas a body is composed of many
substances (its spatially distinct parts), the soul needs to be a simple substance.9
5 Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe iii, c. 37, ‘A Digression con-
cerning the Plastick Life of Nature’ (London, 1678), 146-174 (§7, 154-155). See B. Lotti, Ralph
Cudworth e l’idea di natura plastica (Udine, 2004).
6 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe ii, c. 37, §5, 150.
7 See Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe ii, c. 37, §16, 159.
8 See Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe v, 824-826 (Cudworth quotes and
translates or summarizes Enneads iv, 7.[2] 6-7). Cf. ibidem, 830: “a Monade, or one Single
Substance, and not a Heap of Substances.”
9 For the history of this ‘simplicity argument’ (named by Kant in his exposition of the Second
Paralogism ‘the Achilles of all dialectical inferences in the pure doctrine of the soul’), see
B.L. Mijuskovic, The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments. The Simplicity, Unity, and Identity of
the Soul from the Cambridge Platonists to Kant: A Study in the History of an Argument (The
Hague, 1974); T.M. Lennon and R.J. Stainton, eds., The Achilles of Rationalist Psychology
(Dordrecht, 2008).
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194 Pécharman
What interests me, in sketching this early modern contrast between the
second- and first-rank roles of the divisibility argument, is to delineate an al-
ternative manner of its use in the demonstration of the immateriality of the
soul, one upheld by Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) in his Two Treatises. In the one
of which, The Nature of Bodies; in the other, The Nature of Mans Soule; is looked
into (1644).10 Noticeably, in the description I have just given, whether or not it
gets the paramount importance for stating e contrario that the soul cannot be
corporeal, the divisibility argument relies on the same understanding of the
parts of matter. Descartes, for whom the divisibility argument does not afford
the main demonstration for dualism, and Cudworth, for whom it does, share
the view that the divisibility of matter means that any two material particles
really exist as distinct substances. For both doctrines, matter consists of actual
parts. So, it is worth pointing out that in the 1640s Digby defended an argument
for the immateriality of the human soul that supposed a two-fold difference
from the Cartesian contemporary stance on mind-body dualism. In his Treatise
of Mans Soule, Digby intended to infer from the partless nature of the soul and
the nonmechanical properties of its operations the conclusion that the human
soul is not a corporeal, but a spiritual substance.11 From this viewpoint, the
originality of Digby’s contribution to substance dualism did not consist sim-
ply in a reversal of the Sixth Meditation’s subsidiary place for the divisibility
argument. Digby’s deviation from Descartes went far beyond privileging the
divisibility argument for soul-body dualism. His claim was not just that (i) only
the divisibility argument is able to demonstrate the immateriality of the soul,
but also that (ii) the divisibility of body is able to prove the immateriality of the
soul only on the assumption that parts of matter are not actual. By this second
claim, Digby’s divergence with Descartes was linked to a radical disagreement
over the first principle of new natural philosophy. The new physics aimed at
combating those – namely, scholastics – who misrepresented corporeal quali-
ties as endowed with the indivisible nature of spiritual substances.12 The rejec-
tion of this scholastic mistaking of corporeal qualities for real entities required
in Digby’s view a primordial elucidation of the definition of body. The defini-
tional assumption that the nature of body consists in having parts had to be
developed in terms of the reductionist assumption that all the differences of
bodies (their various properties and operations) consist in the diverse disposi-
tion or proportion of their parts. Now, Digby held that unless the scholastic
10 References to Digby, Two Treatises, are given in the original edition (Paris, 1644), with i for
the Treatise of Bodies, ii for the Treatise of Mans Soule, then chapter and paragraph.
11 Digby, Two Treatises ii, Preface, 350, 353.
12 Digby, Two Treatises ii, Preface, 352. Cf. i, c. 27, §2, 243.
Vivarium 58 (2020) 191-218

question of the actuality or potentiality of material parts was decided in favor

of potential parts, physical explications would remain prone to errors.13 As the
first principle of a new natural philosophy, Digby’s Treatise of Bodies under-
took to champion the metaphysical thesis that the divisible nature of body
requires that the parts of matter are only potential parts.14 His foundationalist
concern that the science of bodies premise the demonstration of the immate-
riality of the human soul implied for Digby the refusal of the actualist position.
2 The Whatness/Muchness of Quantity
The Treatise of Bodies takes it for granted that, through our most common deal-
ings with the external world, we have the notion of quantity as not only one
of the “primary affections” of bodies, but “in a manner the first and the roote
of all the rest.”15 In the interaction between her body and external bodies, any
percipient first conceives of a body actually given to her sense perception as
something having quantity or magnitude. To be able to explain what quantity
is, it is therefore sufficient to consider the quantity of a concrete quantum.
Anyone is able to answer the question how great is it? with regard to a body.
Digby’s approach converges in this respect with a traditional approach to quan-
tity as an item in Aristotle’s list of categories. This tradition viewed Aristotle’s
categorial system as generated from a series of different questions about some
singular substance: the distinction among the categories stems from the dis-
tinction between questions related to an individual, insofar as these questions
cannot prompt the same answers. Whereas terms falling under the category
of substance answer the question what is it? asked of some particular, terms
under the category of quantity answer the question how much? posed of the
same particular. The construction of the definition of quantity in the Treatise
of Bodies, however, goes beyond convergence between the common notion ap-
proach to the nature of quantity and the interrogative approach to the cat-
egory of quantity. Digby emphasizes that the question about the quantity of
a particular thing, that is, how great this thing is, is commonly answered by
means of a comparison with another thing of which the quantity is already
13 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §4, 10 (“the whole progresse of our discourse, will be uncer-
taine and wavering, if this principle and foundation be not firmely layed”).
14 I will say ‘actualism/actualist’ for the actual parts thesis, ‘potentialism/potentialist’ for the
potential parts thesis.
15 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §1, 8.
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196 Pécharman
known, so that it can be used as a measure of the quantity sought.16 A quan-

tity is apprehended concretely by asserting either its equality or its inequality
(excess or defect) in relation to some other thing employed as its measure.
This constitutes a first step. A closer examination of the ordinary expression of
quantity when answering the question how great is it? about something shows
that the vague interrogation answered by means of a comparison can be re-
formulated as an explicit interrogation regarding the quantity of x in this thing.
The point is then to find out how much of x there is in such a thing. The most
natural answer to this second more targeted question discloses that the quan-
tity sought is measurable through a relation between the whole thing and its
parts. When the relative of the thing of which the quantity is sought is another
thing commonly taken as a unit measure for quantities of its kind (a pound
as the unit for measuring a weight, a foot as the unit for measuring a length,
etc.), the quantity initially unknown is apprehended as a whole consisting of
a number of parts equal to the number of times the unit measure is repeated.
Undoubtedly, Digby is acquainted with the scholastic discussion tending to
prove that, since the quantity of a thing is not known by itself, but only by
the use of some extrinsic means, namely, another quantity by which it is apt
to be measured, measure cannot constitute the essence of quantity.17 Yet the
Treatise of Bodies does not evoke this discussion. What interests Digby is that
the quantity of a thing makes this thing to be measurable by some other mini-
mal quantity. The role of the measure can then be attended to as the role of a
part in a whole. Aristotle stated in his Physics that a part measures the whole.18
Conversely, Digby’s definitional strategy relies upon the thesis that a unit mea-
sure is a part in relation to the whole it measures. In its fully developed formu-
lation, then, the question about quantity elicits an answer indicating a certain
number of units of length (ells, feet, inches), or of weight (pounds, ounces), or
of capacities (gallons, pints), or of periods (days, hours). These are, in Digby’s
enumeration of examples, the various unit measures that provide immediately
the answer to the specific question, what quantity there is? or how much?, when
asked about the component or the content of something particular: the stuff in
some cloth, the wood in some piece of carpentry, the gold in some ingot, the
liquid in some cask, the time in performing some action. In each and every
16 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §2, 9. See Aristoteles, Metaphysica x, c. 1: 1052b20: measure is
that by which quantity is known.
17 This discussion is detailed in Francisco Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae xl, §3 (ed. C.
Berton, Opera omnia 25-26, Paris 1866, repr. Hildesheim, 2009, vol. 26, 538-543).
18 See Aristoteles, Physica iv, c. 10: 218a6-7. Cf. Metaphysica v, c. 25: 1023b15 on the meaning
of ‘part’ as that which gives the measure of a thing.
Vivarium 58 (2020) 191-218

case, the answer satisfying the question how much declares how many parts
are in some whole. This parts-whole relation displays for Digby the complete
meaning of the universal conception of quantity. Quantity is conceived of as a
multiplicity of parts.
From this two-step interrogative procedure regarding the common notion
of quantity, Digby draws, as its direct outcome, the following definition of
quantity as divisibility:
Wherefore, when we consider that Quantity is nothing else, but the ex-
tension of a thing; and that this extension, is expressed by a determinate
number of lesser extensions of the same nature, … and that such lesser
ones are in the greater which they measure, as partes in a whole; and
that the whole by comprehending those partes, is a meere capacity to be
divided into them: we conclude, that Quantity or Biggnesse, is nothing
else but divisibility; and that a thing is bigge, by having a capacity to be
divided, or (which is the same) to have partes made of it.19
The measurability of a thing, settled by questioning someone about this thing’s

quantity, helps unearth that the essential feature of quantity consists not di-
rectly in having parts outside of parts, but in the capacity to be divided into
many parts. Hence extension, in the Treatise of Bodies, is primordially used as
a synonym for divisibility, rather than for the existence of parts as external to
each other.20
For an early modern Aristotelian reader of the Treatise of Bodies, this defi-
nition could be viewed as constituting a logical mistake since it ignores the
Porphyrian distinction between a per se inseparable difference or specific dif-
ference, which must be part of the definition of the nature of its subject, and
a proprium quarto modo, a predicate that holds only of one species, of all of it,
and always. The Aristotelian Alexander Ross (†1654) put this point as follows:
[You define quantity to be nothing else but the extension of a thing] and
shortly after [that quantity is nothing else but divisibility.] Thus you con-
found extension and divisibility, which differ as much, as in man rationality

20 The first equivalence is between extension and divisibility. The equivalence between
extension and partes extra partes occurs later, in the conclusion of Digby’s refutation
of the composition of continuum with indivisibles, which relies on the argument in
Aristoteles, Physica vi, c. 1: 231b6-7, that a continuum has a part outside another part. See
section 4 below.
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198 Pécharman
differs from risibility, the one being the effect of the other; for therefore
things are divisible, because they are extensive: take away extension, divis-
ibility faileth.21
Such a criticism misses the main argument in Digby’s justification of the defi-
nitional equivalence of quantity, extension, and divisibility: any quantity is
known by the repetition of some unit measure. Although it derives only from
the consideration of extension, Digby’s definition of quantity as divisibility
epitomizes indeed Aristotle’s dichotomy of continuous quantity and discrete
quantity. In its Digbean version, the dichotomy becomes a hierarchy in which
discrete quantity is simpler than continuous quantity. To this end, it is not useful
in the Treatise of Bodies to recapitulate Aristotle’s opposition in the Categories
between number as that of which the parts are always separate and never
join together at some common boundary, and a continuous quantity as that
of which the parts have a limit in common, at which they may meet.22 Digby
claims instead that “the essence of [number] consisteth in a capacity of being
resolved and divided into so many unities, as are contained in it; which are the
parts of it.”23 Number may therefore function as a rule to determine the con-
tent of an extended quantity. Digby does not mean only that any measurement
of a continuous quantity results in the determination of the number of lesser
quantities that, by measuring it, constitute its parts. He means furthermore
that the very notion of measure must be understood in terms of the divisibility
of number into unities: the function of the repetition of ‘one’ in measuring
what is divisible into non-continuous parts extends to our knowledge of what
is divisible into continuous parts. Whatever the measure of a continuous quan-
tity, it is with respect to this quantity the analogue of ‘one’ with respect to num-
ber. Any minimum measure referred to as the means to know some continuous
quantity must be considered to be an arithmetical unity, otherwise it would
not function as a measure. Aristotle has stated in his Metaphysics that measure,
21 Alexander Ross, The Philosophicall Touchstone: or Observations upon Sir Kenelm Digbie’s
Discourses of the nature of Bodies, and of the reasonable Soule (London, 1645), 2-3.
22 Aristoteles, Categoriae, c. 6: 4b26-33 and 5a2-14. In Metaphysica v, c. 13: 1020a7-12, the di-
vision of quantity into discrete and continuous begins with a definition of quantity as
divisibility: “We call a quantity that which is divisible into two or more constituent parts
of which each is by nature a one and a ‘this’” (trans. W.D. Ross in The Complete Works of
Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. J. Barnes, vol. 2, Princeton, 1984, 73).
23 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §2, 9 (example: the quantity of some land expressed in a deter-
minate number by means of a unit of distance or of area). Cf. i, c. 2, §8, 15: “Number… is
divisible into so many determinate partes, and is measured by unities, or by lesser num-
bers so or so often contained in a proposed greater.”
Vivarium 58 (2020) 191-218

that by which we have the knowledge of quantity, consists either in unity or in

a number. Now, we have the knowledge of number itself by means of unity, so
we must conclude that unity is the principle of our knowledge of all quantity.24
Simon Stevin’s (1548-1620) Arithmétique (1585), however, corrected the ancient
conception of number as a multitude of unities, which viewed ‘one’ as a prin-
ciple for determining the quantity of a thing. To strip away any equivocation,
Stevin dissociates the notion of ‘principle’ from that of ‘part’. The latter must
be conceived as having the same nature as its whole. Stevin argues that since
unity, qua part of a multitude made up of unities, must be homogeneous with
this multitude (otherwise it would be impossible to add/subtract a unity to/
from a number to obtain another number), unity is also a number.25 It seems
that Stevin’s definition of number as that by which the quantity of any thing is
explained, with the example of unity as the number by which the quantity of
something is said to be one, is in the background of Digby’s definition of quan-
tity. The Treatise of Bodies takes for granted that there is no ambiguity in the
relation between unity and number: they have the same nature, and similarly,
any measure unit is of the same nature as what it measures. What matters, for
Digby’s definition of quantity as divisibility, is that the most ordinary answers
to the question how much? make it manifest that, to know the quantity of a
thing, we take another quantity, even though it is not indivisible in its nature,
as a minimum quantity. A foot in regard to a length, a pound in regard to a
weight, etc., are supposed to be something one, something reproducing in its
proportion to the quantity sought the homogeneous relation of the unity to a
greater number. All quantity measures verify the numerical relation between
one and many.26 Any measurement reveals that many is many ones.
In Digby’s two-step construction of the definition of quantity from its com-
mon notion, then, the second step does not invalidate the first one. Instead,
the alternate mode of application of the interrogative criterion elucidates the
import of the former one. The consideration of units to measure a continuous
24 Aristoteles, Metaphysica x, c. 1: 1052b20-23; cf. v, c. 6: 1016b17: “to be one is to be the prin-
ciple of a number, for a first measure is a principle” (trans. Ross, 67), and c. 15: 1021a13: “the
one is the principle and measure of a number” (trans. Ross, 75); Physica iii, c. 7: 207b7: “a
number is a plurality of ones, a certain ‘many’ of them” (Aristotle’s Physics: Books iii and
iv, trans. E. Hussey, Oxford, 1983, 17) Also Euclid, Elements vii, Definition 2: “a number is
a multitude composed of units.”
25 See The Principal Works of Simon Stevin, ed. E. Crone, E.J. Dijksterhuis, R.J. Forbes, et al., 5
vols. (Amsterdam, 1955-1966), vol. iiB, 495.
26 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §5, 12: “the essentiall composition of any multitude whatsoever, is
made by the continuall addition of unities, till that number arise.” This assertion will prove
most useful for rejecting the actualist position on material parts: see section 4 below.
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200 Pécharman
quantity allows reconceiving as a relationship of parts to whole the compari-

son between lesser and greater extensive quantities. In this way, Digby’s mode
of definition of quantity as divisibility agrees in its last stage with Definitions 1
and 2 in Euclid’s Elements v: a lesser magnitude is said to be a part of a greater
magnitude when it measures the greater, and the greater magnitude is a mul-
tiple of the lesser when it is measured by the lesser. The notion of part, under-
stood as a submultiple contained a certain number of times in its multiple,
that is, as an aliquot part, raises the relation of the lesser (the measuring quan-
tity) to the greater (the measured quantity) to the level of a relation that is not
left indefinite. But above all, Digby’s mode of definition of quantity substanti-
ates that the whatness of quantity in general does not differ from the muchness
of any item of quantity, whatever its species, which is always expressed by the
number of unities/parts into which it is divisible.
3 The Semantic Argument
By establishing from the consideration of measure that divisibility, or the rela-

tion of parts to whole, fully expresses the essence of quantity, Digby outlaws
the doctrine that divisibility presupposes the actual distinction of parts. For
him, relations exist only in our thought. The relation of a lesser quantity to a
greater, the relation of part to whole, has no extra-mental being: “two quanti-
ties to be halfe and whole, is in them nothing else, but each quantity to be just
what it is.”27 We have only one absolute notion of things, the notion of their
existence or being; all other notions are “nothing else, but comparisons and
respects.”28 So, the deduction of the definition of quantity as divisibility from
the measurability of a continuous quantity by a certain number of parts can-
not mean that this continuous quantity is composed out of this multiplicity of
parts. For Digby, the divisibility that is the essence of quantity must be under-
stood sensu stricto, as the negation of the existence of parts in the continuous
quantity prior to its division. To assert that a continuous quantity is divisible
into so many parts is not the same as to assert that it is divisible into so many
distinct pre-existing entities. Digby makes the following claim:
nothing is divisible, but what of it selfe (abstracting from division) is

one. For the nature of division, is the making of many; which implyeth,
27 Digby, Two Treatises ii, c. 1, §7, 359.

Vivarium 58 (2020) 191-218

that what is to be divided, must of necessity be not many before it be

divided.29
The definition of quantity in the Treatise of Bodies does not suppose only that
the measure by which any continuous quantity is known divides it as unity
divides number. It also supposes that any continuous quantity is one.30 It is
only from its division that a quantity is made a plurality. Thus, that quantity is
divisible banishes the view that quantity consists of parts existing as so many
distinct entities. The pre-given distinction of parts would mean that the whole
is already divided, in other words, that it is not divisible, against the supposi-
tion that divisibility is the nature of quantity. What is divisible cannot be re-
ally distinct; this would be contradictory.31 As it is, Digby deprives the actualist
interpretation of material parts of the right to use the divisibility argument for
proving mind-body dualism. Since what is divisible is by definition what so far
has not been the subject of a division, the very notion of divisibility happens
to be negated in the actual parts doctrine. The actuality of parts implies that
they are many before being made many by division, that is, that quantity is not
divisible into parts. If advocated in connection with an actualist position on
the parts of matter, divisibility cannot get any argumentative status; it simply
vanishes.
Superficially read, the statement in the Treatise of Bodies that, in answer to
the question how much?, any quantity measured by a “determinate number” of
parts must be viewed as a “whole… comprehending those parts,” might seem to
be ambiguous.32 It is not, though. The whole’s subsumption or encompassing
of parts strictly means the whole’s capacity to be divided into those parts, and
29 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 5, §4, 35. Cf. i, c. 2, §3, 10: “since [Quantity] is Divisibility (that is,
a bare capacity to division) it followeth that it is not yet divided: and consequently that
those partes are not yet in it, which may be made of it; for division, is the making two, or
more thinges, of one.”
30 See Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 3, §7, 21: “all Quantity must of it selfe be one; as Metaphysickes
teaches us”; i, c. 14, §3, 117-118: “[the] formall notion and essence [of Quantity] is: To be di-
visible, which signifyeth, that many may be made, of it; but that of which many may be
made, is not yet many, out of this very reason, that many may be made of it. But, what is
not many, is one. Therefore what hath quantity, is, by meere having quantity, actually and
formally as well one, as it hath the possibility of being made many.”
31 From an actualist standpoint, on the contrary, we avoid contradiction only if a thing is
called divisible because it consists of really distinct parts: see for instance Pierre Bayle,
Systema totius philosophiae, in Œuvres diverses IV, ed. É. Labrousse (Hildesheim, 1968),
224 and 278.
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202 Pécharman
not at all their prior presence. Digby’s mode of construction of the definition
of quantity makes it understandable that quantity is merely “a possibility to be
made distinct thinges by division.”33 This reductionist qualification, asserted
insistently, removes any mistake concerning the terms of the definition: they
cannot signify that parts are really existing beforehand in the whole. The defi-
nition derived from the common notion of quantity intimates that parts are
made from the whole, not that the whole is made from its parts. The Digbean
approach to the nature of quantity implies denying the whole to be the aggre-
gate/collection/sum of its parts, and the parts to be parts distinct from their
whole, identity-independent of it. So, it would be quite misleading to hold that
the notion of a determinate number of lesser extensions dividing a particular
extended quantity suggests that the multitude expressed by this limited num-
ber refers to a pre-existing finite collection of parts. Parts, for Digby, owe all
their entity and identity not to themselves, but to division, “the adaequate act
of divisibility.”34
Not surprisingly, in his 2004 analysis of the early-modern debate on the
‘architecture of matter’, Thomas Holden bases his characterization of Digby’s
position as the ‘Potential Parts Doctrine’ on a quotation from the passage in
the Treatise of Bodies following the definition of quantity abovementioned in
section 2. Digby claims there:
any continued [quantity]… is but one whole that may indeed be cutt into
so many severall partes: but those partes are not really there, till by divi-
sion they are parcelled out: and then, the whole (out of which they are
made) ceaseth to be any longer; and the partes succeede in lieu of it; and
are, every one of them, a new whole.35
Holden regularly invokes this passage to underscore the anti-actualist thesis

that division implies creation of parts. Insofar as he intends to reconstitute
the overarching classification or taxonomy of all opposite arguments in the
early-modern discussion of the composition of bodies, he does not situate
it, however, in the context of Digby’s procedure of deducing the equivalence
of quantity and divisibility. But it seems to me that we must reconsider the
very relation of this claim to the general controversy from the viewpoint of

35 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §3, 10. For Holden’s view that this passage is the quintessence
of the ‘Potential Parts Doctrine’, see T. Holden, The Architecture of Matter. Galileo to Kant
(Oxford, 2004), 18, 33, 94, 101-102, 119, 135.
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its pivotal status in the demonstration of the Treatise of Bodies. I shall first
focus on Digby’s positive argument for the potentialist position, his ‘semantic
argument’.
As I said, the deduction of divisibility from measurability is essential in
Digby’s approach. By itself, this mode of definition of quantity includes the
rejection of the actualist position on parts. The most common notion of quan-
tity warrants the potential parts thesis. For Digby, then, only a scholastic trend
to convert what is merely notional into a real being can lead to confusing parts
with existents. The conception of the unities of measure (ells, inches, feet) as
“reall Entities in the whole that is measured by them” and the conception of
the diverse sensible qualities of some corporeal substance as themselves “sev-
erall substances” arise from the same inclination to hypostatization.36 This
parallel is rooted in Digby’s doctrine of the relation between things in the ex-
ternal world, conceptions in the mind, and names, illustrated in the introduc-
tory chapter to the Treatise of Bodies by the example of an apple. An apple is
“but one entire thing in it selfe,” but the mind considers “singly and alone by it
selfe” each of the different impressions received in sense perception from this
unique entity.37 Correlatively, distinct names are imposed to signify these dis-
tinct conceptions. When we conceive of an apple as red, sweet, cold, we do not
express its various sensible qualities by parroting the unique word apple, even
though the redness, sweetness, and coldness are really nothing distinct from
the apple’s substance. We use as many words in reference to one and the same
thing as we frame in our mind different conceptions of this thing: our language
does not represent things as they are in themselves, but as they are conceived.
The danger in this mental mediation between words and things lies therefore
in transforming the correspondence between words and intra-mental distinct
conceptions into a correspondence between words and extra-mental distinct
entities. This is what happens in the scholastic doctrine of real qualities: the
diverse accidents of a corporeal substance are “actuall Beings,” “each of them
distinct one from an other, as also from the substance which they clothe.”38

38 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 1, §3, 3. Digby’s deflationary account of qualities turns the nomi-
nalist ontological parsimony principle against Ockham’s defense of the category of quali-
ties as the only category including real accidents – see Guillelmus de Ockham, Summa
logicae i, c. 55 (Opera philosophia i, ed. P. Boehner, G. Gál, and S. Brown, St Bonaventure,
NY, 1974, 179-182). On the absurdity of real accidents see Digby, Two Treatises i, Conclusion,
345: the perverted scholastic version of Aristotle’s accidents leads to the search for “glew
and paste” to attach them to their subject. Robert Pasnau highlights that Digby’s cri-
tique “describes quite precisely the most common scholastic approach to the problem”:
Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 (Oxford, 2011), 208. It is worth noting that in Digby’s attack
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204 Pécharman
Now, as Digby’s mode of construction of the definition of quantity emphasizes,

the lesser extensions or parts that measure the quantity of a thing – those uni-
ties that must be of the same nature as the quantity measured – fulfill their
function because they are notionally simpler. The whole measured by these
parts is to be viewed in the same relation to our mind as the apple. Both are
cases of sense perception for Digby: in the same way as we have distinct con-
ceptions of the qualities of an apple, we have distinct conceptions of the parts
of some quantum. The whole measured as to its length by comparison with the
lesser extension either of an ell, or of a foot, or of an inch, “maketh impressions
of such notions in our understanding,” but those units of length are not real
parts of the whole, any more than the sensible qualities of an apple are real
accidents in it.39 The words we use in both cases are words signifying distinct
notions, not distinct substances. On the side of things themselves, there is only
the potentiality of being the objects of distinct conceptions in the mind, not
a real distinction in them between different beings. The mind frames several
distinct notions of an apple, but “these are not different bodies or substances,
distinguished one from an other”; they are “the same one entire thing, working
severally upon the senses.”40 Similarly, Digby argues that
the partes which are considered in Quantity, are not diverse thinges: but
are onely a vertue or power to be divers thinges: which vertue, making
severall impressions upon the senses, occasioneth severall notions in the
understanding.41
The actualist position, then, transmutes into distinct things these distinct no-
tions in the mind of the parts measuring quantity.
Digby fully displays this argumentation when he considers an objection
that, he stresses, might be viewed “at first sight” as “an insuperable objection”
on scholastic inflationary ontology, the symmetrical case of the substantialization of ac-

cidents (many entities where there is only one) is that of mental abstractions (one entity
from many individuals), which are made real universals. In particular, Digby rejects the
Scotistic distinctio formalis a parte rei between the natura communis and the haecceitas
(see Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 1, §4, 4).
40 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §6 13.
41 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §6 13. Cf. i, c. 6, §2, 40: “we must [beware] of conceiving those
partes to be actually in a continued quantity, whereof we can frame actually distinct no-
tions in our understanding… when ordinary men say, that a yard containeth three feete; it
is true in this sense, that three feete may be made of it; but that whiles it is a yard, it is but
one quantity or thing, and not three thinges.”
Vivarium 58 (2020) 191-218

to his potentialist position.42 The objection is from the consideration not of

any corporeal substance, but of an organism such as the human body. It builds
upon our perception of the diverse shaped bodily organs (fingers, hands, arms,
legs, feet, toes, etc.) as having separate functions in the whole body. Since each
one does what cannot be accomplished by the others, are not these func-
tional parts as many actual parts in the human body, really distinct from one
another? The reason why this argument deserves special attention is that it
alleges that there are parts perceived as actual from their mutual distinction
and distinct functionality in the whole. As Aristotle highlights, the diverse or-
gans of the human body function only within the whole body; when separated
from the living body, they no longer exist with their proper nature (the being
of a finger, the being of a hand, etc.). A severed finger, for instance, remains
the same only as to its name, and is merely homonymous.43 In the objection
examined by Digby, this specific feature of the diverse organs – their capacity
to perform their appropriate functions does not survive their separation from
the living body – requires that they be actual parts in the whole organism. For
Digby, however, this constitutes a new case of an erroneous transferring from
“the conditions of our notions” to things themselves.44 The case of the human
body does not differ from that of an apple, or from that of any quantum. The
pro-actualist argument from integral parts cannot invalidate the definition of
quantity inferred from the consideration of aliquot parts. Digby turns back
against the actualist objection the impossibility that any organ keeps its nature
when separated from the whole body. Since the organs separated from the body
no longer possess “the powers that essentially constitute them to be what they
are,” the conclusion must be that these powers never were (namely, are not)
their powers: “a hand, or eye, or foote, is not a distinct thing by it selfe; but… it
42 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §6 12.

43 See Aristoteles, Metaphysica vii, c. 10: 1035b23-25: “the bodily parts… cannot exist sepa-
rated from [the combined whole]. (It is not a finger in any and every state that is the finger
of an animal; a dead finger is a finger only in name)” (Aristotle, Metaphysics. Books Z and
H, trans. D. Bowstock, Oxford, 1994, 17-18); c. 11: 1036b30-32: “For it is not a hand in any and
every state that is a part of a man, but only a living hand, which can fulfil its function.
A hand which is not living is not a part of a man” (trans. Bowstock, 20). For Aristotle’s
fluctuating assertions on the topic of the substantiality or non-substantiality of integral
parts, see Categoriae, c. 7: 8b15, where a hand and a head are examples of substances, and
Metaphysica vii, c. 16: 1040b5-6, where the parts of animals, against the common view
that they are substances, are said to be mere “potentialities,” “since none of them exists
when separated” (trans. Bowstock, 28); also c. 13: 1039a7-8: “if a substance is one thing, it
cannot be composed of substances present in it” (trans. Bowstock, 25).
44 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §6, 13; cf. i, c. 2, §7, 14.
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206 Pécharman
is the man, according as he hath a certaine vertue or power in him to distinct

operations.”45 The very differentiation of integral parts collapses. Nothing in
the human body has a distinct function; it is the whole body that has a unique
capacity to perform distinct operations. According to its diverse impressions
on our senses, this monadic power is conceived by the mind through different
notions. The names for the diverse organs of the human body do not signify
therefore actual parts, but only “productions of the understanding.”46 This, for
Digby, allows of only one conclusion, the general conclusion that all concrete
names of parts (hand, eye, inch, ell, etc.) signify a whole thing insofar as it is a
possibility to be divided.
4 The Argument against Indivisibilism
As I see it, then, Digby borrows from his semantic doctrine a crucial argument
against the actual parts thesis. The very mode of the definition of quantity as
divisibility described in the Treatise of Bodies encapsulates the strictly con-
ceptual status of the unities required to measure and determine a quantity.
Actualists should be immediately defeated simply by taking into account the
true relation of words, thoughts, and things. The ‘by-definition’ argument (the
argument that what is divisible is, by definition, not yet divided) builds on this
dependence of the definition of quantity on Digby’s general theory of mean-
ing. Yet, the potentialist thesis quoted in section 3 (the thesis characteristic
for Holden of the ‘Potential Parts Doctrine’) does more than synthesize the
direct result of the notional approach to the nature of quantity: no parts exist
45 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §7, 14. Digby illustrates this position with the example of a
half-visible rod. To say that a part/half of it is visible and the other part/half invisible
is improper: the whole rod shows itself “according to the possibility of being one new
thing” and does not show itself “according to the possibility of being the other of the two
thinges, it may be made by division.”
46 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §6, 13. Strictly speaking, the word hand means “the man as
he is hand, or as he hath the power of holding” (ibidem, 14). It should be noted that
Digby offers a nominalist argument against a position on integral parts that nominal-
ists defended. See Guillelmus de Ockham, Expositio in libros Physicorum Aristotelis ii, c.
2 (Opera Philosophica iv, ed. V. Richter and G. Leibold, St Bonaventure, NY, 1985, 110), and
Quaestiones in libros Physicorum Aristotelis, q. 68 (Opera Philosophica vi, ed. S. Brown, St
Bonaventure, NY, 1984, 588-589). For Ockham, it is clear to the senses that the integral
parts of a living body actually exist, so that we can conclude that the parts of any continu-
ous body actually exist. In contrast, Digby denies that sense perception even grasps dif-
ferentiated parts like hands and feet: “Sense judgeth not which is a finger, which is a hand,
or which is a foote” (Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §6, 13).
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independently of division. It introduces an important corollary: parts created

by division are other divisible wholes. When a quantity, which is by definition
only potentially a multiplicity of parts, is divided into many parts, each of
these parts constitutes a new whole, which in turn is potentially a multiplic-
ity of parts, and so on. Thus, the divisible nature of quantity precludes atom-
ism.47 There can be no material parts that would remain utterly indivisible.
Digby unpacks a consequence of his definition of quantity that is Aristotelian
in inspiration: continuous quantity implies not only divisibility, but infinite
divisibility. For Aristotle, indeed, it is in the continuous that infinity is most
manifest: every continuous quantity is divisible to infinity into parts smaller
and smaller; parts arrived at by a process of division of a finite magnitude
constitute in turn another potential infinite.48 In Digby’s view, a demonstra-
tion dealing specifically with this ‘infinite divisibility’ corollary of his potential
parts thesis is required. A further argument must be devised, because the issue
of material parts is “a very greate controversy in schooles.”49 In contrast to the
semantic argument from which the truth of the potential parts thesis and the
‘by-definition’ argument follow as direct consequences, this complementary
argument constitutes a demonstration e contrario. The truth of the potential
parts thesis is proved negatively by the impossibility that would follow if mate-
rial parts were otherwise than potential.
Supposing that the adversarial thesis of actual parts is true, Digby examines
what follows from this supposition. The pattern he adopts for his refutation of
actualism shows that:
(i) The assumption of actual parts implies the assumption that actual parts
are indivisibles;50
47 Digby’s explications of natural phenomena in terms of atoms do not contradict this
exclusion. See Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 5, §8, 38: “By which word Atome; no body will
imagine we intend to express a perfect indivisible, but onely, the least sort of naturall
bodies”; i, Conclusion, 343: “done per minima; that is in our language and in one word, by
atomes.” On Digby’s physical doctrine, see B.J. Dobbs, “Studies in the Natural Philosophy
of Sir Kenelm Digby,” Ambix 18 (1971), 1-25; 20 (1973), 143-163; 21 (1974), 1-28; R.H. Kargon,
Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton (Oxford, 1966), 70-73 (Digby’s atoms are “the
minima naturalia or parva naturalia of scholastic-Averroist tradition, rather than the
atoms of Democritus or Epicurus”); J. Henry, “Atomism and Eschatology: Catholicism and
Natural Philosophy in the Interregnum,” The British Journal for the History of Science, 15
(1982), 211-230.
48 See Aristoteles, Physica iii, c. 1: 200b18-20; c. 6: 206a15-206b1 and 207a1-2 (that is said to be
infinite, of which it is always possible to take a part beyond a given part); vi, c. 1: 231b16-17.
50 Not Democritean indivisibles, which are indivisible bodies or magnitudes, but extension-
less indivisibles or points (see Euclid’s definition: a point is that of which there is no part).
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208 Pécharman
(ii) The assumption of indivisibles entails an impossibility;

(iii) Thus, the assumption of actual parts entails the same impossibility.
Because indivisibilism is the necessary consequence of actualism, and an
absurdity is the necessary consequence of indivisibilism, it is demonstrated,
Digby contends, that actualism is absurd. A double reductio ad absurdum (of
indivisibilism and, consequently, of actualism) demonstrates indirectly that
the potential parts thesis constitutes the necessary principle of all explications
in natural philosophy.51
In applying the actualist view that what is divisible is already really distin-
guished into the parts that the division merely discloses, Digby replaces the
divisibility of quantity with its actual division into all the parts into which it
is divisible. This, for Digby, demonstrates that actualism entails indivisibilism.
Since, according to the actualist view that divisibility involves a real distinc-
tion, there could be nothing left undistinguished, that is, undivided, necessar-
ily the actual existence of parts has to be the actual existence of indivisibles.52
Digby rejects the objection that his supposition that for an actualist, to say that
quantity is divisible amounts to saying that all its parts are really distinguished,
assumes too much and that the thesis is not that every part is actual, but only
that some parts are really distinguished. This objection, he contends, cannot
undermine his demonstration. Any indefiniteness is excluded, since according
to the actualist thesis, parts are per se parts and “have theire actuall distinction
out of theire nature of being partes.”53 Insofar as it is impossible in the actualist
view to suppose parts that would not be parts by their essence, it is necessary
to observe the principle of isonomy that all parts are equal before the actualist
requirement of the actual existence: “all must enjoy [their nature] alike, and all
be equally distinguished.”54
51 On this ‘argument by elimination’ for potential parts, see Holden, Architecture of Matter, 125.
52 Digby’s demonstration might appeal to Aristotle’s authority: in De generatione et corrup-
tione i, c. 2: 316a24-34, Aristotle argues that if a body is by nature divisible through and
through, then on the supposition that it has been divided, it is impossible that what is
left is some magnitude, since there would be then something that has not been divided,
against the assumption that the body is divisible throughout. What is left are either points
or nothings, that is, constituents from which the body can never be constituted.
54 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §4, 11. See Holden, Architecture of Matter, 143, about ‘the argu-
ment from the definiteness of parts to ultimate parts’. Interestingly, Digby’s potentialist
isonomy argument, which claims that if parts are actual, all parts are indivisibles, exploits
the actualist argument of Ockham, who was an opponent of indivisibilism. Ockham re-
jects the position that only some parts of the continuum actually exist: if some parts actu-
ally exist, then the same reason holds for all parts. See Guillelmus de Ockham, Quaestiones
in libros Physicorum Aristotelis, q. 68 (ed. Brown, 588-589). Digby’s rigid approach to the
Vivarium 58 (2020) 191-218

Thus, if the actualist thesis is true, the division of any continuous quantity
resolves it into indivisibles. The traditional issue of the composition of conti-
nua with indivisibles can be then addressed. The Treatise of Bodies considers
two options: the composition of continuum by a finite number of indivisibles,
and its composition by an infinite number.55 A line, the most basic magnitude,
illustrates the first option. Since every continuum is divisible, a line formed by
a finite set of indivisibles can be divided. Yet it cannot be divided beyond the
number of parts fixed ex hypothesi. The view that a line is composed of a de-
terminate number of indivisibles is therefore unable, Digby argues, to answer
the demonstration in Euclid’s Elements vi of Proposition 10, “To cut a given
uncut straight line similarly to a given cut straight line,” proving by the ratio of
two lines that “any line whatsoever may be divided into whatsoever number of
partes.”56 By the Euclidian demonstration that any line must be divisible into
an indefinitely increasing number of parts, the first option examined in the
Treatise of Bodies is consequently eliminated: a quantity cannot be composed
of a finite number of indivisibles. The impossibility of allowing for the geo-
metrical truth demonstrated by Euclid reveals, moreover, the very nature of
indivisibles. Since a continuum resulting from the addition of a finite number
of indivisibles would lack a property – divisibility into infinite parts – that is
the necessary property of the simplest kind of magnitude according to Euclid,
we must acknowledge that when indivisibles are put together, they become
“drowned in one another.”57 No magnitude can be ever composed out of indi-
visibles. This universal negative conclusion is inescapable; it eliminates also
the second, infinitist, option. Any addition of indivisibles, either countable or
innumerable, comes just to “one indivisible point.”58 The uninterrupted addi-
tion of one to one supposed by an infinite multitude of indivisibles would be
no exception to the essential nature of the indivisibles: whether finite or indef-
initely increasing, the additive process never goes beyond the first indivisible.
A multitude of indivisibles, even unnumbered, is still one indivisible only. So
none of the two options about indivisibles passes the test of the composition
actualism/potentialism debate as the opposition indivisibilism/anti-indivisibilism does

not allow for Ockham’s anti-indivisibilist defense of actualism.
55 For example, two major figures of indivisibilism at Oxford in the early fourteenth century
were Henry of Harclay (defender of the infinitist thesis) and Walter Chatton (defender of
the finitist alternative).
56 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §4, 11. For a more developed version of the same argument, see
Digby, A Late Discourse… touching the cure of wounds by the powder of sympathy (2nd ed.,
London, 1658), 45.
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210 Pécharman
of an extension. It is therefore fully demonstrated, according to Digby, that the

supposition of indivisibles entails an impossibility. Since actualism necessarily
involves indivisibilism, the absurdity of indivisibilism involves the absurdity of
actualism, and the latter implies e contrario the necessary truth of the poten-
tial parts thesis. Digby concludes: “Thus then it remaineth firmely established,
That Quantity is not composed of indivisibles (neyther finite, nor infinite ones)
and consequently, that partes are not actually in it.”59
When he deduces universal indivisibilism from universal actualism (all
parts are actual, therefore all parts are indivisibles), Digby describes as an ac-
tualist objection – judged weak, just a quibble – the thesis that “there are par-
tes actually in Quantity, abstracting from all.”60 This restrictive actualist thesis
attempts, he says, to avoid the paradox of an infinity actually existing in any
finite thing. As I said, against this restriction Digby alleges the necessity of an
isonomic treatment of material parts: anyone admitting some actual parts is
committed to admit all parts as actual; there can be no middle position. Yet,
this precludes as well a restrictive potential parts doctrine. The argument pre-
sented as decisive to defeat a temperate actualism (not all parts are actual,
but some are potential) also condemns a temperate potentialism (not all parts
are potential, but some are actual). For Digby, any actual/potential distinction
among the parts of a thing constitutes a “cavill upon the word all,”61 a pitiable
effort to elude the necessity to choose between the two opposite views on ma-
terial parts. Manifestly, he is inclined to transform any moderate advocacy of
potential parts, any admission of actual parts with potential parts in a same
body, into the expression of a pusillanimous actualism. His absolutist view
that actualism entails that all parts of a continuum are actual rebuffs tangen-
tially any kind of distinction between actual parts and potential parts within
the quantitative parts of one and the same thing. Now, as Robert Pasnau has
nicely documented, not only was such a distinction vindicated by medieval
proponents of the potential parts doctrine, but it was then the common po-
tentialist doctrine.62 So, Digby was far from resuscitating a medieval doctrine
when claiming that the divisibility of quantity excludes the actuality of its
parts. Such an extreme potentialist position had no defender among medieval
authors. The standard medieval version of the potential parts doctrine, called

62 In his analysis of misleading interpretations of the phrase potential parts used by scholas-
tic authors, Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 614, remarks: “What seems to have gone wholly
unnoticed in discussions of this topic is that proponents of the potential parts doctrine
do not suppose that every part of a body is merely potential.”
Vivarium 58 (2020) 191-218

by Pasnau “the Mixed View,” was not so radical: it defended the thesis that some
parts of a body are actual, and some are potential.63 The arguments framed
by the ‘extremist’ William of Ockham (ca. 1287-1347), the most prominent de-
fender of actualism, against the potential parts doctrine, mostly “aimed at an
opponent who is willing to recognize certain sorts of actual parts.”64 So the di-
lemma of either actualism or potentialism in the medieval debate on material
parts was not a dilemma between two extremes, but between an extreme and a
middle position. In the Treatise of Bodies, on the contrary, the two alternatives,
actual or potential parts, are two extremes. The potential parts doctrine de-
fended by Digby illustrates the extremist potentialist position that Pasnau calls
“the Simple View” because “the substances it postulates are, literally, simple,
inasmuch as they lack all parts.”65 It is, thus, in the Treatise of Bodies that the
strict opposite of actualism on material parts, which was lacking in medieval
philosophy, finally emerges. In contrast to the standard scholastic approach
to potential parts, Digby’s approach constitutes an ultra-potentialist doctrine.
It is furthermore striking that Digby introduces his refutation of actualism
as resolving the scholastic issue of material parts. The reference to this con-
troversy in the Treatise of Bodies does not mean that Digby puts his definition
of quantity as divisibility under the patronage of notorious defenders of di-
visibilism in the fourteenth-century discussion. No doxography listing the full
spectrum of reasons advanced contra atomism in the medieval indivisibilist
controversy is to be expected. Digby’s intent is to devise a mode of refutation
outside the traditional discussion. Accordingly, his reduction of indivisibilism
to the impossible does not sketch medieval divisibilist arguments. He aims at
disproving the actual parts position not by advocating for the anti-indivisibilist
side in the scholastic continuum controversy, but by advocating for the logi-
cal necessity of his potential parts position. It was ordinary in medieval
63 Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 615. A passage from John of Jandun’s Quaestiones in libros
Physicorum Aristotelis quoted by Pasnau differentiates “two kinds of quantitative parts,”
actual parts, which contribute to the form of the whole, and potential parts, which are too
small to do the same.
64 Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 617.
65 Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 610. For Pasnau, Digby’s discussion of material parts in
connection with the scholastic debate on this issue “attacks, in turn, the two standard
scholastic views, Actualism and the Mixed View” (621). Pasnau does not take into account,
as I do, Digby’s presenting the thesis that only some parts, not all parts, are actual, as an
objection from defenders of actualism. He sums it up immediately in terms that are those
of the standard medieval potential parts doctrine: “a Mixed View according to which only
finitely many parts of a continuous body are actual. Beneath the actual parts, on this view,
body would continue to be divisible and so at this level there would be only potential
parts” (622).
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212 Pécharman
philosophy to refute by geometrical impossibilities the doctrine of the compo-

sition of continuum with indivisibles. As John Murdoch’s pioneering research
on this question has stressed, in the earlier years of the fourteenth century, the
mathematical objections that had constituted the “primary bastion” of John
Duns Scotus’s (1265/66-1308) criticism of indivisibles “increased, in complexity
as well as in number, at an almost exponential rate.”66 By comparison, Digby’s
e contrario demonstration of the necessary truth of the potential parts thesis
is striking for its mathematical sparsity. By means of sophisticated examples
of projections, medieval mathematical refutations of indivisibles multiplied
possible geometrical models for the reduction to an impossibility of the sup-
position that a magnitude is composed of extensionless points. But for proving
in the Treatise of Bodies that indivisibilism entails what from the viewpoint of
Euclidian geometry is an absurdity, no developed geometrical demonstration
is required. Digby just alludes to a demonstration already given in the Elements
and aims at using it as a fundamental geometrical reason against indivisibil-
ism. This constitutes for Digby the simplest possible way to invalidate at the
same time the two indivisibilist options (either a finite number or an infinity
of indivisibles compose a continuous quantity). Rather than producing a bat-
tery of new geometrical demonstrations of the impossibility of indivisibilism,
Digby derives from the Euclidian demonstration of the indefinite divisibility of
any line the argument that contiguity or contact between indivisibles is impos-
sible by the very nature of indivisibles.
The sophisticated geometrical demonstrations of the medieval divisibil-
ist tradition were devised as procedures of confirmation of the contact im-
possibility argument formulated in Aristotle’s Physics vi. Aristotle eliminates
successively the three possible contiguity alternatives derived from the sup-
position that indivisibles or points make a continuum: part-to-part contact,
part-to-whole contact, and finally whole-to-whole contact.67 Indivisibles, since
they have no parts, and consequently no boundaries that could be together
in the same place, cannot be in contact either part-to-part or part-to-whole.
The last alternative is likely impossible. Contiguity whole-to-whole of indi-
visibles, Aristotle claims, would never compose an extension; its result would
66 J.E. Murdoch, “The Development and Criticism of Atomism in the Later Middle Ages,” §52
of A Source Book in Medieval Science, ed. E. Grant (Cambridge, MA, 1974), 312-324, at 313.
See also idem, “Infinity and Continuity,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval
Philosophy, ed. N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny, and J. Pinborg (Cambridge, 1982), 564-591; and
“Beyond Aristotle: Indivisibles and Infinite Divisibility in the Later Middle Ages,” in
Atomism in Late Medieval Philosophy and Theology, ed. C. Grellard and A. Robert (Leiden,
2009), 15-38.
67 See Aristoteles, Physica vi, c. 1: 231b2-7.
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be as extensionless as a single point itself. In other words, a continuum made

of indivisibles supposed to be in contact in their entirety would not be a con-
tinuum, but a mere superposition of points. Medieval divisibilists attempted
to support this argument with full-scale geometrical demonstrations.68 By
contrast, in the Treatise of Bodies, the Euclidian reference is a means to re-
turn to the Aristotelian argument, not to construct a new geometrical confir-
mation of its validity. The Euclidian reference might even have been spared:
Aristotle’s Physics asserts the infinite divisibility of any continuous quantity.
But the Euclidian authority makes this assertion geometrically demonstrated.
On the basis of this geometrical guarantee, Digby borrows his per impossibile
demonstration against indivisibilism from Physics vi, as from the best source.
The Aristotelian argument, which constitutes the terminus a quo of the anti-
indivisibilist geometrical demonstrations in medieval philosophy, constitutes
in the Treatise of Bodies the terminus ad quem of the whole argumentation,
when Digby asserts, as I mentioned earlier, that “it is the nature of indivisibles,
when they are joyned together, to be drowned in one another.”69
Digby’s attack on indivisibilism was not devised from the legacy of scholas-
tic arguments. Instead, it seems to me that the main purpose was to contradict
Galileo’s (1564-1642) stand on the composition of the continuum. Simplicio,
the Aristotelian character in the Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (1638),
considers that the building up of divisibles out of indivisibles offers an insuper-
able difficulty. In response, Galileo’s spokesman, Salviati, does not undertake
to counter one-by-one the commonplace anti-indivisibilist arguments. What
refutes all of them, he contends, is that an infinity of indivisibles is required
to compose a divisible magnitude. Each line, whatever its length, contains in-
finite points. Moreover, for Salviati, this indivisibilist thesis is supported by the
principle that all continuous quantities, such as lines, are divisible into parts
that are themselves divisible without end:
68 For some of the geometrical arguments and counter-arguments used by the indivisibil-
ist and divisibilist protagonists of the medieval debate, see J.E. Murdoch, “Superposi
tion, Congruence and Continuity in the Middle Ages,” in Mélanges Alexandre Koyré i.
L’Aventure de la science (Paris, 1964), 416-441. On the nominalist discussion of the indi-
visibilist “touch-at-a-point argument” based on the example of a sphere and a plane sur-
face, see J. Zupko, “Nominalism Meets Indivisibilism,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology
3 (1993), 158-185. For the geometrical objections against atomism borrowed in the early
seventeenth century from the medieval debate, see C.R. Palmerino, “Libertus Fromondus’
Escape from the Labyrinth of the Continuum (1631),” Lias 42 (2015), 3-36.
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214 Pécharman
I do not see how it is possible to avoid the conclusion that these lines are
built up of an infinite number of indivisible quantities because a division
and a subdivision which can be carried on indefinitely presupposes that
the parts are infinite in number, since otherwise the subdivision would
reach an end; and if the parts are infinite in number, we must conclude
that they are not finite in size, because an infinite number of finite quan-
tities would give an infinite magnitude. And thus we have a continuous
quantity built up of an infinite number of indivisibles.70
If a continuous quantity is made of parts that are always divisible, it must

be made of an infinity of parts without magnitude. According to Galileo’s
Dialogues, therefore, Aristotle’s Physics vi, chapter 1 militates against Aristotle’s
Physics vi, chapter 1: the principle that any continuum is divisible into parts di-
visible forever (231b16-17) prohibits the thesis that no continuum can be made of
indivisibles (231a24). The right conclusion to be inferred from the principle of
the indefinite divisibility of a continuum is that this continuum is composed of
an infinity of indivisibles and that the line is composed of an infinity of points.
A division that can be repeated without interruption presupposes that parts
are infinite in number and without assignable magnitude. This, for Salviati,
makes quite obsolete Simplicio’s belief that in a continuum, the number of
parts is potentially infinite, but actually finite, as well as the philosophical di-
lemma of parts either actual or potential.71 Assuredly, Digby’s Treatise of Bodies
had to restore against Salviati’s reasoning the coherence and geometrical certi-
tude of the anti-indivisibilist argument in Physics vi, chapter 1.
Conclusion: The Best Ally of Mechanical Natural Philosophy
For Digby, the constitution of a body by quantity – defined as that by which a

body has parts – is made unintelligible if we suppose that there are actual parts
in quantity: this would imply impossibilities. On the basis of his justification of
the potentialist position, Digby is able to defend the thesis that quantity, that
70 Galileo Galilei, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, trans. H. Crew and A. de Salvio
(New York, 1914), 33-34.
71 Despite Salviati’s claim that the scholastic debate over actual parts/potential parts must
not interfere with his indivisibilist argumentation, Galileo’s position may be viewed as a
defense of actualism. See Holden, Architecture of Matter, 186: “Consider Galileo’s account
of material structure… His bodies are built out of an actual infinity of ultimate atomic
parts (the extensionless parti non quante) and for precisely this reason are themselves
infinitely complex.”
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by which a body is a body or a thing which has parts, is not intrinsic to body.
A body has parts not by its being a thing or substance, but by the accident of
quantity. The quantified being and its quantity must be distinguished; their
real distinction is for Digby the necessary metaphysical complement of his def-
inition of corporeity as quantity/divisibility. The thing that is divisible must be
conceived of as not divisible of itself; it is divisible with respect to its quantity,
not with respect to its substantial being.72 To say the least, it is intriguing that
Digby, despite his semantic argument proving that parts have, like qualities,
a merely notional status, is not deflationist on quantity as he is on qualities.
When Digby subjects the predicamental accidents to a nominalist razor, he
does the exact opposite of Ockham: he denies real qualities and asserts real
quantity. Ockham’s criterion for evaluating the respective ontological commit-
ment of Aristotle’s accidental categories of quantity and quality consists in the
possibility/impossibility of an explication in terms of local motion. What can
be ascribed to the local motion of a thing and of its parts does not require the
introduction of another res than this thing. Quantity passes the test, therefore
quantity is not an entity added to substance; sensible qualities do not, there-
fore these qualities are things distinct from substance.73 By comparison, the
position defended in the Treatise of Bodies may appear to lack consistency. The
criterion that Digby uses against scholastic quality realism leads us to expect
also quantity anti-realism. Yet, the semantic argument analyzed in section 3
only encompasses the parts of quantity. The Treatise of Bodies infers quantity
realism from a metaphysical standpoint that is not confined to the categorial
scheme. Digby judges consequently that his realist thesis on quantity does not
create the puzzles denounced in his attack on real qualities. The question of
the untraceable glew and paste required to attach real qualities to their subject
does not occur in the case of quantity. In contrast to real qualities, real quan-
tity is not for Digby contrary to genuine Aristotelian legacy, because this time,
72 See Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 3, §8, 22: “besides Quantity there [is] a substance or thing…
condistinguished from its Quantity or Divisibility.” For Digby, if a substance had quantity
intrinsically, this would imply an ontological absurdity: any change in it would mean its
annihilation and replacement by another substance. See Two Treatises i, c. 16, §6, 141-142:
substance signifies “that which maketh a thing be what it is”; this precludes that there is
“any divisibility in substance,” since “every division following that divisibility, would make
the thing an other what, that is an other thing.” For an implicit attack on Digby’s real
distinction of body and quantity, see Thomas Hobbes, De corpore i, c. 4 (London, 1655), 4:
“We must be careful not to think… that there is in nature a body or any imaginable thing
existent, which at first has no magnitude whatsoever, and then with the addition of mag-
nitude becomes a quantity [quantum]… ; though some people have philosophized in this
way.”
73 See Guillelmus de Ockham, Summa logicae i, c. 55 (ed. Boehner, Gál, and Brown, 179-182).
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216 Pécharman
the legacy goes beyond Aristotle’s analysis of quantity in terms of an accident

inherent in its substantial subject.74 The metaphysical thesis of the distinc-
tion between quantity and substance derives in the Treatise of Bodies from the
need to explain rarity and density. On the basis of his reading of Aristotle’s On
Coming-to-be and Passing-away,75 Digby understands substance, by itself indi-
visible, as capable of more or less quantity, namely, of more or less quantitative
parts. The relation of quantity to a substance means its “proportion… to the
capacity of that substance.”76 According as more or less is either on the side
of that by which a body has being (substance) or on the side of that by which
a body has parts (quantity), the first distinction between bodies must be that
of bodies “whose quantity is more, and [their] substance lesse” – rare bodies –
and bodies “where the substance is more and the quantity lesse” – dense bod-
ies.77 The metaphysical foundation of natural philosophy derives the most
immediate distinction between material substances or bodies from a ratio
between potential quantitative parts and being.78 Quantity realism is then
viewed as the condition for a non-scholastic explication of qualities ensuring
that their true reductionist meaning in Aristotle (a quality is “no other thing,
but that disposition of partes, which is proper to one body, and is not found in
all”) is maintained as the only kind of realism permissible concerning them.79
Against the scholastic thesis that sensible qualities are beings really distinct
from bodies, Digby intends to demonstrate that these qualities are “made by
the various minglings of rarity with density”: they result from degrees of rarity
and density.80 The right status of quality realism is re-qualified by Digby on
the basis of the necessity of quantity realism for natural philosophy. In this
74 See Aristoteles, Categoriae, c. 5: 2a34-36 for the inherence relation; Metaphysica vii, c. 3:
1029a14-16 for the thesis that quantity is a non-substantial property of a thing.
75 See Digby, Two Treatises i, Conclusion, 343.
76 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 3, §8, 22 (my emphasis).
77 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 3, §8, 23. De generatione et corruptione opposes matter’s capacity
to exist in any degree of density to vacuum accounting for rarefaction and compression.
For Aristotle, matter by itself has no quantity and in itself is neither rare nor dense: matter
gets these two determinations from quantity. Digby refutes the ‘vacuity’ supposition at
Two Treatises i, c.3, §§6-7.
78 See Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 3, §8, 24: “the first differences of haveing partes, are to have
bigger or lesse, more or fewer.” Cf. Two Treatises i, c. 4, §8, 31: “Rarity and Density… are
as divisible as quantity”; see also i, c. 14, §5, 118 on the potential parts of rare and dense
bodies.
79 See Digby, Two Treatises i, Conclusion, 345 (cf. 344; i, c. 6, §2, 40; ii, Preface, 351).
80 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 31, §4, 273 (§4 title reads: “That all the sensible qualities are reall
bodies resulting out of severall mixtures of rarity and density”).
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regard, Digby’s position involves a rejection of Ockham’s interpretation of the

definitions of rare and dense in Aristotle’s Categories. For Ockham, Aristotle’s
definitions of rarum and spissum entail that substance itself has parts distant
from one another.81 From the consideration of condensation and rarefaction,
Ockham derives the thesis that quantity is substance considered in a certain
respect, the disposition of its parts. This, for Digby, constitutes a misattribution
to substance of partes extra partes, as well as a misconception of quantity. A
real distinction must answer our different notions for what it is to be something
and to have parts. The material structure responsible for the qualities by which
bodies are differentiated cannot be the substantial being of bodies; it must be
quantity understood as divisibility. A greater or lesser proportion of quantity
separable from the substance of bodies explains the primordial properties of
rarity and density and these, in turn, explain all other properties of bodies,
including their sensible qualities. The doctrine of bodies, Digby claims accord-
ingly, “can not consist” (is not consistent) without the real distinction between
quantity and substance.82 This distinction alone can uphold the reduction of
qualitative phenomena, such as colours, to “various degrees of rarity and den-
sity, variously mixed and compounded.”83
So for Digby, the assertion that a body is constituted by quantity remains
somewhat elliptical as long as it is not understood as meaning that a body is
made “out of Quantity as it concurreth with substance.”84 All bodies are divis-
ible (corporeity is divisibility), but not all bodies have the same proportion of
their potential parts to their substance. Some bodies, by the “overproportion of
quantity” in them, have more divisibility than others and offer “lesse resistance
to the motion of an other body through [them].”85 Digby deduces then from
the potential parts doctrine “a vast consequence,” the necessity of a mecha-
nistic explication of all properties and operations of bodies: the “adaequate
act of divisibility,” that is, actual division, can only be done by local motion.86
81 In Guillelmus de Ockham, Summula philosophiae naturalis iii, c. 12 (Opera Philosophica
vi, ed. S. Brown, 289), Ockham comments in this sense on Categories, c. 8: 10a16-27. Cf.
Quaestiones in libros Physicorum Aristotelis, q. 97 (Opera Philosophica vi, ed. Brown, 658)
for the use of the principle pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate in Ockham’s criti-
cism of the “vulgar opinion” on rarefaction that supposes the distinction between quan-
tity and substance.
84 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 3, §1, 15 (cf. i, c. 3, §8, 23: “Quantity as it is ordained to substance
for the composition of a bodie”).
85 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 4, §8, 23. Cf i, c. 4, §6, 30.
86 See Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 5, §5, 35-36.
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218 Pécharman
The diversity of resistance in rare and dense bodies to partition by a mechani-

cal force initiates the whole pedigree of material operations. From there, the
argument of divisibility fully allows the demonstration of the immateriality of
the reasonable soul: Digby’s Treatise of Mans Soule will just have to assert the
impossibility that mental operations are “performed by the ordering of rare
and dense partes.”87
Vivarium 58 (2020) 191-218

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Vivarium 58 (2020) 191-218 v i va

Kenelm Digby on Quantity as Divisibility

body – continuum – Digby – divisibility – part – quantity – whole

1 Introduction: An Outsider Defense of Mind-Body Dualism

In seventeenth-century projects in natural philosophy, both mechanism and

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/15685349-12341384

the correlate of the metaphysical principle of substance dualism as the only

1 Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia v (Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. C. Adam and P.

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question of the actuality or potentiality of material parts was decided in favor

2 The Whatness/Muchness of Quantity

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known, so that it can be used as a measure of the quantity sought.16 A quan-

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The measurability of a thing, settled by questioning someone about this thing’s

19 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §2, 9.

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that by which we have the knowledge of quantity, consists either in unity or in

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quantity allows reconceiving as a relationship of parts to whole the compari-

3 The Semantic Argument

By establishing from the consideration of measure that divisibility, or the rela-

nothing is divisible, but what of it selfe (abstracting from division) is

27 Digby, Two Treatises ii, c. 1, §7, 359.

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that what is to be divided, must of necessity be not many before it be

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Holden regularly invokes this passage to underscore the anti-actualist thesis

33 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §6, 13.

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36 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §3, 10.

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Now, as Digby’s mode of construction of the definition of quantity emphasizes,

on scholastic inflationary ontology, the symmetrical case of the substantialization of ac-

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to his potentialist position.42 The objection is from the consideration not of

42 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §6 12.

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is the man, according as he hath a certaine vertue or power in him to distinct

4 The Argument against Indivisibilism

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independently of division. It introduces an important corollary: parts created

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(ii) The assumption of indivisibles entails an impossibility;

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actualism/potentialism debate as the opposition indivisibilism/anti-indivisibilism does

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of an extension. It is therefore fully demonstrated, according to Digby, that the

59 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §5, 12.

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philosophy to refute by geometrical impossibilities the doctrine of the compo-

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be as extensionless as a single point itself. In other words, a continuum made

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If a continuous quantity is made of parts that are always divisible, it must

Conclusion: The Best Ally of Mechanical Natural Philosophy

For Digby, the constitution of a body by quantity – defined as that by which a

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Vivarium 58 (2020) 191-218

1 Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia v (Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. C. Adam and P.

19 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §2, 9.

27 Digby, Two Treatises ii, c. 1, §7, 359.

33 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §6, 13.

36 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §3, 10.

42 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §6 12.

59 Digby, Two Treatises i, c. 2, §5, 12.

87 Digby, Two Treatises ii, c. 5, §1, 393.