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A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century
Natural philosophy encompassed all natural phenomena of the physical world. It sought to discover the physical causes of all natural effects and was little concerned with mathematics. By contrast, the exact mathematical sciences were narrowly confined to various computations that did not involve physical causes, functioning totally independently of natural philosophy. Although this began slowly to change in the late Middle Ages, a much more thoroughgoing union of natural philosophy and mathematics occurred in the seventeenth century and thereby made the Scientific Revolution possible. The title of Isaac Newton's great work, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, perfectly reflects the new relationship. Natural philosophy became the 'Great Mother of the Sciences', which by the nineteenth century had nourished the manifold chemical, physical, and biological sciences to maturity, thus enabling them to leave the 'Great Mother' and emerge as the multiplicity of independent sciences we know today.
376 pages, Paperback
First published November 29, 2002
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About the author
Edward Grant
49 books20 followersEdward Grant is an American historian of medieval science. He was named a Distinguished Professor in 1983. Other honors include the 1992 George Sarton Medal, for "a lifetime scholarly achievement" as an historian of science.
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September 26, 2024
Everyone knows that in olden times what we now call science was referred to as natural philosophy. Is it a mere terminological nicety, or does the distinction bear any consequence? The issue has, of late, given rise to a lively controversy among intellectual historians. For Andrew Cunningham has advanced a thesis to the effect that natural philosophy is always covertly a theological discourse about God, even when one is not explicitly treating of divine or supernatural causation per se, while the authoritative historian of science Edward Grant has rejoined in defense of the integrity of natural philosophy as an investigation into the natural world, as such, largely independent of whatever its protagonists may have believed about God as Creator of nature. The present work, A History of Natural Philosophy from the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2007), seems to be conceived by its elderly author as a summing up of his entire career and definitive statement of his views on the matter.
Well may we concur with this cautionary remark, ‘Indeed, as readers will discover, the historical relationship between natural philosophy and science is by no means straightforward’ [p. xi]! What does our author have to say about it? In his preface, he outlines how, in view of his career’s specialization, he initially intended to close this study with the flowering of late-medieval natural philosophy around 1500, but after Cunningham came forward with his controversial thesis, resolved to extend the range of his inquiry from late middle ages all the way to the nineteenth century, so as to be able satisfactorily to counter Cunningham’s argument (in which the seventeenth-century milieu culminating in Newton constitutes the centerpiece).
Grant proceeds to telegraph what he regards as his main finding:
My objective...has been to describe the general characteristics of natural philosophy in the different historical periods and to trace the major transformations that occurred over the centuries. As readers will observe, the most profound change in natural philosophy occurred in the seventeenth century. It involved a union of the exact sciences and natural philosophy, a phenomenon that has received relatively little attention in the vast literature about the meaning and causes of the Scientific Revolution. Without that fusion, however, it is doubtful that the Scientific Revolution could have occurred in the seventeenth century. [p. xii]
In the final part of this review, we intend, first, to review Grant’s take on Cunningham’s thesis and second, to sketch the fate of the early modern fusion of exact science with natural philosophy in the world of contemporary physics of the twenty-first century.
But let us preface our remarks with an overview of what the reader may expect to find in the present work. The first seven chapters [pp. 1-178], covering ancient Egypt to Plato, Aristotle, late antiquity, the fate of natural philosophy in Islam, the Latin tradition during the early medieval period (down to the twelfth century) and during the high medieval stage (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries), consist largely in checking the boxes: expository, anyone who knows his history of science will find all the topics familiar, to be skimmed through quickly to pick up Grant’s own positioning but it’s really in the later chapters where he develops his announced thesis and therefore has the opportunity to say something new and interesting.
Late medieval natural philosophy – its form and content, occupy chapter eight [pp. 179-238]. Here, Grant steps into the area of his proper expertise as an historian and his writing acquires piquancy over the somewhat routine first part of this book. Two topics engage his attention: first, thought experiments and the role of imagination [pp. 200-211] in envisioning, for instance, the possibility of other worlds, the possibility of a rectilinear motion of the whole cosmos and the possibility of void spaces within the world. Second, he wishes to show how the scholastics were not merely passive recipients of Aristotle but began to reconceive the role of experience, as applied to the question of real versus hypothetical worlds [pp. 215ff].
Chapter nine [pp. 239-273] covers relations between natural philosophy and theology during the medieval period. The first point is that, after the reception of Aristotle, natural philosophy acquired a certain autonomy vis-à-vis theology. In what strikes this recensionist as an original contribution, Grant turns things around to the opposite direction from what is usual and investigates the influence of natural philosophy on theology [pp. 262-273]. The following passage reveals the gist of his non-standard viewpoint:
Why did medieval theologians transform so many questions in theology into questions on natural philosophy, many of the latter emphasizing logico-mathematical techniques that had been developed in medieval natural philosophy?….The study of natural philosophy, as taught in the faculty of arts, was made an essential prerequisite of study in the higher faculties of medicine, law and theology. As a consequence, virtually all theologians were well trained in logic and natural philosophy….Theologians generally reached philosophical maturity while in the theological faculty, where they finally had a good opportunity to develop their philosophical ideas. Consequently, they tended to present their mature thoughts about natural philosophy in their Sentence Commentaries. The strong desire to philosophize in their Sentence Commentaries perhaps explains why they included questions that could only be answered by the introduction of logico-mathematical techniques that had been developed in natural philosophy. Without these techniques it would not have been possible to cope with questions such as: ‘whether God could make the future not to be’; ‘whether an angel is in a divisible or indivisible place’; ‘whether God could cause a past thing [or event] to have never occurred’; ‘whether an angel could sin or be meritorious in the first instant of his existence’; ‘whether God could know something that he does not know’; ‘whether [an angel] could be moved from place to place without passing through the middle [point]’. Logic and natural philosophy were applied to the deepest mysteries of the Christian faith: the Trinity and Eucharist….Theology was often more natural philosophy than it was theology. All that I have said...points to the unavoidable and overwhelming conclusion that while natural philosophy was virtually independent of theology, theology was utterly dependent on natural philosophy. [pp. 272-273]
Chapter ten [pp. 274-322] presses onward and describes the outcome of medieval natural philosophy during the early modern period. The first half of this chapter analyzes why the trendsetting thinkers of the seventeenth century such as Kepler and Galileo find the Aristotelian medieval paradigm insufficient and therefore reject it in favor of a revolutionary method and technique. Natural philosophy survives, but undergoes a wrenching transformation at their hands. The story is carried forward from Bacon and Newton [pp. 307-322], but there is hardly anything on the nineteenth century itself and nothing at all on Schelling!
After detailing the transition to today’s view, in which natural philosophy has been diminished to but a quaint term for modern empirical science as we understand it, Grant concludes his workmanlike exercise in historiography by inviting the reader to entertain a thought experiment:
Could a Scientific Revolution have occurred in the seventeenth century if the level of science and natural philosophy in Western Europe had remained what it was in the first half of the twelfth century?….Without the level that medieval natural philosophy attained, with its overwhelming emphasis on reason and analysis, and without the important questions that were first raised in the Middle Ages about other worlds, space, motion, the infinite, and without the kinds of answers they gave, we might, today, still be waiting for Galileo and Newton. [p. 329]
The observation is just enough in itself, but leaves us with two outstanding questions, viz.,
1) What about Cunningham’s thesis? For a printed exchange of views between Andrew Cunningham and Edward Grant, see the following: Open Forum: the Nature of ‘Natural Philosophy’, in Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the early Pre-Modern Period vol 5. no. 3 (2000), pp. 258-300. The plausibility of positing an inherent role for theology in the sciences derives from the inherent hierarchical ordering of disciplines, with theology at the apex since, as has been the case ever since Aristotle founded theology as a self-conscious intellectual endeavor, it engages the most general questions as to the nature of being and the relations obtaining among beings (what we today might call metaphysics, but for Aristotle metaphysics and theology are pretty much interchangeable). Thus logically speaking it seems hard to avoid a position something like Cunningham’s. But Grant comes across as having a much more down-to-earth disposition. He will ask for express documentation in the texts themselves.
In response he raises two main points [pp. 250-251 in the present text]: first, if Cunningham is right, why was the disciplinary boundary between natural science and theology respected and enforced so rigidly by contemporaries? For a Master of Arts was not licensed to teach about theology. A medieval man could not possibly have envisaged the relation of theology to natural philosophy as one of a potential intruder that has to be kept at bay. For Grant, this means that the two remain entirely separate domains of inquiry.
Second, if the thesis were right, why can we document so little evidence of a theological doctrine having a mentionable impact on any disputes over the properties of the natural world? Given what we now know about how nature operates according to objective laws, it causes little surprise to see that scientists can frame their explanations without having to invoke metaphysical, let alone theological hypotheses. Cunningham is well aware, of course, of the relative independence of physics from theology. Yet, if as he alleges, the question of God always stands in the background, it ought to matter somehow to the everyday conduct of the discipline of natural philosophy, else our current understanding of what they were up to as elaborating a forerunner of modern empirical science would be justified. Thus, Cunningham owes us a more nuanced account of how, on his model, the natural philosopher’s primary orientation to God makes any difference in practice. This recensionist suspects that he will have an easier time arguing his case for the revolutionaries of the seventeenth century than for the medieval scholastics, who, after all, tended to hew pretty close to Aristotle and his commentators, above all Avicenna and Averroes.
2) What is the significance of Grant’s omitting Schelling? To be sure, Naturphilosophie is not his area of expertise, which lies in late antiquity. The reason Grant can comfortably skip over it, of course, is that it represents in most observers’ eyes an abortive child, after all. For, although Schellingian speculations did inspire a handful of investigators during the early part of the nineteenth century – notably, Hans Christian Ørsted – on the whole it failed to take root in the research tradition of the nascent community of those who were soon to be identified as ‘scientists’.
Therefore, it seems the real question is methodological, or rather, what methodology is fitted to secure the allegiance of the majority of practitioners? The cause of Naturphilosophie’s stillbirth, it may be supposed, is that it was too qualitative in orientation. How has the consolidation of natural philosophy and the exact mathematical disciplines Grant sees occurring during the seventeenth century held up through the present day, in the twenty-first century?
We wish to draw a conclusion different from Cunningham’s; for it is not anymore so much theological motivation that drives practice (if it ever was) but conventions as to appropriate method. There will always be a latent tension between the qualitative and the quantitative. As always, one’s temperament can tend to one side or the other. If philosophically inclined (as with physics during eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to be distinguished from mechanics which was viewed as a mathematical discipline), the concentration of effort will tend to the establishment of applicable principles (say, Franklin’s proposal of two types of electricity corresponding to what we now call positive and negative charge, or the principle of conservation of electric charge). Appropriate to an early stage of a discipline, a method such as this shies away from exact mathematical modeling.
If to the other, one gets French mathematical physics in the style of the early decades of the nineteenth century (dominated by the figures of Laplace and Poisson), in which the emphasis lies on the analytical derivation of formulae in a model that somehow mathematizes the problem and not on proving the physics of it per se. For this latter, one would have to take the formulae one has derived and check them systematically against experiment, something mathematical physicists in the French mold were reluctant to do, if ever.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, nonetheless, balance was restored. With the arrival of thermodynamics in the mid-century, physics becomes quantitative, a trend that becomes entrenched with the founding of the theoretical physics which was to dominate from the second half of the nineteenth century down to the 1970’s, culminating in the framing of the standard model. Its outstanding success (as measured by Nobel-prize-winning accelerator experiments) is attributable to a harmonious interplay, in which experiment serves as a check on heuristics.
Since the 1970’s, however, an upstart has established itself, which could be described as a fusion between the rigor of the pure mathematician and the informal and heuristic style of reasoning typical of the physicist. Thus, string theory has taken over and displaced the component of natural philosophy in Grant’s synthesis. Instead of a combination of exact science and natural philosophy, we return to mathematics in a speculative mode in which physics provides only a pretext for flights of fantasy. Hence, John Horgan’s ironic science in The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (Addison-Wesley, 1996); or Sabine Hossenfelder’s Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (Hachette, 2018, our review here). For one discerns in string theory and allied areas of what nowadays gets called mathematical physics a loss of heartfelt connection with the great tradition of theoretical physics, therefore the consecutive reasoning we associate with the summits of achievement (say, Newton’s decomposition of sunlight into component colors, Ampère’s classic demonstrations of null results from which he infers the basic principles of electrodynamics, Einstein’s papers on the photoelectric effect, Rutherford’s bombardment of atoms with alpha rays leading to the nuclear model and so forth) loses ground to inconclusive building of toy models. Ever-popular speculations on the black hole information paradox resemble medieval debates on the nature of space, atoms and the void, but lead nowhere because they do not stimulate anyone to develop an exact theory having an empirical foundation.
In contrast to this increasingly disjointed and aimless style of reasoning, we may advert to the great nineteenth-century mathematician Karl Weierstrass’ rigorous methodology as described by Roger Cooke in his biography of Weierstrass’ star pupil, Sonya Kovalevskaya:
In general it can be said that for Weierstrass the important things in mathematics were certainly clarity and systematic development. Like his illustrious predecessor Gauss, he did not consider a mathematical edifice complete until all the scaffolding was removed. In practice this approach meant that a mathematical topic should be developed from first principles chosen so that the proofs flow naturally without the need for multitudinous special tricks. [p. 16 in Roger Cooke, The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya, Spinger-Verlag (1984); cf. our review here]
What is altogether missing these days (as the doyen among string theorists, Edward Witten, for one frankly acknowledges) would be an anchoring of theoretical reasoning in physical principles – precisely what a discipline like natural philosophy has always excelled at inventing and investigating. A hypothetico-deductive methodology that consists, in essence, in postulating any loose mathematical framework at random then striving to squeeze as many papers as one can out of it by spinning out conjectural derivations from unjustified postulates, as opposed to proceeding methodically via the traditional ordered stages of analysis complemented by synthesis, cannot realistically hope ever to disclose the hidden workings of nature, unless perchance through sheer luck (which one has not had so far, after fifty years). Therefore, to overcome the crisis in fundamental physics we must reengage natural philosophy properly so called!
Well may we concur with this cautionary remark, ‘Indeed, as readers will discover, the historical relationship between natural philosophy and science is by no means straightforward’ [p. xi]! What does our author have to say about it? In his preface, he outlines how, in view of his career’s specialization, he initially intended to close this study with the flowering of late-medieval natural philosophy around 1500, but after Cunningham came forward with his controversial thesis, resolved to extend the range of his inquiry from late middle ages all the way to the nineteenth century, so as to be able satisfactorily to counter Cunningham’s argument (in which the seventeenth-century milieu culminating in Newton constitutes the centerpiece).
Grant proceeds to telegraph what he regards as his main finding:
My objective...has been to describe the general characteristics of natural philosophy in the different historical periods and to trace the major transformations that occurred over the centuries. As readers will observe, the most profound change in natural philosophy occurred in the seventeenth century. It involved a union of the exact sciences and natural philosophy, a phenomenon that has received relatively little attention in the vast literature about the meaning and causes of the Scientific Revolution. Without that fusion, however, it is doubtful that the Scientific Revolution could have occurred in the seventeenth century. [p. xii]
In the final part of this review, we intend, first, to review Grant’s take on Cunningham’s thesis and second, to sketch the fate of the early modern fusion of exact science with natural philosophy in the world of contemporary physics of the twenty-first century.
But let us preface our remarks with an overview of what the reader may expect to find in the present work. The first seven chapters [pp. 1-178], covering ancient Egypt to Plato, Aristotle, late antiquity, the fate of natural philosophy in Islam, the Latin tradition during the early medieval period (down to the twelfth century) and during the high medieval stage (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries), consist largely in checking the boxes: expository, anyone who knows his history of science will find all the topics familiar, to be skimmed through quickly to pick up Grant’s own positioning but it’s really in the later chapters where he develops his announced thesis and therefore has the opportunity to say something new and interesting.
Late medieval natural philosophy – its form and content, occupy chapter eight [pp. 179-238]. Here, Grant steps into the area of his proper expertise as an historian and his writing acquires piquancy over the somewhat routine first part of this book. Two topics engage his attention: first, thought experiments and the role of imagination [pp. 200-211] in envisioning, for instance, the possibility of other worlds, the possibility of a rectilinear motion of the whole cosmos and the possibility of void spaces within the world. Second, he wishes to show how the scholastics were not merely passive recipients of Aristotle but began to reconceive the role of experience, as applied to the question of real versus hypothetical worlds [pp. 215ff].
Chapter nine [pp. 239-273] covers relations between natural philosophy and theology during the medieval period. The first point is that, after the reception of Aristotle, natural philosophy acquired a certain autonomy vis-à-vis theology. In what strikes this recensionist as an original contribution, Grant turns things around to the opposite direction from what is usual and investigates the influence of natural philosophy on theology [pp. 262-273]. The following passage reveals the gist of his non-standard viewpoint:
Why did medieval theologians transform so many questions in theology into questions on natural philosophy, many of the latter emphasizing logico-mathematical techniques that had been developed in medieval natural philosophy?….The study of natural philosophy, as taught in the faculty of arts, was made an essential prerequisite of study in the higher faculties of medicine, law and theology. As a consequence, virtually all theologians were well trained in logic and natural philosophy….Theologians generally reached philosophical maturity while in the theological faculty, where they finally had a good opportunity to develop their philosophical ideas. Consequently, they tended to present their mature thoughts about natural philosophy in their Sentence Commentaries. The strong desire to philosophize in their Sentence Commentaries perhaps explains why they included questions that could only be answered by the introduction of logico-mathematical techniques that had been developed in natural philosophy. Without these techniques it would not have been possible to cope with questions such as: ‘whether God could make the future not to be’; ‘whether an angel is in a divisible or indivisible place’; ‘whether God could cause a past thing [or event] to have never occurred’; ‘whether an angel could sin or be meritorious in the first instant of his existence’; ‘whether God could know something that he does not know’; ‘whether [an angel] could be moved from place to place without passing through the middle [point]’. Logic and natural philosophy were applied to the deepest mysteries of the Christian faith: the Trinity and Eucharist….Theology was often more natural philosophy than it was theology. All that I have said...points to the unavoidable and overwhelming conclusion that while natural philosophy was virtually independent of theology, theology was utterly dependent on natural philosophy. [pp. 272-273]
Chapter ten [pp. 274-322] presses onward and describes the outcome of medieval natural philosophy during the early modern period. The first half of this chapter analyzes why the trendsetting thinkers of the seventeenth century such as Kepler and Galileo find the Aristotelian medieval paradigm insufficient and therefore reject it in favor of a revolutionary method and technique. Natural philosophy survives, but undergoes a wrenching transformation at their hands. The story is carried forward from Bacon and Newton [pp. 307-322], but there is hardly anything on the nineteenth century itself and nothing at all on Schelling!
After detailing the transition to today’s view, in which natural philosophy has been diminished to but a quaint term for modern empirical science as we understand it, Grant concludes his workmanlike exercise in historiography by inviting the reader to entertain a thought experiment:
Could a Scientific Revolution have occurred in the seventeenth century if the level of science and natural philosophy in Western Europe had remained what it was in the first half of the twelfth century?….Without the level that medieval natural philosophy attained, with its overwhelming emphasis on reason and analysis, and without the important questions that were first raised in the Middle Ages about other worlds, space, motion, the infinite, and without the kinds of answers they gave, we might, today, still be waiting for Galileo and Newton. [p. 329]
The observation is just enough in itself, but leaves us with two outstanding questions, viz.,
1) What about Cunningham’s thesis? For a printed exchange of views between Andrew Cunningham and Edward Grant, see the following: Open Forum: the Nature of ‘Natural Philosophy’, in Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the early Pre-Modern Period vol 5. no. 3 (2000), pp. 258-300. The plausibility of positing an inherent role for theology in the sciences derives from the inherent hierarchical ordering of disciplines, with theology at the apex since, as has been the case ever since Aristotle founded theology as a self-conscious intellectual endeavor, it engages the most general questions as to the nature of being and the relations obtaining among beings (what we today might call metaphysics, but for Aristotle metaphysics and theology are pretty much interchangeable). Thus logically speaking it seems hard to avoid a position something like Cunningham’s. But Grant comes across as having a much more down-to-earth disposition. He will ask for express documentation in the texts themselves.
In response he raises two main points [pp. 250-251 in the present text]: first, if Cunningham is right, why was the disciplinary boundary between natural science and theology respected and enforced so rigidly by contemporaries? For a Master of Arts was not licensed to teach about theology. A medieval man could not possibly have envisaged the relation of theology to natural philosophy as one of a potential intruder that has to be kept at bay. For Grant, this means that the two remain entirely separate domains of inquiry.
Second, if the thesis were right, why can we document so little evidence of a theological doctrine having a mentionable impact on any disputes over the properties of the natural world? Given what we now know about how nature operates according to objective laws, it causes little surprise to see that scientists can frame their explanations without having to invoke metaphysical, let alone theological hypotheses. Cunningham is well aware, of course, of the relative independence of physics from theology. Yet, if as he alleges, the question of God always stands in the background, it ought to matter somehow to the everyday conduct of the discipline of natural philosophy, else our current understanding of what they were up to as elaborating a forerunner of modern empirical science would be justified. Thus, Cunningham owes us a more nuanced account of how, on his model, the natural philosopher’s primary orientation to God makes any difference in practice. This recensionist suspects that he will have an easier time arguing his case for the revolutionaries of the seventeenth century than for the medieval scholastics, who, after all, tended to hew pretty close to Aristotle and his commentators, above all Avicenna and Averroes.
2) What is the significance of Grant’s omitting Schelling? To be sure, Naturphilosophie is not his area of expertise, which lies in late antiquity. The reason Grant can comfortably skip over it, of course, is that it represents in most observers’ eyes an abortive child, after all. For, although Schellingian speculations did inspire a handful of investigators during the early part of the nineteenth century – notably, Hans Christian Ørsted – on the whole it failed to take root in the research tradition of the nascent community of those who were soon to be identified as ‘scientists’.
Therefore, it seems the real question is methodological, or rather, what methodology is fitted to secure the allegiance of the majority of practitioners? The cause of Naturphilosophie’s stillbirth, it may be supposed, is that it was too qualitative in orientation. How has the consolidation of natural philosophy and the exact mathematical disciplines Grant sees occurring during the seventeenth century held up through the present day, in the twenty-first century?
We wish to draw a conclusion different from Cunningham’s; for it is not anymore so much theological motivation that drives practice (if it ever was) but conventions as to appropriate method. There will always be a latent tension between the qualitative and the quantitative. As always, one’s temperament can tend to one side or the other. If philosophically inclined (as with physics during eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to be distinguished from mechanics which was viewed as a mathematical discipline), the concentration of effort will tend to the establishment of applicable principles (say, Franklin’s proposal of two types of electricity corresponding to what we now call positive and negative charge, or the principle of conservation of electric charge). Appropriate to an early stage of a discipline, a method such as this shies away from exact mathematical modeling.
If to the other, one gets French mathematical physics in the style of the early decades of the nineteenth century (dominated by the figures of Laplace and Poisson), in which the emphasis lies on the analytical derivation of formulae in a model that somehow mathematizes the problem and not on proving the physics of it per se. For this latter, one would have to take the formulae one has derived and check them systematically against experiment, something mathematical physicists in the French mold were reluctant to do, if ever.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, nonetheless, balance was restored. With the arrival of thermodynamics in the mid-century, physics becomes quantitative, a trend that becomes entrenched with the founding of the theoretical physics which was to dominate from the second half of the nineteenth century down to the 1970’s, culminating in the framing of the standard model. Its outstanding success (as measured by Nobel-prize-winning accelerator experiments) is attributable to a harmonious interplay, in which experiment serves as a check on heuristics.
Since the 1970’s, however, an upstart has established itself, which could be described as a fusion between the rigor of the pure mathematician and the informal and heuristic style of reasoning typical of the physicist. Thus, string theory has taken over and displaced the component of natural philosophy in Grant’s synthesis. Instead of a combination of exact science and natural philosophy, we return to mathematics in a speculative mode in which physics provides only a pretext for flights of fantasy. Hence, John Horgan’s ironic science in The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (Addison-Wesley, 1996); or Sabine Hossenfelder’s Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (Hachette, 2018, our review here). For one discerns in string theory and allied areas of what nowadays gets called mathematical physics a loss of heartfelt connection with the great tradition of theoretical physics, therefore the consecutive reasoning we associate with the summits of achievement (say, Newton’s decomposition of sunlight into component colors, Ampère’s classic demonstrations of null results from which he infers the basic principles of electrodynamics, Einstein’s papers on the photoelectric effect, Rutherford’s bombardment of atoms with alpha rays leading to the nuclear model and so forth) loses ground to inconclusive building of toy models. Ever-popular speculations on the black hole information paradox resemble medieval debates on the nature of space, atoms and the void, but lead nowhere because they do not stimulate anyone to develop an exact theory having an empirical foundation.
In contrast to this increasingly disjointed and aimless style of reasoning, we may advert to the great nineteenth-century mathematician Karl Weierstrass’ rigorous methodology as described by Roger Cooke in his biography of Weierstrass’ star pupil, Sonya Kovalevskaya:
In general it can be said that for Weierstrass the important things in mathematics were certainly clarity and systematic development. Like his illustrious predecessor Gauss, he did not consider a mathematical edifice complete until all the scaffolding was removed. In practice this approach meant that a mathematical topic should be developed from first principles chosen so that the proofs flow naturally without the need for multitudinous special tricks. [p. 16 in Roger Cooke, The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya, Spinger-Verlag (1984); cf. our review here]
What is altogether missing these days (as the doyen among string theorists, Edward Witten, for one frankly acknowledges) would be an anchoring of theoretical reasoning in physical principles – precisely what a discipline like natural philosophy has always excelled at inventing and investigating. A hypothetico-deductive methodology that consists, in essence, in postulating any loose mathematical framework at random then striving to squeeze as many papers as one can out of it by spinning out conjectural derivations from unjustified postulates, as opposed to proceeding methodically via the traditional ordered stages of analysis complemented by synthesis, cannot realistically hope ever to disclose the hidden workings of nature, unless perchance through sheer luck (which one has not had so far, after fifty years). Therefore, to overcome the crisis in fundamental physics we must reengage natural philosophy properly so called!
December 6, 2020
Despite the title's comprehensive timescale, it is a book concentrating more on the medieval times (~1100-1500), of the scholastic philosophy and early universities. The interplay of theology and medieval natural philosophy, and how these were foundational in the latter rise of modern science. The other chapters on pre- and post-medieval are like slightly awkward appendages to the medieval body. This also means that the book is somewhat disjoint and repetitive at places (which may not be a bad thing, as some slight refreshers are needed ocassionally). Nevertheless, still a very interesting read. Really fascinating was the section on Jean Buridan, and his impetus theory... these stuff, the precursor of Galileo's and later Newton's work on motion should be more made more well known. The last chapter also gives a very good summary of the whole book. Although the chapter purports to be talking about 19th century (not much of 1800s being talked about), it is more about how the preceding centuries natural philosophy vs Science vs Physics lead up to the modern 'Science' that we know today.
September 21, 2013
While this survey of natural philosophy is indeed comprehensive, I felt it to be quite haphazard and lacking structure beyond the historical timeline given. Moreover, Grant tends to overemphasize biographical sketches of thinkers as well as the issue of translating text across cultures, which I found to be tangential to the philosophical exposition for which I was hungry. What much of the book starts out with in terms of Aristotles writing, the rest leaves to understanding how people grappled with, translated, regurgitated, or refuted his works, rather than discussing the theoretical and practical advancements made thereafter, by the likes of physicists or other natural philosophers. Perhaps we are left with wondering what happened during this timeframe in terms of major contributions to the field? Or was there no one until Francis Bacon no more influential? Otherwise, I felt underwhelmed at the knowledge I gleaned from the text, much more likely to glaze over another name (which, to the authors' credit, is thoroughly researched), in order to find any real meaty takeaways on how this field advanced over the course of history. Three stars.
As a qualifier, I particularly enjoyed the sections on Aristotelian natural philosophy, the turbulent relationship between natural philosophy and theology, as well as the reasoning behind why the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic schools did not take root in Islamic society. And in his conclusion, Grant does make the apt point that maybe we wouldn't have had the scientific revolution of the enlightenment occurred when it did had we not underwent the tumult of "probing and poking around" not taken place.
As a qualifier, I particularly enjoyed the sections on Aristotelian natural philosophy, the turbulent relationship between natural philosophy and theology, as well as the reasoning behind why the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic schools did not take root in Islamic society. And in his conclusion, Grant does make the apt point that maybe we wouldn't have had the scientific revolution of the enlightenment occurred when it did had we not underwent the tumult of "probing and poking around" not taken place.
January 31, 2026
I think grant does a great job of covering this large and complicated topic. So many threads to pull on.
Found fascinating the framing of Aristotles 3 areas of theoretical knowledge. Metaphysical, mathematical, and natural. Then it’s the interplay of the 3 areas that lead to human development.
The metaphysical sets the direction for the natural, and the natural needs the framework and the tools of analysis provided by the mathematical. Any of them isolated from the others will begin to decay or stall
Found fascinating the framing of Aristotles 3 areas of theoretical knowledge. Metaphysical, mathematical, and natural. Then it’s the interplay of the 3 areas that lead to human development.
The metaphysical sets the direction for the natural, and the natural needs the framework and the tools of analysis provided by the mathematical. Any of them isolated from the others will begin to decay or stall
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews