1.3 Medieval Concept of Nature

The sublunary region

Animals and plants, like human beings, belonged to 'sublunary region'. They were thought of as belonging to a single linear hierarchy, a Scale of Nature.

The Scale of Nature

Degrees Of Spontaneous Change

Medieval thought was struck by the spontaneous "movement" (including change) that characterised some but not all of the things in the cosmos.

Some things were characterised by a kind of spontaneous movement called growth, seen as the assimilation of matter to the animal or plant body. (Reproduction was seen as a continuation of growth.)
Some things had the capacity to respond to stimuli - animals mostly.
Some things had the capacity to exercise their will - human beings.

So degrees of spontaneous change was one dimension in which things were ordered. You could see this as the foundation for the threefold distinction: nutritive soul, sensitive soul and rational soul

This provided the broad structure of the framework to which the whole of creation was thought of as belonging.

Aristotle had recognised a hierarchy of living beings, stretching "little by little" from the lifeless through plants to the human being:

The Great Chain Of Being

This mild idea was solidified during the middle ages into the doctrine of the Great Chain of Being. Albertus Magnus was partly responsible for the transmission, and for the reinforcement.

In the great chain of being that the medieval world thought in terms of the position of the human being was distinctive: at the point on the scale at which the material world interfaced with the spiritual.

S/he was the purpose of Creation, and the highest product of material creation.

But the scale covered the whole of creation, not just material things.

The human being, at the top of material creation, stood at the bottom of the scale of spiritual beings, which ascended through the angels to God.

The human body was the product of generation and subject to corruption;

the human soul was received at conception (or later) direct from God who created it and destined it for eternal life. (Crombie, Augustine to Galileo, p. 180.)

Everything and its place

The literary critic Danby (Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature) gives an informal account of the contrast between the medieval conception of things and their behaviour or action was to be understood and the Modern. I will draw on Danby to sketch in the contrast before going on to explain the scholastic notions of form and essence through which the picture was elaborated in academic philosophy.

The old order assumed Nature to be "benignant" which I suppose is Eng Lit for "benign". She was looked upon as a sort of Queen Mother, says Danby (writing when there was one ( UK)).

The key notion is that everything in Nature had a place, and associated with each place was a norm.

Different creatures had different norms to which they were expected to adhere: but to every sort, an ideal pattern of behaviour was there.

Within the embrace of Nature as a whole, every type of creature had its own 'nature', which was a sort of way of conducting itself, a style of being that was proper to it.

Also, everything had a particular place. There were many places in Nature, but everything had one, a place to which it belonged. It is its place that sets for the thing its norm, its proper pattern of being or behaviour.

Shakespeare's Macbeth is illuminating when read from this perspective. Much of the play relies on the assumption that everything has its proper place in Nature, and leaving that place, doing what was not natural to a thing, created a disturbance which reverberated and which perhaps brought retribution.

Remember the event: an "unnatural" deed; and the disturbances occasioned in Nature:

And the suggestion of punishment or revenge comes for example in this, that Heaven "threatens [man's] bloody stage" when "troubled by man's act." (Act II Scene 4)

What else can be said of the old conception of Nature?

Everything has its place, and an associated normal pattern of behaviour or style of being, a nature : but also, it is thought of as striving to achieve that norm.

The things in Nature are not inert, on the old conception, not blobs of matter subject only to the push and pull of forces external to themselves. They are thought of as themselves generating action, as themselves the originators of behaviour, as in some sense striving, striving towards the goals that are set by their own particular natures.

'Laws Of Nature'

We have put this in terms of 'norms'. But it can also be put in terms of 'Laws of Nature': things in the medieval world, it might be said, strive to obey the Laws of Nature.

That is to say, you could express the norms associated with a thing's nature as a set of rules, or laws: behaviour according to those rules or laws is behaviour that is proper to the thing, behaviour that is natural for it. The nature of a thing amounts therefore to a set of rules, and you could go on to say that it is these rules that the thing strives to obey.

This gives us the sense in which Medieval thinkers conceived of Laws of Nature: they were Laws which things strove to obey.

VP

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Reason, Nature and the Human Being in the West
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