Averroes' Physics: A Turning Point in Medieval Natural Philosophy
Ruth Glasner
Abstract
For the first time Averroes' physics is studied on the basis of all available texts and versions of his three commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, including texts that are extant only in Hebrew manuscripts and have not been hitherto studied. A comparison of these sources shows that a diachronic study is absolutely essential. Averroes changed his interpretation of the basic notions of physics—the structure of corporeal reality and the definition of motion—more than once. He has repeatedly rewritten and edited several key chapters in all three commentaries. After many hesitations he offers a bol ... More
For the first time Averroes' physics is studied on the basis of all available texts and versions of his three commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, including texts that are extant only in Hebrew manuscripts and have not been hitherto studied. A comparison of these sources shows that a diachronic study is absolutely essential. Averroes changed his interpretation of the basic notions of physics—the structure of corporeal reality and the definition of motion—more than once. He has repeatedly rewritten and edited several key chapters in all three commentaries. After many hesitations he offers a bold new interpretation of physics to which this book refers as ‘Aristotelian atomism’. Ideas that are usually ascribed to scholastic scholars and others that were traced back to Averroes but only in a very general form, not only originated with him, but were fully developed by him into a comprehensive and systematic physical system. Unlike earlier Greek or Muslim atomistic systems, Averroes' Aristotelian atomism endeavours to be fully scientific, by Aristotelian standards, and still to provide a basis for an indeterministic natural philosophy. Commonly known as ‘the commentator’ and usually considered to be a faithful follower of Aristotle, Averroes is revealed in his commentaries on the Physics to be an original and sophisticated philosopher.
Keywords:
Averroes,
Ibn Rushd,
physics,
commentaries,
atomism,
minima naturalia,
forma fluens,
indeterminism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2009 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199567737 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2009 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199567737.001.0001 |
