A Research Project in the History of Physics & Metaphysics

The project Matter, Space, and Change. The Theory of Indeterminate Dimensions in Some Italian Masters of the Early Fourteenth Century (CARIPLO-Young Researchers, ref. 2023–1961) investigates how the Averroist doctrine of indeterminate dimensions was received, debated, and transformed in early fourteenth-century Italy. Inherited from Averroes’ De substantia orbis, this theory was employed to explain the divisibility of matter, its conservation through the processes of generation and corruption, and its capability to become individualized into bodies of varying sizes. The idea of eternal dimensions underlying change, in particular, was frequently invoked both in discussions of natural philosophy (e.g., dealing with condensation and rarefaction) and theology (e.g., in connection with transubstantiation and the resurrection of bodies). As such, it was an extremely versatile explanatory solution, although it implied theoretical problems that, on each occasion, needed to be addressed and solved (e.g., the actual relationship between indeterminate and determinate dimensions; their eternity and their priority over substantial form, apparently at odds with the Aristotelian principle of the priority of substance over accident).

Through the critical edition of previously unpublished texts, the study of manuscripts and archival documents, and the creation of a searchable digital database, the project will map the diffusion of the doctrine up to the sixteenth century and assess its impact on the history of metaphysics and natural philosophy.