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'THE INFINITE VARIETY OF FORMES

AND MAGNITUDES':
16TH- AND 17TH-CENTURY ENGLISH CORPUSCULAR
PHILOSOPHY AND ARISTOTELIAN THEORIES OF
MATTER AND FORM
STEPHEN CLUCAS
BirkbeckCollege,Universityof London

Recent historiographical reflections on the 'cultural topography and geo-politics' of the Scientific Revolution, prompted by
Roy Porter and Mikulis Teich's The Scientific Revolution in Nation-

al Context,1have led some historians of science to reconsider the

global narratives of synoptic histories of the rise of modern science in favour of local studies which stress 'the role of particular
and disparate national and cultural traditions of thinking and
mental work,' and the 'special filiation' of scientific traditions
within 'distinct national contexts.'2 While Porter and Teich
acknowledge the importance of 'internationalism' and 'cosmopolitanism' in early-modern scientific endeavour, they stress the
mediation of these trans-national scientific developments by
'indigenous language, education, communication networks, institutions, economics, social relations, politics, religious confession,
patronage and other comparable elements that can be called [...]
"national context"'.3 The rise of corpuscularism (or atomism) is
an aspect of the 'new science' which, as I have argued elsewhere,
benefits from being studied in terms of an 'independent English
atomistic milieu,'4 which is characterised by particular syntheses
of late mediaeval and Renaissance Aristotelian and non-Aristotelian thought. In his study of English atomism, Robert Kargon
laid particular stress on the importance of Descartes and Gassen1 R. Porter and M. Teich (eds.), The ScientificRevolutionin National Context
(Cambridge, 1992).
2 Ibid., 2-4.

3 Ibid., 4-6.
4 S. Clucas, "The Atomism of the Cavendish circle: a reappraisal", The SeventeenthCentury,9 (1994), 247-273; 256.
? Koninklijke Brill, Leiden, 1997

Early Science and Medicine 2,3

252

STEPHEN CLUCAS

di in the development of English atomism, dismissing earlier corpuscular developments as the marginal products of an isolated
coterie.5 Stressing atomism as a radical break with the past, a 'new
world picture [...] different from the view of previous centuries,
and [...] close to that of the XIXth century and our own',6 Kargon emphasised what he saw as the definitively modern anti-Aristotelianism of the Northumberland circle atomists.7 A less whiggish view of the development of corpuscularism within a national context is to be found in Ugo Baldini's study of the rise of
seventeenth-century Italian corpuscularism, 'I1lcorpuscularismo
italiano del Seicento. Problemi di metodo e prospettive di ricerca,'8 which considers the complex emergence of a particular 'tematica corpuscolare [...] italiana' out of the Aristotelian tradition
of minimanaturaliaand other traditions.9 Baldini stresses the persistence of the ontological, linguistic, and conceptual categories
of the Aristotelian tradition in new Renaissance philosophies such
as corpuscularism,'0 which still lacked a 'deep' model of explanation ('un modello "profondo" di spiegazione') comparable to
the peripatetic concepts of form and quality.11As Baldini rightly
points out, the criteria for a critique of the Aristotelian doctrine
of 'forms' were neither obvious nor natural to seventeenth-century philosophers,12 and the history of the disentanglement of
mechanism from Aristotelian physics is complex and difficult.
Baldini's historiographical cautions are equally pertinent to the
situation in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England,
although the 'English corpuscular thematic' involves a very different kind of disentanglement from Aristotle. English natural
philosophers at this time were becoming increasingly critical of
Aristotelian physics as a tool for understanding the structure, qual5 R. H. Kargon, Atomismin England:from Harriot to Newton (Oxford, 1966),
63, cf. Clucas, "Atomism",247.
6 R. Kargon, "Thomas Harriot, the Northumberland Circle and Early Atomism in England",Journal of the Historyof Ideas, 27, 1966, 128-136; 128.
7 Kargon, Atomism,7, 13, and "Thomas Harriot", 128, 134-6.
8 U. Baldini,
'II corpuscolarismo italiano del Seicento. Problemi di metodo
e prospettive di ricerca' in U. Baldini, G. Zanier, P. Farina, F. Trevisani, Ricerche
sull'atomismodelSeicento.Atti del Convegnodi studiodi Santa MargheritaLigure(14-16
ottobre1976) (Florence, 1977), 1-76.
9 Ibid., 7-8.
10 See "Alcune implicazioni semantiche della transizione dall'Aristotelismo al
Corpuscolarismo",22-55 (esp. 32-5).
Ibid., 57.
12 Ibid., 57 fn.94

INFINITE VARIETY OF FORMES AND MAGNITUDES

253

ities and motions of the material universe. The increased interest

in experimentalism and observation, and exposure to an array of
alternative explanations for physical phenomena-from alchemy,
medicine, neoplatonism, atomism, to the new critical philosophies
of nature put forward by continental philosophers such as Telesio, Patrizi, Doni, Campanella and Bruno-led to a willingness to
formulate new conceptions of physical phenomena which diverged from the Aristotelian traditions. For the most part, however,
these new explanatory principles did not constitute a revolutionary break with the Aristotelian inheritance, but rather a critical
synthesis. The conceptual framework for describing 'depth phenomena' or 'kinetic-energic' phenomena, which involved hidden,
invisible or indiscernible processes, or processes which involved
mutation, growth or generation from one physical state to another, posed particular difficulties for natural philosophers seeking
to develop matter theories based on corpuscular or mechanical
principles. It is significant perhaps that these were the last areas
of natural philosophy to be divested of an Aristotelian conceptual framework. The theoretical complexity and sophistication of
the Aristotelian doctrine of forms as it was developed between the
thirteenth and the sixteenth century, provided a subtle and
nuanced arrayof conceptual tools for philosophers seeking to discuss dynamic processes. In this paper I look at the course of English natural philosophy in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the writings of Walter Warner, Francis Bacon and
Nicholas Hill, viewing them as transitional formulations between
traditional Aristotelian hylomorphic theories and the new
mechanical corpuscular modes of explanation of natural phenomena, before going on to consider Robert Boyle's more critical formulations of 1666 as the expression of a post-1650 movement away from peripatetic eclecticism towards full corpuscularian explanations.
Francis Bacon, 1561-1626

Bacon, Hill and Warner, who were all associated (in different
ways) with the intellectual circle of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of
Northumberland,-

1 all

gave serious consideration to corpuscular-

's On Hill and Northumberland

see H. Trevor-Roper, "Nicholas Hill the Eng-

254

STEPHEN CLUCAS

ism as a means of explaining various physical phenomena,14 and

all three continued-in varying degrees-to use concepts and theoretical distinctions inherited from the Aristotelian tradition in
their explanations of physical processes. Bacon, in his Advancementof Learning,was severely critical of the 'kind of learning that
did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen' who had 'sharp and
strong wits', but 'being shut up in the cells of a few authors
(chiefly Aristotle their dictator)' they knew little 'history, either
of nature or time' and so 'did out of no great quantity of matter
and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us [...] laborious webs
of learning' which were 'admirable for the fineness of thread and
work, but of no substance or profit.'15 But despite his repeated
attacks on the schoolmen, he did not hesitate to retain a doctrine
of forms, albeit of a strictly defined and delimited kind. Even at
the level of epistemology, Bacon inherits the Aristotelian articulation of the field of knowledge, arguing that natural philosophy
should be divided into 'Physic', which 'inquireth and handleth
the material and efficient causes' and 'Metaphysic' which 'handleth the formal and final causes.'16 The field of 'Physic' is subdivided into three subfields, 'whereof two respect nature united
or collected, the third contemplateth nature diffused or distributed.' That is to say, it deals with nature both as homogeneity
('one entire total') and as heterogeneity ('the [...] principles or
seeds' of nature). His physics then implies a view of nature as the
'configuration' and 'contexture' of seminal (or corpuscular) principles.17 Above these material and efficient causes are the material forms and final causes which are the subject of Metaphysics.
Despite the 'received and inveterate opinion, that the inquisition
of man is not competent to find out essential forms', Bacon insists
lish Atomist", in Catholics,Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth-century
essays (London, 1987), 1-39; esp. 11-12. On Bacon and the Northumberland circle see Kargon, Atomismin England, pp. 43-4.
4' See Kargon, Atomismin England, 5-17, 43-53, and "Thomas Harriot", art.
cit.; J. Jacquot, "Harriot, Hill, Warner and the New Philosophy", in ThomasHarriot, RenaissanceScientist (Oxford, 1974), 107-128; G. Rees, "Atomism and Subtlety in Francis Bacon's Philosophy", Annals of Science,37 (1980), 549-71, and S.
Clucas, "Atomism".
15 F. Bacon, TheAdvancementof Learning,ed. A. Johnston (Oxford, 1974), 28
16 Ibid., 90. Bacon repudiated this position in the 1620s, claiming in a letter
of June 1622 that 'When true physics have been discovered, there will be no
Metaphysics.Beyond the true Physics is divinity only.' cit. Johnston, Advancement,
271 n.
17Johnston, Advancement,91.

INFINITE VARIETY OF FORMES AND MAGNITUDES

255

natural philosophy

Opus quod operatur Deus a principio usque ad finem

'the summary laws of nature'
I\

I
I

\
\

Staphy

physic

natural history

1. Knowledges are as pyramides ...

that 'the invention of forms is of all other parts of knowledge the

worthiest to be sought.'8 Metaphysics in its search for forms, he
says, does the most to 'abridge the infinity of individual experience' and so is at the apex of a 'knowledge pyramid' [See fig.1]:
For knowledgesare as pyramides,whereof historyis the basis. So of natural philosophy,the basis is natural history;the stage next the basis is
physic;the stage next the verticalpoint is metaphysic.19

'That knowledge is worthiest', Bacon said, 'which is charged

with least multiplicity, which appeareth to be metaphysic.' It is
metaphysics which he sees as the principal instrument of his utilitarian insistence on 'fructiferous' works and practise: 'Metaphysic
[...] doth enfranchise the power of man unto the greatest liberty
and possibility of works and effects,' by helping him to avoid the
'narrow and restrained ways' of physics, which is distracted by the
'accidents of impediments' innate in the 'ordinary flexous courses
18

Ibid.

19 Ibid., 93

256

STEPHEN CLUCAS

of nature'.20 By locating and defining forms, man is better

equipped to act on nature-for 'whosoever knoweth any form,
knoweth the utmost possibility of superinducing that nature upon
any variety of matter.'21
Bacon is quite emphatic, however, in distinguishing his concept
of form from others, in particular that of Plato, who, Bacon says,
'lost the real fruit of his opinion' (i.e. 'that forms were the true
object of knowledge') 'by considering of forms as absolutely
abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined by matter.' In doing this, Bacon felt that Plato 'turn[ed] his opinion
upon theology' which 'infected' his natural philosophy.22 It is
clear, then, that Bacon's concept of form is restricted to that of
materialforms, rejecting both Aristotelian and Platonic tendencies
to view form as abstract from matter. While he claimed that 'the
forms of substances [...] are so perplexed, as they are not to be
inquired,' he argued that the simple forms of 'natures and qualities' are knowable:
to inquire the form of a lion, of an oak, of gold; nay of water, of air, is a
vain pursuit: but to inquire the forms of sense, of voluntary motion, of vegetation, of colours, of gravity and levity, of density, of tenuity, of heat, of
cold [...] [qualities] of which the essences (upheld by matter) of all creatures do consist [...] is that part of metaphysic we do now define of.23

According to Bacon, the lack of success in establishing 'true

forms' is a product of impractical, overtheoretical knowledge
which has made 'too untimely a departure and too remote a recess
from particulars.'24It is precisely the emphasis on final causes in
metaphysics which he sees as the major obstacle in the investigation of natural phenomena. Plato, Galen and Aristotle, had all
'fall[en] upon these flats of discoursing [of] causes', which are
'remoraeand hindrances to stay and slug the ship from further sailing and [...are the reason why...] the search of the physical causes hath been neglected.'25 In this respect Bacon finds the 'natural philosophy of Democritus' in its treatment of 'particularities
of physical causes more real and better inquired than that of Aristotle and Plato' who both 'intermingled final causes' in their phys20 Ibid.,
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.,
23 Ibid.,
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.,

93
91
92
94

INFINITE VARIETY OF FORMES AND MAGNITUDES

257

ical explanations 'the one as part of theology, and the other as a

part of logic.'26 In making the treatment of final causes 'impertinent' and a 'prejudice of further discovery' in natural philosophy,
Bacon also circumscribes his concept of form, which is strictly tied
to the nature and consistency of matter. It was his reflections on
dynamic processes, and particularlyphysiological processes, which
led Bacon to dilate and develop his ideas on material form and
'natural motion'. In his 1609 essay on Cupid in De Sapientia
where he expounds the myth of Cupid as an allegory of
Veterum,
'the natural motion of the atom,' Bacon critically appraises 'the
philosophy of the Greeks [...regarding...] the material principles
of things', and particularly 'the principle of motion, wherein lies
all vigour of operation'. He finds the Greeks 'negligent and languid on this point', and the 'opinion of the Peripatetics' to be
'blind babbling' and 'little more than words.'27Democritus, Bacon
said, had 'considered the matter more deeply', but he rejects the
Democritean clinamentheory on the initial cause of atomic generation as 'a narrow theory, and framed with reference to too few
particulars',which would be inadequate as an explanation of complex natural phenomena such as 'the motion of heavenly bodies
in a circle, or the phenomena of contraction and expansion,'
while Epicurus' theories on 'the declination and fortuitous agitation of the atom' he considered to be 'a relapse to trifling and
ignorance.' While Bacon approves those of his contemporaries
'who refer [the original impulse of matter] to God', he accuses
them of 'ascend[ing] by a leap and not by steps.' The natural
philosopher's task, he thought, was to locate the 'single and summary law in which nature centres and which is subject to and subordinate to God'.28 In his search for the subordinate (but material) laws of natural process, Bacon developed an eclectic matter
theory which would account for a variety of dynamic physical
processes. Beginning with an atomism that saw atoms as particles
possessing 'matter, form, dimension, place, resistance, appetite,
motion and emanation,'29 Bacon moved toward a neo-Paracelsian
position, where all material bodies are seen as containing 'spirits
26

Ibid., 94-5
F. Bacon, De Sapientia Veterum(London, 1609), The Worksof FrancisBacon,
ed. J. A. Spedding, R. L. Ellis and D. D. Heath, (London, 1857-1874), 6: 730.
27

Ibid.
29 F. Bacon, Cogitationesde RerumNatura, c. 1605, Spedding, 10: 387.
28

258

STEPHEN CLUCAS

or pneumaticalls,'30 in dynamic interaction with the heterogeneous parts of tangible matter. Thus the human body is seen as
the battleground between restraining and preserving 'vital spirits'
and destructive 'inanimate spirits' or subtilized tangible matter,
whose qualities are determined by particle size and distribution.3'
These spirits play a formative role in organic bodies: '[it] gives
them shape, produces limbs, digests, ejects, organizes and the
like.'32 Bacon's spirits, then, take over some of the causative and
dynamic functions of Aristotelian form, whilst retaining a corpuscular focus on the internal organization of the parts of matter.
It was precisely the search for explanations of the internal configurations of substance, and the 'severe and diligent inquiry of
all real and physical causes' that led Bacon's contemporaries back
to a variety of concepts of form which were not strictly reducible
to matter. In the remainder of this section I will consider two
atomists traditionally associated with the 'Northumberland circle'-Walter Warner (author of an extensive series of manuscript
notes on space, matter, time, heat and cold) and Nicholas Hill,
author of the Philosophia Epicurea published in Paris in 1601.

Walter Warner, 1562-1643

For Walter Warner, whose natural philosophical writings
spanned the first two decades of the seventeenth century, 'the severall things of the universe' were 'but severall portions of matter
distinguished and individuated by severall formes.'33 'Formes', he
said, 'do determyne and distinguish, and diversifie the indifferency of the matter [...] [matter] is indeed the cheef subiect of
30
31

Spedding, 4: 219.

On Bacon's eclectic matter theory see G. Rees and Ch. Upton, Francis
Bacon'sNaturalPhilosophy:A New Source.A transcriptionof manuscriptHardwick72A
with translationand commentary
(Chalfont St Giles, 1984), 33-57, and G. Rees, ed.,
PhilosophicalStudiesc.1611-1619, The Oxford Francis Bacon, 6 (Oxford, 1996),
xlii-xlviii, liv-lxv. While Kargon believes that Bacon began with a system which
'resembles that of Democritus and Epicurus' which was then 'discarded [...]
sometime in the period after 1612 and before 1620' (Atomism,45-7), it would
perhaps be more accurate to see Bacon as developing an eclectic, 'neo-atomist'
response to the exigencies of his natural philosophical investigations.
32
Spedding, 8: 275.
S3British Library,Add.MS 4394, f. 385r.

INFINITE VARIETY OF FORMES AND MAGNITUDES

259

formation.'34 He maintained the scholastic distinction between

internal form and external figure (sive internam et formalem sive
externametfiguralem)35 in discussing atomic composition. He also

utilised the Aristotelian and scholastic concepts of 'formall quiddity' and 'sphere of activity',as well as a number of dynamic developments of the Aristotelian theory of form derived from mediaeval and more recent sources which involved the propagation,
emanation or transmission of forms.
In his corpuscular explanations of the cohesion of solid bodies, inflammation and animal physiology, Warner makes free use
of specific notions of form which he adapts from the Aristotelian
tradition. Thus in his notes on animal physiology, while he argues
that the vital spirits are composed of 'single parts or atoms' or
'atomical parts', he also maintains that spirits and all material
things which have 'any operation or operative virtue in them' contain 'two kindes of formes':
the one as it were informant, the other assistent, the one resulting ex interna crasi elementorum
materialium(quasiforma materiationis)the other supervenient and as it were infused ab extra (quasiformaformationis)the one stable and [as it were] dead: the other in perpetuall motion and lively and as
it were animate.36

That is to say, they are subject to two kinds of formation-a

passive material formation, according to the nature of the substance and its internal combination or mixture of parts (a 'mere
accident of the matter'),s7 and an active, quasi-vital'forming form'
which enters matter from outside. The first presumably comprehends certain corpuscular arguments for the qualities of matter,
but the second (the assistant form) seems to gesture towards some
extra-corpuscularprinciple, or a forceacting on the corpuscles, but
not reducible to them. Nonetheless, he sees these assistant forms
as quasi-material:
'this forme assistent' he says, 'is a thing substantiall [...] and <hath> his owne <peculiar> matter or substance wch
is <quiddam> materiae analogum.'38 Warner inherits this distinction

34 B.L. Add. MS 4425, f. 4r-v. cf. Sion Arc.L 40.2/E 10, f. 88v.: "The only
subiect of forme is matter. Matter formed is called a body."
35 B.L. Add. MS 4395, f. 53V"

British Library,Add. MS 4394, f. 229r.

B.L.Add.MS4394, f. 228r.
38 B.L. Add.MS 4394, f. 228r: "[There is] a great difference betwene these two
formes for that the forme of materiation or informant of the matter is a mere
accident of the matter and hath [...] no subsistence of it self but only an insis36

37

260

STEPHEN CLUCAS

from the Aristotelian tradition. In his commentary on De Anima,

published in 1605, for example, Jacopo Zabarella discusses the
relationship between informing forms and assistant forms, referring the reader to the previous commentaries of Averroes and
Philoponus. According to Zabarella, Averroes, in his fifth commentary on Book 3 of Aristotle's De Anima, designated the sentient and vegetative part of the soul as an informed form, and the
rational soul as an assistant form, having the same relationship to
man's soul as the celestial sphere has to the intelligence which
inhabits it.39 Philoponus, Zabarella explains, made a similar distinction, judging that the rational soul was not
an act of the body accordingto its substance,but accordingto its operation, like a sailorin a ship. [...] he denies thereforethat the rationalsoul
is an informingform, but maintainsthat it is an assistentform, and results
from operation and not from substance.40

Warner's assistant forms are thus a spirit-like substance which

actively shape matter, reacting with the matter informed. Objects,
Warner says, have their 'assistent forms infused, as far as their substance and emanations reach into the matter of the object
informed.'41 It seems likely that Warner drew the concept of
informing and assistant forms directly from Averroes, as he also
tence in an other, whereas this forme assistent is a thing substantiall per se [...]
subsistens et alteri tantu[m] assistens, and <hath> his owne <peculiar> matter
or substance wchis <quiddam> materiae analogu[m] and his owne proper forme
though dependent on the forme insistent of the fundamentall matter because
it is a substance per se interminabilis et informabilis but per terminos et formam alterius." (The use of arrowed brackets <> indicates a superlineal insertion
in the original manuscript).
39 j. Zabarella, In TresAristotelisLibrosde Anima Commentarij
(Venice, 1605),
20V: "Animam rationalem non esse formam hominis, qua homo sit homo, sed
esse formam assistentem, sicuti orbi coelesti assistit intelligentia, existimauit Averroes, vt legere apud eum possumus in commentario quinto libri tertij de Anima, vbi dicit nomen actus de anima rationali & de alijs partibus animae dici
serme aequiuoce, quoniam de anima sentiente, & de vegetante significat formam informantem, de rationali vero significat non informantem, sed assistentem solum."
40 Ibid. 21r: "Videtur etiam huius sente[n]tiae fuisse loannes Grammaticus;
nam in sua Praefatione in secundum librum de Anima, & in declaratione 1. context. eiusdem libri, aperte dicit animam rationalem non esse actum corporis
secundum substantiam, sed solum secundum operationem, cuiusmodi est nauta
in naui; alias vero animas esse actus etiam secundum substantiam; negat igitur
animam rationalem esse formam informantem, & asserit esse solum assistentem,
& dantem operationem, non dantem esse substantiale."
41 B.L. Add. MS 4394, f. 227r: "obiects haue their formas assistentes<fundatas>
[...] quod ad [...] <substantiam>et emanationemattinet in obiectoru[m]materia."

INFINITE VARIETY OF FORMES AND MAGNITUDES

261

holds other Averroist positions, including the controversial belief

in the eternity of the world, which he regards as uncreated and
indestructible:
That matter is aeternall it is true, eternall I meane both in respect of beginning and end and first for the beginning. Yf matter be not eternall but had
[...] beginning

then it was made or created. [...] but that it should be made

or created is impossible for a thing can be said to be made but in 2. senses. Ether of matter or of no matter [...] of matter it can not be made for
we are [...] reiected into an infinit progresse, and if it be said to be made
of no matter, it must be made of some thing els besides matter [...] wchis
but a vaine and nugatory affirmatio[n] [...]. Wherefore it resteth that matter be made ether absolutely ex nihilo [...] or not to be made at all. Yf it
should be made of nothing it must be made in an instant for betwene nothing and hoc aliquid there is no degrees or meane and to be made in an
instant it can not [...] it is manifest that matter was not nor could ever be
made. And the same resons being thereto applied do sufficiently proue that
it can not be destroied or haue an Ende. And beside these proofes there
is this corollary. Yf matter or any part thereof the smallest portion or atomus that may be imagined might perish or be annihilated, it would follow
that the Vniversall masse thereof whether it be supposed finite or infinit
or howsoever had ben destroied and brought to nothing long agoe.42

As Jan Prins has suggested, Warner's idea of the assistant form

is closely integrated with the scholastic notion of the spheraactivitatis, and the related mediaeval idea of the multiplicatiospecierum.
Assistant forms are, according to Prins, 'actively or passively operative qualities plus their spheres of activity,'43although Warner
seems at points to regard them as synonymous, or rather to see
the sphere of activity as a particular form of assistant form." Thus
when explaining the transmission of light and its reception by the
eye, Warner speaks of the reflection of light as an 'extension or
emanation [...] formed according to the superficiall formation of
the [...] [reflecting] body'. This emanating substantial form is
'sphericall according as the bodies of the vnivers from wch the
light is incident are [...] <to the obiect> spherically circumstant
or ambient.' This 'sphericall extension or emanation of luminosity', he adds 'is comonly called the sphere of actiuity'. Light is
not 'merely imaginary but substantiall', and so the sphere of activ42 B.L. Add.MS
4394, f. 382r'.

4aJ. Prins, Walter Warner (ca. 1557-1643): Notes on Animal Organisms, (Published

Ph.D, RijksuniversiteitUtrecht, 1992), 104 and fn. 90. (Currently in press with
Kluwer Academic Press, Dordrecht).
44 See B.L. Add. MS 4394, f. 227v: "the light spherically reflected [...] may be
not improprely vnderstood to be one and the same sphere of actiuity or forme
assistent."

262

STEPHEN CLUCAS

ity is considered to be a 'forme assistent', in so far as it 'penetrates, or is immersed in, or forms matter.'4 This formation also
obtains for other spheres of activity ('whether it be vnderstood of
light or of any other of like conditions') at work in the universe
which are 'actiue or alteratiue or motiue of matter'.46The assistant form is not only found in the emanating light, but also in
the objects which reflect that light, and in the 'visory spirits' in
the organ which receives the light.47All 'qualities sensible,' Warner argues here, such as colour, sound, taste, odour, are not
'<mere> accidents, or affections or conditions [...] of substances
themselus', they are not 'substantiall or materiall formes', but
'ought to be vnderstood to be [...] very formes assistent'.48
In the physiological processes involving atomized vital spirits
(such as vision), Warner gives assistant forms the role of an active,
organizing, kinetic principle which interacts with the atomical
parts of the stable (but not entirely passive) matter.49In later formulations of Warner's corpuscularism, this organizing principle
was redesignated 'vis' (or 'power'), whilst retaining the idea of
the force as a radiative projection or emanation (like the sphera
actiuitatis).Warner'svis is an 'effect or power or vertue which may
be called liet [i.e. "light"] whether sensibell or insensi[bell]'
found in all bodies, 'all wayes extensiue or impulsiue', a 'vertue
radiatiue' which, although immaterial and insensible was (like the
assistant form) a substance analogous to matter-it possessed
extension, could form a plenum, and could be quantified.50Warner described it as 'the squarer and cutter of atomi',51 a motive,
alterative force which acts on and organizes the discrete parts of
matter. Matter itself he now saw as incapable of self-motion: 'vnactiue,'52 'not moveable per se [...] or apt to move it selfe Wth out
45

B.L.Add.MS. 4394, f. 228r: "quatenus insidet seu immergitur seu assistit

materiae."

Ibid.
Ibid., f. 226v: "as the obiects haue their formas assistentes [...] <fundatus>
attinet in obiectoru[m]
quod ad [...] <se substantiam> [...] et emanatione[m]
46
47

materia and depending quod ad formalitatem attinet [...] on the formes insistent of the said obiects, so haue the organs likewise their formes assistent, fun-

datusquod ad modu[m] assistentiaeattinetin materiaipsoru[m]organoru[m]."

48 Ibid., f. 227r.

49B.L. Add. MS 4394, f. 225v: "matter is as well reactiue and proactiue as passibilis", cit. in Prins, Warner, 103.
50 B.L. Add. MS 4394, ff. 384r and 401v.
51 Add.MS 4394, f. 397r.
52 B.L.Add. MS 4394, f. 388r.

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263

the operation of some externall movent.'53 Vis is responsible for

'the production of all the species, motions, alterations and effects
Wchare actually apparant in the Universe.' Because 'no alteration
can be wthout locall motion', and because the 'phaenomena' of
alteration cannot be 'salued by the solitary existence of matter'
he acknowledges 'a fo<u>rth thing as a cause of motion wch may
therefore well be termed vis or power [...] by the quality of his

office'54 and whose 'cheef condition' was 'to cause <locall>

motion.'55 Warner used vis to explain atomic cohesion in solid
bodies, and physical qualities like colour and weight.56In this new
phase of Warner's thought, the interaction between insistent and
assistant forms was replaced by a variety of energic processes, and
form itself was now reduced to atomic constructure (the 'seuerall graduations or dispositions of matter according to diuerse
qua[n]tity or formes <or mixture> of <the> atomi or partes thereof)57 and the proportions of matter, vis and vacua in a given
body.58
While the question of the atomic formation of solid bodies was
relatively uncomplicated, dynamic questions involving alteration
and generation demanded an order of explanation, a vocabulary
and a conceptual language that corpuscularism was not yet able
to provide independently of Aristotelian ideas of form. When discussing chemical resolution, for example, Warnerinvokes the idea

of the instantaneous transition of forms (actus vero instantaneus resolutionis est transitus de forma ad formam) despite the fact that his

chemical philosophy is essentially based on corpuscular particles.

His account of inflammation, which confronts physical processes
of a similar order of complexity, also makes ample use of sophis53 Add. MS 4394, f. 396v.

54 B.L. Add. MS 4394, f. 389v.

55 Ibid.
56 B.L. Add.MS 4395, f. 399r.
57 Ibid., f.
396rv.
58 B.L. Add.MS
4394, f. 384V:"so longe as the same designed space doth containe one and the same designed matter and vis in one and the same sort formed
and situated both in respect of their owne parts and mutuall one to an other
[...] and of both to the space contine[n]t so long it hath one state. This state
is infinitly specified according to the infinit variety of forme and situation, and
<every species> singularized by numerall diuersity of matter and vis contayned.
[...] The combination of plenu[m] and vacuu[m] whether the plenitude be of
matter or vis is subiect to the same variety of cases [...] as the former of matter
and vis mutatis mutandis."

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STEPHEN CLUCAS

ticated post-mediaeval conceptualizations of form. Although

Warner includes atomization (atomizatio),amongst the faculties of
the igneous spirit, fire had many properties which seemed inexplicable in terms of the collision and contact explanations of the
atomistic hypothesis. Thus he also numbers 'autogenesis' (autogenesia) amongst fire's properties, because, he says, 'many times we
see that fire conceives itself per se without any actual contact with
a flame at all.'59 He also notes fire's 'faculty of transcursion', its
continual and rapid movement (continua transcursio),which he
glosses as a spirit whose propagation is 'sphericall or omnique'it is a 'sphere of actiuity' in the mediaeval sense. However, Warner interprets the sphere of activity in corpuscular terms: 'the
sphere of actiuity of the igneous spirit doth extend vsque ad cessationem motus [...] individuorum ab originali ignario emissorum.60

That is to say, the boundaries of the sphere are co-identical with

the point at which the individua or corpuscles emitted from the
point of origin lose their motion. It is however, the spherical pro-

jection of the calorific spirit or vis (fire's Extensivitas sphaerica seu

facultas omniquoque extensiua et motiua)61 which is the causal vehi-

cle for fire's energic properties. Warner sees this 'calorific force'
or vis as analogous to, but distinct from, the transmission of light:
It is to be noted that the heat of a fire, whether it is incorporated or unrestrained, whether it is perceived by the senses or communicated to corporeal bodies issues forth from the fire not as far as the light extends, but as
far as the [igneous] spirit extends. This is self-evident, both because the
calorific force [vis calorificae]exists after the light is extinct, and because
the spiritual sphere of activity of the calorific force does not extend very
far beyond the fire's point of origin, whereas the radiative force of light
extends itself over immense distances.62

Warner was not alone in formulating accounts of physical phenomena which interfused corpuscular and Aristotelian modes of
59 B.L. Add. MS 4395, f. 50v.: "multa eni[m] videmus ignem [...] per se
concipere absque ullo ignis actualis contactu."

60 B.L. Add. MS 4395, f. 49v.

61 B.L. Add. MS 4395, f. 55r.

62 B.L.
Add.MS 4395, ff. 51-: "Notandu[m] est calore[m] qui ab igne siue
libero siue incorporato vel sensu percipitur vel obiectis corporibus communicatur non a lumine sed ab ipso spiritu materiali, non ab eo <igne> quatenus
luminoso sed quatenus spirituoso provenire, quod manifestu[m] est, tu[m] quia
vel non existente lumine, existit tamen vis calorificae vel manet haec extincto
illo; tu[m] quia vis calorifica ambitum sphaerae actiuitatis spirituosae [...] <non
transcendat> eamque principio ignario bene proximu[m] cu[m] luminositatis
vis radiatiua ad longe immensiore[m] distantia[m] [...] protendatur."

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265

explanation. Kenelm Digby in his treatise OfBodies,first published

in 1644, for example, re-interprets the spheraactivitatisin atomistic terms not dissimilar to those of Warner's account of the
igneous spirit. The sphere of activity, he says, is
an orbe of emanationsof the samenaturewhichthe bodyis of, withincompasseof whicheorbe,whenanyother bodycomeththatreceivethan immutation by the little atomes whereof that orbe is composed [...]. And because

the orbe (regularlyspeaking)is in the formeof a sphere,the passiveis said

to be within the sphere of the other's activity.63

When faced with dynamic physical processes such as physiological change or inflammation, Warner made full use of his Aristotelian resources, although he did make some efforts to relate
formal properties to various corpuscular properties, thus building
a tenuous bridge between corpuscularian and Aristotelian concepts of matter. Warner'srecourse to the conceptual apparatus of
forms and spheres of activity can perhaps best be understood as
a response to the complexity and subtlety of various natural
processes, which required explanatory models more flexible and
versatile than those offered by collision, reflexion, contiguity, and
other purely mechanical actions. As Jan Prins has noted, Warner's natural philosophy seems to bridge the gap between the earlier Aristotelian traditions in which he was educated at Oxford,
and newer modes of explanation:
On the one hand his purely speculative approach as well as his explanations [...] in terms of matter, form, potency and faculties and their objects
attests to his dependence on the Aristotelian and Scholastic tradition. On
the other hand his rationalism as well as the blurred distinction between
bodily and mental processes suggest an influence of Italian natural philosophy from the last quarter of the 16th century [...] based on the idea of

the universeas [...] a "cosmicorganism"or "ensouledmechanism".'64

For an eclectic Aristotelian like Warner, corpuscularianism was

intially a relatively unknown philosophical quantity, and one that
necessarily involved him in an engagement with Aristotelian
notions of form and formation, that is to say with a cluster of
ideas he could not (or would not) dispense with entirely.

K. Digby, Two treatisesOf Bodiesand of Man's Soul, (London, 1669), 138.

64 Prins, Warner,77-8.

63

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Nicholas Hill, 1571-c. 1621

Nicholas Hill, author of the redoubtable collection of aphorisms

Philosophia Epicurea, Democritiana, Theophrasticaproposita simpliciter,

non edocta,first published in 1601, pursues a corpuscular natural

philosophy which obviates the necessity of engagement with Aristotelian forms. Like Warner,Hill conceives of the universe as compounded of solid, indivisible and solid particles of various
shapes,65 whose motions and interrelations are governed by a

force - vis - which radiates in a manner analagous to light. Unlike

Warner, however, Hill 'infects' his natural philosophy (as Bacon

would say) with theology, identifying vis with the providential power of God acting on the universe. For him vis is
the efficient,active,universalcause, and the simple absoluteessence.The
foundationand root of all materialpower is God, to whose name everything bendsits knee, and to whomall powerand energyreturns,who binds
the wanderingplanets together into a structure,and contains in himself
the first principlesof all species."

Atoms in Hill's scheme are not the lifeless objects of a physical force, but the 'ends of divine actions in nature.'67 A tiny
amount of vis is required, Hill says, to propagate an infinite
motion through the atomic fabric of matter, thereby 'deifying'
it.68 The agency of God's power, of course, does not require Hill
to develop a set of causative or kinetic principles. God wills certain qualities and properties, and the atoms obey. Warner's
account, by contrast, which never mentions God (or any of his
hypostatic substitutes), must of necessity devise a completely
65

N. Hill, Philosophia Epicurea, Democritiana, Theophrastica proposita simpliciter,

non edocta(Geneva, 1619), 30, aphorism 116: "Prima corpuscula sunt verb solida, impenetrabilia, inalterabilia, multiformia."
66 PhilosophiaEpicurea,28, aph. 110: "Primavis, causa rerum efficiens, actiua,
vniuersalis, simplex, absoluta essentia, materiale virtutum fundamentum Deus
est, & radix, ad cuius nomen omne genu flectendum, & ad quem iure postliminij omnis virtus, & energia redit, soluta mundi compage, & dissitis a se primis
principijs specieru[m]."
67 Ibid., 30, aph. 116: "divinae actioni in natura terminos."
68 Ibid., 54. aph. 200: "Minimavis per materiam atomicam in motum prouissimam effectiue infinitatur materiam deificans quodammodo." In his preface (p.
5), Hill responds to the imagined criticism that his philosophy deals with an
"Impious immersion

of God into matter" (Dei immersionem materiae impiam) by

suggesting that the "first efficient physical cause" can be interpreted metaphysically as a 'hypostasis'.

INFINITE VARIETY OF FORMES AND MAGNITUDES

267

orginal set of causative and kinetic principles, or (as he does)

improvise within a peripatetic framework. By invoking God as a
providential organizer of material process, Hill is free to advance
a critique of the doctrine of forms. For Hill form is 'the state and
condition of things, resulting from the connection of material
principles'; it is 'a constitutive and not an operative principle.'69
He rejects the view held by the 'schools' (scholae) that all natural bodies can be analyzed into form and matter, but insists instead
that essences are 'the coalition and consistency of individual
parts'70His view of 'natural motions' is also unequivocally corpuscular, with no reference to spheres of activity, or transmission
of forms. 'Generative, alterative, diminutive, corruptive and local
motions', he says, are a function of atomic constitution, not immaterial operations: 'Nothing can change in substance or quality,
otherwise than by the ebb and flow of parts and metathesis,that
is, the transposition of indivisible or uncuttable atoms.'71 Hill's
account of the 'ebb and flow' and 'transposition' needs no further conceptual elaboration, as it is referred simply to the 'vis' of
God's foresight and providence, by which he acts 'mediately and
immediately on prime corpuscles'.72
Hill in fact reserves his fiercest remarks against the peripatetic philosophers for some of the more recondite aspects of Aristotle's doctrine of forms, such as the infusion of special forms,
the pre-existence of forms in generation, the extinction or disappearance of forms, and the invention of hypostatic forms of
external motion (heterokinesia),condemning them as 'absurd and
incomprehensible figments'.73 Interestingly enough, however, he
69 Ibid., 13-14, aph. 35: "Forma est status, & conditio rei, resultantia principiorum materialium connexorum, principium constituens, non operans."
70 Ibid., 60-61, aph. 230: "Essentia est omnium coalitus, & consistentia, quae
in singulis sunt indiuiduis, non superstes post analysim, forma, & materia, illae
enim communi scholae sensu rerum tantummodo basis."
71 Ibid., 153-154, aph. 432: "Motus naturalis [...] generatiuus, alteratiuus,
diminutiuus, corruptiuus localis & ceteris idem sunt reductiue, nec enim res
quoad substantiam, aut qualitatem mutantur aliter, quam per partium effluxum,
influxum & atomorum metathesin,i. indiuisibilium siue insecabilium transpositionem."
72 Ibid., 40, aph. 154: "Deus agit in omnibus mediate & immediate, primis
corpusculis."
73 Ibid., 71, aph. 259: "[F]ormarum specialium infusio, formarum praeexistentium in generationis principio, medio, sine instantanea in aduentu, vltimae

formae extinctio, aut aufugium. [...] omnium hypostasium heterokinesia, i. alienus

motus, Primi efficientis separata a rebus existentia [...] absurdissimasunt & intellectui exercitatio [...] incomprehensibilia figmenta."

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preserves the peripatetic doctrines of form when discussing the

reception of sense data into the intellect, preferring, for example, to see our perception of starlight as 'the admission of forms
[...] rather than the emission of rays' (admissione formarum, non
[...] emissione radiorum), quoting Aristotle in the original Greek.74

'Our ignorance of the processes of nature in particular generation [...] should not inhibit our investigation of first principles',
Hill believed, although he realized that the invisibility of such
processes was largely to blame for such inhibitions. His solution
was to rely on an analogical chain of connections between the visible and invisible worlds-the analogy which obtains between the
invisible first principles and visible solid bodies would allow the
parts hidden in the depths to come to light.75
Robert Boyle, 1627-1691

As long as new narratives of connection between the unseen and

the seen were lacking, natural philosophers continued to avail
themselves of the compelling conceptual armoury of the doctrine
of forms as 'faculties' and 'principles' which filled the blanks in
the logical chains of analogy. During the course of the seventeenth-century, the necessity of the doctrine of forms became
steadily less compelling as other narratives-those of 'force'became more predominant. Robert Boyle, in his treatise on the
The Origins of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Phi-

losophy,published in 1666, is characteristic of late seventeenth-century attempts to dispense with form as an explanatory principle
by replacing it with corpuscular interaction:
that which is commonly called the form of a concrete, which gives it being
and denomination and from whence all its qualities are, in the vulgar philosophy, by I know not what inexplicable ways, supposed to flow, may be
in some bodies but a characterization or modification of the matter they
consist of, whose parts, by being so and so disposed in relation to each other constitute such a determinate body, endowed with such and such properties.76

Although 'for brevity's sake' Boyle retains the term 'form', he

74 Ibid., 43-44, aph. 166.
75 Ibid., 46, aph. 174.
76 R. Boyle, The Originsof Formsand Qualitiesaccordingto the CorpuscularPhilosophy(Oxford, 1666), ed. M.A. Stewart, SelectedPhilosophicalPapersof RobertBoyle
(Manchester, 1979), 90.

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269

radically redefines it: 'I would be understood by it not a real substance distinct from matter, but only the matter itself of a natural
body, considered with its peculiar manner of existence which [...
may... ] be called either its specifical or its denominating state or its
essential modification-or [...] its stamp.'77. Rejecting what he saw

as the confused, ill-defined and poorly conceptualized notion of

substantial form as it was developed by the modern peripatetics
as 'not comprehensible,'78
Boyle argued that physical nature could
be sufficiently explained

by 'the three [...] primary and most

catholicmoodsor affections of the insensibleparts of matter' (i.e.

bulk, figure and motion/rest).7? The vexed question of process
or 'alteration' is, in Boyle's scheme, explained by the vagaries of
'local motion'. '[W]hen one inanimate body works upon another, there is nothing really produced by the agent in the patient',
Boyle argued, 'save some local motion of its parts or some change
of texture consequent upon that motion.' These 'local motions'
or 'mechanical changes of texture' are 'principal amongst second
causes, and the grand agent of all that happens in nature,'80and
effectively replace the function of peripatetic form as a 'kind of
soul, which, united to the gross matter [...] acts in it by the several qualities to be found therein.'8' Thus while the peripatetic
could explain natural processes as the actions of a variety of substantial forms, Boyle explains them as the action of a variety of
local motions or 'active qualities,'82 which are seen as comparable to the ancient atomistic concept of synkrisisand diakrisis('the
convention and dissolution and alterations [...of...] atoms') as the
cause of the generation and corruption of bodies.83 The idea of
local motions as a constructive and destructive 'transpositionof
77 Ibid., 39-40. Baldini notes a similar linguistico-conceptual transformation
cose
at work in Galileo's critique of qualities or forms in the Discorsointono allUe
and the MassimiSistemi("11Corpuscolarismo italiano", 56-7).
78 Ibid., 53-5. Boyle notes that the "more candid of the peripatetics" (he cites
Scaliger) acknowledged that "the true knowledge of forms is too difficult and
abstruse to be attained by them" (54).
79 Ibid., 51.

80 Ibid.,19. Cf. also p.44: "localmotionhath, of all other affections of matter,

the greatest interest in the altering and modifying it, since it is not only the
grand agentor efficientamong second causes, but one of the principal things that
constitutestheform of bodies."
81 Ibid., 38

82Ibid., 40. "Form",he says, "usuallycomprises several [active qualities] which

have convene[d] in one body."
83

Ibid., 44

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parts', naturally raises another set of questions with regard to causation. Boyle's world is 'not a moveless or indigested mass of
matter, but an automaton or self-moving engine, wherein the great-

est part of the common matter of all bodies is always [...] in

motion.' But this 'automatic' functioning is referred (like Hill's
vis) to the divine cause of causes:
[T]he first and universal, though not immediate, cause of forms is none
other but God, who put matterinto motion(which belongs not to its essence)
and establishedthe laws of motionamongst bodies, and also [...] guided it in
diverscases at the beginningof things.84

Boyle objects to 'schoolmen and philosophers' who have

'derived forms immediately from God' (which is to 'put Omnipotence upon working I know not how many thousand miracles
every hour'),85 suggesting instead a mediated creation, with a preordained set of mechanical laws and second causes which are
tractable to natural philosophical investigation in a sphere separate from a consideration of final causes. In this Boyle is not
unlike Bacon, who exhorted his contemporaries to proceed by the
'steps' of second causes rather than 'ascend[ing] by a leap' to
God as final cause.86While Bacon's insistence on the separability
of second causes was not a unique gesture (it had been a characteristic apologetic trope of natural philosophers in previous centuries), the seventeenth century saw the systematic widening of
this separation as an epistemological break. The independent
investigation of second causes as 'mechanical affections' broke
first with immaterial forms and pneumatology, and ultimately with
divine causation itself. 'Forces' or 'active principles' (such as 'spirits', 'forms' or 'local motions') entered natural philosophy as the
mediate agents of a divine creator, but 'by steps' (debates over
autokinetic matter, revived pneumatology, and later hylozoism)
became self-sufficient explanatory principles. While dynamic or
energic models of atomic interaction increasingly replacedform as
an explanatory device in the latter half of the seventeenth century, I think the earlier 'transitional' corpuscularians such as Hill
and Warner (and later eclectics such as Kenelm Digby and Guy
Holland87) are especially imperative for historians of early-mod84 Ibid., 69.
85 Ibid., 56-7.
86
87

See footnote 27.

See especially his GrandPrerogativeof Humane Nature (London, 1653).

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271

ern English science to study. In these thinkers the substitution has

not yet become a full possibility. Their vision of natural process
had still to be negotiated through theoretically eclectic conceptual vocabularies. It is the delicate conceptual renegotiations of
these tenuous sub-visible boundaries-between particulate constructure and dynamic process, between soul-like substantial form
and mechanical force (or local motion)--which are in need of
careful examination, for it is here, if anywhere, that a scientific
revolution in natural philosophy took place.
ABSTRACT
In this article, I argue that the interest on the part of Bacon, Hill, and Warner
in corpuscularian interpretations of natural phenomena and their similarity to
certain views later held by Digby or Boyle offer a strong indication for the existence of an 'independent English atomistic milieu', a view that fits more closely Porter & Teich's recent model of national contexts for early modern science
than Kargon's traditional picture of English atomism as a foreign import. In the
course of this article, I consider Francis Bacon's anti-Aristotelianpolemic in the
light of his continued adherence to a conception of material form and his essentially Aristotelian metaphysics, as well as the relationship between his conception of form and his corpuscular theories of matter. This is followed by an examination of Walter Warner's natural philosophical manuscripts. Particular attention is paid to his Averroist distinction between assistant form (which has the
role of an active, organizing, kinetic principle) and insistent forms (passive material formation, according to the nature of the substance and its internal combination or mixture of parts) in his treatment of the atoms of vital spirits and
of the transmission of light, an idea that has interesting links to the scholastic
notion of the sphaeraactiuitatis.It is shown how Warner replaced the assistant
form/sphere of activitywith an energic principle, which he called vis and which
took over many of the characteristics of the formative principles it replaced. I
then compare Warner's use of vis with Nicholas Hill's, for whom it represented
a hypostatic principle, i.e. an instrument of divine agency in the physical world.
Such a strong view of divine causation enabled Hill to undertake a more radical critique of Aristotelian form than was available to Warner. My discussion ends
with a look at Boyle's critique of the modern Aristotelian doctrine of forms, and
his re-interpretation of form in terms of atomic configuration and the modifications of local motion. I end by suggesting that the 'phasing out' of Aristotelian
notions of form, and their replacement with ideas of force or local motion
opened the way for a similar 'phasing out' of divine causation, by making force
a self-sufficient explanatory principle.