The Isomorphism of Space Time and Matter PDF

Early Science and Medicine 16 (2011) 000-000 www.brill.
nl/esm
e Isomorphism of Space, Time and Matter in

Seventeenth-century Natural Philosophy
Carla Rita Palmerino

Radboud University Nijmegen*
Abstract
is article documents the general tendency of seventeenth-century natural philoso-
phers to regard space, time and matter as magnitudes having the same internal com-
position, irrespective of whether they were atomists or anti-atomists. It examines the
way in which a number of prominent natural philosophers (including Fromondus,
Basson, Sennert, Arriaga, Galileo, Magnen, Descartes, Gassendi, Charleton as well as
the young Newton) motivated their belief in the isomorphism of space, time and mat-
ter, and how this belief reflected on their views concerning the relation between geom-
etry and physics. Special attention is paid to the relation between theories of matter
and theories of motion: it is shown that a number of seventeenth-century natural
philosophers regarded rarefaction and condensation, on the one hand, and acceleration
and deceleration, on the other hand, as analogous phenomena, which consequently
had to be explained in similar terms.
Keywords
atomism, anti-atomism, space, time, matter, motion, rarefaction, condensation, accel-
eration, deceleration, Isaac Newton, Walter Charleton, Aristotle, Epicurus, Moses
Maimonides
1. Introduction
In the Quaestiones quaedam philosophicae, a set of notes redacted be-
tween 1664 and 1665 and contained in the manuscript Trinity College
* Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Faculty of Philosophy, Radboud
University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9103, NL - 6500 HD Nijmegen (e Netherlands)
(cpalmerino@phil.ru.nl). Research for this article was carried out within the project
Visualizing the Invisible. Representations of Matter and Motion since the Renaissance,
sponsored by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). I wish to
thank Sophie Roux for her valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/157338211X585858
ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 1 1-7-2011 10:35:57

2 C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 16 (2011) 000-000
Notebook, the young Newton argued for the composition of space, time
and matter out of extended, but partless minima. The Quaestiones begin
with an essay “Of the first matter,” in which Newton argues, following
Walter Charleton, that matter can neither be composed of mathemat-
ical points nor of a combination of points and parts, nor be “a simple
entity before division indistinct,” but must consist of extended indi-
visibles. A few pages later, Newton explains, in the essay “Of motion,”
that if matter is composed of minima, the same must be true for space
and time. Therefore, motion must consist of indivisible units, in which
a “least space” is traversed in “a least time.” This is why a physical mini-
mum can never be said “to be moving,” but only “to have moved.”
at it may be knowne how motion is swifter or slower consider 1 at there is
a least distance, a least progression in motion & a least degree of time […]. 2 ese
leasts have no parts for that implys that they are yet divisible neither prius nor pos-
terius. Not least distance since it is passed over in an indivisible part of time &
ther cannot be a different time ascribed to the entrance of a thing into that part
of space & the leaving of it. Not the least degree of motion because too that is
performed in an indivisible part of time and is no sooner begun than done. Not
the least moment of time because first and last imply severall parts of time. 3 e
least degree of motion is equal to the least distance and time.1
As is well known, Newton remained an atomist until the end of his life.
In his later works, however, he presented the indivisibility of atoms as
an empirical, rather than as a conceptual matter, and therefore aban-
doned his aprioristic belief in the existence of partless minima.2
Moreover, in his mature writings Newton explicitly contrasted the
indivisibility of atoms with the infinite divisibility of space, thereby
rejecting the view, formerly expressed in the Trinity College Notebooks,
that there had to be a one-to-one correspondence between minima of
space and minima of matter. In the Opticks, for example, he invoked
the infinite divisibility of space to suggest that God could create atoms
with different sizes and figure:
1)
Isaac Newton, Certain Philosophical Questions: Newton’s Trinity Notebook, edited by
J.E. McGuire and M. Tamny (Cambridge, 1983), 352-54.
2)
Andrew Janiak, “Space, Atoms and Mathematical Divisibility in Newton,” Studies
in History and Philosophy of Science, 31 (2000), 203-30, esp. 215-16.

G. Claessens / Early Science and Medicine 16 (2011) 000-000 3
And since space is divisible in infinitum, and matter is not necessarily in all places,
it may be also allow’d that God is able to create particles of matters of several sizes
and figures, and in several proportions to space, and perhaps of different densities
and forces, and thereby to vary the laws of nature, and make worlds of several sorts
in several parts of the universe.3
Newton’s thoughts concerning the divisibility of space are far from

transparent and have been subjected to contrasting scholarly interpre-
tations. But there is in any case no doubt that in his later works, Newton
renounced to his former belief in the existence of spatial and temporal
atoms and that he treated motion as a continuous process. The “par-
ticles of time” (particula temporis) invoked in the Principia are in fact,
as I. B. Cohen has pointed out, “not finite atoms of time in the sense
of tiny particles of matter. Rather, for Newton, time is finitely con-
tinuous and only infinitesimally discrete.”4
To today’s readers the conceptual framework of the Principia appears
certainly more coherent and meaningful than the views expressed in
the Trinity College Notebooks. And yet, the latter were more consistent
with mainstream seventeenth-century matter theories. Not only Char-
leton, to whom Newton explicitly referred, but also other early modern
authors considered the existence of minima of space and time a neces-
sary corollary of their atomism.
The scope of the present article is to investigate how some prominent
natural philosophers motivated their belief in the isomorphism of space,
time and matter, and how this belief reflected on their theories of mat-
ter and motion. In the following pages I shall first try to retrace the
historical roots of the so-called isomorphism theory. Subsequently I
shall analyze the view of a number of seventeenth-century authors con-
cerning the relation between geometry and physics, between the com-
position of space and the composition of matter. Finally, I shall draw
attention to a fact that has, as far as I am aware, so far escaped the
attention of scholars, namely that a number of seventeenth-century
3)
Isaac Newton, Opticks, with a foreword by A. Einstein, an introduction by Sir E.
Whittaker, a preface by I.B. Cohen ( New York, N.Y, 1952), 403-4.
4)
I. Bernard Cohen, “Newton’s Concept of Force and Mass, with Notes on the Laws
of Motion,” in e Cambridge Companion to Newton, ed. I.B. Cohen and G.E. Smith
(Cambridge, 2002), 57-84, 74.

atomist and corpuscularian thinkers regarded rarefaction and conden-

sation, on the one hand, and acceleration and deceleration, on the other
hand, as analogous phenomena, which consequently had to be explained
in similar terms.
2. Isomorphism of Space, Time and Matter: An Historical

Account
When historians speak of Aristotle’s “isomorphism thesis,” they nor-
mally refer to the view that space, time and motion are continuous
magnitudes, which are divisible into ever divisible parts. In Physics IV
(219a 11-15) we read:
Well then, since anything that moves moves from a ‘here’ to a ‘there’, and magni-
tude as such is continuous, movement is dependent on magnitude; for it is because
magnitude is continuous that movement is so also, and because movement is con-
tinuous so is time.5
The same idea is restated in book VI (231b), where Aristotle argues

that “any continuum is divisible into parts that are divisible without
limit” and that “the same applies to spatial magnitude and time and
motion.”6 As a corollary, if it can be shown that any one of them cannot
be composed of, and broken down into, indivisibles, it follows that
none of them can. But according to Aristotle only the assumption of a
continuous space and a continuous time can allow for a coherent
account of motion and of coming-to-be.
5)
Aristotle, Physics, transl. by P.H. Wicksteed and F.M. Cornford, 2 vols., Loeb Clas-
sical Library (Cambridge, Mass./London, 1934), 1:385.
6)
Ibid., 2:97. For a discussion of the isomorphism thesis in the Physics, cf. Fred D.
Miller, “Aristotle against the Atomists,” Infinity and Continuity in Ancient and Medieval
ought, ed. Norman Kretzmann (Ithaca and London, 1982), 87-111, esp. 102-109.
According to Miller, “the principal argument for the isomorphism thesis in Physics VI
2 is unsatisfactory because it is circular […]. In the first part of the argument Aristotle
shows that certain commonsense theorems about faster and slower things follow from
the assumption that magnitude is continuous; and in the second part of the argument
he reasons, on the basis of such commonsense theorems about faster and slower things,
that if magnitude is continuous, then so is time,” ibid., 104-5.

Although in the Physics, Aristotle takes great pains to demonstrate

that continuous magnitudes cannot be composed of indivisibles, but
must instead be divisible into ever divisible parts ad infinitum, he does
not explicitly assert that the same thing holds true for physical sub-
stances. The most solid evidence of Aristotle’s belief in the infinite
divisibility of material bodies comes from De generatione et corruptione,
and more precisely from the critique of atomism contained therein. In
book I, chapter 2 Aristotle argues that “aggregation and segregation
exist, but not into or out of atoms, since this leads to many impossi-
bilities […], but into smaller and yet smaller parts, and aggregation out
of smaller <into greater>.”7 And in chapter 10, which is devoted to
mixtio, he maintains that
there is no such thing as a thing’s being divided into parts which are the smallest
possible (…). If however mixing is just composition at the level of small particles
(…) ‘being mixed’ will be relative to perception: one and the same thing will be
mixed for one man whose sight is not sharp, whereas for Lynceus nothing is
mixed.8
Aristotle’s theory of the composition of the continuum profoundly

influenced the view of later atomists, who for the most part endorsed
the belief in the isomorphism of physical magnitudes, but ascribed to
them a discrete structure. Epicurus denied that compound bodies could
be divided ad infinitum and considered it necessary “that the first-
beginnings are indivisible corporeal existences.”9 According to the tes-
timonials of Simplicius and of Sextus Empiricus, Epicurus ascribed an
atomic composition not only to matter, but also to space and time, and
described motion as a discrete process in which a body occupies suc-
cessive atoms of space in successive atoms of time.10
7)
Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione, transl. with notes by C.J.F. Williams (Oxford,
1982), 8.
8)
Ibid., 34.
9)
Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus (40-41), in Cyril Bailey, Epicurus: e Extant Remains,
with Short Critical Apparatus, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 1926), 23.
10)
See Richard Sorabji, “Atoms and Time-Atoms,” in Kretzmann (ed.), Infinity and
Continuity, 65-70; Anthony A. Long and David N. Sedley, e Hellenistic Philosophers,
2 vols. (Cambridge, 1986-1987), 2:46; Miller, “Aristotle against the Atomists,” 103.

The isomorphism of matter, space, time and motion was explicitly

asserted by Islamic atomists, as reported by the Sephardic philosopher
Moises Maimonides (1135- 1204). In his Guide for the Perplexed, Mai-
monides exposed and criticized the atomistic matter theory of the so-
called Mutakallemin (the followers of the Kalam), and compiled a list
of 12 propositions that were common to all of them, irrespective of
their individual points of view.11 The first three propositions were the
following:
Proposition I: All things are composed of atoms

Proposition II: ere is a vacuum
Proposition III: Time is composed of time-atoms.
In postulating the isomorphism of space, time, and matter, the Mutakal-

lemin disclosed, according to Maimonides, their intellectual debt to
Aristotle:
e Mutakallemin undoubtedly saw how Aristotle proved that time, space and
locomotion are of the same kind, that is to say, they can be divided into parts
which stand in the same proportion to each other: if one of them is divided, the
other is divided in the same proportion. ey, therefore, knew that if time were
continuous and divisible ad infinitum, their assumed atom of space would of
necessity likewise be divisible. Similarly, if it were supposed that space is contin-
uous, it would necessarily follow, that the time-element, which they considered
to be indivisible could also be divided (…). Hence they concluded that space was
not continuous, but was composed of elements that could not be divided.12
In his comment, Maimonides feels the need to explain why the Muta-
kallemin consider the composition of time to be dependent on the
composition of space, whereas he does not comment on the fact that
they deduce the ultimate composition of space from the composition
of matter. He simply reports that the Mutakallemin postulate the
atomic structure of the universe and of all bodies contained in it, as if
there were no ontological difference between space and matter.
11)
On the atomism of the Kalam, see Alnoor Dhanani, e Physical eory of Kalam:
Atoms, Space, and Void in Basrian Mu’tazili Cosmology (Leiden, 1994).
12)
Moses Maimonides, e Guide for the Perplexed, tansl. M. Friedländer (2nd ed.,
New York, 1956), 121.

In the Christian Middle Ages, the two main centers of atomism were
represented by Oxford and Paris, where in the fourteenth century a
number of authors asserted, in a polemical reaction to Aristotle, the
composition of all continua out of indivisibles, conceived either as ex-
tended parts or as non-extended points. Among the Parisian atomists
we find Nicholas d’Autrecourt, who in his Exigit ordo, also known as
Tractatus universalis (Universal Treatise), explicitly states the isomor-
phism of space, time and matter. In his treatise Autrecourt argues,
against Aristotle and Averroes, that bodies are composed of indivisible
particles and that “when a thing is said to be in the process of dis-
solution, this is nothing but the separation of the particles which are
dispersing and parting.”13 In keeping with his material atomism, Autre-
court also asserts that space is composed of indivisible points, time of
indivisible instants, and that a body in motion can only cover one point
of space in one instant of time. Only the motion of the first heaven,
which is the fastest in nature, is continuous, whereas the others are
discontinuous, in the sense that they include instants of motion and
instants of rest.14 In the case of Autrecourt the belief in the isomorphism
of space, time and matter is grounded on the view that permanent
quantity (i.e. extension) “is not distinct from material substance …
for if the quantity becomes greater, so too the substance,”15 and that
successive quantity (i.e., motion) is not distinct from the moving body.16
13)
Nicholas of Autrecourt, e Universal Treatise, transl. L.A. Kennedy, R.E. Arnold,
A.E. Millward, introd. L.A. Kennedy (Milwaukee, 1971), 43. On Autrecourt’s the-
ory of indivisibles and on his treatment of motion, see Blake D. Dutton, “Nicholas
of Autrecourt and William of Ockham on Atomism, Nominalism, and the Ontol-
ogy of Motion,” Medieval Philosophy and eology, 5 (1996), 63-85; Jean Celeyrette,
“L’indivisibilisme de Nicolas d’Autrécourt dans le contexte parisien des années 1330, in
Nicolas d’Autrécourt et la Faculté des Arts de Paris (1317-1340). Actes du colloque de Paris,
19-21 mai 2005, ed. S. Caroti and C. Grellard (Cesena, 2006), 195-218 ; Christophe
Grellard, “Nicholas of Autrecourt’s Atomistic Physics,” in Atomism in Late Medieval
Philosophy and eology, ed. C. Grellard and A. Robert (Leiden, 2009), 107-26,
14)
e hypothesis that variations in speed result from the intervention of moments of
rest was put forward also by Crathorn and Wyclif. See John E. Murdoch, “Atomism
and Motion in the Fourteenth Century,” in Tranformation and Tradition in the Sci-
ences. Essays in Honor of I.B. Cohen, ed. E. Mendelsohn, (Cambridge, 1984), 45-66.
15)
Nicholas of Autrecourt, e Universal Treatise, 96
16)
Ibid,, 98-104.

In his treatise Autrecourt was at pains to rebut Duns Scotus’

anti-atomist arguments, which stressed the incompatibility between
atomism and Euclidean geometry.17 Geometrical objections against
atomism survived well into the seventeenth-century. We find them, for
example, in the Labyrinthus sive de compositione continui (1631) of Lib-
ertus Fromondus, professor of theology at the University of Louvain.
Like all good Aristotelians, Fromondus was convinced that matter,
space, time, and motion were divisible into ever divisible parts ad infi-
nitum, and therefore denied that continuous magnitudes could be com-
posed of either extended or non-extended indivisibles. However, he
directed his arguments chiefly against the hypothesis of a continuum
composed of extended atoms, which he considered not only more dan-
gerous from a religious point of view—because it violated the dogma
of the Eucharist –, but also more problematic from a conceptual point
of view—because it contradicted a number of Euclidean postulates; it
did not permit to account for the incommensurability between lines;
and it rendered impossible the very existence of certain geometrical
figures.18 Completely unfounded, according to Fromondus, was also
the atomists’ hope to achieve a victory over “Aristotle and all the math-
ematicians” in the field of physics.19 For the hypothesis that continuous
magnitudes were composed out of a finite number of extended particles
rendered it impossible to explain a whole range of natural phenomena
such as the condensation and rarefaction of matter or the different
speeds of moving objects.
Fromondus’ anti-atomist arguments rested on the conviction that
what was true of material bodies had to be true also of space, time and
motion, and that atomists could therefore not allow themselves to
accept the principles of Euclidean geometry or to assert the continuity
of motion. As we shall see in the following sections, most seventeenth-
century atomists and corpuscularians endorsed Fromondus’ belief in
17)
Ibid., 12-13. For Euclidean arguments against indivisibilism, see Murdoch, “Infin-
ity and Continuity,” and Sander de Boer, “Atomism, Medieval,” in e Continuum
Encyclopedia of British Philosophy, ed. A. Grayling, A. Pyle and N. Goulder, 4 vols.
(London, 2006), 1:156-59.
18)
Fromondus’ seven geometrical arguments against physical atomism are found in
his Labyrinthus sive de compositione continui (Antwerp, 1631), 29-56.
19)
e nine physical arguments against atomism are given in ibid., 56-97.

the isomorphism of space, time and matter, as is shown by the fact that
they all tried to harmonize their theory of matter with their theory of
motion.
3. e Isomorphism of Space and Matter in Seventeenth-century

Atomist and Corpuscularian ought
If one speaks of the isomorphism of space and matter in early modern
natural philosophy, one’s thought spontaneously goes to René Descartes
who, as is well known, inferred the infinite divisibility of material exten-
sion from the infinite divisibility of geometrical extension. In a letter
to Guillaume Gibieuf, dated 19 January 1642, Descartes claims
that it implies a contradiction that there are atoms or parts of matter which have
extension and yet are indivisible, because one cannot have the idea of an extended
thing without also having the idea of half of it or a third, and consequently with-
out conceiving it as divisible into two or three. Because, from the only fact that I
consider the two halves of a part of matter, however small it may be, as two com-
plete substances, and the ideas of them are not rendered inadequate by an abstrac-
tion of the mind, I conclude with certainty that they are really divisible.20
In the Principia Descartes reiterated his conviction that “there cannot

be atoms or parts of matter which are indivisible of their own nature
(…) for there is nothing which we can divide in thought and which we
do not thereby recognize to be divisible.”21
20)
“Ainsi, nous pouvons dire qu’il implique contradiction, qu’il y ait des atomes ou des
parties de matière qui aient l’extension et toutefois soient indivisibles, à cause qu’on
ne peut avoir l’idée d’une chose étendue qu’on puisse avoir aussi celle de sa moitié, ou
de son tiers, ni, par conséquent, sans qu’on la conçoive divisible en 2 ou en 3. Car, de
cela seul que je considère les deux moitiés d’une partie de matière, tant petite qu’elle
puisse être, comme deux substances complètes, & quarum ideae non redduntur a me
inadequatae per abstractionem intellectus, je conclus certainement qu’elles sont réelle-
ment divisibles,” Oeuvres de Descartes, eds. C. Adam and P. Tannery, 13 vols. (Paris,
1897-1913), nouv. présentation, B. Rochot and P. Costabel, 11 vols. (Paris, 1964-
1974), 3:477. For Descartes’ rejection of indivisibles, see Sophie Roux, “Descartes
atomiste?,” in Atti del Convegno su “Atomisme et continuum au XVIIe siècle” (Napoli,
28-30 aprile 1997), eds. E. Festa and R. Gatto (Naples, 2000), 211-74.
21)
Descartes, Oeuvres, 8:51.

Descartes’ view is often contrasted by scholars with that of Pierre

Gassendi, who distinguished between the infinite divisibility of geo-
metrical entities, which he regarded as fictitious magnitudes, and the
atomistic composition of material substances. But does this mean that
Gassendi rejected the ancient atomists’ belief in the isomorphism of
space and matter? A letter to Samuel Sorbière, written on 30 January
1644, would seem to authorize this conclusion. Gassendi there estab-
lishes a parallelism between space and time, to which he ascribes the
following three common properties: infinity; infinite divisibility; indif-
ference to their content.22 This “remarkable parallelism” (insignis paral-
lelismus) is also discussed in the Syntagma, where we encounter however
an important modification in his analysis of the common properties of
space and time. As pointed out by Olivier René Bloch, Gassendi speaks
here of ‘continuity’, rather than ‘infinite divisibility’, probably “to mask
if not to resolve the latent contradiction that seems to oppose the atom-
ism professed in the rest of the Physics and his realistic theory of space.”23
And in fact if one looks at the rest of the Physics one can see that when
Gassendi abandons the infinite ‘imaginary space’ 24 for the ‘mundane
space’, that is, for the space occupied by the world, he introduces in his
analysis spatial and temporal minima akin to those of ancient atomism.
It has already been declared before that neither this infinity of parts in the con-
tinuum nor mathematical indivisibility exist in nature, but are merely a hypoth-
esis of the mathematicians, and that therefore in physics one should not argue on
the basis of things that are not known to nature.25
22)
Pierre Gassendi, Opera omnia in sex tomos divisa (Lyon, 1658), 6:179.
23)
Ibid., 180.
24)
Space is called by Gassendi ‘imaginary’, not because it is fictitious, but because, like
time, it is devoid of specific functions and of a capacity to act. See Olivier R. Bloch, La
philosophie de Gassendi. Nominalisme, matérialisme et métaphysique (e Hague, 1971),
176; Karl Schuhmann, “ La doctrine gassendienne de l’espace,” in Quadricentenaire de
la naissance de Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), Actes du Colloque International Digne-les
Bains, 18-21 mai 1992 (Digne-les Bains, 1994), 233-44.
25)
“Declaratum certe est quoque iam ante & infinitatem illam partium in conti-
nuo, & insectilitatem Mathematicam in rerum natura non esse, sed Mathematicorum
hypothesin esse, atque idcirco non oportere argumentari in Physica ex iis, quae natura
non novit,” Gassendi, Opera omnia, 1:341b.

This passage is found in the Pars physica, section I, book V, of the Syn-
tagma philosophicum. In the opening pages of this book, which deals
with the motion of compound bodies, Gassendi takes into account
Zeno’s paradoxes of motion and tries to show that they can be solved
simply by denying, with Epicurus, “both the potential and the actual
infinity of parts; and admitting indivisibles, not mathematical and infi-
nite, but physical and finite.”26 Physical space and time are composed
of physical indivisibles just as the bodies that move in them.
Gassendi’s theory of space was endorsed by Walter Charleton, who
in his Physiologia distinguished between an invisible space, namely the
incorporeal part of the universe, which he described as “being identical
to the void” and also as infinitely divisible, and the “visible space,”
which is more “consentaneous to reason,” as it “allows one to speculate
the Catholique Principles Motions and Mutations.”27 This space, like
all other physical continua, is not infinitely divisible, but is instead
composed of insectilia. The question “whether it be convenient to trans-
fer Geometrical demonstrations to Physical or sensible quantity” is
therefore answered by Charleton in the negative:
And this (in a word) seems to be the true and only cause why Mathematicians
constantly suppose every continuum to consist of infinite parts: not that they can,
or ought to understand it to be really so; but that they may conserve to themselves
a liberty of insensible Latitude, by subdividing each division of parts into so many
as they please; for, they well know, that the physiologist is in the right when he
admits no infinity, but only an innumerability of parts in natural continuum.28
As we have mentioned earlier, the essays “Of atoms” and “Of motion”
of Newton’s Trinity College Notebooks contain explicit references to
Charleton’s Physiologia. Charleton, in turn, used as his source besides
Gassendi’s Syntagma also another important French atomist work,
namely Jean Chrysostome Magnen’s Democritus reviviscens of 1646. The
26)
“An proinde est ad eas [rationes] responsurus, negando illam tam potestate, quam
actu infinitatem partium; & concedendo insectilia, non Mathematica illa, atque infi-
nita; verum Physica, finitaque,” ibid., 341a-b.
27)
Walter Charleton, Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana: or a Fabrick of
Science Natural, Upon the Hypothesis of Atoms, Founded by Epicurus, Repaired by
Petrus Gassendus, Augmented by Walter Charleton (London, 1654), 84.
28)
Ibid., 97.

Democritus is particularly interesting for our present purpose, as it con-

tains a very explicit assertion of the isomorphism of space and matter.
The book, the declared scope of which is to reconstruct Democritus’
original atomistic doctrine, is divided in three disputationes. In the first
Magnen tries to demonstrate that no prime matter exists above and
beyond the elements; in the second, he argues for the composition of
material bodies out of atoms; in the third he explains the consequences
of Democritus’ theory for the explanation of a number of specific nat-
ural phenomena. In this third disputatio, Magnen establishes a list of
fundamental principles, among which we find the following one: “mo-
tion, space and time are analogous, that is to say proportional,” which
means that if one of them can be proven to be divisible ad infinitum,
the same must also be true for the other two.29 Magnen’s view is that
the three magnitudes are divisible ad infinitum extrinsically, or math-
ematically, but not physically (extrinsece et mathematice, non autem
physice). If considered in their physical reality, space, time and motion
must in fact all be composed of atoms. The reason Magnen gives for
this is that
What is true for the real space is true for the real motion, but in the real space
there are atoms, hence there will be atoms also in motion, but we cannot think of
atoms of motion without conceiving them as being “all at once.” Hence there exist
a motion “all at once,” which is however successive in its connotation, that is to
say extrinsic according to mathematical space.30
Magnen goes on to argue that although “extrinsically,” that is to say

mathematically speaking, motion can be regarded as successivus, or con-
tinuous, “intrinsically,” that is to say physically speaking, a continuous
motion is impossible. The real motion of physical bodies takes place
“all at once,” which means that each atom of a moving body jumps
from one atom of space to the next in successive time-atoms. It is inter-
29)
“Motus, locus, et tempus sunt analoga, hoc est proportionalia,” Jean-Chrisostome
Magnen, Democritus reviviscens (Pavia, 1646), 226.
30)
“Ut se habet spatium reale, ita & motus realis, sed in spatio reali sunt atomi, ergo
et in motu erunt atomi, sed atomi motus non possunt fingi animo, quin intelligatur
totae simul, ergo datur motus totus simul, qui tamen erit successivus in connotatione
seu extrinsece penes spatium mathematicum,” ibid., 234.

esting to see that in the Democritus the atomic structure of motion is

inferred from the atomic structure of physical space, and the atomic
structure of physical space is in turn made to depend on the mere fact
that in physical space “there are atoms.”
Such a position was by no means eccentric or even atypical. Among
seventeenth-century natural philosophers who propounded a corpus-
cularian or atomistic theory of matter, the majority simply assumed
that if matter was composed of indivisible parts, the same should also
be true for space, time, and motion.
But how did these authors respond to the geometrical objections
against atomism, like those formulated by Fromondus in his Labyrin-
thus?
The most radical stance was that taken by Sébastien Basson, who in
his Philosophia naturalis of 1621 argued that the objections stemmed
from a wrong view of the nature of geometrical entities. Basson denied
tout court that mathematical magnitudes were divisible ad infinitum.
Take for example the traditional argument according to which, if lines
were made out of extended points a side of a square would have the
same number of points as the diagonal. The argument, Basson noticed,
would be valid if the diagonal were a straight line, which however, is
not the case (cf. fig. 1): “The nature of the individual [i.e., point or
atom] doesn’t allow for the first lines to be truly straight apart from
those that are parallel, and those that cross it at a perfect right angle.”31
In his Philosophia, Basson went as far as to deny that God could create
two straight lines and make them cross at any angle he wishes.32
Basson’s position was not entirely original. Before him, Giordano
Bruno and Francesco Patrizzi had rejected Euclidean geometry, which
was based on what they considered an absurd belief in the infinite divis-
ibility of the continuum, and had tried to erect mathematics exclusively
on arithmetic, which matched the discrete structure of reality.33
31)
Sébastien Basson, Philosophiae naturalis adversus Aristotelem libri XII (Geneva, 1621),
417. On Basson’s atomism see Christoph H. Lüthy, “oughts and Circumstances of
Sébastien Basson. Analysis, Micro-History, Questions,” Early Science and Medicine, 2
(1997), 1-73.
32)
Basson, Philosophiae naturalis, 422.
33)
Cf. Hélène Védrine, “L’obstacle réaliste en mathématique chez deux philosophes
du XVI siècle: Bruno et Patrizzi,” in Platon et Aristote à la Renaissance (XVI Colloque
International de Tours, ed. J.-C. Margolin and M. Gandillac (Paris, 1976), 239-48.

Figure 1: Basson’s illustration that a ‘diagonal’ is not really a diagonal (Basson,

Philosophia naturalis, 420)
The majority of seventeenth-century atomists chose however another

defensive strategy, which consisted in discriminating between physical
and mathematical divisibility. Following Daniel Sennert, who in turn
followed Andreas Libavius, Magnen recognized that space, time and
matter were divisible ad infinitum mathematically, but not physically,
and the same stance was taken, as we have seen, by Gassendi and Char-
leton.34 To them, one should add the Jesuit Honoré Fabri, who in a
letter to Mersenne of 1643 specified that the composition of physical
objects out of extended and impenetrable parts was “of no weight
against the incommensurability of Euclid, who is not considering mat-
ter, but only its extrinsic quantity or extension.”35
Whatever their view concerning the relation between physical and
mathematical magnitudes, all authors named so far subscribed to the
isomorphism of space, time, and matter. More precisely, they all inferred
the structure of space, time, and motion from that of matter. But there
was also someone who took the opposite step, by assimilating the com-
position of matter to that of space and time. The author I am referring
to is Galileo Galilei, who in his last published work, the Discorsi e
dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze of 1638, aban-
doned his previous Democritean atomism in favor of a new theory that
34)
See Andreas Libavius, Alchemia triumphans (Frankfurt, 1606); Daniel Sennert,
De chymicorum cum Aristotelicis et Galenicis consensu ac dissensu (Wittenberg, 1629).
35)
Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne religieux minime, eds. Paul Tannery, Cornélis
de Waard, et al,, 17 vols (Paris, 1932-1988), 12:291-92.

postulated the composition of space, time and matter out of non-

extended points.
In order to understand the evolution of Galileo’s position, we have
to go back to 1612, the year of publication of the Discourse on Floating
Bodies, in which Galileo took issue with the Aristotelian explanation of
hydrostatic phenomena. In the Discourse, Galileo postulated the com-
position of bodies out of extended particles, which he described as being
physically indivisible. So, in explaining the phenomenon of melting,
he maintained that a metal could be reduced from the solid to the
liquid state only by the sharp needles of fire, which were able to pen-
etrate it and dissolve it into its ultimate particles.36
The matter theory outlined in the Discourse on Floating Bodies was
subjected to many objections. Of particular interest are those raised by
Vincenzo Di Grazia, professor at the University of Pisa, who reproached
Galileo for assuming that bodies were “composed of atoms and indivis-
ible parts,” in contradiction to mathematics and Aristotle’s “infinite
reasons.”37
To this objection, Galileo answered as follows:
Needles, Mr. Di Grazia, are extended bodies […]; as such, they don’t have any-
thing to do with the issue of whether it is possible to consider lines and other con-
tinua as composed of indivisible parts. Where is it, then, that you have found that
mathematics dismisses the possibility of composing lines of points? And in which
mathematicians have you found such a question disputed? Surely you have not
found it, nor is such a thing repellent to mathematics.38
36)
“Ma quando finalmente, adoprando sottilissimi ed acutissimi strumenti, quali sono
le piú tenui parti del fuoco, lo solveremo forse nell’ultime sue particelle, non resterá
in loro piú non solo la resistenza alla divisione, ma neanco il poter, piú essere divise,
e, massime da strumenti piú grossi de gli aculei del fuoco,” Galilei, Opere, 4: l06. For
an analysis of the theory of matter outlined in the Discourse on Floating Bodies, see
William Shea, “Galileo’s Atomic Hypothesis,” Ambix, 17 (1970), 13-27, esp. 13-15;
Ugo Baldini, “La struttura della materia nel pensiero di Galileo,” De Homine, 57
(1976), 91-164, esp. 6-27.
37)
Galilei, Opere, 4:416-17.
38)
“Gli aghi, Sig. Grazia, son corpi quanti, e peró son aghi; ed essendo tali, non
hanno che far niente nel suscitar quistione se la composizione delle linee o di altri
continui sia di indivisibili. Dove poi avete voi trovato che repugni alle matematiche
il compor le linee di punti? e appresso quali matematici avete voi veduta disputata

In this passage Galileo makes a distinction between lines “and other

continua,” which contrary to Aristotle he believes to be composed of
indivisible points, and material bodies, which he regards as being made
out extended parts. As Galileo explained in his response to another
Pisan professor, Giorgio Coresio: “Atoms are called thus not because
they are not extended, but because, being the smallest corpuscles, they
cannot be divided by any smaller corpuscles.”39
Contrary to one-dimensional geometrical points, which are unex-
tended and hence absolutely indivisible, three-dimensional material
particles are factually or operationally indivisible for the reason that
they are smaller than any “solid instrument available to us.”
But what about the composition of space and time? The fact that in
the letter to Di Grazia, Galileo speaks of “lines and other continua” may
be an indication that he assimilates the structure of space, time and
motion to that of geometrical magnitudes. Moreover, his theory of
natural acceleration, which by 1612 was already in an advanced state
of elaboration, would not have allowed for the composition of space
and time out of extended minima.
But, as we have anticipated, Galileo also ended up embracing the
isomorphism of matter and motion. Contrary to Sennert, Basson, Gas-
sendi, or Magnen, however, he did not assimilate the structure of space
to that of matter, but vice versa the structure of matter to that of space.
Galileo took a first step in the direction of the conflation of physical
and mathematical divisibility in the Assayer. In this work, he compared
the particles of heat, which he called “extended minima” (minimi
quanti), with those of light, which he called “truly indivisible atoms”
(atomi realmente indivisibili), thereby meaning non-extended.40
Lack of extension, which in the Assayer was considered to be the sole
distinctive property of the ultimate particles of light, was to become in
simil questione? Questa non avete voi sicuramente veduta, né quello repugna alla
matematiche,” ibid., 733.
39)
“Gli atomi son cosí detti non perché siano non quanti, ma perché, sendo i minimi
corpuscoli, non se ne danno altri minori da i quali possino esser divisi,” ibid., 281.
40)
Galileo Galilei, e Assayer, transl. S. Drake, in e Controversy on the Comets of
1618, eds. S. Drake and C. D. O’Malley (Philadelphia, 1960), 313. For an analysis of
the properties of the atoms of light in the Assayer, see Shea, “Galileo’s Atomic Hypoth-
esis,” 20-21; Baldini, “La struttura della materia,” 38-58.

the Two New Sciences the common attribute of all atoms. In the First
Day of the Two New Sciences, which deals with the strength of materi-
als, Galileo’s spokesman, Salviati, puts forward the hypothesis that the
particles of a solid cohere in order to prevent the interstitial voids from
broadening. When, in the melting process, fire fills these voids, the
particles become free to move with respect to each other. Asked by his
interlocutors to quantify the number of those voids, Salviati postulates
that there is an infinity of them which, in turn, hold in check an infin-
ity of material particles. But “the existence of infinitely many parts has
as a consequence their being not extended, since infinitely many ex-
tended [parts] make up an infinite extension.”41
While in 1612 Galileo believed that the ‘needles’ of fire, being
extended bodies, could only dissolve a metal into particles that were
physically, but not mathematically, indivisible, by 1638 he had con-
vinced himself that fire was composed of extensionless atoms, which
were capable of dissolving solid bodies into equally extensionless points
of matter. According to this view, then, solid bodies differ from liquids
neither because of the specific forms of their ultimate components
(which are always extensionless points), nor because of the number of
such points (which is always infinite), but because of the presence of
that glue that goes by the name of ‘void’. Fluids are made up of an
infinity of points which are, as it were, all filled in by matter, and solids
by an infinity of points, one part of which is filled with matter while
the other is void. Aware of the impossibility of giving a direct empirical
proof of the existence of these extensionless atoms—“I doubt that you
want me to make you see the invisible, nor am I able to do that”42—
Salviati tries at least to demonstrate by mathematical means “that in a
finite continuous extension it is not impossible for infinitely many voids
to be found.”43 As we shall see in the following section, Galileo’s indirect
proof of the existence of mathematical atoms is based on his solution
41)
Galileo Galilei, Two New Sciences, ed. S. Drake (Madison, 1974), 42. Here and in
the following, I have changed the English translation of ‘non quanto’ from Stillman
Drake’s ‘unquantifiable’ to ‘non-extended’. Drake’s translation is misleading, for the
sense of ‘non quanto’ is not that the minimum cannot be quantified, but that it has
no quantity in the sense of spatial extension.
42)
Ibid., 58.
43)
Ibid., 28.

to the so-called Rota Aristotelis problem. The analysis of this famous

paradox of motion serves Galileo to assert the composition of all phys-
ical magnitudes out of non-extended parts: material bodies are made
out of non-extended atoms, lines out of non-extended points, time out
of instants without duration.
Galileo’s decision to replace the physical atomism of the Assayer with
a paradoxical mathematical atomism continues to puzzle scholars. My
suggestion is that this theoretical shift was motivated by Galileo’s will
to harmonize his theory of matter with the theory of acceleration pre-
sented in the Third Day of the Two New Sciences, which is based on the
crucial notion of degree of speed.44 As we shall see in the following
section, Galileo, like many other seventeenth-century authors, devoted
particular attention to the phenomenon of rarefaction and condensa-
tion of matter and established an implicit link between this phenom-
enon and that of acceleration and deceleration.
4. Rarefaction and Condensation, Acceleration and Deceleration:

Two Similar Phenomena?
In his Labyrinthus sive de compositione continui, Fromondus mentioned,
as we have seen, two natural phenomena that in his view were difficult
to explain on the basis of atomism. These were the rarefaction and
condensation of matter and the acceleration and deceleration of motion.
For those who believed in the composition of the continuum out of
extended indivisibles, the only way to account for the first phenomenon
was to admit the presence of interstitial voids within rarefied bodies
and the mutual interpenetration of particles in condensed bodies.45 And
in order to explain how different objects could traverse the same space
at different speeds, they had to postulate that “in every slow motion,
44)
See Carla Rita Palmerino, “Una nuova scienza della materia per la scienza nova
del moto. La discussione dei paradossi dell’infinito nella prima giornata dei Discorsi
galileiani,” in Festa and Gatto (eds.), Atomisme et continu; Ead., “Galileo’s and Gassen-
di’s Solutions to the Rota Aristotelis Paradox. A Bridge between Matter and Motion
eories,” in Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter eories, ed. C.H. Lüthy,
J.E. Murdoch and W.R. Newman, (Leiden, 2001), 381-422.
45)
See Fromondus, Labyrinthus, 76-97.

some pauses and retardations occur in which the mobile rests, but which
in a faster movement are filled.”46 Fromondus’ argument was based on
the assumption that, if physical bodies were composed of a finite num-
ber of extended particles, the same composition would also have to be
found in the space in which those bodies moved as well as in the time
during which they were moving. This meant, in turn, that rarefaction
of matter and acceleration of motion should be explained in analogous
terms: those who believed that an alternation of atoms and voids was
concealed within rarefied matter would have to assume that an alterna-
tion of motion and rest was concealed within slow motion. Both
hypotheses seemed to Fromondus to stand in contradiction to sensory
experience and also to be unacceptable from a conceptual as well as a
theological standpoint.
The remaining part of this article will be devoted to showing how
those of Fromondus’ contemporaries who asserted the composition of
space, time and matter out of indivisibles tackled the two problematic
phenomena mentioned in the Labyrinthus, namely rarefaction and acce-
leration.
4.1. Infinite Atoms, Infinite Degrees of Speed: Galileo

In the First Day of the Two New Sciences, Galileo displayed confidence
in the fact that his non-extended atoms would look acceptable to Aris-
totelians:
But by employing the method I propose […] I believe that they [i.e., the learned
Peripatetics] should be satisfied, and should allow this composition of the contin-
uum out of absolutely indivisible atoms. Especially since this is a road that is per-
haps more direct than any other in extricating ourselves from many intricate
labyrinths.47
These lines may hide a reference to the Labyrinthus, where Fromondus

had argued that “the more subtle among those who constructed the
continuum out of atoms, composed it out of infinite rather than finite
46)
“[…] in omni motu tardo pausas et morulas quasdam interiiciunt quibus mobile
quiescat, quae in motu celeriori complentur,” ibid., 62.
47)
Galileo, Two New Sciences, 54 .

[atoms].”48 Galileo underlines in fact that his new matter theory “facil-
itates the comprehension of condensation and rarefaction,” for it per-
mits an explanation that “circumvents [both] the voids and the [inter]
penetration of bodies.”49 In the Assayer Galileo had instead described
rarefaction as “one of the most difficult questions in nature, for it
seemed unconceivable that a body could expand without a separation
of its parts.”50
The account of rarefaction and condensation contained in the Two
New Sciences is based, as we have anticipated, on the analysis of the Rota
Aristotelis paradox, which consists in explaining what happens to two
concentric circles when one of them accomplishes a full revolution on
its tangent.51 In order to facilitate the comprehension of the problem,
Galileo decides to substitute the two concentric circles with two hexa-
gons. With the help of the Figure 2, he shows that if the external poly-
gon rolls along the line AS, covering a distance equal to its own
perimeter, the internal one will trace out on its tangent a path of the
same length, but interrupted by five gaps (IO, PY, ...).
The same thing, Galileo observes, happens with the concentric cir-
cumferences. But “just as the ‘sides’ [of circles] are non-extended, but
are infinitely many,” so are also the voids that interrupt the line ce.52
Passing from geometry to physics, Galileo observes that a rarefied
body, just like the line traced out by the smaller circle, has to be con-
sidered as being composed of an infinite number of non-extended
points, part of which are filled with matter and part of which are void.53
48)
“Subtiliores, inter eos qui continuum ex atomis struxerunt, ex infinitis potius quam
finitis composuisse,” Fromondus, Labyrinthus, 9. For the possible influence of Fromon-
dus on Galileo, see Pietro Redondi, “Atomi, indivisibili e dogma,” Quaderni Storici,
20 (1985), 529-71, esp. 555-57.
49)
Fromondus, Labyrinthus, 55.
50)
Galilei, Opere, 6:331.
51)
For an anlysis of Galileo’s solution to the Rota Aristotelis paradox, see Israel E.
Drabkin, “Aristotle’s Wheel: Notes on the History of a Paradox,” Osiris, 9 (1950),
161-98; Pierre Costabel “La roue d’Aristote et les critiques françaises à l’argument de
Galilée,” Revue d’histoire des sciences, 17 (1964), 385-96 ; Palmerino, “Galileo’s and
Gassendi’s Solutions.”
52)
Galilei, Two New Sciences, 33.
53)
Ibid. On the Galilean theory of the continuum and the infinite, see i.a. Maurice
Clavelin, “Le problème du continu et les paradoxes de l’infini chez Galilée,” alès,
10 (1959), 1-26, A. Mark Smith, “Galileo’s eory of Indivisibles: Revolution or

Figure 2: Galileo’s use of the Rota Aristotelis paradox to demonstrate the composition
of continua out of indivisible points and empty spaces (Galileo, Discorsi e dimostra-
zioni matematiche, intorno a due nuove scienze [Leiden, 1638], 22)
In order to explain condensation, Galileo analyses what happens when

it is the smaller hexagon that rolls upon its tangent. In this case, the
sides of the bigger polygon will undergo five retrogressions along the
tangent, each equal to the excess of the side of the larger hexagon over
that of the smaller one. Passing from finity to infinity, that is from
polygons to circles, Salviati notices that the points of the external cir-
cumference, in order to trace out a ‘condensed’ path, will have to ret-
rogress for an infinite number of non-extended spaces.
e compacting of infinitely many unquantifiable parts without interpenetration

of quantified parts, and the previously explained expansion of infinitely many
indivisibles with the interposition of indivisible voids, I believe to be the most
that can be said to explain the condensation and rarefaction of bodies without the
necessity of introducing interpenetration of bodies and [appealing] to quantified
void spaces.54
The fact that Galileo uses a paradox of motion to solve a problem hav-
ing to do with the composition of matter is in my view symptomatic
Compromise?,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (1976), 571-88; Homer E. Le Grand,

“Galileo’s Matter eory,” in New Perspectives on Galileo, ed. R.E. Butts & J.C. Pitt
(Dordrecht, 1978), 197-208.
54)
Galilei, Two New Sciences, 57.

of his will to bridge the two new sciences discussed in the work. Gali-
leo’s theory of natural acceleration, which is worked out in the Third
Day, rests on the assumption that falling bodies, in their continuous
acceleration, pass through an infinite number of degrees of speed.
In response to the difficulties raised by his interlocutors, who do not
understand how the jump from rest to motion can be accomplished in
a finite time interval, Galileo’s spokesman explains that the falling body
does not remain in any degree of speed for more than an instant: “and
since in any finite time, however small, there are infinitely many
instants, there are enough to correspond to the infinitely many degrees
of diminished speed.”55 Salviati answers with a few words, because he
probably thinks that his earlier discussion of the Rota Aristotelis paradox
has already proved satisfactorily that space, time and motion are com-
posed of indivisibles.
However ingenious it may have been, Galileo’s theory of acceleration
suffered from problems that only the invention of the methods of dif-
ferential and integral calculus later in the century would overcome. Take
for example the case of a body that “is carried from rest on an inclined
plane, and also along a vertical of the same height.” Galileo tells us that
the degrees of speed acquired in the two descents are the same, but that
“the times of the movements will be to one another as the lengths of
the plane and of the vertical.”56 How can these claims be reconciled
with the contention that a falling body acquires a new degree of speed
in each instant of time? Galileo must have raised this problem in a let-
ter to Bonaventura Cavalieri, which is unfortunately lost to us. In his
reply, Cavalieri wrote:
I will not deny that parallels intercept the same quantity of points in the perpen-
dicular and in the oblique line, just as it happens with concentric circumferences,
but this does not mean that the two lines are equally long. For if we want to com-
pose the lines out of points, I believe that the difference between the two transits
can be explained with the fact that the points are more rare in the oblique than
in the perpendicular line.57
55)
Ibid., 157.
56)
Ibid., 175.
57)
“[…] che poi tanti punti si causino da tutte le parallele così nella perpendicolare
come nell’obliqua, questo non lo negarò, come anco nelle circonferenze concentriche;

Cavalieri’s words may have been a source of inspiration for Galileo, who
in his analysis of the paradox of the wheel shows precisely how the inner
circumference can ‘rarefy’ in order to cover a longer line. Moreover, the
fact that in his Specchio ustorio, Cavalieri used concentric circumferences
to represent the growth of degrees of speed in accelerated motion sub-
stantiates the hypothesis that Galileo used the Rota Aristotelis paradox
not only to illustrate his theory of matter, but also to suggest a solution
for problems connected to his theory of motion.
Galileo’s mathematical atomism did not make proselytes even among
his closest disciples. As we shall see in the following two sections, most
seventeenth-century atomists continued to endorse the kind of physical
atomism criticized by Fromondus in the Labyrinthus.
4.2. A Discontinuous Matter and a Discontinuous Motion: Arriaga,

Basson, Gassendi.
One of the polemical targets of the Labyrinthus was probably the Span-
ish Jesuit Roderigo de Arriaga, author of a very influential Cursus phil-
osophicus (1632). It is enough to look at the index of Arriaga’s book to
see that the author establishes indeed a close connection between the
two problematic phenomena menntioned. For in the Disputatio XVI.
De continui compositione the discussion of the problem of rarefaction
and condensation in the Sectio X is immediately followed by that of the
question de velocitate et tarditate motus of Sectio XI.
Arriaga’s proposed explanation of rarefaction and condensation dif-
fers from that criticized by Fromondus in that it ascribes the expansion
or contraction of a material body to the introduction or expulsion of
particles of air, and not of void.58 But Arriaga’s account de velocitate et
ma che perciò doverse dirsi tanto longa l’una come l’altra, mentre volessimo compor le
linee di punti, dico che la differenza di questi transiti può cagionare questo, potendosi
credere che detti punti siano forsi più diradati nell’obliqua che nella perpendicolare,”
Galilei, Opere, 16: 138 (italics mine).
58)
“Dicendum ergo est cum Ocamo Opusculo de Eucharistia, rarefactionem aquae
fieri per introductionem aliquorum corpusculorum aëris, aut aliorum (…) ratione
autem illorum maiorem occupari locum a corpore raro quam antea; in condensa-
tione vero foras expelli eiusmodi corpuscula, ideoque minorem locum occupare. Haec
sententia clarissime explicat maiorem vel minorem rarefactionem, quin aliqua cor-
pora penetrentur aut relinquant vacuum,” Roderigo de Arriaga, Cursus philosophicus
(Antwerp, 1632), 428.

tarditate motus exactly corresponds to that targeted in the Labyrinthus.59

In section XI, Arriaga holds that space and time are composed of phys-
ical indivisibles and that all motions of which the speed is inferior to
one minimum of space per minimum of time (i.e., the velocity of the
first moveable) have to be conceived as being intrinsically discontinu-
ous. In order to clarify his theory, the Jesuit invokes the case of two
concentric circumferences, of which one is twice as long as the other
and which rotate around their common axis. Given that the circumfer-
ences are made up of physical indivisibles, the number of which is
directly proportional to the length of the radii, during a complete rota-
tion each point of the internal circumference will go through only half
the number of indivisibles of space that are traversed by the correspond-
ing point on the external circumference. This implies, in turn, that the
external circumference will move continuously, while the internal one
will move with half its moments in motion and half of them at rest.
Only the common center, made up of a single point, will remain com-
pletely at rest.
In his Harmonie universelle, Marin Mersenne comments this view as
follows:
e human mind is not capable of understanding how it is possible for a contin-

uous motion to be slower than another one. is has forced the Spanish philoso-
pher Arriaga in his sixteenth philosophical dispute, as well as many other authors,
to conclude that the slowness of motion is due to nothing else than the interrup-
tion by many moments of rest.60
Among the ‘many others’ alluded to by Mersenne were Sébastien Basson

and Pierre Gassendi, both of whom used the example of the spinning
59)
“Ego enim ostendo, illam tarditatem in re solum consistere posse in eis morulis,
quia punctum, dum primo movetur, non potest nec magis nec minus, quam punctum
spatij, acquirere; ergo ea tarditats in eo puncto unionis non potest explicari, nisi per
morulas,” ibid., 432.
60)
“L’esprit humain n’est pas capable de comprendre comme il est possible qu’un
mouvement continu soit plus tardif qu’un autre: ce qui a contraint le Philosophe Hes-
pagnol Arriaga dans sa seiziesme dispute physique, et plusieurs d’autres, de dire que
la tardiveté du mouvement n’est autre chose qu’une interruption de plusieurs repos,”
Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle contenant la theorie et la pratique de la musique,
2 vols (Paris, 1636), 2:74.

wheel to demonstrate that all motions having a speed inferior to that

of one minimum of space per minimum of time are in fact intrinsically
discontinuous.
In his Philosophia naturalis Basson argues that space is made up of
parts of equal size, which are not imaginary, but very real (verissimae),
and which correspond to the particles of bodies.61 To Aristotle’s argu-
ment that a continuous motion could not take place in an atomized
space, Basson answers that motion is in fact discontinuous and that
relative speeds, as Empedocles taught, are caused by the greater of lesser
number of pauses that are inserted between the particles of motion.62
The reason why in a spinning wheel the parts closer to the center rotate
more slowly than those at the periphery is because their motion, which
our eyes perceive as continuous, is in fact interrupted by a greater num-
ber of moments of rest.63 Although Basson does not establish a connec-
tion between acceleration and condensation on the one hand and
rarefaction and condensation on the other hand, it is obvious that he
bases the explanation of both phenomena on his view that space, time
and matter are composed of minima of invariable size. Just as variations
in speed are due to an alternation of motion and rest, so do variations
in the size of bodies require a vacuum inter partes: condensation takes
place when pores are evacuated, whereas rarefaction implies the forma-
tion of new voids among the particles.64
A similar account is found in Gassendi’s Syntagma, where rarefaction
is explained as the result of the interposition of void spaces within the
particles of bodies and slowness of motion as the result of the inter-
position of particles of rest. With respect to the latter, Gassendi claims
that
it seems legitimate to conceive of the motion with which atoms are said to move
through the void, or if you prefer the motion attributed to the first moveable, as
being absolutely fast; and of all the degrees which lie between that [fastest motion]
and pure rest, as deriving from the intermixture of fewer or more particles of rest.65
61)
Basson, Philosophiae naturalis, 406-7.
62)
Ibid., 411.
63)
Ibid., 399.
64)
Ibid., 322 ff.
65)
“[…] ita licere videtur concipere motum, quo Atomi per Inane ferri dicuntur, aut,

In order to clarify his hypothesis, Gassendi employs the Rota Aristotelis.

The same paradox that had been used by Galileo to demonstrate that
space, time and motion were composed of an infinite number of unex-
tended points now serves Gassendi to show that there is no place in
nature for the mathematically indivisible, and that space, time and
motion, just like material bodies, are composed of extended minima.
Contrary to Galileo, Gassendi thinks that if of two concentric circum-
ferences one is twice as long as the other, the number of their points
will also be in a relation of two to one. So, when the larger circumfer-
ence guides the revolution, the smaller circumference moves forward
in such a way that “each of its points, or rather each of its impercep-
tible parts,” always touches two points on the plane. In one of these
contact points the circumference will be at rest, whereas in the other,
it will be in motion. If instead the smaller circumference rolls per se on
the tangent, the larger circumference touches each point of the tangent
with two points, one of which is in motion, while the other at rest:
[…] thus it comes about that in both cases the lines described [by the two circles]
will have the same length; for in the first case it happens that each part of the
smaller circumference behaves as two parts of the bigger one; in the second case
it happens that two parts of the bigger circumference cannot do anything more
than one part of the smaller one.66
Although he was a staunch supporter of Galileo’s science of motion,

Gassendi thought that the latter “could be expressed and defended
without the need to admit mathematical instants and points.”67 The
si mavis motum primo Mobili attributum, esse velocissimum; omneis vero gradus,
qui ex illo, ad meram usque quietem sunt, ex intermistis paucioribus, pluribusve
quietis particulis esse,” Gassendi, Opera omnia, 1:341b. e hypothesis is repeated by
Gassendi at the beginning of book V (cf. ibid., 1:338a-b). For a thorough account of
Gassendi’s theory of microscopic and macroscopic motion, cf. Marco Messeri, Causa
e spiegazione. La fisica di Pierre Gassendi (Milan, 1985), 74-93.
66)
“[…] sicque efficiatur, ut utroque casu aequales describantur lineae; quatenus in
priore, unaquaeque minoris circumferentiae pars idem praestat, quod duae maioris; &
in posteriore duae quaelibet maioris nihil amplius praestant, quam singulae minoris,”
Gassendi, Opera omnia, 1:342b.
67)
“Ce que vous dites touchant l’opinion de Galilée, qu’elle peut estre declarée et
soutenue, sans la necessité d’admettre des points et instans Mathematiques, est tres-
bien, aussi bien que toutes ces consequences que vous tirez,” Lettre de monsieur Gassend

aim of the anti-Galilean solution to the Rota Aristotelis paradox was

precisely to substitute the infinitist foundation of Galileo’s theory of
acceleration: the mathematical point had to become an extended indi-
visible; the instant a ‘timelet’; and the non-extended void a moment of
rest.68
Another peculiar feature of Gassendi’s theory is that it included an
explanation of the discontinuous motion of macroscopic bodies based
on his atomistic dynamics. Contrary to Arriaga, who had ascribed to
God the task of periodically interrupting the motion of bodies, Gas-
sendi believed that the state of rest or motion of the res concretae was
the macroscopic resultant of clashes and tensions among the com-
pounding atoms, which were striving to liberate themselves.69
But Gassendi’s explanation failed to satisfy even his most faithful
disciples. In the 1684 edition of his Abrégé de la philosophie de Gassendi,
François Bernier described as ridiculous the hypothesis of the discon-
tinuity of motion, “all the more as there is no reason why a ball, which
while gently rolling on a billiard table has been stopped, or put to rest,
should not remain at rest until the intervention of a cause which sets
it again in motion.”70
4.3. Space, Time and Matter are Made of Minima of Changing Size:
Fabri and Magnen
Not all natural philosophers who believed in the existence of physi-
cal indivisibles of space, time and matter ended up postulating the
à l’auteur, Aix, 16 may, 1649, in Jacques-Alexandre Le Tenneur, De motu naturaliter

accelerato, Appendix (Paris, 1649), s.p.
68)
See Carla Rita Palmerino, “Galileo’s eories of Free Fall and Projectile Motion as
Interpreted by Pierre Gassendi,” in e Reception of the Galilean Science of Motion in
Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. C.R. Palmerino and J.M.M.H. ijssen, (Dordrecht,
2004), 137-64; ead., “Galileo’s and Gassendi’s Solutions.”
69)
See Gassendi, Opera omnia, 1:385a.
70)
“Il doit être ridicule de s’imaginer que dans ces différens mouvemens il y ait des
morules ou des petits repos entre-meslez, et qu’un mouvement lent, et un viste soient
differens en ce que dans le lent il y en ait plus, et dans le viste il y en ait moins; d’autant
plus qu’il n’y a aucune raison pourquoy une boule qui en roulant doucement sur un
billard aurait une fois estée arrestée, ou mise en repos, ne deust pas ensuite demeurer
en repos jusques à ce qu’il intervint une cause qui la remit en mouvement,” François
Bernier, Abregé de la philosophie de Gassendi, 7 vols. (Lyon, 1684), 449-50.

discontinuity of rarefied bodies or of retarded motion. One alternative

solution was that proposed by Magnen and Fabri, both of whom
assumed the existence of minima of changing size.
In his Democritus reviviscens, Magnen admits that the acceleration
and deceleration of motion and the rarefaction and condensation of
matter are extremely difficult to deal with for an atomist. The last dis-
putatio of his book is almost entirely devoted to explaining these two
problematic phenomena. In the first chapter, De motu locali atomorum,
Magnen argues that the various speeds of macroscopic bodies are the
result of the multiplication of a minimum atomic speed, rather than of
the discontinuation of a maximum speed. Each atom of the falling body
acquires a new atom of impetus in each successive atom of time, and
the multiplication of the atoms of impetus leads to a multiplication of
speed. Interestingly, Magnen notices that the expression “uniformly
accelerated motion” is strictly speaking not correct, for “there is always
a space in which the motion is equal and uniform, as follows from the
nature of atoms.”71
Like acceleration, also the rarefaction of matter is interpreted by
Magnen as the result of a multiplication of sorts. In chapter 2, De
rarefactione et condensatione iuxta Democritum, Magnen explains that
“a single atom, without rarefaction, inflation, or reproduction, can
naturally occupy a bigger and bigger place ad infinitum,” simply by
changing its shape. For, as is well known, solids of equal volume but
different shapes also have different external surfaces.72
Fabri’s theories of matter and motion, like Magnen’s, rest on the
assumption that physical minima can have different sizes. In the ninth
book of his Metaphysica demonstrativa, which was published in 1648
by his pupil Pierre Mousnier, Fabri argues that “there are physical
71)
“Respondeo ad tertium ad sensum dari posse motum unifromiter difformem non
autem stricte loquendo, quia est semper aliquod spatium per quod motus est aequa-
lis, & uniformis idq ; necessario atomorum naturam sequitur,” Magnen, Democritus
reviviscens, 236.
72)
“Atomus est omnis figurae capax, ergo occupare potest maiorem, & maiorem
locum in infinitum: cum enim figurae regulares in isoperimetris sint magis collectae
minoremque locum occupent, sequitur quod quo irregularior erit figura eo maiorem
occupabit locum, at non potest dari, ita irregularis, quin magis irregularis esse possit,
ergo etiam maioris loci capax,” ibid., 247.

instants, because there is action through which a thing is.”73 He starts

from the premise that the existence of things requires an action of
conservation, and that this action has to change “in single instants, for
a permanent thing existing now might not exist in the following in-
stant.”74 From this he concludes that time must be composed of phys-
ical instants, for nothing can exist or move in a mathematical instant.
In Fabri’s view, the hypothesis that space and time are composed of
mathematical indivisibles is unacceptable, irrespective of whether one
assumes that these indivisibles are extensionless and infinite or extended
and finite. For in both cases “there could be no quicker or slower
motion.”75 Given that “time, motion and space are composed in the
same way,” it would in fact be impossible for a point of the body in
motion to acquire more or less than one indivisible of space in each
successive instant of time.76 The only way in which one could save the
possibility of slower and faster speeds would be to postulate that motions
are interrupted by a variable number of pauses. But this solution, which
was favored, as we have seen, by the Spanish Jesuit Arriaga, is dismissed
in the Metaphysica as untenable.77
Fabri’s own explanation of the variety of speeds of physical bodies is
based on the following principle: although a moving body can only pass
through one locus adaequatus in each physical instant of time, successive
instants can each have a different duration. This means, for example,
that a body which is moving with a uniformly accelerated motion from
A to G traverses the space BC in an instant of time smaller than the
one in which it traverses the space AB and bigger than the one in which
it traverses the space CD (see fig. 3P).78
73)
“[…] dantur instantia Physica; quia datur actio, per quam res est,” Honoré Fabri
& Pierre Mousnier, Metaphysica demonstrativa, sive scientia rationum universalium,
auctore Petro Mousnerio doctore medico. Cuncta excerpta ex praelectionibus R.P Hon-
orati Fabri (Lyon, 1648), 371. For Fabri’s theory of matter and motion, see Carla
Rita Palmerino, “Two Aristotelian Responses to Galilei’s Science of Motion: Honoré
Fabri and Pierre Le Cazre,” in e New Science and Jesuit Science, ed. M. Feingold,
(Dordrecht, 2003), 187-227.
74)
Fabri & Mousnier, Metaphysica demonstrativa, 367.
75)
Ibid.
76)
Ibid., 413.
77)
Ibid., 375.
78)
Honoré Fabri & Pierre Mousnier, Tractatus physicus de motu locali, in quo effectus

Figure 3: An illustration of Honoré Fabri’s explanation of the variety of speeds of

physical bodies (Fabri & Mousnier, Tractatus physicus de motu locali, table I, fig. 24).
To those who wonder how it is possible for an instant to be smaller

than another instant, Fabri answers as follows: “I also admit that there
can be nothing smaller than a mathematical instant; but things are
different in the case of the physical instant, which is potentially divis-
ible.”79
In Fabri’s eyes, the hypothesis of the actual indivisibility but poten-
tial divisibility of physical points “makes it easy to explain all phenom-
ena related to quantity: first, the speed and slowness of motion […];
second, rarefaction and condensation, compression and dilatation; for
every point can have a bigger or smaller extension.”80
It is therefore no surprise to find that in the Metaphysica, Fabri takes
issue not only with Arriaga’s theory of motion, but also with his expla-
nation of the rarefaction and condensation of matter:
If air were composed of mathematical points, it would be impossible to explain

how it rarefies or how it is condensed, or compressed, thereafter. For neither is it
possible for a mathematical point to be bigger or smaller; nor is Arriaga right in
explaining condensation by means of an expulsion of corpuscles, and rarefaction
by means of an intrusion, for this contradicts empirical evidence.81
omnes, qui ad impetum, motum naturalem, violentum, et mixtum pertinent, explicantur.

Auctore P. Mousnerio cuncta excerpta ex praelectionibus R.P. Honorati Fabri (Lyon, 1646),
table I, fig. 24, accompanying the explanation on p. 109.
79)
“[…] nam equidem fateor instanti mathematico nihil esse posse minus; secus vero
instanti physico, quod est divisibile potentia, ut dicemus alias,” ibid., 110.
80)
“Facile iuxta hanc hypothesim, omnia quae pertinent ad quantitatem explicantur;
Primo motus velocitas et tarditas. […] Secundo rarefactio, condensatio, compressio,
dilatatio; quia quodlibet punctum potest habere, modo maiorem, modo minorem
extensionem,” Fabri & Mousnier, Metaphysica demonstrativa, 414.
81)
“Si aër constat ex punctis mathematicis, non potest explicari, quomodo rarescat,
vel densetur, vel comprimatur, contra post. Nec enim punctum mathematicum potest
esse maius, vel minus: nec est quod Arriaga explicet condensationem per extrusionem

Fabri thinks that the only possible explanation of the phenomenon of

rarefaction and condensation is the “theory of the inflatable points,”
which Arriaga criticized in his Cursus philosophicus.82 According to this
view, material bodies are composed of physical points of different shapes
that under certain conditions become bigger or smaller. Fabri specifies
that this possibility only applies to humid bodies, for dry bodies are
not subject to rarefaction and condensation.83 In his Physica, id est
scientia rerum corporearum (1669-1670), Fabri expounds his theory
further by explaining that rarefaction and condensation are “real
motions,” which have their principle in heat and cold, respectively.84
Of the four Aristotelian elements, only water and air have the capacity
of expanding and contracting. Both these elements are constituted of
cubic physical points which, under the action of heat or cold, can
change in shape and volume.85 By contrast, the spherical points of earth
and the cylindrical points of fire are not subject to contraction or expan-
sion.86
4.4. Space, Time and Matter Are Composed of Proportional Parts:

Fromondus
Although Fromondus’ main polemical target was, as we have seen, the
theory that space, time and matter were composed of extended minima
of equal size, he criticized also other forms of atomism. In the Labyrin-
thus, he considered the possibility of composing the continuum out of
minima of changing size, but rejected it on the grounds that if indi-
visibles could become bigger or smaller, they would not longer be indi-
visible.87 He also discarded the hypothesis that physical magnitudes
corpusculorum, & rarefactionem per intrusionem, quippe hoc manifestae experien-

tiae repugnat,” ibid., 397. Arriaga’s explanation of rarefaction and condensation is
criticized also ibid., 424.
82)
See ibid., 422.
83)
Ibid., 395.
84)
Honoré Fabri, Physica, id est scientia rerum corporearum, 4 vols. (Lyons, 1669-1670),
1:201-10, 333, 363.
85)
Ibid., 3:154, 188.
86)
Ibid., 3:115, 138-39.
87)
Fromondus, Labyrinthus, 57-58.

were composed of non-extended points, because where there is no

extension there cannot be any matter.88
Having rejected the existence of both extended and unextended indi-
visibles, Fromondus came to the conclusion that continuous magni-
tudes had to be composed of ever divisible parts. The author of the
Labyrinthus was however not willing to endorse Aristotle’s claim that
these parts were finite in act and infinite in potency. Rather, he argued
that space, time, and matter were divisible into an actual infinity of
partes proportionales, proceeding towards ever smaller magnitudes as 1,
½, ¼, and so on.89 Why Fromondus opted for this solution becomes
clear in the last chapter of the Labyrinthus, which is devoted to the two
problematic phenomena of the rarefaction and condensation of matter
and of acceleration and deceleration of motion. Here Fromondus argues
that, although in the natural course of things bodies do not rarefy ad
infinitum, the composition of the continuum out of an infinite number
of proportional parts allows for the possibility that God, in his omnip-
otence, may produce such an endless rarefaction. In order to support
his claim, Fromondus appeals to another, more familiar phenomenon:
God can endlessly rarefy matter, either without form or with a form preternatu-
rally conserved. is can be shown by means of the example of the slowness of
motion: for slowness, being a laxness of parts in successive continua, is very sim-
ilar to rarity in permanent continua.
[…] And just as from the infinite slowness of motion it can be shown that rar-
efaction can proceed endlessly, so from the speed of motion, which can also be
increased in infinitum (for couldn’t God create celestial spheres that were bigger
and bigger ad infinitum and yet able to accomplish a rotation in 24 hours?), we
can show that also condensation, if related to divine virtue, can be without end.90
88)
Ibid., 97-99 (Caput XXXI, Frustra quidam conati inter Aristotelem & Epicurum
medij incedere, negando ullas esse in continuo partes, aut asserendo infinitas, sed indi-
visibiles).
89)
“Si spatij quod pertransitur magnitudo habet partes proportionales infinitas,
quarum una prior est, altera posterior, igitur corpus quod sine replicatione per tale
spatium movetur, debet infinitas partes transire, unam post alteram, partesque in eo
motu successivae erunt etima infinitae: nam unicuique parti spatij permanentis, sua
pars motus successivi respondet,” ibid., 137.
90)
“Deus tamen materiam illam sine forma, aut cum ipsa contra naturam conservata,
potest sine fine rarefacere. Quod etiam exemplo tarditatis in motu possumus decla-
rare: tarditats enim in successivis est quaedam partium laxitas, simillima raritati in

Like his atomist opponents, Fromondus thus regarded the slowness of

motion as a key to understanding the rarefaction of matter, and veloc-
ity as a key to understanding condensation.
5. Conclusion
One of the features that is normally associated with early modern atom-
ism is the tendency to treat space as an autonomous entity, which is
intelligible on its own, independently of the notion of body. What I
have tried to show in this article is that although seventeenth-century
corpuscularians and atomists did often speak about such an ontologi-
cally independent space, they set it off from a physical space to which
they ascribed the same composition as material bodies. Galileo, Sennert,
Basson, Arriaga, Gassendi, Magnen and Fabri subscribed to quite dif-
ferent theories of matter and motion, but what they all had in common
was the assumption, which was stated explicitly as often as implicitly,
that time, space, and matter had the same structure. This assumption,
as we have seen, expressed itself in the choice, which is puzzling to
us but was evidently normal for the philosophical mind-set up to the
second half of the seventeenth century, to regard the acceleration and
deceleration of heavy bodies and the rarefaction and condensation of
matter as phenomena that deserved analogous treatment. As Fabri
explained, rarefaction and condensation, acceleration and deceleration
are “phenomena related to quantity.” And if the magnitudes that un-
dergo the quantitative change are isomorphic, their changes must also
be explained in similar terms.
As I have shown in my introduction, the belief in the existence of
atoms of space, time and motion was also endorsed by the young New-
ton, who in later works however started to distinguish between the
discreteness of matter, on the one hand, and the continuity of space
permanentibus. […]. Veluti autem ex tarditate motus infinita rarefactionem posse

sine fine procedere ostenditur; ita ex velocitate motus, quae etiam in infinitum incre-
scere potest (cur enim Deus caelestes sphaeras ampliores & ampliores sine fine creare
nequeat, quae omnes 24 horarum spatio revolvantur?) ostendere possumus, conden-
sationem, si ad virtutem divinam comparemus, nullum habere finem,” ibid., 191-93
(italics mine).

and time, on the other. Although Newton did not explicitly motivate
this shift, it is reasonable to assume that he abandoned the isomor-
phism-principle when he realized that he could neither renounce to
regarding motion as a continuous process or to believing in the existence
of atoms.
An explicit rejection of the isomorphism of space, time and matter
is instead found in the writings of Leibniz. Both in his correspondence
and in his published works, Leibniz repeatedly observes that the inca-
pacity to distinguish between the structure of abstract magnitudes and
that of substantial things has caused many to get lost in the labyrinth
of the continuum. Particularly instructive, in this respect, is Leibniz’s
reaction to one of Foucher’s comments on the New System.
Extension or space and the surfaces, lines, and points one can conceive in it are
only relations of order or orders of coexistence, both for the actually existing thing
and for the possible thing one can put in its place. us they have no bases of
composition, any more than does number. A number divided, 1/2 for example,
can be further divided into two fourths or four eighths, etc. to infinity, without
our being able to arrive at any smallest fractions or to conceive of the number as
a whole that is formed by the coming together of ultimate elements. […] And one
can say the same for the abstract line. […] But, in actual substantial things, the
whole is a result or coming together of simple substances, or rather of a multitude
of real unities. It is the confusion of the ideal with the actual which has muddled
everything and caused the labyrinth of the composition of the continuum. ose
who make up a line from points have looked for the first elements in ideal things
or relations, something completely contrary to what they should have done; and
those who found that relations like number or space (which contain the order or
relation of possible coexistent things) cannot be formed by the coming together
of points were wrong, for the most part, to deny that substantial realities have first
elements, as if the substantial realities had no primitive unities, or as if there were
no simple substances. However, number and line are not chimerical things, even
though there is no such composition, for they are relations that contain eternal
truths, by which the phenomena of nature are ruled.91
Being the result of the coming together of “real units,” substantial things
must be divisible into their first components. Ideal magnitudes, on the
contrary, are not composed out of first parts and hence their division
91)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, ed. and transl. R. Ariew and D.
Garber (Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1989), 146-7.

is indeterminate. In contrast with seventeenth-century atomists, how-

ever, Leibniz did not regard ideal space as a chimerical entity that
needed to be distinguished from a real, physical space. Space was, for
him, the “relation of order or order of coexistence” of actually existing
things; and as he was to explain in a letter to Varignon of 2 February
1702, “though continuity is something ideal and there is never anything
in nature with perfectly uniform parts, the real, in turn, never ceases to
be governed perfectly by the ideal and the abstract.”92
It would therefore seem as if the hypothesis of a space-matter iso-
morphism appeared equally untenable to Newton, who regarded space
as an absolute entity, ontologically independent from the bodies con-
tained in it, and to Leibniz, for whom space was an ideal entity denot-
ing possible relations of coexistence between objects.
92)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. and transl. L.E.
Loemker (2nd ed., Dordrecht, 1969), 544.

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Early Science and Medicine 16 (2011) 000-000 www.brill.

e Isomorphism of Space, Time and Matter in

Carla Rita Palmerino

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/157338211X585858

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 1 1-7-2011 10:35:57

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 2 1-7-2011 10:35:57

Newton’s thoughts concerning the divisibility of space are far from

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 3 1-7-2011 10:35:57

atomist and corpuscularian thinkers regarded rarefaction and conden-

2. Isomorphism of Space, Time and Matter: An Historical

The same idea is restated in book VI (231b), where Aristotle argues

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 4 1-7-2011 10:35:57

Although in the Physics, Aristotle takes great pains to demonstrate

Aristotle’s theory of the composition of the continuum profoundly

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 5 1-7-2011 10:35:58

The isomorphism of matter, space, time and motion was explicitly

Proposition I: All things are composed of atoms

In postulating the isomorphism of space, time, and matter, the Mutakal-

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 6 1-7-2011 10:35:58

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 7 1-7-2011 10:35:58

In his treatise Autrecourt was at pains to rebut Duns Scotus’

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 8 1-7-2011 10:35:58

3. e Isomorphism of Space and Matter in Seventeenth-century

In the Principia Descartes reiterated his conviction that “there cannot

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 9 1-7-2011 10:35:58

Descartes’ view is often contrasted by scholars with that of Pierre

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 10 1-7-2011 10:35:58

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 11 1-7-2011 10:35:58

Democritus is particularly interesting for our present purpose, as it con-

Magnen goes on to argue that although “extrinsically,” that is to say

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 12 1-7-2011 10:35:58

esting to see that in the Democritus the atomic structure of motion is

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 13 1-7-2011 10:35:58

Figure 1: Basson’s illustration that a ‘diagonal’ is not really a diagonal (Basson,

The majority of seventeenth-century atomists chose however another

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 14 1-7-2011 10:35:58

postulated the composition of space, time and matter out of non-

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 15 1-7-2011 10:35:58

In this passage Galileo makes a distinction between lines “and other

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 16 1-7-2011 10:35:58

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 17 1-7-2011 10:35:58

to the so-called Rota Aristotelis problem. The analysis of this famous

4. Rarefaction and Condensation, Acceleration and Deceleration:

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 18 1-7-2011 10:35:58

4.1. Inﬁnite Atoms, Inﬁnite Degrees of Speed: Galileo

These lines may hide a reference to the Labyrinthus, where Fromondus

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 19 1-7-2011 10:35:58

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 20 1-7-2011 10:35:58

In order to explain condensation, Galileo analyses what happens when

e compacting of inﬁnitely many unquantiﬁable parts without interpenetration

Compromise?,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (1976), 571-88; Homer E. Le Grand,

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 21 1-7-2011 10:35:58

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 22 1-7-2011 10:35:58

4.2. A Discontinuous Matter and a Discontinuous Motion: Arriaga,

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 23 1-7-2011 10:35:58

tarditate motus exactly corresponds to that targeted in the Labyrinthus.59

e human mind is not capable of understanding how it is possible for a contin-

Among the ‘many others’ alluded to by Mersenne were Sébastien Basson

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wheel to demonstrate that all motions having a speed inferior to that

ESM_016_04_02-Palmerino_CS4ME.indd 25 1-7-2011 10:35:58

In order to clarify his hypothesis, Gassendi employs the Rota Aristotelis.

Although he was a staunch supporter of Galileo’s science of motion,