Matter's activity and impenetrability in Francis Bacon, Francis Glisson and Henry More

SILVIA MANZO

Groningen

Workshop; Early Modern Matter Theories; 2017

University of Groningen

As a number of scholarly studies have noted (Henry, 1987; Crocker, 2003; Reid, 2012, etc.) in a scholium appended to Ad V.C. Epistola altera (1677) Henry More exposes a critique of the ?hylozoistic? philosophy contained in Baruch Spinoza?s Tractatus Theologico-politicus (1670). Furthermore, he associates the Spinozistic views with the natural philosophy of the prominent English physician, Francis Glisson. Regardless of the intentions of Spinoza and Glisson, More sees in their assumptions on matter and motion hints of atheism. Particularly in the case of Glisson, More refutes one by one a number of motions described in his Tractatus de natura substantiae energetica, seu de vita naturae (1672), for being supported on a wrong conception of substance as endued with an energetic nature. What makes this confrontation more interesting is that Glisson?s account of motion is an adaptation of Francis Bacon?s classification of motions presented in the Novum Organum (1620). One of the motions attacked by More is the motion of resistance to annihilation or antitypia (which he calls ?motion of solidity?). Although in Democritus Platonissans (1647) More denies that antitypia is an essential property of matter, he later identifies this term with the impenetrability that he ascribes to matter?s essence, more specifically to the atoms of which bodies are composed (Reid, 2012). According to More, matter occupies a place in extension which, in contrast to spiritual extension, cannot be penetrated. In fact, More tends to define bodies not simply in terms of extension but also in terms of impenetrability. By drawing on this fundamental property of matter he finds a line of argument to support the existence of spiritual extension: in contrast to corporeal extension, spiritual extension is said to be penetrable. Interestingly, the concept of antitypia plays also a central role in Bacon?s natural philosophy as fundamental to matter and inserts into a corpuscularian view, like in More?s account. The aim of this paper is to expose and compare Bacon?s, Glisson?s and More?s stances towards matter?s activity and impenetrability. In doing so it attempts to trace the complex transition of some characteristic components of early modern views of matter and motion in different intellectual contexts and philosophical settings.