earthly substances, collocating them in their species and genera. Fifthly,
there are the accidental forms of objects, which provide information about
the substances in which they inhere (CPA 224, 142–8).
The close interweaving of science and metaphysics is displayed clearly in
one of Grosseteste’s most original contributions, his theory of light,
expounded in the Hexaemeron and also in a sep arate treatise, On Light. Light,
he maintained, was the Wrst corporeal form to be created: it unites with
prime matter to form a simple dimensionless substance. In the Wrst
moment of time this simple substance spread instantaneously to the
furthest bounds of the universe, creating tridimensionality. From the
outermost sphere, the Wrmament, it returned inward, creating one after
the other nine celestial spheres, of which the ninth is the sphere of the
moon. From this sphere light travelled earthward, and produced four
terrestrial spheres of Wre, air, water, and earth as it moved to our world,
where it produced the four familiar elements.
So far we have a physical theory; but Grosseteste at once moves into
theology. Light is the natural essence that most closely imitates the divine
nature: like God it can create, unaided, from within itself; like God it can
Wll the universe from a single point (Hex. 8. 4. 7). Of all creatures it is the
closest to being pure form and pure act (Hex. 11. 2. 4). Indeed God himself is
eternal light, and the angels are incorporeal lights; God is a universal form
of everything, not by uniting with matter, but as the exemplar of all forms.
It is only by the light of God, the supreme Truth, that the human intellect
can attain to truth of any kind.
Metaphysics and science are intermingled also in the work of Albert the
Great, the Wrst German philosopher. In his work, however, science occu-
pies a more substantial proportion. Born in Swabia in the Wrst years of the
thirteenth century, Albert studied arts in Padua and became a Dominican
in 1223. He taught theology at Paris from 1245 to 1248, having among his
pupils the young Thomas Aquinas, whom he took with him to Cologne in
1248 to establish a new house of studies. Thenceforth Cologne was his
principal base until his death in 1280, though he moved around as provin-
cial of the German Dominicans (1254–7), bishop of Ratisbon (1260–2), and
preacher of St Louis IX’s crusade.
Albert was the Wrst of the scholastics to give a wholehearted welcome to
the newly translated works of Aristotle. After commenting, as a theolo-
gian, on Lombard’s Sentences, he wrote commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethics,
THE SCHOOLMEN
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