 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode... Animal, Vegetable, Mineral – Albert the Great's Natural Philosophy What do Alexander the Great and Winnie the Pooh have in common? Their middle name. And the same goes for the subject of today's episode, who has something else in common with both of them. Like Alexander, he had a close working relationship with Aristotle. And like Winnie the Pooh, he was interested in exploring the animal world, and went so far as to undertake a personal inspection of beehives, though as far as I'm aware, his voluminous writings never mention a heffalump. Nor did he restrict his research to animals. Indeed, there was little or nothing in the universe that escaped his interest. Apt, then, that he was known as the Universal Doctor, and already honored in his own time with the title Albertus Magnus, Albert the Great. The admiration was, however, less universal than the scope of Albert's intellectual ambitions. Roger Bacon believed he was, if not a bear of very little brain, then a master of very little training. Albert, heard no philosophy and was not taught by anyone, complained Bacon, and was one of many authors to write in Latin, who was misled by the poor standard of translations into this language, having himself no facility in Greek or Arabic. There is a grain of truth in these harsh judgments, in that Albert did not enjoy the sort of education Bacon would have seen as indispensable for work in natural philosophy. He hailed from Lauingen in Svebia, though his career would later give him a particularly strong connection to Cologne. Born around the turn of the 13th century, Albert joined the Dominican order as a young man, by which time he was living in Padua. Though he was a student here, he was not trained in the cutting-edge Aristotelian philosophy so valued by Bacon. His precocious interest in the natural world had to be satisfied largely through independent investigation and observation. He would not come to Paris, and be exposed to the intellectual currents of university life there, until the 1240s. Nonetheless, he was deemed an outstanding enough mind to be made the first Dominican master of theology at Paris, which makes him the counterpart of the Franciscan master, Alexander of Hales. During his time at Paris, Albert acquired a student, whose name would eventually eclipse his, Thomas Aquinas. Though the two would not see eye to eye on every issue, Albert's intense interest in Aristotelian philosophy was certainly passed on to his illustrious student. In fact, Thomas accompanied Albert to Cologne in 1248, and was the one to write down the notes on Albert's lectures on Aristotle's ethics. In response to requests from fellow Dominicans, Albert then undertook an ambitious project. He would write about the entirety of Aristotelian natural philosophy, dealing not just with the principles of physics, but more specific topics like the heavens, animals, plants, and even minerals. Albert thus took up Aristotle's natural philosophy in its full scope and ambition, something that had not been done, except in the Islamic world, since Aristotle's own colleague Theophrastus. So impressive is this feat, that I'm going to devote an entire episode to it. In the next episode, we'll turn to Albert's ideas in metaphysics, which paved the way for Aquinas's own theories. But, just to finish off the story of his life, I must mention that in 1260, Albert was appointed bishop of Regensburg, a beautiful city located on the Danube River. He lived there for only one year, which is something I have in common with him. I lived in Regensburg for the same length of time, but more than 700 years after Albert did, with the result that I wasn't able to meet him. Albert did not relish the duties of a bishop, and persuaded the pope to accept his resignation. He first joined the papal curia, but eventually found his way back to Cologne, where he would spend his final years dying in 1280, by which time he'd outlived his most famous student by six years. Perhaps it was Albert's close study of plant life that enabled him to live to such a ripe old age. His investigations in this sphere deserve special praise, because as he noted himself, the ancient tradition gave him relatively little to go on. There was a work called On Plants, falsely ascribed to Aristotle, actually by Nicholas of Damascus. There was ancient literature on agriculture, and medical writings that discussed the uses of certain plants. Still, Albert was obligated to supplement this material with observations he'd made himself, but he would have done so anyway. He was as committed as his critic Roger Bacon to the centrality of experience in natural philosophy. All our knowledge is grounded in sensation, and one can reach the universal truths envisioned in Aristotelian philosophy only on the strength of individual observations. Even when it came to something as humble as plants, Albert was not going to be satisfied with anything less than full-blown science. His own work On Plants emphasizes that he does not share the medical doctor's practical aims. He wants to put the philosophy back into this branch of natural philosophy. And that means understanding real branches, along with all the other parts of plants. He also carefully distinguishes between kinds of plants, while admitting that the dividing lines between types can be blurry. And he seeks to identify the essential and accidental parts of each plant type. Thorns, for instance, are mere accidental growths, whereas other parts of a plant belong to its very nature. He draws parallels between plant parts and animal parts. Plant sap is a source of warmth for the organism, like blood in animals. Knots and trees are like digestive organs, while the wood is analogous to flesh and the bark to skin. The features that distinguish the various species of plant, and Albert lists about 400 of them, can often be explained in brute material terms. The shape of a leaf will be caused by the proportion of watery and earthy constituents in the plant matter, with wetter ingredients causing the leaves to spread out like water does. On the other hand, a role must also be given to the heavens, which have a particularly powerful effect on plants because they are so simple. Here, Albert would be thinking of such phenomena as seasonal crop cycles. This is a pervasive feature of Albert's natural philosophy. He not only writes treatises about the heavens, but also thinks the celestial bodies exert influence over the generation of plants, animals, and humans. Monstrous births and deformities are a good example. In general, they result from matters failure to take on the nature of an animal or human properly. Since it is matter that is to blame, these monstrosities do not detract from the universality of natural philosophy. Often, matter refuses to cooperate because the heavens have worked some malign influence. As usual, Albert also mentions his own experiences on this topic, reporting on deformed births which he puts down to astrological causes, and on conversations he had with midwives about the phenomenon. Albert mentions the case of a pig born with the head of a human, something that could not be explained through normal biological functioning, and thus must be put down to heavenly influence. You may snort with disbelief at his gullibility, but after all we do think that humans can be pig-headed, so why not the reverse? This shows that Albert had something else in common with Winnie the Pooh, an interest in piglets. And speaking of pork products, also with Roger Bacon, given that he too was an enthusiastic believer in astral influence. In the later medieval and renaissance tradition, the two were brought even closer together. Alchemical and astrological treatises were spuriously ascribed to Albert, and he was even said to have taught alchemy to Bacon. But actually Albert did not stray too far from Aristotle in the direction of the so-called occult sciences. In his authentic works, he dismissed the claims of alchemy, agreeing with Avicenna that alchemists can only produce something that looks like gold, but is not really gold. Characteristically, he cited his own experience. He repeatedly tried firing a golden metal produced by an alchemist, and found that it broke down into dross instead of melting as it ought to. As for astrology, he admitted the possibility of such feats as predicting lifespan on the basis of a birth horoscope. But usually he invokes the stars in what we would see as more scientific settings, as in his treatment of the rising and possible shifting of the seas. Albert was aware of claims that the oceans and seas had changed location over time. There was very convincing evidence that this is the case, such as the discovery of an ancient ship's rudder buried deep under now-dry ground. Of course, the phenomenon is a genuine one. Unfortunately, the explanation offered for it was false. It was proposed that changes in the position of the stars, over long periods of time, brought about the shifting of the seas. Albert disagrees, arguing that the cycles of the planetary movements are regular, so that we should see the seas moving progressively across the earth as centuries go by, something that would certainly have been noted in recorded history. On the other hand, he admits that floods, like the one that deluged the whole earth in Noah's day, are caused by the heavens, and in particular by astral conjunctions. Then there's the evident phenomenon of the rising and falling tide. Again, and this time correctly, Albert puts this down to the influence of the moon. He even says that the moon causes tide to rise like a magnet pulling iron, which is remarkably close to the truth. Unfortunately, he then adds a more detailed and entirely spurious explanation, namely that the moon is causing vapor under the water to expand, which makes the sea level rise. As these examples show, Albert was not interested only in living things, but also in what we can, in his case quite literally, call the elements. Another of his treatises on natural philosophy deals with minerals, which he divides into stones and metals. It's in this context that he makes his skeptical remarks concerning alchemy. You might think that here the role of the heavens would be minimal, but in fact Albert thinks that stones are formed precisely when celestial influence causes earthy matter to condense, which always requires the admixture of at least some moisture to hold the stone together. Metals, by contrast, are produced through the concentration of vapor that has escaped from within the hollows of the earth. Albert also retails some rather fanciful claims about minerals, speaking of their healing properties and other effects we might deem magical, a belief he shares with his fellow German thinker Hildegard of Bingen. But as ever, he draws impressively on his own experience. He may for instance be the first author to note the poisonous effects of mercury. You may be wondering how Albert had the opportunity to observe nature so carefully, since you're probably imagining him holed up in a university scriptorium or Dominican house. But as it happens, it was precisely his life as a Dominican that gave him the chance to see the world up close. As a mendicant, he always undertook his travels on foot. Given the many cities in which he lived and worked, that meant a lot of walking. He was a peripatetic philosopher in every sense of the word. Albert didn't just keep his eyes open while on the road though, he made active inquiries, as with his interviewing of midwives and testing of fake gold. He did the same when it came to the animal world, inspecting ants, bees' hives, and my favorite example, having himself lower down a rock face to examine an eagle's nest. As with plants and minerals, Albert was a pioneer in revisiting the topic of zoology, a major interest of Aristotle's that had been largely dropped ever since, with the exception of authors in the Islamic world like Avicenna. Naturally enough, the animal that most interested Albert was the human. He discussed human nature in various places, including a dedicated treatise called simply On the Human Being. It combines a detailed philosophical consideration of the soul's relation to the body, with some theological speculations concerning Adam and Eve, all arranged in the form of disputed questions. As usual, Albert draws extensively on Aristotle while also paying due respect to the opinions of Augustine and other church authorities. But the most decisive influence on his theory of soul is Avicenna. Albert follows him by outlining two ways of thinking about the soul. On the one hand, there is Aristotle's idea that the soul is the form of the body, in the sense that it is the body's act or perfection. On the other hand, there is the soul, considered as a substance in its own right, which can even survive bodily death. As observed a generation earlier by John Blund, these two points of view on the soul belong respectively to the physicist and the metaphysician. In physics, or natural philosophy, we grasp the soul through the activities it manifests in the body. In metaphysics, we understand soul as it is in itself, rather than approaching it through its effects. The contrast may be borrowed most immediately from Avicenna, but it echoes a long-standing Platonist approach to human nature, according to which our true selves are immaterial and immortal even if they have acquired an intimate relationship with corruptible bodies. And indeed, Albert is enough of a Platonist to say that the human, as such, is nothing but intellect. On the other hand, this is scholastic philosophy so there's always an on the other hand, Albert doesn't want to go too far in this Platonist direction. In particular, he resists the idea that the soul has only a casual or accidental relation to the body. To avoid this, he rejects Plato's idea that the soul already existed before coming into the body, and emphasizes the soul's essential tendency or inclination to join a body. This in fact is what distinguishes the human soul from an angel which has no such inclination. Albert also rejects a popular argument in favor of the substantiality of the human soul. We've seen that many 13th century thinkers followed Im Gabyrol in holding that all created things, including the soul, consist of both matter and form. This would have the significant advantage of making soul a hok aliquid, or this something, as the scholastics put it. Anything that combines matter and form would be a substance in its own right, even if the matter at stake is so-called spiritual matter. Albert associates this idea with Plato as well as with Im Gabyrol. Against both of them, he insists on a more Aristotelian way of looking at things. The soul may have potentialities and powers, and in fact it needs the body to exercise many of these, but we should not confuse potentiality with materiality. So, while it's true that all things other than God have potentialities, which they may or may not use, this does not mean that the soul or angels have matter. In fact, Albert will even admit that insofar as the soul is conceived as a form, it remains incomplete without its body, for as a form, it is nothing but a source of bodily activities like nutrition or sensation. Obviously, it needs the body as an instrument to carry out those activities and realize its potential. Just as obviously, when the body dies, the opportunity to do so is lost. But the soul survives, because it is also a substance in its own right. Its activities are destroyed while it lives on, like a blacksmith who can survive the destruction of his anvil and hammer. One reason for Albert to demote the lower functions of soul to mere activities realized in a body is that there is one further theory he wants to avoid. It's one we've seen in Peter Olivey and Robert Kilwardby that there are a plurality of forms in every single human. Like Aquinas after him, Albert instead insists that the soul is a single substance and act. In fact, early in his career he claims that the whole human soul arrives in the body as a unity bestowed directly by God. This would mean that the generation of human souls is totally unlike what happens with other animals. The soul of a giraffe would emerge from material causes, whereas human souls would come from outside the physical realm entirely. As Albert begins to read more deeply in Aristotelian zoology though, he becomes dissatisfied with this story. He comes to think that the lower part of the human soul emerges from the matter provided by a pregnant mother receiving form from the father, just as in other animal species. Yet, the power of intellect still needs to be given to the human directly by God. In other words, you've got your sense faculties and your ability to digest food from your parents along with your eye color, but you've got your mind from God. Despite its double origin, Albert continues to insist that the soul is a single form, and not a collection of forms enabling us to perform different activities. To the objection that a single form could never produce such varied results, Albert can respond that the variety results from the disparate nature of the body. Soul uses a subtle spirit pervading the entire body as an intermediary through which it expresses its activities in that body. These activities are then further diversified by the bodily organs. This is a pattern of thinking that arises repeatedly in Albert. A single cause can give rise to many different effects by using various recipients as intermediaries. Take his theory of celestial influence, which has been a running theme in this episode. Albert thinks the planets affect our lower world by means of light, but he also knows that bodies like the moon get their light from the sun. So, why don't we always just see the same sort of effects that would be produced by sunlight, instead of finding that the different celestial bodies have different effects? For instance, the moon has a particular effect on moisture, as demanded in astrological theory, which is why it is closely connected to the tides. The reason is that the light of the sun is absorbed by the moon and takes on a special lunar character before being passed on to the seas or an unfortunate pig embryo. Albert uses the same kind of account in an even more exalted part of his philosophy. When he comes to explain how a simple god could give rise to such a bewilderingly complex world, he suggests that god's effect is nothing other than simple being. This being is, however, diversified by the essences of the things god creates. But I'll shed more light on the universal doctor's attempt to explain the origin of the universe next time, as we continue to look at Albert the Great, here on the History of Philosophy, without any gaps.