Introduction

Absolute conceptions of knowledge and being are characteristic of all important positions of ancient philosophy. These conceptions molded the ideas of physical reality, but they are incompatible with physics as it was built up in the revolution of the natural sciences during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The foundations of the scientific revolution were laid in earlier centuries. For Duns Scotus, physics was not a dominating interest as semantics and logic were, but it is still of interest to pay attention to a number of physical themes within a wider philosophical context. Moreover, in contrast to the other subjects (with the exception of ethics (Wolter) and ontology (Honnefelder)), we have a major and brilliant monograph on the subject, written by Richard Cross.

We start with Duns Scotus' theory of matter (§10.2). Even in this day and age, matter is not a subject dear to modern theology, but long before Van Ruler stressed that both ends of the ontological spectrum – God and matter – share the common property of impeccability, the medieval theory of matter had already moved with the times. Long before Duns Scotus, the pure potentiality theory of matter was a minority opinion in the West, but Duns not only dropped matter as the principle of individuation, he also elaborated on more complex theories of matter and individuality (see Chapter 11). Matter is not something negative, let alone something dirty, for it exists in its own right, not as a non-being facet of being.