The Shadow Within Nature: Epistemology and Ontology of Prime Matter in the Late Middle Ages (1250-1430)

The proposed research is centred on an ontological and epistemological shadow posited within nature by medieval philosophers: the shadow cast by prime matter. The project will investigate a later medieval (ca. 1250-1430) debate that lies at the heart of hylomorphism, the theory that every bodily thing is made of matter and form. Medieval thinkers postulated the existence of a basic and primordial matter of which the corporeal universe is made. While a form expresses the structure making any thing what it is, prime matter is the potential substratum hosting the forms. Accordingly, prime matter has no form or qualification: it cannot be said that it exists properly, nor it can be known per se. Medieval thinkers, however, ascribed to this entity the role of principle of nature. But how can something that is unknowable be a pillar of our understanding of the natural world? And how can something deprived of actual existence be the enduring subject of natural change? The proposed research will address these central philosophical questions. Focusing on the most influential late medieval thinkers, the project will reconstruct the ontological debate on prime matter by means of epistemology – a completely new angle allowing an overall reassessment of the issue. As a consequence, the project will provide a new interpretation of the medieval discussion on matter and new historical ground for the contemporary debate in metaphysics and philosophy of science.