In this article, I analyse the influence of the translation of ἕξις as ‘forma’ in Michael Scot’s Arabic-Latin version of Aristotle’s Physics on a passage of Giordano Bruno’s Figuratio Aristotelici Physici auditus. I take my cues from a passage where Bruno uses the term ‘formae’ to refer to Aristotle’s expression ἕξεις καὶ διαθέσεις (Phys. II 1.193a25-26). I then examine all the 16th-century editions of the Physics Latin translations to trace the use of ‘formae’ as a translation of this Aristotelian passage.
I focus on the 1562 Giunta edition of Aristotle’s opera omnia with Averroes’ commentary, which includes the Arabic translation attributed to Michael Scot, the only one to translate ἕξις as ‘forma’. All occurrences of the translation of ἕξις in the Latin and Arabic translations are also documented. Finally, after a brief accounting of the meaning of ἕξις in Aristotle and in the Arabic version of the Physics, I discuss Bruno Nardi’s interpretation of Albert the Great’s inchoatio formae, to show how Bruno’s use of the translatio Scoti places him in the tradition of ancient and medieval philosophers
who have read the form as a quality of the matter.

This paper examines a specific instance of conceptual and terminological reconfiguration in early modern scholastic Aristotelianism: the case of the Jesuit Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza and his account of materia, tightly interwoven with the positions of fellow Jesuits Francisco Suárez and Rodrigo Arriaga. After reconstructing Hurtado’s position on the ontological status of prime matter, his rejection of the Aristotelian claim that it is pure potency, and his distinction between “physical” and “metaphysical” meanings of materia, we turn to Hurtado’s treatment of the matter-form relation. Hurtado maintains that matter and form’s being could, at least through divine power, be sustained separately. He likewise holds that matter can subsist without categorial quantity while preserving location and the capacity for local motion. We also address the problem of distinct kinds of matter and highlight Hurtado’s speculations concerning the possible existence of a hypothetical form of matter, a purely theoretical distinction that nonetheless remained relevant within early modern cosmological debates.

While it is well known that heat played a dominant role in the development of modern science, the fact that its status had already begun to evolve drastically in earlier periods is much less recognized. Although not pertaining exclusively to the Aristotelian framework, by the late Middle Ages, heat was deeply embedded in the Aristotelian worldview, which dominated much of Western natural philosophy. In this framework, heat was classified as a fundamental quality, interacting with other elemental qualities in natural processes. In Aristotle’s system, heat, along with cold, wet, and dry, was part of a theory of contrariety that explained change and transformation in the natural world: this is the aspect of Aristotle’s theory of heat that is privileged in this paper. In the early modern period, unlike concepts such as ‘substantial form’, which were discredited by modern science, heat persisted but underwent a profound ontological shift. No longer a positive entity, it came to be understood as a process, specifically a form of motion, marking a decisive departure from medieval interpretations.
This study traces the pre-history of this transition by analyzing how the notion of positive contrariety between heat and cold was progressively dismantled in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. First, it examines the shift from a binary model of contrariety to a relative scale of thermal properties. Second, it discusses Cardano’s critique of the Aristotelian view of cold as a positive contrary, which stimulated significant debate. Finally, it explores how redefinitions of resistance in the 16th century further undermined the traditional model, paving the way for mechanistic and empirical approaches that culminated in modern thermodynamics.

Since Antiquity, scholars have sought to explain the cause of agnetic ‘attraction’ through diverse theories, which raised questions as to whether the magnet attracts iron or vice versa, or if both entities play equal roles. Aristotle himself avoided the notorious question of how magnetic attraction works: his commentators and critics made good for this lacuna. Medieval theories predominantly posited that iron moved towards the magnet for teleological reasons. Medical and alchemical authors in turn emphasized the magnet’s active attraction of iron, while only a minority believed in the iron’s active attraction of the stone. The seventeenth century saw William Gilbert establish an account of reciprocal attraction between the iron and the magnet. These causal representations, rather than being empirically grounded, were often rooted in natural-philosophical or metaphysical assumptions, especially Aristotle’s causal principle of motion. A fierce controversy about the ‘correct’ account of the causal roles in magnetic attraction grounded, prepared and partly overshadowed the debates on how to explain magnetism. This article will shed light on this little-known controversy. It offers a more balanced account of the tacit and salient impact of Aristotelian natural philosophy by providing a framework that enabled different theories to contradict each other – until even this framework dissolved during the seventeenth century.

The terminology of “auditory species” was prevalent in theories of sound and hearing from Antiquity to the Early Modern period for its use in explaining the intermediary stages of sound propagation and perception. Its very existence, however, was a topic of extensive debate among the scholastics. Each tried to square their account with Aristotle’s mention of “sensible forms” in De an. II 12, while going far beyond Aristotle’s text and looking for opportunities for creative interpretation of the terminology, as Aristotle himself never clearly defined what they are, nor specified their way of generation and existence in the medium and the sense organs. With regard to auditory perception, the most general account holds that auditory species proceed from the sounding object to the ears, where they are captured by the sensory faculty. Over the centuries, the terminology and general account have remained in use, yet the specific ideas behind them have changed dramatically. In this paper, I shall point out three distinct ways of putting auditory species to use in 16thand 17th-century authors differently connected to the Aristotelian tradition, namely the Coimbra commentators, the Prager theologian Rodrigo de Arriaga, and the German medical professor Christoph Günther Schelhammer. I argue that the terminology of auditory species can be creatively accommodated to an astoundingly wide spectrum of philosophical frameworks that have different takes on the gradation of materiality, the mode of interaction between the material and the immaterial, and the nature of air motion that contributes to sound generation and propagation.

The present study examines the relationship between cosmology, Aristotelian notions of the eternity of the world, and materialism in Renaissance thought, focusing on the influence of Averroes and its reception in Giordano Bruno. The medieval debate between al-Ghazali and Averroes on ‘creation’ versus ‘eternalism’, transmitted through Latin translations, forms the starting point for exploring the re-emergence of these themes in Renaissance Aristotelianism and heterodox traditions.
Bruno’s work is of particular interest in this regard, as his cosmology integrates Aristotelian and Averroist notions of eternal matter with Neoplatonic and Cusanian motifs. This integration gives rise to his famous doctrine of infinite worlds, universal animation, and an immanent unity of matter and form. The analysis draws upon Ernst Bloch’s concept of ‘cosmological materialism’ in order to situate Bruno’s philosophy within a broader historical trajectory of materialist thought. The essay posits the argument that Bruno’s work represents a radicalisation of Averroistic ideas, including the notion of the productive potentiality of matter and the denial of creation ex nihilo. Additionally, it introduces innovations that are linked to post-Copernican cosmology and monistic immanentism. In doing so, Bruno both inherits and transforms themes of the ‘Aristotelian Left’, reshaping them into a vision where necessity, infinity, and vitality converge in an eternal, animated universe.

In the Aristotelian tradition, the relationship with Aristotle’s treatment of infinity has always been ambiguous for reasons connected to theology, creation, and natural philosophy. Scholastic philosophy generally rejects the existence of real infinities in the created world, while recognising potential infinities in the doctrine of the continuum, in line with Aristotle’s views on this matter. According to this view, there is no infinite power or greatness in the world. Nevertheless, notable developments emerge in which this orthodoxy is questioned, and the possibility that God could produce an actual infinity in terms of quantity, number, or intensity becomes widespread among later scholastics – such infinist approaches sometimes drawing on highly interpretative readings of Aristotle’s own thinking. Alongside these examples of internal development, the concept of the natural infinite – the presence of infinity in nature – becomes a source of tension between the new philosophy and Aristotelianism at the beginning of the modern era, even when a general framework or vocabulary of Aristotelian descent is maintained. Such a multifaceted subject could not be exhausted in a few pages, so we will only discuss two emblematic examples: a 16th-century literary celebrity and a 17th-century mathematician and philosopher.
Despite being as different as possible, they are both signs of an interesting dependence on Aristotelian concepts and terminology, even while moving away from and fundamentally distorting the framework they were cast in.