Introduction

Tutorial 1. The Nature of Natural Philosophy

Essay question: Why did Aristotelian philosophy retain its position of strength in the universities throughout the first half of the seventeenth century?

Introduction. The four tutorials in SS 13 study four different 'sites of science' characteristic of the seventeenth century: the university, the city, the court, and the new scientific academies and societies.  This tutorial focusses on the style of 'science' indigenous to the university: natural philosophy

Prescribed sources: More specifically, this tutorial explores how natural philosophy was taught in Oxford in 1600 by reference to (1) a few brief texts from Aristotle, (2) the leading introductory textbook on the physics of Aristotle produced in Oxford in this period, (3) a more advanced textbook illustrating the kinds of questions disputed in the Schools, (4) the Laudian Statutes of 1636 governing studies for the bachelor’s degree, and (5) a typical series of tutor’s instructions on how to organise one’s undergraduate studies. 

1. Aristotle, (a) Physics II.1, III and IV (extracts) and (b) On the Heavens (Oster, Science in Europe, 1500-1800: A Primary Source Reader, section 1.2, pp. 8-15.
2. John Case, Ancilla philosophiae seu epitome in octo libros physicorum Aristotelis (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1599): 10 pages freshly translated on Canvas.
3. John Case, Lapis philosophicus seu commentarius in 8o libros physicorum Aristotelis in quo arcana physiologiae examinantur (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1599), frontispiece and pp. 190-4: book II, ch. 1: an example of a disputation on an issue related to Physics II.1 (1.a above) on Canvas.
4. Oxford University Statutes, translated by G. R. M. Ward, Volume 1: Containing the Caroline Code, or Laudian Statues, promulgated A.D. 1636 (London, 1845), 7, 10, 13-15, 20-25, 27-29, 35-6, 43-4, 47-8, 78-9, 85, 86, 117-19, on Canvas.
5. Richard Holdsworth(?), ‘Directions for a Student at the Universitie’, in Harris Francis Fletcher, The Intellectual Development of John Milton, vol. 2: The Cambridge University Period, 1625-32 (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1961), Appendix II, 623-64, specifically pp. 624, 634-6, 641, 643, 645, 649-52, on Weblearn: prescribed passages Canvas.

Leading questions. What sort of ‘science’ was taught in Oxford c. 1600?  How was it taught?  Where did it fit within the university curriculum as a whole?  And how did that curriculum, those teaching practices, and indeed the established methods of teaching about the natural world in particular shape the built environment of Oxford itself in this period? 

Resources for answering these questions take several different forms.

Tour of central Oxford. Before the 1480s, the centre of the University was the Church of St Mary the Virgin.  Since the 1740s, its visual focus has been Radcliffe Square, a space previously filled with modest houses.  Midway between these two dates, between 1598 and 1637, most of the functions of the University were transferred to a gradually expanding structure known today as the Bodleian Library.  Retracing the sequence in which those buildings were constructed, and examining some of their principal features, offers a vivid means of gaining familiarity with many of the most basic assumptions and conceptions underlying the purpose of knowledge and the means of obtaining it during the seventeenth century. The introductory module, Structures of Learning, is designed for this purpose.

The Schools Quadrangle, the University curriculum, and the Laudian statutes of 1636. The heart of the Bodleian Library, namely the Schools Quadrangle, offers perhaps the most perfect architectural embodiment anywhere of the university curriculum which was shared, with relatively minor variations, from one end of Europe to the other.  This curriculum is laid down in the University statutes which were recodified in 1636, one year before the Bodleian reached its definitive form.  The statutes can therefore provide an exactly contemporary commentary on the both these buildings and the activities which they were built to support.

A Fresher’s Handbook, c. 1640. In order to understand how the formal requirements of the statutes were delivered in practice, a more informal and unofficial set of guidelines is needed.  These are provided by the most accessible surviving set of ‘Directions for a Student at the Universitie’, which lay down a plan of study spanning the full four years of study needed to become a bachelor of arts.  Although the ‘Universitie’ in question is Cambridge rather than Oxford, the date of this document is again the immediately before the outbreak of the civil wars.

Two physics textbooks: introductory and intermediate. For a closer understanding of what kind of ‘science’ was taught and how it was taught, we need to turn to the physics textbooks produced by Oxford’s leading philosopher in the decades before 1600, John Case (1540/41?–1600).  As fellow of St John’s College for the final third of the sixteenth century, he published the most comprehensive series of English textbooks in this period on most of the main branches of the Aristotelian cursus philosophicus: logic, ethics, politics, economics and physics.  Moreover, in the case of natural philosophy, Case left behind both an introductory textbook for rank beginners (the Ancilla philosophiae) and a more advanced textbook for intermediate students (the Lapis philosophicus) both published for the first time on the eve of the new century, in 1599.

Visual material associated with this topic is therefore minimal and purely illustrative, with the exception of the frontispiece to Case's Lapis philosophicus, which is a prescribed source.

Image: Entrance to the Schola naturalis philosophiae, Schools Quadrangle (1613-24), Oxford. Photo: Howard Hotson, 25 Feb. 2017.