-
Chapter 4: The (Re)Balance of Nature, ca. 1250-1350
- University of Notre Dame Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
chapter four The (Re)Balance of Nature, ca. 1250–1350 Joel Kaye My purpose in this essay is to provide evidence for a series of claims: that balance has a history; that between approximately 1250 and 1350 a markedly new sense of what constituted balance emerged within the discipline of scholastic natural philosophy; and that by the end of this period this new sense of the form and potentialities of balance underlay the most innovative and forward-looking university speculations on nature.1 Over this time period, medieval natural philosophers , working primarily from an Aristotelian inheritance, developed a conception of nature as a richly complex, interconnected whole—a meta-system composed of numerous interconnected subsystems , each, in turn, composed of numerous functioning bodies and parts, moving and finding meaning in relation to each other and to the functioning whole. Central to this conception was the belief that each system and subsystem (from nature as a whole to the smallest constituent functioning bodies) maintained itself in what we would today term a state of “balance” or “dynamic equilibrium.” I stress today because medieval thinkers never used the terms for balance and equilibrium in this way. 85 For medieval thinkers the words “balance” and “equilibrium” (bilanx , aequilibrium, and their cognates) rarely escaped or transcended their original ties to the common mechanical scale (Lat., bilanx) and the simple equalities (two balanced equal weights) that the scale was designed to measure.2 In the medieval period the terms had not yet gained the metaphorical and mathematical breadth they enjoy today when we routinely speak of fields, systems, or multiple forces “in balance ” or “in equilibrium.” From the evidence of the Oxford English Dictionary , it is only long after the medieval period (primarily in the last two centuries) that the words “balance” and “equilibrium” have commonly come to describe a dynamic state in which multiple objects and forces are systematically ordered and integrated within a relational field.3 Both the phrase and the concept of a “balance of nature,” so common in the present day, were unknown in the period 1250–1350. The first English use of this phrase (as cited in the OED) occurs surprisingly late, in 1909. The first use that actually conforms to our modern sense is found in 1923, by H.G. Wells, and even then it appears in the context of science fiction.4 And yet I want to argue that the sense conveyed by the phrase “balance of nature” was very much alive and active in scientific speculation, avant la lettre, from the ancient world through the premodern period. With the terms “balance” and “equilibrium” expressing little more than the notion of a simple equality between two weights, and in the absence of any direct equivalents, Latin thinkers used a cluster of related words and terms centered on notions of equality and equalization (which I define here as the process of attaining or maintaining equality) to convey many (although not all) of the meanings we today attach to the word “balance.” Belonging to this cluster are medium, medietas , mediocritas, aequalitas, aequitas, aequus, aequare, aequabilis, aequivalentia , adaequatio, adaequare, proportionalitas, proportionare, and related forms.5 The frequency and plasticity with which these words were used indicates that the absence in the medieval period of specific terms to carry the rich meanings of our modern “balance” and “equilibrium” in no way speaks to the parallel absence of many of the senses now captured by these words. But it is not only the meanings and uses of the word “balance” that have changed. This is true for countless other words. Balance, I want to argue, is different, and positing its change over time poses unique 86 Joel Kaye [35.168.113.41] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 15:03 GMT) problems and questions. For one thing, in our common understanding , balance is tied to a generalized sense —our physical awareness of our bodies and selves within our environment—a sense that seems to exist beneath consciousness and thus resists the notion that it might be historically or culturally modified. Similarly, balance is often used to designate a larger feeling for how objects and spaces are or ought to be arranged, for how things properly fit and work together in the world. This last usage extends to an exceedingly wide range of subjects but is particularly central to discourses on politics, ethics, aesthetics, and the analysis of nature. It extends from profound speculations on the cosmic order down to our...