Matter and infinity in Robert Grosseteste’s De luce and Notes on the Physics

This paper explores Robert Grosseteste’s doctrine of matter, with a focus on how it involves the issue of infinite replicability. In Grosseteste’s treatise De luce, prime matter is a dimensionless entity capable of expansion induced by the infinite multiplication of light, which is the first corporeal form. Consequently, the union of matter and form is intended as the first substantial change that happened at the beginning of time, namely the generation of the physical body of the universe. In the Notes on the Physics, Grosseteste develops this notion by introducing the idea of an infinite passive replicability of matter and an infinite active replicability of form as something that explains the difference between the Pythagorean and the Platonic views of physical bodies. The principle of infinite multiplication, therefore, works as source of every substantial change and justifies Grosseteste’s typical shifts from mathematics to natural philosophy. Moreover, it allows him to respond to the criticism that Aristotle addressed to the theories of body as made of indivisible entities.