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Yeda'aya ha-Penini's Unusual Conception of Void

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Ruth Glasner
Ruth Glasner
Affiliation:
Program in the History and Philosophy of Science The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Abstract

It was commonly accepted in the middle ages that void within or outside the world is impossible. The paper presents a quite unusual conception of void, which is described in Yeda'aya ha-Penini's commentary on Ibn Rushd's epitome on Aristotle's Physics. According to this conception there is a thin layer of void between the water and the inner surface of the container. Ha-Penini describes two versions of this conception. According to one version this void layer is three-dimensional but thin, according to the other it is two-dimensional. The first part of the paper shows how ha-Penini “corrects” the text of Ibn Rushd, putting into it ideas which were unknown to Ibn Rushd. It is argued that, though the two views are rejected by Ibn Rushd, ha-Penini himself partly accepts (his version of) these views. The second part of the paper argues that ha-Penini could not have found these views in the Arabic-Hebrew tradition, and it seems that he relied on Christian sources. If this is indeed so, the paper presents an example of acquaintance of Hebrew scholars in southern France with Scholastic science in the first half of the fourteenth century.

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Article
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Science in Context , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1997 , pp. 453 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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