Introduction. Understanding Parts and Wholes: Medieval Mereology and Early Modern Matters

This Introduction provides some conceptual guidelines on the two intertwined topics covered by this section. On the one hand, it sets out some of the main notions of the medieval debate on parts and wholes. It stresses notably that, if medieval philosophers were aware of the whole-parts problem and elaborated complex and refined metaphysical doctrines to account for it, Renaissance and early modern philosophy also likely elaborated and employed similar mereological notions. On the other hand, it recalls some problems related to the theories of material composition, pointing out that such doctrines cannot be disjoined from the logic of parts and wholes. Hence, mereological concepts actually work in the background of such debates. The leading hypothesis of this section is, therefore, that the conceptual apparatus of mereology could have offered strategies to build bridges between different conceptions of matter, and that it might have played a relevant role in shaping and accounting for models of material composition in the early modern period.