70 RICHARD MCKEON 



The encyclopaedist and the cosmologist of the twelfth cen- 

 tury likewise worked on texts long available but neglected — 

 Chalcidius' translation of Plato's Timaeus and his commentary 

 on it, the works of the Platonists Apuleius and Macrobius or of 

 Martianus Cappella who furnished bits of the theories of 

 Hermes Trismegistus, and finally the eleventh century trans- 

 lations of works on medicine or on the nature of man, like 

 those of Constantine the African or Alfanus of Salerno in 

 which the problem of elements is stated. Thierry of Chartres, 

 Peter Abailard, William of Conches (one of whose works is 

 sometimes called On the Ele77ients of Philosophy) , and their 

 critic William of St. Thierry as well as many other philosophers 

 of the early twelfth century used the elements as beginning 

 points and ordering principles in their expositions of composites 

 as man, the universe, and the sciences; and elements were 

 continued in that function in the encyclopaedias of the later 

 twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, such as Alexander Neck- 

 ham's On the Natures of Things, Thomas of Cantimpre's On 

 the Nature of Things, and Bartholomew of Glanville's On the 

 Properties of Things. After the translation of Aristotle's scien- 

 tific work and of commentaries which put varying interpre- 

 tations on his conception of things, neither the data nor the 

 theories of these organizations of knowledge were useful in the 

 continuing investigations; and, in general, encyclopaedic organi- 

 zations of the sciences were turned from the classification of 

 the nature and properties of things to the ordering of motions 

 and functions according to principles. 



The problem of elements is the counterpart of the problem 

 of universals. (1) Science is of the universal; (2) it is derived 

 from and applied to particulars; (3) examination of universal 

 predicates is therefore involved in questions of existence and 

 being, of experience and reason. Conversely, (1) wholes or 

 complexes are composed of parts and ultimately parts are 

 Composed of simple parts; (2) the nature of parts depends on 

 how the whole is conceived; (3) determination of simples is 

 therefore involved in a complex of related questions concerning 



