Abstract

The relationship between Ars and Natura undergoes a manifest evolution from Aristotle to the medieval period and the time of Walter Burley. While Aristotle views all the possible complementarities between natural things and artificial things with regard to their perfection, the medieval commentators from Doctor planus and perspicuus on define artificialia in natural philosophy increasingly as perfect figures in actuality, divisible and with infinitely arrangeable parts. In Burley's works in particular, the products of art are likened to geometrical figures within the structure of the continuous, such as lines, points and surfaces, and used as arguments against Ockham in their dispute over the ontology of indivisibles.