This article deals with Robert Grosseteste’s account of ‘spatial differences’, such as ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘right’, ‘left’, ‘before’, and ‘behind’. More specifically, attention is focused on Grosseteste’s De differentiis localibus, which is a concise scientific treatise arguing for the objectiveness of the differences of place pertaining to all living bodies, including heavenly ones. The article has a two-fold goal: to present the contents of such an understudied opuscule, and to check if there is some compelling reliance on any of the Latin (...) versions of Aristotle’s On the Heavens. Such an analysis reveals that Grosseteste’s reading of Aristotle’s On the Heavens is angled by Averroes’ Long Commentary on the Physics, on which Grosseteste relies as well to build his conception of mathematical and natural differences. (shrink)

This article deals with the first Latin reception of Pseudo-Aristotle’s On Indivisible Lines and its impact on the medieval debate about the continuum. Robert Grosseteste’s and Albert the Great’s references to this pseudo-Aristotelian text show that it could be regarded as a source for where to find information about the indivisibilist tenet, as well as an expansion of Aristotle’s anti-atomistic critiques scattered throughout his authentic works. The use of On Indivisible Lines made by Henry of Harclay and Adam of Wodeham (...) confirms this trend: the reading of this text could be twofold according to the tenet defended. While Henry argues against Pseudo-Aristotle to defend indivisibilism, Adam expands on pseudo-Aristotelian arguments to show the incongruities implied by indivisibilism. (shrink)