Light, heat and sound in Robert Grosseteste’s Physics

Robert Grosseteste was one of the most prominent thinkers of the Thirteenth Century. Philosopher and scientist, he was Bishop of Lincoln from 1235 to 1253. He was heavily influenced by Augustine, whose thought permeates his writings, but he also made extensive use of the thought of Aristotle, Avicenna and Averroes. Grosseteste’s physics is the science of Nature, of which we will discuss in this book. This science is quite different from the Galilean physics. However, in the scientific treatises written by Grosseteste, we find some features preparing the born of the new physics that produced the Galilean revolution and the Newtonian mechanics. This is the reason why Robert Grosseteste, English statesman, philosopher and scientist, is defined by Alistair Cameron Crombie as the real founder of the tradition of the scientific thought in Oxford. In this book we will propose a discussion of this Grosseteste’s physics, in particular that which in described in his treatises on light, heat and sound.