Minima naturalia

According to E. Stroker [1], it was not the Democritean atomistic theory of matter which was the precursor of the modem Daltonian atomic theory, as generally accepted, but the Aristotelian concept of minima naturalia, developed in the Middle Age. 

Minima naturalia, the minimum particles in which a substance can be divided without ceasing to be what it actually is i.e, without losing those properties which characterise the substance. 

Although it is clear that Boyle did not regard the traditional elements such as air and earth to be true elements, it is not clear whether he believed that any true elements existed in nature. His universe was based on a mechanical philosophy that comprised two factors matter and motion. The corpuscles of matter had size, shape, and motion, and they were elemental, in the sense that they were the irreducible physical particles that made up the matter of the universe. These particles could be combined in specific forms, which he called minima naturalia. The closest equivalent we have to the minima naturalia is the modem concept of a molecule, a stable configuration of atoms. Boyle argued that since only specific forms could be constructed from the corpuscles, these minima naturalia were the most basic chemical substances possible, and in that sense they could be perfectly unmingled and were not actual elements. 

Wigglesworth s thesis relies on sources that may be traced all the way back to medieval commentaries on Aristotle. It is well known that the scholastics of the medieval university had a type of corpuscular theory. In Book I, Chapter IV of the Physics, Aristotle asserts that animals and plants have an upper and a lower size limit, and that the same must be said of their parts. From this rather obscure reasoning, the scholastics concluded that there are minima naturalia - smallest natural parts - out of which living, and even... 

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