Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>How is a body’s place in the physical universe to be understood? Must it be explained in terms of its relation to a region of space? Or can it be accounted for in some other way? Such questions are of central concern to contemporary metaphysicians and philosophers of science and, in their attempts to answer them, they have routinely turned for inspiration to the views of earlier thinkers, especially Newton and Leibniz. This pioneering new study presents and explains the broadly Aristotelian theory of place developed by Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). It argues that the key to understanding Aquinas’s theory is to be found in two underexplored aspects of his natural philosophy: first, in his account of local motion; and second, in his account of magnitude. Beginning with a novel analysis of both accounts, this book systematically and comprehensively introduces the respective elements of Aquinas’s theory. The resulting picture not only sheds new light on Aquinas’s ontology of the material world but also provides a wholesale alternative to standard contemporary theories of place. In addition to presenting and explaining Aquinas’s views in a way that advances the scholarly literature, the book also makes the case for their continuing relevance. Indeed, one notable result that emerges from this study is that medieval debates about space and spatial location are entirely continuous with those after Newton and Leibniz and serve to advance our understanding of the range of dialectical options available across both sets of debates.</jats:p>