Isabelle M. Draelants

To illustrate the theoretical definition of nature in the mid-13th century that was commonly shared in Europe, we chose to translate and comment on the definition of nature as given in the Encyclopedia of Sciences (Speculum doctrinale, XV, ch. 4) compiled by the Dominican friar Vincent de Beauvais in the mid-13th century. This complex European “universal” definition, in four points, mirrors in a certain way all the theoretical conceptions of nature valid at this time, including all the literary heritage available, the theological definitions, and the new inputs from natural philosophy (Arabo- and Greco-Latin translations). It synthetizes the conceptions of nature, some of which go back to Augustin d’Hippone (5th c.), to Guillaume de Conches (12th c.), to Aristote, and to Medica Salernitana of the beginning of the 13th century.

This book has been defined around three important issues: the first sheds light on how people, in various philosophical, religious, and political contexts, understand the natural environment, and how the relationship between the environment and the body is perceived; the second focuses on the perceptions that a particular natural environment is good or bad for human health and examines the reasons behind such characterizations ; the third examines the promotion, in history, of specific practices to take advantage of the health benefits, or avoid the harm, caused by certain environments and also efforts made to change environments supposed to be harmful to human health. The feeling and/or the observation that the natural environment can have effects on human health have been, and are still commonly shared throughout the world. This led us to raise the issue of the links observed and believed to exist between human beings and the natural environment in a broad chronological and geographical framework. In this investigation, we bring the reader from ancient and late imperial China to the medieval Arab world up to medieval, modern, and contemporary Europe. This book does not examine these relationships through the prism of the knowledge of our modern contemporary European experience, which, still too often, leads to the feeling of totally different worlds. Rather, it questions protagonists who, in different times and in different places, have reflected, on their own terms, on the links between environment and health and tries to obtain a better understanding of why these links took the form they did in these precise contexts. This book targets an academic readership as well as an “informed audience”, for whom present issues of environment and health can be nourished by the reflections of the past.

In order to illustrate the theoretical definitions of nature commonly shared in the mid-thirteenth century in Europe, we translate and comment on the definition of nature given in the “Mirror of Sciences” compiled by a Dominican friar, Vincent of Beauvais. While complex, this European fourfold definition reflects to a degree all the theoretical conceptions of nature used at this time, including the literary heritage available, some theological definitions and the new inputs from natural philosophy. It synthetizes the conceptions of nature, some of which go back to Augustine of Hippo, to William of Conches, to Aristotle and to the medical school of Salerno until the beginning of the thirteenth century.