Because Aristotelian natural philosophy is the major emphasis in this volume, our discussion of it must necessarily encompass Aristotle's natural books (libri naturales), as described in chapter 3, and the medieval commentaries and questions on those works. The natural books of Aristotle were far from a thorough, well-rounded, coherent, and systematic description and analysis of the physical world. But in those treatises, a wealth of topics and ideas were included, and a remarkable breadth of coverage. The natural books were the best available guides for the study of the universe, which is why they served as the fundamental texts for natural philosophy in the universities of the Middle Ages. It was that natural philosophy that functioned as the world view of the Middle Ages, a world view that was embodied in a special kind of literature – the questions literature – that was peculiar to the Latin Middle Ages and to the medieval university.

THE QUESTIONS LITERATURE OF THE LATE MIDDLE AGES

The questio, or question, was the most widely and regularly used format for natural philosophy. As we saw in chapter 3, it grew out of the commentary, but it was structurally akin to the oral disputation that was such a prominent feature of medieval university education. It was actually a teaching master's written version of the questions that he presented orally in his classroom lectures.