The Summary of Physics Restored

Short Glossary

These entries orient the reader within this particular natural philosophy. They describe historical functions and relations; they do not identify timeless meanings shared by every alchemical writer or supply modern chemical and medical equivalents.

Act and Potency

Act is a power brought into operation or determination; potency is its capacity before that fulfilment. The terms help the author describe generation without making what is merely possible identical to what has already been formed.

Air

An elemental and mediating nature, also implicated in the account of spirit and the heavens. The local argument must decide whether air means a lower elemental condition, a purified medium, or a comparison; it is not automatically modern atmospheric chemistry.

Archetype

The primary exemplar from which the order and powers of created things depend. It belongs to the book’s account of divine causation and transmitted form, rather than to a modern psychological classification.

Art

An ordered human practice that follows, imitates or works with Nature. The term is broader than fine art and does not make the practitioner the creator of Nature’s first powers.

Body

A material and organised condition in which powers operate. Body is distinguished from soul and spirit, although the living compound depends on their union. A body’s destruction does not, in this account, abolish every residual natural capacity.

Cause

That by which the author explains a thing’s existence, form, activity or end. Distinguishing a divine first cause from subordinate natural causes matters more here than supplying a single modern mechanism for every term.

Chaos

The confused or undifferentiated condition associated with the beginning of material order. It belongs to a historical account of creation and formation; it need not denote random behaviour in the modern mathematical sense.

Concord

An agreement of different powers or qualities in an ordered whole. Concord does not require sameness. The musical analogy makes proportion and interval central to its meaning.

Corruption

The loss or dissolution of a compound’s prior form or organised condition. Corruption is paired with generation and can prepare another formation; the word does not by itself mean moral depravity.

Creation

The dependence of the world and its principles upon a divine maker. The creator is expressly distinguished from the parts of the world, even when those parts are joined into a single commonwealth.

Earth

An element, the terrestrial globe, or a receiving and generative ground. Its sense changes with scale. The author’s account of earth’s fertility and its place among heavenly bodies should not be made into one undifferentiated symbol.

Elements

The foundational material natures of the author’s natural philosophy. Their number, qualities and relations are contested in the work; they are not equivalent to the chemical elements of a modern periodic table.

Ether

The subtle celestial medium or nature through which higher powers communicate. It belongs to the work’s cosmology and should not be equated with a later physical ether theory without argument.

Fire

A term whose range includes destructive flame, heat, a formative natural power and celestial light. The canons distinguish these functions. A definition that identifies every fire with burning would erase part of the argument.

Form

The determining and active principle by which matter is a thing of a particular kind. Form is related to soul in living compounds, but the work also discusses a universal formative principle.

Generation

The coming-to-be of an individual compound or living thing. The author explains it through prepared matter, formative activity, seed and suitable receiving conditions; some examples rely on historical assumptions about spontaneous generation.

Harmony

The proportionate cooperation of differentiated parts or powers. It supplies the title’s governing promise and the musical analogy of the late canons. Harmony is a relation, not merely a pleasant sensation.

Heat, Innate

The internal, life-related heat distinguished from external warmth and from radical moisture. It is associated with a solar or celestial formative power. Its historical function exceeds what a thermometer measures.

Intellect

The faculty of understanding and knowledge. The closing canon distinguishes intellect from will while relating both to the divine exemplar and to the limited faculties of created intelligible natures.

Light

A principle connected with intelligibility, form, life and celestial influence. The term also structures the author’s account of inquiry. Its several functions must be identified in context rather than reduced to a single physical or symbolic equivalent.

Love

A unifying and communicating power, used to explain the joining of differentiated natures and the mutual support of the universe’s parts. The preface also makes love of knowledge and of readers a motive for writing.

Matter, First

The underlying recipient of formation in the account of Nature’s beginning. It is not an identified modern chemical substance. Its relation to universal form must be distinguished from the matter of an already formed individual.

Matrix

A receiving and nourishing condition of generation, often expressed through the image of a womb. Its meaning depends on what is received, what acts upon it, and the scale of the natural process being described.