Neckham, Alexander (1157–1217)

Alexander Neckham is one of the leading thinkers in the English appropriation of the new science made available during the twelfth century. His best known writings, especially De naturis rerum (On the Natures of Things), show a prodigious acquaintance with natural history. Neckham was most concerned, however, that the study of the natural world be made to serve the purposes of theology. He thus strove not only to draw moral lessons from nature, but to apply to theological method the doctrines of the new logic, especially Aristotle’s Topics. While Neckham cannot be said to have mastered the texts that were flooding into the Latin West, he certainly did realize the challenges and the possibilities that they offered to inherited theologies.