Libertus Fromondus' Escape from the Labyrinth of the Continuum (1631)

Abstract

This article is concerned with a previously little studied work, the Labyrinthus sive de compositione continui liber unus (1631), in which Libertus Fromondus attacked the atomistic theory, which at the time was finding supporters at the University of Louvain. I try to identify Fromondus' sources and polemical targets, to summarise his mathematical and physical arguments against atomism, and to understand his nominalist solution to the problem of the composition of the continuum. Moreover, I situate the Labyrinthus in the context of seventeenth-century theories of matter and motion and attempt to provide new evidence of Fromondus' possible influence on Galileo and of his undeniable influence on Leibniz.