Dales R.C. Medieval Discussions of the Eternity of the World

Brill Academic Publishers, 1990. — 311 p. — (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History 18).In the 1270s savage debates among philosophers, theologians, and clerical administrators at the University of Paris centered principally around three issues: the unicity of the active intellect; the animation of the heavens; and the eternity of the world. The only one of these which
still seems important today, and the only one which has not become irrelevant because of a change in the world view, is the eternity of the world, or, more precisely, the possibility of a beginningless world. Although the question is not so central to our concerns as it was to the scholastics, it continues to evoke considerable interest, and indeed it has never been solved.