The following is a series of responses to frequently asked questions which are philosophical in nature and which are often confused with genuinely scientific questions. The responses are intended, among other things, to illustrate the difference between empiriological physics and the philosophy of nature (philosophical physics)

"If matter reaches its perfection in man, and man reaches his perfection in the Person of Christ, then only in Christ will I come to understand the ultimate meaning of matter."

Some of the ideas we are working on

1: Is it true that the uncertainty principle refutes realism? Some scientists reason that although we can never measure the electron with perfect accuracy, we can determine what we will observe-a wave (if we refine our motion measurement) or a particle (if we refine our position measurement). What we observe depends on how we observe it. The observed phenomenon depends on the observation, and therefore on the observer. And so it seems that quantum theory raises doubts about one of the most deeply held articles of scientific faith-the belief in an objective world that is independent of our observations. Quantum theory and the uncertainty principle tell us that we cannot picture nature but can only predict the results of specific experiments-and these results will depend on how we choose to perform our experiments. Not only are we blind to the workings of nature, but even our brief glimpses are of no objective, independent reality but of a subjective, observer-determined world.

The above is a typical example of trying to draw philosophical conclusions from scientific knowledge. Firstly, the existence of the external world and its having meaning independently of my observation of it is not an article of faith. Faith involves accepting as true something somebody tells us because we have evidence that the speaker is well informed about the subject and is honest. Knowledge of the external world's existence does not require the mediation of another person. The idea that the existence of the objective world is an article of faith only shows that the author of those words has not really freed himself from the influence of Descartes and is still working within the framework of epistemological idealism.[1]

Experiment is a special form of experience.[2] In order to be apprehended, an experiment must always be experienced. Experience is more ultimate and indeed prior to experiment, and if experience is unreliable, then experiment is also unreliable. In this light consider the following: one begins with an experiment (a controlled experience) and through that experiment establishes a premise, namely, that we cannot be certain of the position and momentum of an electron at the same time. Our observation of the electron changes its position. And since it is assumed that the visible world is determined by the microscopic or submicroscopic (we will come back to this later), it isn't difficult to see how the idea that "our observation of the world changes the world" should proceed therefrom rather naturally. The conclusion is that we do not see the world as it is in itself, that is, objectively. The observer changes what he observes.

But that means that our first premise cannot be taken seriously, because it was established by an experiment, which is a controlled experience, and experience is unobjective, according to the above text. Therefore, we cannot conclude that realism is false. We cannot conclude anything about the relationship between the observer and the external world; for we cannot conclude anything about the observer and the electron. How can I act as a realist in order to establish my first premise, and then proceed to deny realism? If I end up by denying realism, I must also deny my first premise. If I deny my first premise, I cannot conclude that realism is naive.

In the September 2, 1927 edition of the New York Times, Waldemar Kaemppfert wrote:

To measure the properties of a particle such as an electron, one needs to use a measuring device, usually light or radiation. But the energy in this radiation affects the particle being observed. If you adjust the light beam to accurately measure position, you need a short-wavelength, high-energy beam. It would tell you position, but its energy would throw off the momentum of the particle. Then, if you adjust the beam to a longer wavelength and lower energy, you could more closely measure momentum, but position would be inaccurate.

As you can see from the above text, it isn't our observation that changes anything, it is the energy in the radiation that affects the particle being observed. This is a long way from the Idealism of Immanuel Kant.[3]

2: Physicist Nick Herbert says that things are not solid, but are mostly empty space. In fact, he goes so far as to say that this chair, for example, is not totally real. This chair is really only a set of probabilities. He says that there is a basic ambiguity at the basis of the inanimate world. He speaks of the thinglessness of the world. In other words, there are no entities. "Big things are made of entities whose attributes are not there when you don't look at them, but become there when you do look".

 Since as far back as Empedocles, people have been thinking about matter within a reductionistic materialist frame of mind. The reductionist thinks of the macroscopic world as the result of what goes on at the microscopic or submicroscopic level, and not vice versa (which is Aristotle's position). Empedocles,[4]Anaxagoras, and Democritus all taught that particles alone constitute real being, and of course they did so because they were not able to refute Parmenides,[5] who argued that being is unchangeable. To reconcile the evident fact of change with Parmenides, they taught that the "whole" comes to be and passes away, but the particles of matter (which alone truly exist) do not come to be and pass away (particles of matter are identified with "being"). But what they ended up doing was reconciling a bad metaphysics with the evident fact of change, and so they too ended up with a false philosophy (reductionistic materialism), which I will attempt to show.

So within the reductionist mindset, things are simply "wholes" that result from the interaction and commingling of particles, just as a machine is the result of the interaction of its parts. Accordingly, the whole does not have anything that cannot be explained by an appeal to its parts. A machine, remember, is an artifact. It is not one being. It does not exist in-itself. The machine is a whole made up of different parts, many of which are different substances (ie, metal, glass, wood, etc.). Now let's take the example of a painting, a self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh. The painting of Van Gogh is not a unified substance, as Van Gogh is (or as we tend to think he is). There are no interior bonds between the molecules of the painted surface as there are between the parts of his living body. The picture as picture has nothing within itself. It owes whatever reality it owns as a picture to forces acting on it from the outside, arranging or moving the parts into their proper position.[6] In other words, the picture derives its unity from what is extrinsic to it. In fact, the parts are really outside the picture. The artist creates the impression of reality, and he depends on those who will see the painting to cooperate with him, using their insights into what a man is in order to appreciate the painting that the art has provided. Without an idea of man derived beforehand from nature, we could never get such an idea from the self-portrait of Van Gogh. The painting could never portray alone what it means to see, feel, taste, touch, think, will, etc. Without an idea of life, the Sunflowers would remain a dead patch on dead canvas, unassociated with any meaningful thing beyond itself, as would Vincent in his self-portrait. And so the full unity of the picture comes to art from the logical order, as opposed to the mere mechanical union of contiguous parts on canvas. The principle of unity and being comes to the painting from the outside in regard to its production and in regard to the appreciation of the work.

This is how the reductionist conceives of everything, since he denies that things have a nature. For someone like Aristotle, iron, copper, water, salt, sugar, kerosene, are all invested with distinctive natures (something the reductionist denies). They all have something from within. As Vincent Smith writes: "Each has a certain electromagnetic character, a definite specific gravity, a melting point of its own, a fixed point of combustibility. Each acts differently. When each is exposed to light, it selects certain wavelengths of the incident radiation and reflects others."[7] The whole is one thing, that is, one unified entity that has a definite nature. It is the nature that determines it to be what it is, not the particles. The parts are parts of the substance, and so the parts have the same nature as the whole. For example, the parts of a man are human parts, sharing in the one nature. Things have an intelligible structure, that is to say, a form. It is this intelligible structure that determines the parts, not vice versa.

The physicist conceives of things according to the principle of inertia[8] (even Quantum physicists who say that Newtonian physics is no longer useful at the subatomic level). In other words, what is inert has its principle of motion outside of it. What is inert is sluggish because it is indifferent, passive, actualized completely by outside agents. If inertia rules the real world and nothing owns anything from within itself, we end up with an infinite regression in matter (for the parts do not own anything from within themselves, but are composed of smaller parts, which in turn are composed of smaller parts, etc.). If we come to something that does own something from within itself, it is either a nature or more parts. By appealing to smaller and smaller particles, we never really explain anything. But if we are to do so, we must use terms other than the ones we are trying to explain.

If things don't have something from within themselves, for example, if the tree or your cat are not invested with a distinctive nature, then the tree is not a thing in itself and the cat is not a thing in-itself, just as the artifact is not a thing in-itself (the car is not a thing in-itself. It is the sum of its parts). But Smith points out some consequences of this position in the area of motion. He argues that if a thing has a finite velocity, it cannot be moved completely from the outside. For if bodies did not put up resistances to these outer agents and did not bear a reality from within, by the same force that moves a thing it should be moved faster and faster until an infinite velocity has been attained. If there were no natures with their inner principles and if all things had their principles of motion outside them (like the painting), anything that moved would move infinitely fast. But there are no infinite velocities-if there were, they would be indeterminate and thus unknowable. He goes on to point out that granted that there is such a thing as inertia at all, it cannot be unlimited in this moving world of ours, and if it is limited, there are brakes.[9] And these brakes are natures or substances. To account for the fact of differences, there must be a manifold of these counteragents to inertia, a plurality of things moved from within. For what is merely inert cannot be differentiated; one purely inert thing could never differ from another, and if there is only inertia in the universe, there are no differences within the universe. If there are differences in inertia, then it follows that there is no pure inertia. There are principles of difference within inertia, and this is the same thing as saying -- form and matter.[10] "Since the inert as such is indeterminate and has no distinctions and since nature unfolds a plurality of differences, there must be a plurality of substances, a plurality of natures. For substance is a nature existing"[11]. A substance is not a result of an interaction of particles and molecules. A purely inert world would be actually nothing.

So when Nick Herbert says that things are not solid because they are not solid on the subatomic level, he is operating within the reductionistic habit of mind (or as Adler would say, the reductionistic fallacy[12]). The truly real is not the subatomic. The truly real is on the level of the macroscopic. Your cat is a real being. The primary mode of being is not the particle or the atom. The primary mode of being is the substance, that is, the nature existing. So solidity is very real, which is why Herbert would duck if you were to throw a brick at him. The brick and the chair are in every way real, more real than the molecules or particles within them; for they are what they are by virtue of the thing's nature. If there is a basic ambiguity at the basis of the inanimate world, as Herbert says there is, then perhaps that is be a clue that reductionism proceeds backwards, rather than forwards. In speaking of the "thinglessness" of the world, he only reveals his reductionistic habitus. A thing is not a thing because it is made up of solid little balls. A thing is an entity because it is composed of first matter and substantial form.[13] A thing has a potential principle and a formal or actual principle. A thing is actually something because it has form, that is, an intelligible structure, or a nature. A material thing is not a pure form, but a composite of first matter and substantial form. The first accident of a material thing is quantity, which extends the substance. Quantity gives us parts outside of parts. The parts are not prior to the substance. The quantity of a substance can and does change while the substance itself remains the same (remains what it is). The parts receive their order, their intelligible unity from the thing's form. Without the form, there is no intelligible unity to the parts. In fact, there would be no parts; for parts are parts of a substance, and if there are no unified substances, there are no parts of substances.

In terms of Herbert's claim that "big things being made of entities whose attributes are not there when you don't look at them, but become there when you do look at them," this is simply a self-refuting interpretation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. For why is it that I am a thing whose existence does not depend upon someone looking at me? If my existence does depend on someone looking at me, then only at this point should I be able to look at something else and give it its existence. But does that person's existence depend upon someone looking at him?

3: What is the atom? A substance? A pure quantity?

It was Democritus who endowed the Pythagorean units with the properties of Parmenidean being. Pythagoras reasoned that quantity is the basis of reality, and that all is reducible to number.[14] Parmenides reasoned that Being is One, unchanging, and indivisible. The atom is the Pythagorean point or unit, and this unit, Democritus argued, is unchanging and "uncuttable"; and it was Parmenides who showed that being is uncuttable.

Democritus accepted the Pythagorean void or empty space. So if he argued that being is the atom, it isn't difficult to understand how he arrived at the conclusion that what is "non-atom" is non-being. Empty space is "not atom", and so empty space is "not-being" or nothing. The atom of Democritus is without "whatness". It has size, shape, and position in space, and of course it is impenetrable. The various kinds of elements are explained by an appeal to quantity (those atoms of the same kind are really of the same size and shape).

Now, "the modern atom" is very different from the atom of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius, but the philosophical mindset is not all that different (this is partly due to the fact that just as ancient atomism stemmed from a philosophy that confused mathematical entities with real entities, so too is modern atomism rooted in a philosophy that confuses logical being with real being, namely that of Descartes). There are some physicists today who attempt to explain the various kinds of atoms by an appeal to quantity alone, for example, the number of protons. We can ask, why is oxygen a different kind of thing than fluorine? Why is the beryllium atom a different kind of atom than carbon? Again, some appeal to quantity alone as an explanation of the "qualitative" differences between the atoms of the various elements.[15] For the only differences we can measure here are quantitative differences. But does quantitative difference explain or account for qualitative difference?

When we come across something unfamiliar, our first question is always, "What is it?" and not, "How much of it is there?" "What" is more fundamental than "How much". "What" is a qualitative term. When we ask how much of something there is, the question, in order to be intelligible, always refers to some specific kind of thing. Quantity does not answer a qualitative question. Number does not explain why carbon is a different kind of thing than helium.

And when a chemist wants to know what a particular chemical is, he simply studies its activity (how it reacts with other chemicals, for instance). For it is by the activity that we come to know "what" a thing is.[16] Carbon acts differently than helium. It is a different kind of thing. A change in quantity does not necessarily imply a change in kind (quality). A quantitative change does not necessarily give us a different kind of thing; it often gives us more or less of the same kind of thing. Quantity is a different mode of being than quality. If quantity gives us more or less of the same, then it follows that substantial quality (formal cause) is prior to quantity. Certainly sodium "has more" than carbon, but that does not account for the radical difference between the two.

In short, the "whatness" of an atom (as well as the "whatness" of any substance) cannot be measured. What is intelligible cannot be measured in so far as it is intelligible, but only insofar as it is quantified. The carbon atom has an intelligible structure, and this intelligible structure or nature is revealed through its activity. The "whatness" of a thing is its intelligible nature or essence. That is why the intellect seeks to know first and foremost what the thing is. The intellect wants to "make sense" out of the thing, and the thing is only intelligible if it has an essence or nature. The atom is intelligible because it is a nature existing. It is a composite of potency and act. Its formal principle is its substantial form, and it is this "immaterial" principle that makes the gold atom to be "what it is". We know that the gold atom is not a pure form, because it can change; and pure forms do not change. The gold is potentially something else. It can be transformed. And if it can be transformed, that is, if it can have a change of form, then there must be a subject of the form. The ultimate subject of a thing's form is its prime matter (potency). This first matter is not a "part". It is continuous. Prime matter is the potential principle of the whole entity. This primordial potency has the aspect of a subject, and it belongs to the form to actualize this subject, which is in potency to receive form. Prime matter is the ultimate potency, that is, pure potentiality. The gold atom is, fundamentally speaking, prime matter "golding", just as carbon is prime matter "carboning", etc. It is prime matter that acquires the intelligible structure of gold, that is, the substantial form of gold. The quantity of an atom follows upon its nature.

The fact that we change an atom by changing its quantity does not imply that quantity determines it to be "what it is". To transform any substance requires that we first change its secondary matter (the quantified thing), that is, its parts. If we want to kill a frog, we start by rearranging its parts, such as cutting it in half. The parts are parts of the substance. A material substance is a composite of both matter and form, and so the form needs matter if it is going to "form". The intelligible structure (form) of a material substance makes matter intelligible. A material substance, like a human person, cannot attack the intelligible structure of a thing directly. We can only do so by first attacking the already constituted and extended substance. We change the parts. And so it is no surprise that removing subatomic particles changes the atom. It is also faulty logic to conclude that since a qualitative change is initiated and accompanied by a quantitative change, quantity determines the substantial quality.

Subatomic particles are too poor in property to account for the rich heterogeneity of our experienced world. The properties of mass and charge are the only properties of electrons and protons. The neutron has only one property, namely weight, and it enjoys a magnetic moment by its spin. A neutron's place in nature seems to be limited and determined to one,[17] like all the other fundamental particles. Its place in nature seems to be the nucleus toward which it tends. For it does not have enough interiority and independence to make a permanent abode elsewhere. The negative meson lasts in independent status for only millionths of a second, and the neutral meson has a much shorter lifetime. And so it is true that such entities are of greater potency, and thus are poorer in act. They are in matter's poorhouse, so to speak. And they are poor in quality so that they can serve a higher unity, one much richer in qualities. In fact, as we move closer to the inorganic world, form becomes very faint, so much so that a mineral is almost entirely under the dominion of inertia; and this explains the success of the empiriological method in the region of the mineral, its lesser success in biology where form is greater and more "exertive" (there is less predictability and more variation in biology than there is in physics).

And so it isn't the poorer that determines the richer, but the richer that determines and elevates the poorer. The subatomic particles are not rich enough in being to determine what goes on at the macroscopic level. Rather, they are organized and unified, that is, they are made to serve a higher unity, one they do not determine, but only serve.

4: Is there evidence in the world of modern physics that offers some support for Aristotle's Hylomorphism?

If modern physics reveals anything, it is that the old atomism is dead. Physicists have begun to realize that we just can't explain things in a reductionistic way anymore. Modern physics has actually helped to "de-materialize" the material world. If by matter we think of extension, then it can be said that the material world is more immaterial than material. It is the immaterial principle that makes a thing to be what it is, not little atomic billiard balls. To really understand this, we have to learn to disregard our imagination. We cannot "picture" potency and act, and so we cannot "picture" the ultimate constitution of matter. We have to learn to "think" these principles. Modern physics tends to support this hylomorphic requirement. Let me quote Heisenberg rather extensively. He writes:

"What is an elementary particle? We say, for instance, simply "a neutron" but we can give no well-defined picture and what we mean by the word. We can use several pictures and describe it once as a particle, once as a wave or as a wave packet. But we know that none of these descriptions is accurate. Certainly the neutron has no color, no smell, no taste. In this respect it resembles the atom of Greek philosophy. But even the other qualities are taken from the elementary particle, at least to some extent; the concepts of geometry and kinematics, like shape or motion in space, cannot be applied to it consistently. If one wants to give an accurate description of the elementary particle--and here the emphasis is on the word "accurate"--the only thing which can be written down as description is a probability function. But then one sees that not even the quality of being (if that may be called a "quality") belongs to what is described. It is a possibility for being or a tendency for being. Therefore, the elementary particle of modern physics is still far more abstract than the atom of the Greeks, and it is by this very property more consistent as a clue for explaining the behavior of matter."[18]

The term "quality of being" should not be taken too literally. It is likely that he employs this term to refer to some concrete "thing" that can be measured. But a tendency for being, or potentiality, is not nothing. Concerning this potentiality, Heisenberg writes:

"Besides the three fundamental building stones of matter - electron, proton, and neutron - new elementary particles have been found which can be created in these processes of highest energies and disappear again after a short time. The new particles have similar properties as the old ones except for their instability. Even the most stable ones have lifetimes of roughly only a millionth part of a second, and the lifetimes of others are even a thousand times smaller....

These results seem at first sight to lead away from the idea of the unity of matter, since the number of fundamental units of matter seems to have again increased to values comparable to the number of different chemical elements. But this would not be a proper interpretation. The experiments have at the same time shown that the particles can be created from other particles or simply from the kinetic energy of such particles, and they can again disintegrate into other particles. Actually the experiments have shown the complete mutability of matter. All the elementary particles can, at sufficiently high energies, be transmuted into other particles, or they can simply be created from kinetic energy and can be annihilated into energy, for instance, into radiation. Therefore, we have here actually the final proof for the unity of matter. All the elementary particles are made of the same substance (see end for comment on this term), which we may call energy or universal matter; they are just different forms in which matter can appear.

If we compare this situation with the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, we can say that the matter of Aristotle, which is mere "potentia", should be compared to our concept of energy, which gets into "actuality" by means of the form, when the elementary particle is created.

Modern physics is of course not satisfied with only qualitative description of the fundamental structure of matter; it must try on the basis of careful experimental investigations to get a mathematical formulation of those natural laws that determine the "forms" of matter, the elementary particles and their forces (note: the elementary particles don't do the "forming"). A clear distinction between matter and force can no longer be made in this part of physics, since each elementary particle not only is producing some forces and is acted upon by forces, but it is at the same time representing a certain field of force. The quantum-theoretical dualism of waves and particles makes the same entity appear both as matter and as force...."[19]

We should not take his use of the word "substance" too literally when he maintains that "all elementary particles are made of the same substance". In Aristotelian thinking, potency is not substance, but the potential principle of substance. If "universal matter" corresponds to Aristotle's prime matter or "potentia", as Heisenberg suggests, then we have to remember that universal matter is not substance but "substratum".[20]

Further on he writes:

"In a similar way in quantum theory all the classical concepts are, when applied to the atom, just as well and just as little defined as the "temperature of the atom"; they are correlated with statistical expectations; only in rare cases may the expectation become the equivalent of certainty. Again, as in classical thermodynamics, it is difficult to call the expectation objective. One might perhaps call it an objective tendency or possibility, a "potentia in the sense of Aristotelian philosophy. In fact, I believe that the language actually used by physicists when they speak about atomic events produces in their minds similar notions as the concept "potentia". So the physicists have gradually become accustomed to considering the electronic orbits, etc., not a reality but rather as a kind of "potentia". The language has already adjusted itself, at least to some extent, to this true situation. But it is not a precise language in which one could use the normal logical patterns; it is a language that produces pictures in our minds, but together with them the notion that the pictures have only a vague connection with reality, that they represent only a tendency toward reality (emphasis mine)."[21]

He concludes his chapter:

"In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life. But the atoms or the elementary particles themselves are not as real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts."[22]

Now "potentia", in the Aristotelian framework, is entirely real. It is real only as realized by act or form. It cannot exist apart from form; for then it would be actually nothing. It cannot exist independent of form anymore than a block of wood could exist independent of an accidental shape. Form realizes, that is, makes real or actualizes prime matter. Also, when atoms belong to a higher unity, such as water, or an even higher unity such as a plant or animal, the prime matter is not to be conceived of as the prime matter of the atoms. The atoms of the elements have changed, that is, they have ceased to be "what they are" (contrary to Empedocles). They have transformed. The plant is one thing, not many atoms. In the plant, the elements have become living. The atoms of the various elements no longer behave in the same way. They act differently, and so they are different. They belong to a higher form. They have become parts of a unified living organism (in this case, a plant). The prime matter is that of the plant as a whole. The plant as a whole is a composite of potency and act, or matter and form. In the plant, the oxygen atom, for example, has transformed. It's prime matter has acquired another form, namely that of the plant. It has ceased to be oxygen (an inanimate element) and is now only virtually present in the plant.

5: Is this world simply the result of random and accidental physical and chemical processes? Physicist Roger S. Jones writes:
 

We live on a tiny speck of dust, called planet Earth, which dizzily circles an average dwarf type star called the Sun. On this tiny planet, the forces and laws of nature have somehow conspired to bring about a stable and nourishing form of matter that has proceeded to transform itself into life and to consummate that life with consciousness. And here we stand, the shining end product of this remarkable transmutation - the most organized form of matter and the highest form of life on earth, very possibly in the whole universe. Indeed, we may be the only living things in the universe. Carl Sagan and his extrapolations notwithstanding, there is as yet not the slightest shred of evidence of life anywhere else. Other life forms may exist or we may be entirely alone in the universe. It remains an open question. In any event, we see ourselves as the crowning achievement of four billion years of evolution on earth.

We mustn't let any of this go to our heads however. The whole incredible big bang story with its climactic human ending is merely the result of physical and chemical processes that are completely random, accidental, and meaningless. We may think we're pretty good and important, but there is absolutely nothing in the blind, meaningless events to suggest the slightest purpose, value, or significance in our existence. If we should be so foolish as to annihilate ourselves in an atomic holocaust or through the strangling pollution of the earth, it will make not the least difference in the scheme of things. The planets, stars, and galaxies will continue on their cosmic schedules, completely oblivious to our passing. So much for human significance.

There are a number of things in the above that we should be made aware of. Note that Roger Jones uses the expression "laws of nature", which in his words "have conspired to bring about..." This is incompatible with his statement that the physical and chemical events that have brought about this entire universe are blind, accidental, random, and meaningless. For this is precisely the opposite of what it means to act according to a "law of nature". When things behave according to a law, the result is that their behaviour is meaningful, intelligible, predictable, regular, and determinate.

Moreover, he maintains that matter has transformed itself into life and consummated that life with consciousness, and he proceeds to refer to this as "the most organized form of matter and the highest form of life on earth." But organized is the very opposite of disorganized. If events are organized and under a law, then the events are not blind, accidental, meaningless, purposeless and valueless. For these terms express "disorganization".

Note also his expression "higher form of life" and the term "consummate". Yet he says: "If we should be so foolish as to annihilate ourselves..." after telling us that "there is absolutely nothing in the blind, meaningless, events to suggest the slightest purpose, value, or significance in our existence." If there is no real "value", then he cannot legitimately use terms such as "highest" and "consummate" which express value and purpose and degrees of perfection. And much less can he argue that self-annihilation is foolish. For foolishness means "lacking in wisdom". For he is suggesting that we ought not to annihilate ourselves. But this suggests value, in particular, that human life is valuable and that we ought to respect its value, preserve it; for it is good.

And so the above text is in fact replete with of inconsistencies. But not only are his words inconsistent, they are also unsound. He draws philosophical conclusions without the prior philosophical premises. Let me explain. He says: "The whole incredible big bang story with its climactic human ending is merely the result of physical and chemical processes that are completely random, accidental, and meaningless...there is absolutely nothing in the blind, meaningless events to suggest the slightest purpose (emphasis mine), value, or significance to our existence."

Now, since finality means purpose or aim, Jones is maintaining that our universe is the result of aimless processes. In short, he is denying finality or teleology (from the Greek word telos, for end). The principle of finality, as Aristotle says, runs: "Every agent acts for an end."[23] Every agent tends to a goal. A substance (an existing nature) has intentions. Now motion is "the fulfillment of what exists potentially, insofar as it exists potentially. So when we use the term motion, we do not mean to limit this term to locomotion. Locomotion is a specific kind of motion. Rather, we refer to all types of movement from potency to actuality.

Now, when moving (acting), an existing nature (i.e., a sodium atom, a Maple tree, a bear, etc.) intends "these results" rather than "those results". Things act for definite ends (the end: "that for the sake of which a moving thing moves"). If a moving thing had no definite end, and if it did not tend to "this effect" rather than "that effect", there would be no sufficient reason why one effect should be produced from its action or efforts rather than another effect. This would render the search for causes impossible; and since science is a search for causes, science would be impossible. For it is of the nature of water to boil at 100 degrees centigrade under ordinary conditions. If it did not tend to do so, why does it always boil at this point? There would be no answer if finality does not exist, because there would be no sufficient reason for water to do so. If things did not tend to one determined end rather than another, in other words, if things do not act for an end or purpose, then things would be indeterminate. And what is indeterminate is unknowable.[24] In other words, a thing acts according to its nature; for we know what a thing is (its nature) by its actions (motions). But if a thing does not act for a determinate end, then we can never know what the thing is. If the thing's actions are entirely indeterminate (without purpose), then what the thing is remains indeterminate (we cannot acquire a determinate idea of what the thing is). The thing would be neutral and inert, and thus entirely passive, and not only unable to act for a determinate end, but unable to act at all (for a thing that has no "whatness" is not anything at all, just as a thing that is totally inert and purely indeterminate would not be anything at all). Denying the principle of finality (which is what Roger Jones does in the above text) amounts to denying actual existence.

Also, if there are no substances that act for definite ends, then the processes of nature are indeterminate, as was said. But what is absolutely indeterminate is absolutely unknowable and unpredictable. And yet empiriological physicists avow that their theories are nothing but tools that facilitate prediction. And so physics is impossible without finality.

Also, the very word "universe" (tending towards unity) bespeaks finality. The universe is a cosmos, not a chaos. A chaos is unintelligible. A universe without finality could not even be known to be chaotic, since what is chaotic is only so against the background of what is not chaotic, but purposeful. Again, if there is absolutely no finality to the processes of the universe, then it follows that the universe is unintelligible. Hence, there could not possibly be a "science of the universe". Moreover, one cannot argue that the result of the accidental and random chemical processes are ordered and purposeful; for one cannot get purpose from what is purposeless, order from what is chaotic, form from what is formless, anymore than you can get act from potency, or being from non-being.

So a nature is defined by its tendencies. We know a thing by its motions. A substance is original and primary; to be original is to have definite tendencies. A substance (a nature existing) is an original cause and source (a principle of its motions). It is the origin of its actions or motions, and it is fulfilled or perfected by its tendencies actualized (the flower is perfected by its tendencies actualized; for it tends to the fullness of its own being under ordinary conditions). By being moved (from potency to act), the thing grows to a greater fullness of being. For natures always act in a way that is fitting. They do what is good for them under the circumstances (which is why Jones uses terms and expressions such as "climactic human ending", "consummate", "highest form of life"). As Smith writes: "A nature's penchant toward a fixed end under a given set of conditions is called a law of nature. Laws are natural appetites, natural inclinations, goalward tendencies that natures own and that are broken only at the price of destroying the natures themselves."[25] To follow the laws of sodium is simply to be sodium. To follow the laws of iron is simply to be iron. Again, if we did not know iron's laws or its tendencies, we could not predict its behaviour, and so it could not be used for specific purposes, such as building automobiles. That is why to speak of "laws of nature" and then deny that there is purpose and meaning in the processes of nature is contradictory, to say the least.

Finally, it is not possible for the entire physical and chemical processes of the universe to be governed by chance (which is not to be governed at all). A chance event is an event that happens beyond the intentions of the agent. A chance happening lacks a final cause. Chance results when two or more natures, moving according to their natural tendencies, cross one another's paths. It is an intersection of two or more causal series. Smith puts it well: "Two causal chains, each aiming at a certain end through the natural tendencies of the agents and patients that are involved, cut across one another and, though not intending the chance event, produce it accidentally. The event so produced is an accident of nature. It is a disorder, and lacking in unity, interiority, and order of determination which are found in a genuine nature, a chance event lacks being to the extent that it is chance."[26]

Now, in order to predict chance events, we need more than a knowledge of laws. The prediction of chance involves a knowledge of fact, a knowledge not simply of what a nature must do, but also what the natures outside of it are in fact doing. And so it follows that if all the physical and chemical processes are chance events, science, not to mention physics, would be impossible. Moreover, it would be impossible to know that all is chance; for we can only know "chance" against the background of things tending to determinate ends, that is, acting according to their natures. If everything happens by chance, then nothing happens by chance, because a chance event is such only in relation to two or more events (causal series) that in themselves are "not chance". These events alone enable us to discern that their intersection is a chance event.

And again, if all events are "governed by chance", all events would lack interiority, unity, intelligibility and determination. Science would be a pure fiction, as Friedrich Nietzsche argued.[27]

6: Is energy the ultimate cause and first principle of material reality?

To answer this question, let us turn once again to Heisenberg, who speaks of the complete mutability of matter. He writes:

"All the elementary particles can, at sufficiently high energies, be transmuted into other particles, or they can simply be created from kinetic energy and can be annihilated into energy, for instance into radiation. Therefore we have here actually the final proof for the unity of matter. All the elementary particles are made of the same substance, which we may call energy or universal matter; they are just different forms in which matter can appear.

If we compare this situation with the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, we can say that the matter of Aristotle, which is mere "potentia", should be compared to our concept of energy, which gets into "actuality" by means of the form, when the elementary particle is created"[28]

If we accept this comparison of Aristotle's "potentia" or prime matter with Heisenberg's energy, then it follows that energy is a material or potential cause, not a formal cause. Nothing moves itself from potency to act. For example, consider something that exists only potentially, not actually. It cannot bring itself into actuality, for it would have to be prior to itself. But that is impossible. It is impossible for something that is not, to be at the same time and in the same respect in order to bring itself into being. This is absurd.

What is in potentiality to actuality cannot reduce itself to actuality, but is rather reduced to act by something already in act.[29] A being cannot give to itself what it does not possess. If energy is pure potentiality, then energy accounts for the mutability of material substances. The electron is mutable, and therefore the electron or the proton or any other elementary particle is not the ultimate substrate. Rather, pure potentiality (which cannot exist on its own-for it would not be actually anything) is the ultimate substrate, which always exists in composition with actuality. If we are going to use the term energy, we must not-if Heisenberg's comparison is valid-think of it as "an actual something". What is actual is potentially something else, but actually something. In other words, what is actual is a composite of potency and act. And if energy is potentiality, it is not reduced to actuality through itself; for potency cannot reduce itself to act. To do so, to act in some way, would presuppose that it is actually something, and thus not pure potentiality-hence, not comparable to Aristotle's "potentia" or prime matter.

And so it follows that energy does not account for the electron or the proton or any elementary particle, and much less does it account for the rich heterogeneity we see in nature.

The cause cannot be less than the effect, for that would imply getting something from nothing-and from nothing comes nothing. But potency is less than actuality, and so potency does not cause actuality. Rather, act is the formal cause of things. Act is not the result of potency or energy. Act is distinct from potentiality, and since act is the essential quality of a thing, determining the thing to be what it is, endowing matter with its fundamental intelligibility, act or formal causality is outside the scope and methodology of empiriological physics. Form is prior to quantity and is not, as such, measurable. Hence, empiriological physics cannot, of its very nature, explain the polymorphic character of the world we live in.

7: Can finality or teleology be measured?

The order and uniformity of nature (which renders predictability possible) remains not only unexplained by measurement, but also unperceived by measurement.[30]

Empiriological physics seeks to generalize its measured facts. E = MC2, for example, is not put forth as a single fact, limited to a single case and having no validity beyond that single fact. Rather, it is put forth as a general principle having universal applicability. Generalizations of measured data are called laws by empiriological physics. But laws involve a problem. For possible grounds are there for extending a fact, measured several times, into a generality? How can we safely conclude that a measurement in one part of the world will hold for a measurement in another part? How do we know that Ohm's law, to use Smith's idea, measured in Paris in 1998 will hold in New York in 1999? For the empiriological physicist extrapolates his facts, and he does so within the framework of nature's uniformity. But this uniformity and ability to extrapolate he cannot explain. Extrapolation and prediction (based on uniformity-i.e. a moving thing will always move in the same way) lie beyond the physicist's instruments and his ability to measure. So, physics must recognize its dependence upon a rational knowledge outside itself (philosophical physics) or fall into a complete skepticism (i.e. that of David Hume).[31]

Measurement does not measure order. It cannot pronounce on the relation between what is measured and what the future will bring. Measurement is only of fact--actually, measurement is really only of quantifiable fact, or quantity. Tendencies, ends, teleology, intelligible structure, are all beyond the scope of measurement. These latter have to do with quality, not quantity. For there is indeed something prior to quantity, namely, essential quality or intelligible structure. Pure quantity is unintelligible. For only an intelligible thing has quantity (even mathematics does not deal in pure quanities. Intelligible matter is the substrate of mathematical entities). Measurement stops at quantity. It leaves the nature of the thing untouched. Measurement can neither perceive nor touch the essence of a thing. But it was Descartes who identified material substance with quantity,[32] and since that time some empiriological physicists have tended to regard quantity as the basis of reality. But Max Planck was not one of them. He clearly understood the secondary character of measurement. He writes:

The ideal aim before the mind of the physicist is to understand the external world of reality. But the means which he uses to attain this end are what are known in physical science as measurements, and these give no direct information about external reality. They are only a register or representation of reactions to physical phenomena. As such they contain no explicit information and have to be interpreted.[33]

For example when the element Carbon reacts with Oxygen in the process of combustion (name for the specific process of the change called a chemical reaction), both cease to be carbon and oxygen, since the chemical reaction has produced a new substance called carbon dioxide. Likewise the substance of any person identified by his/her name is constantly undergoing chemical reactions, this being cannot be the same entity as before the reactions it has undergone. Therefore it must be a new substance other than what it was, prior to the change. Therefore it must be identified by a new name, since it is not the same thing. What else can it be but a new substance identified by a different name.

It is certainly true that a chemical change is one in which a new substance with new properties are formed. The key word in this definition is "formed". And certainly at the heart of chemical change is the formation of a new substance. Chemical changes are constantly occurring in my body. But the conclusion: "Therefore I am constantly becoming a new substance," does not follow. If this was true, it would not be possible to say that I am becoming a new substance. "I" is the subject, and the subject of the change is always that which endures or remains the same throughout the change. How can I say: "I am becoming a new substance", and at the end of that chemical change say: "I am a different substance"? My words testify against me. If I am becoming a new substance, and a few moments later I maintain that I am no longer the same substance, then who is this "I" that has endured? The "I" is me. Therefore I have not changed substantially. If I were changing continually, I'd never know it, because I would never live long enough to know it. I couldn't possibly witness it, because it is me who am becoming a new substance, and "I" am no longer around to know it or tell about it.[34]

That is why I am not reducible to my parts. My parts are a part of me. In other words, my parts are not the substance. The chemical changes that occur in me have me, my substance, as their end. I am continually changing other substances into this one substance that is me, a living and human kind of being. The only time I will change substantially is on the day I die. This will be a change from a living, unified substance to a non-living multiplicity of elements.

The material substance has parts, that is, the substance is extended or spread out. It is quantity that gives us parts outside of parts. But quantity is not primary. Substance is really prior to quantity, prior to the arrangement of parts outside one another. The human substance as a whole does not change, but its parts are constantly changing. But these parts are not the substance itself, but parts of the substance. If they were the substance itself, the substance would not be one substance, but many substances. By the human person is one substance, not many. There are many parts of the one substance, but these parts are unified into one living organism. The parts can change (quantitative changes, growth, nutrition, etc.), but the substance is the subject of those changes. The substance is a subject. Quantity does not stand on its own, in other words, quantity is not substance or being per se (as it was for Descartes). Quantity is a different mode of being than substance. Substance is being per se, while quantity is in esse, or accidental, that is, "inhering in". It is a thing that is quantified. It is a thing that has parts. Only by virtue of quantity is a substance subject to measurement. But in itself, substance is not measurable. It does not hide behind the quantity, so to speak, as Pierce misunderstood substance. It is not something that you can look for by pealing an onion, for example, and discovering that all you get are parts. Substance is intelligible. Your pet cat is not a multiplicity of chemicals and a bundle of perceptions, but a substance that has parts and has color. And so the above problem is rooted in a confusion between parts and substance.

Physicist Rudy Rucker is aware of the difficulties involved in identifying parts with substance when he writes:

"A human body changes most of its atoms every few years. Daily one eats and inhales billions of new atoms, daily one excretes, sheds, and breaths out billions of old ones. Physically, my present body has almost nothing in common with the body I had twenty years ago. Since I feel that I am still the same person, it must be that "I" am something other than the collection of atoms making up my body. "I" am not so much my atoms as I am the pattern in which my atoms are arranged."[35]

"Feedback", which takes place in the living organism, is ordered toward homeostasis. This is the overall direction of the chemical changes. There is a constant balancing act in the living organism. The chemical changes are ordered or directed towards unity, and because of that the living organism is a unity. And it is not a unity by virtue of the parts, for the parts are multiple, and what is multiple is not actually one in so far as it is multiple, but only potentially one. A multiplicity is actually unified by one principle-a unifying principle. And wherever we find unity, we find form. To unify is to form, and to form is to unify. The living organism is unified or formed. The parts are unified. The parts have a common end, namely the unity and integrity of the whole organism. All the parts share in the "knowledge" of the common end - which is the integrity of the one organism. Of course, there is no literal knowledge. But they all are determined to that common end (just as the knowledge of the plan enables each soldier to determine himself toward the common end; for it is the Commander-in-Chief who relates the plan of action down the ranks through the Generals and to the Lieutenants, etc.). This unifying principle is the substance's form - which is why the definition of chemical change above includes the word "form": a chemical change is defined as a "change in which new substances with new properties are formed. " When a substance is changed, it is transformed, that is, something within it has acquired a new form. Matter is really the ultimate subject of a chemical change. Matter is that which has the form. The substance of Oxygen is a matter and form composite (potency and act composite). In the change to Carbon Dioxide, Oxygen has been transformed into "Carbon Dioxide", just as sperm and ovum have changed (ceased to be what they are) and have transformed into a substantial unit, and this substantial unit will change again only at death, whenever that may occur.

So quantity does not order like a final cause, and neither does it operate as an efficient cause. Quantity is not a nature, and has neither tendencies nor an inner principle. It is the substance that is responsible for what the parts are. Quantity is responsible for the fact that there are parts, one outside the other. As Smith points out: "Quantity does not explain the "content" that is in the parts; it is only their distribution into an estate of distinctness, dimensionality, and distance"[36] Quantity is a disposition, not a cause. Quantity does not give us an intimate knowledge of the reality which the parts disperse. It is the activity of the substance that does that. And since quantity is only intelligible in reference to a "thing", and since a thing is only intelligible as a certain kind of thing, it is the form that determines the content of the quantity, that is, the content of the parts, i.e. the finger, the tongue, the liver, the DNA, etc.

And so it is the substance that remains the same throughout all the accidental (chemical) changes that take place on a daily basis. Quantity is an accident. A change in quantity is an accidental change. And since quantity gives us parts outside of parts, a change in the parts is an accidental change.

9: In chemistry, the number of protons they contain identifies the elements Carbon and Hydrogen as different substances. Carbon for example contains six protons and hydrogen only one. Therefore the number of protons determines what kind of element we will have. The element with 17 protons can be none other than Chlorine. Element 79, containing 79 protons can be none other than Gold. Therefore, a specific number of a certain kind of thing determines the thing to be what it is. Therefore the correct number of a specific part will determine what a thing is to be. In the case of a human being, missing specific parts makes it to be something other than what it was.

They are identified as different substances by the number of protons they contain. That is the only measurable way we can identify them as different. Carbon contains six protons and hydrogen only one. But it is concluded: "Therefore the number of protons determines what kind of element we will have." But this does not follow. Because differences in kind are accompanied by differences in quantity (number of protons), it does not follow that the quantity (this different number) is that which determines the elements to be different in kind. "Kind" (Genos) is a qualitative term, and not a quantitative term. Only quantity as such is measurable, not "kind", that is, the nature (physis) of the thing. We come to know what (not how much: quantity) an element is by its activity. Knowing how many protons it has does not tell us what it is. Nor does the number determine what a thing is any more than your weight determines what you are. Quantity and quality are two irreducibly different modes of being. Let me explain.

What is determinate is definite (de-terminate; finished; finite). What is definite can be defined (for it is de-finite). To define something is to express its essence. What is definable has an essence, that is, an essential quality, an intelligible structure. In short, it is knowable. It is an object of science. Now there is no science of particulars. Science is of universals. What the chemist knows of Carbon is the nature of carbon. He understands what it is, which is not a "how much", although that is part of his knowledge - and certainly "how much" in terms of the subatomic particles is part of the physicist's knowledge, since this seems to be the only measurable criterion for distinguishing one element from another. The chemist understands how Carbon acts or how it reacts. What he knows is what kind of thing it is. Quantity does not determine or define a thing. A quantity is always a quantity of a particular kind of thing, i.e. 6 protons, 1 elephant with 4 legs. Consider the following: if the number of protons determines what the element is, then what determines the proton to be what it is? Number of quarks? What determines quarks to be what they are? Number of some other subatomic particle? Mesons? Ultimately we are really not explaining anything here. For what makes these subatomic particles to be what they are? Smaller subatomic particles? We get ourselves into an infinite regress in matter when quantity becomes the criterion for nature. And more importantly, this would mean that the atom is not anything determinate: for it has no essential quality or nature. It is nothing in-itself. But the proton as well would not be anything determinate, nothing in-itself, for it is what it is by virtue of something outside of itself (since there is no "itself"), namely the quarks. But a quark is also nothing determinate, nothing in-itself, that is, not a determinate nature. And a regress in one direction will mean that everything is indeterminate. Nothing exists in-itself.

From another angle, it would seem that every atom of every element should all be of the same kind, only of different quantities (for quantity gives us more or less of the same thing). Carbon should be the same kind of thing as hydrogen, just more of the same, or vice versa.[37]

And quantity is not an efficient, formal, or final cause. How does it become a formal cause on the subatomic level? And how does one explain the leap from pure quantity to quality?[38]

Matter is an analogous term. The only matter that investigative science can measure and investigate is that which has mass and extension. But this is not ultimate matter. Note the language here: "has mass and extension". What is it that has mass and extension? Clearly mass and extension are not primary. They are quantitative terms, and quantity is an accident of a material substance (quantity "inheres in"; ac-cidere). Pure quantity would be unintelligible. Quantity has a subject, and this is the substance itself. And substance is always of a determinate nature; otherwise it would be indeterminate, indefinite, unintelligible, and unknowable. The atom of Democritus was thought to be a pure quantity, and this seems to be the case with our original question.

But even a mathematical entity such as a triangle or rectangle is not a pure quantity. The matter of the triangle is not made of wood or steel, the matter of the triangle is an intelligible matter.[39] The triangle has a subject, and this subject is intelligible matter, as opposed to sensible matter (wood, steel). We could not have a triangle without a subject any more than we could have a color without a subject. And yet in the real world, there is more than geometry. There are definite kinds of things that have shape and size and sensible qualities. Mathematics abstracts from these. And so it is no coincidence that mechanistic atomism developed originally as a direct result of the influence of a mathematician/philosopher (Pythagoras), and was resurrected again in the modern world as the direct result of the influence of a mathematician/philosopher (Descartes).[40]

What determines Carbon to be Carbon is not something that the investigative sciences can measure. For what is prior to quantity escapes measurement. One cannot investigate, measure, or picture the formal cause of Carbon or Hydrogen; rather, one has to think it.

And for the ending of the above formulated problem: "In the case of a human being, missing specific parts makes it to be something other than what it was," is certainly true because some parts are essential to the human organism. Take away the heart and you have a different kind of substance. In fact, you no longer have one substance, but a multiplicity of non-living substances. But quantity as such only extends the substance. The rich content of those parts is not determined by quantity. Their content is determined by the nature of the thing. And so a human being has a human heart, which is a specific kind of part (note the word "specific", from species). Species is a qualitative term, not quantitative. The human species is a universal, not a particular. In fact, as Plato said long ago, particulars (such as parts or "particles") do not determine "kind" (genos), or nature (physis), or form (eidos). For these latter are universal in character, unlimited and immaterial.

10: How is it possible to argue that substances are one if they are composed of many? For example, how can a water molecule be one substance if it is composed of two other elements? And man too is simply a composition of a multiplicity of elements, i.e., 65% Oxygen, 18% Carbon, 10% Hydrogen, 3% Nitrogen, 1.4% Calcium, 1% Phosphorus, .35% Sodium, .25% Sulphur, 1% other elements.

There is no water in the watermelon.[41] Similarly, there is no hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, or carbon in the human being, just as there is no hydrogen in water. Water is a different kind of substance than hydrogen. And the human being, a living substance, is an entirely different kind of thing than the inanimate elements.

The key to resolving the above mentioned problem lies in the notion of "virtual presence".[42] The hydrogen has (in our example of water) been transformed. It has not, mind you, been entirely annihilated. It was a substance (the hydrogen atom is a substance), but now the hydrogen is virtually present in the water, not actually (formally) present.[43] The properties of hydrogen are no longer, just as in salt the properties of sodium are no longer. The sodium has been transformed. Oxygen, phosphorus, calcium, etc. have been transformed, and the result is a new substantial unity, namely a living human being. The prime matter of these substances have acquired new form, the form of man, salt, or water.

Nevertheless, as Vincent Edward Smith writes: "the activities of these original forms, their virtue, or their strength as the word originally meant, remains in some way since it has not been altogether nullified. Virtual presence may be said to imply a mixture of act potency, and its nature for that reason can only be explained through matter and form. The lower degrees of mobility in nature are always apparent in the higher, but in their more elevated form they are dominated by the higher reality in which they are, expressing its nature and cooperating in its actions. They are not expelled from existence in their adopted homes, but they are, as shown by the unity of the whole in which they reside, more indeterminately and subordinately present than when they existed in isolation"[44]

Chlorine does not behave as chlorine when part of the salt compound. A thing acts according to its nature (for we know the nature of a thing by its actions). It does not act like chlorine in salt because it is not chlorine. It has been transformed into salt. The first matter of chlorine has taken on or acquired the substantial form of salt.

But the compound salt bears certain traces of the elemental forms of sodium and chlorine in a greater or lesser degree. All other compounds bear traces of the elemental forms to some degree just as vegetation remains in the composite that is an animal, or just as sensation remains in the composite that is the human being.[45] For there is no pure sensation in man; sensation is intimately united to intellection.

Virtual presence also occurs on the subatomic level. The atom is not simply a conglomeration of its subatomic particles. The behavior of an electron is different within the atom than when outside the atom. Physicist Louis De Broglie writes:

"The particles which form these systems seem to lose the individuality and the autonomy with which our very conception of the idea of particles seemed bound to endow them; these particles are in some way built into the systems which incorporate them and from diverse points of view the system appears to be more than the totality of particles of which it is formed....The system thus appears as a sort of unit of higher order in the heart of which the constituents are so much the more difficult to isolate in that they are more strongly united between themselves by the interactions."[46]

"We have no knowledge of what energy is" Physicist Richard P. Feynman

Firstly, the law of conservation of energy states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in the manifold changes which nature undergoes (there is a numerical quantity which does not change when something happens).

The first law has to do primarily with quantity, that is, with something measurable. The law itself really does not touch that which is not subject to measurement, and there is so much in an ordinary atom of gold, for instance, that is beyond our ability to measure, namely its substantial quality and its ultimate constitution.[47]

Nonetheless, the universe, Smith argues, is really the aggregate of the beings which make it up, and so if the laws of thermodynamics (the first and second law) apply to the universe as a whole, the laws must have their ground or basis in the individual parts, namely things or substances. He writes: "The parts must be both conservative and entropic".[48]

The parts of the universe are existing substances, and it is these substances that are doing the conserving. For it is the nature or the form that conserves. To deny that substances are existing natures, composites of matter and form, is to open the door to inertialism. If a substance is not a nature that has its principle of movement within it, then its principle of movement is extrinsic, that is, outside of it - it being nothing but a result or conglomeration of parts. The parts in turn have their principle of movement outside of them, etc. If inertia alone ruled, then everything would be moving at an infinite velocity. There would be no resistance, because there would be no existing nature to resist the movement from the outside.

Smith also points out that there is a difference in conservatism with regard to the atom and its subatomic units. The electron, for instance, is not conservative in the same way that the atom is conservative. The electron is much poorer in property (having only mass, charge, and spin), that is, much more inert, much more capable of being "influenced by many different contexts".[49] There seems to be much more potency and consequently less actuality with an electron than with an atom. Smith provides the following example: "Any element can be made radioactive by the addition or subtraction of relatively inert particles, like the neutron or proton, but not every element can be combined, say with neon, silver, or zinc."[50]

The elementary particles are much more "general", much more potential, and thus far less "self-centered", that is, less moved from within than the atom. And so the atom is more conservative, that is, it has more interiority, for it is more "moved from within" (more determinate, in short, more formal). All the elementary particles are poor in property and tremendously inert. A proton, for instance, is so universal in its action not by virtue of what is has (it has very little), but rather by virtue of what it does not have.

12. Does the instability of the entropic process contravene hylomorphism?

The second law of thermodynamics deals with the instability of nature. All the original energy of the universe will not be destroyed; rather it will have become unavailable for useful work. The universe will at some point run out of the energy it needs for all forms of motion and activity. A heat death is in store for the universe. Matter and energy will have reached a state of inertness and quiescence.

Smith points out that hylomorphism is necessary to account for the facts of thermodynamics. No matter what imperceptible changes may take place in things like iron door knobs or pine trees, they remain what they were long before a prospector might have found the mine from which the iron came, for instance, or before the scientist (who measures the changes in the tree) was ever born.[51]

The atom is far more conservative than the electron. The being of an electron is so inert, so potential (not pure potentiality) that it can only individuate not much more than a few accidents at a time. In combination the electron loses its nature and is virtually present in its new substantial context. But the atom is far less inert than the electron or other elementary particles. It is more stable and conservative, and it is far more capable of acting without destroying its whole nature in the action. It can hold its own when combined, i.e., in bronze (copper, zinc, etc.). The electron, on the other hand, obtains its vibrating frequency not on its own, but from its atomic context. The atom, in short, has more being, more act, and is less inert than the electron and the other elementary particles. The atom is stable, but its components are not stable. Moreover, the atom's stability does not come from the instability of its components. Greater stability is not obtained by adding lesser stabilities. More act is not obtained by a juxtaposition of potencies. More and more inertia does not give us less inertia.[52]

The universe is indeed running downhill, but it is not doing so at a violent pace, with infinite velocity. There are conservative principles at work here. There are "braking principles in the process." If not, there is no reason, argues Smith, why this downhill drive should not attain infinite speed and wipe out all distinction and determination. The multiplicity of determination (determinate natures) is an index of a multiplicity of such resistive principles - determinate natures.

13: If mass and energy are equivalent, and matter is that which has mass and extension, then it seems that E = mc² refutes Aristotle's hylomorphic doctrine of matter and form.

Firstly, matter is not that which has mass and extension. This is Descartes' notion of matter, which Einstein's formula refutes - if it refutes anyone. E = mc² actually supports and requires matter and form dualism. As we are all aware, E stands for energy, m for mass, and c the speed of light. The formula depicts the equivalence of matter and energy. A complete conversion of one gram of matter (what Aristotle would refer to as secondary matter) into energy would produce enough heat to boil the water in eighty-five Olympic size swimming pools.

In 1939 it was discovered that by splitting uranium (fission) we could produce a lighter and more stable element (a more stable nucleus), such as barium-144 and krypton-89. A nuclear reaction, which transforms heavyweight or lightweight nuclei into more stable middleweights, lowers the average energy of the nucleons and releases tremendous amounts of excess energy.

Now, let's look at the mass of the atom in terms of standard atomic mass units. Under these terms the atomic mass of Oxygen is sixteen, while the proton is 1.00758 and its neutron 1.00893. The nucleus of a helium atom contains two protons and two neutrons. Weighing its component parts gives us a value of 4.03302. But the actual weight of the nucleus is 4.00280, a difference of 0.030 mass units. Why does the nucleus of helium weigh less than the sum of its parts? Phosphorus weighs 0.280 mass units less than the sum of its nucleons, and the weight difference between the sixteen nucleons in Oxygen and their weight outside the atom is 0.1328. What accounts for this difference in energy? Is it possible that matter has been annihilated by the combination? Has mass been turned into energy?[53]

The explanation lies in the notion of "strong force' or binding energy. This is the nuclear charge that is the source of the strong attraction between nucleons (the strong force is not the electrical charge). The strong nuclear force is much stronger than the electromagnetic force but has a much shorter range. This force is equal to the energy required to disrupt the nucleus. Now, the reason why the helium nucleus is lighter than the sum of its component parts is that 0.030 mass units have been converted into energy, that is, into the energy required to bind the nucleons (which is equivalent to the energy required to disrupt the nucleus).

Matter and energy's equivalence was known long before Einstein (just as time's relativity to motion was known before Einstein). A body on a very high mountain weighs less than it would on the surface of the earth; for the earth's pull decreases as the body moves towards outer space. Mass has always been measured in terms of energy and energy in terms of mass. Mass is measured in terms of weight, and weight is reduced to the pull exerted by the earth. When an object is weighed, what is measured is the force of attraction, which the earth exerts on its body. What is measured is the amount by which the heavy object overcomes the resisting forces in the spring. Conversely, energy is measured by mass. Take the foot-pound, for instance (the work done in raising a pound of matter a distance of one foot). Now matter is a mass concept, and so is distance, which involves extension. When one measures the current in an ammeter, it is the amount of energy that overcomes the inertia in the deflection needle that is measured.

And so it seems the dichotomy of mass and energy in classical physics was artificially made, and thanks to Einstein the situation has been remedied.

What is, then, the real relation of matter and energy? Consider our example of the helium nucleus whose nucleons weigh more outside their home than within. The four nucleons are held together by the "strong force', and it is obvious that the energy until now available for the pull toward the earth has in this context been turned to a new task. Were this energy retrieved and directed downward toward the earth, "conservation of energy" would indicate that nothing would really be lost or gained in the process. It seems that energy has been changed from one form to another. And so Smith argues that Einstein's equation is really the problem of converting energy from one form to another rather than the conversion of mass to energy. Even changes in the extension of the fission fragments in comparison with the original substance does not pose serious problems for Aristotle; for changes in extension or volume are commonplace events. The conversion of mass into energy does not really stand in any opposition to earlier known philosophical principles. Smith argues that the opposition is rather towards the physics of Galileo, Newton, and Descartes.

It was Descartes who reduced the material world to quantity, identifying material substance with extension. A natural substance, for Aristotle, is defined by its mobility and the two-fold principles which motion discloses. A body is not defined in terms of mass and extension, and so there is no requirement that mass be constant. A change is extension does not alter the nature of a thing - which is expressed by the definition. Extension need not be constant. Prime matter alone is constant through a change of substance. Energy has inertia, and the inertia in the fissionable material has not been lost or gained but appears in the mass and energy of the products. This illustrates matter and form dualism by showing the constancy of prime matter amid the nuclear changes that are changes in the substantial forms of the atoms. "Strong force" or binding energy also illustrates the principles of potency and act (matter and form). The atom is a substantial unit, and not simply the conglomeration of subatomic particles, and so it isn't surprising that the nucleons do not preserve in the composite the properties that they bear in isolation. The change of mass property into binding energy or strong force reveals that there are radical changes in the subatomic particles themselves when they enter into atomic constitutions.

E = mc² has made the world of physics aware of the inadequacy of the classical concepts, and it should make us aware of the danger of erecting a science on "mere uninterrupted measurements." What a thing is, its nature, is known not by measurement but by intellection, that is, abstraction. Hylomorphism can only expect to find in nature changes in the very being of things accompanied by a constancy of their inertia.[54]

14: Do the elementary particles determine the atom to be the kind of atom it is?

Elementary particles or units are logically general. What this means is that they are poor in property, that is, qualitatively poor. Consider Aristotle's logical categories - the ten genera. Substance; Quantity; Quality; Relation; When; Where; Action; Passion; Posture; Habit. These ten genera are logically general. In the extra-mental world there are particular substances of very specific kinds. There is no pure substance in reality that is as general and unspecified as the logical category. Genera are in the mind. As general, the genus substance is unspecified (non-specific), that is, having no specific determination, such as living, non-living compound, plant, animal, human, etc. Even "animal" is logically general - less general than substance, but general nonetheless. "Animal" as a genus is open to more specific determination (species/specification), such as "winged", "aquatic", or "rational".

The real world is rich in specification, that is, rich in various species of animal, various kinds of substances, various kinds of quantity, qualities, places (France, England, Southeast Asia) and times, etc.

Electrons and other elementary particles are real and not simply logical (although the neutrino is said to have zero mass, some say merely a point without dimension, reminiscent of Pythagoras of old, but these examples only help our case). But electrons and other subatomic units are general like the logical categories in that they are poor in property and await specification or determination. Some of the latest elementary particles to be discovered disintegrate almost instantaneously. Their interactions with one another are not all different. Their interactions, at this point, seem to be of four kinds (nuclear force, electrical interactions, the beta-decay interaction, and gravity). Elementary particles are indeterminate. They are more passive than active. They do not tend to exist independently in nature; rather they tend towards a qualitative context (an atom, for instance). They are almost totally inert and determined from without.

The electron acts in a multiplicity of ways because there are a multiplicity of different non-inertial factors in the world, that is, natures or essences. The electron's almost total inertia does not allow it to differentiate itself to account for this multiplicity and rich heterogeneity. Adding generalities does not lead to specifics. Adding indeterminacies does not lead to determinacy. Adding the genus animal over and over again does not give us winged creature or rational animal, and neither does the mere summation of subatomic units give us the rich and heterogeneous world in which we live.

And so no matter how the quantum reality question is answered, there are no philosophical conclusions that can be drawn therefrom. Those who maintain that the electron is not a determinate particle between measurements, but is rather a mere tendency towards something, a possibility less real than an actuality, in fact help the thesis we are proposing. They certainly are less real, that is, more potential or indeterminate than the atom in which it finds itself. The atom in which it exists determines its behavior. Likewise, the hydrogen atom is potentially present in a water molecule (less real than the water molecule), and not actually present, just as the water molecule is virtually present (not actually present) in the human body. As we descend towards the subatomic level, we approach not what is more real but less real. It is the whole that is entirely real. The gold atom is real not because indeterminate subatomic units determine it.

15: How can anyone say that reductionism is not science (just bad philosophy)? Physicist Richard Feynman writes:

"Everything is made of atoms...everything that animals do, atoms do. In other words, there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics"

"Certainly no subject or field is making more progress on so many fronts at the present moment, than biology, and if we were to name the most powerful assumption of all, which leads one on and on in an attempt to understand life, it is that all things are made of atoms, and that everything that living things do can be understood in terms of the jigglings and wigglings of atoms.

The notion that all is reducible to atoms and receives ultimate explanation in the behavior of those atoms is about as correct as the idea that the novel is reducible ultimately to its letters.

Each letter of the alphabet has its properties. It is written a certain way, it can be capitalized or in lower case, has a definite phonetic, which can change in a particular but larger context ('h' is silent, 'k' is silent, 'k' is hard, etc.). As a child we are taught the properties of the letters as a prelude to reading. Some of these letters have accents, etc. Some letters are italicized, underlined, made bold, placed next to quotation marks, etc. These letters await further determination, that is, a context in which to be. It is that context that determines them further, that is, determines their meaning. That context is the word. Now, the letters determine the word in a way, but the word determines the letters in a much more profound way, as I will try to explain. The word can be isolated, but as such it lacks the deeper meaning of which it is capable (potential). It too receives formal determination within a higher context, namely the sentence. It is the idea to be expressed that determines the sentence, which determines the words and their tenses, capitalization, accents, etc. And the words, as was said, determine the letters.

But often an idea is just too complex to express in one sentence - impossible to express in a letter, such as the letter 'm'. So, instead of just one sentence, we need a paragraph. It is the entire paragraph that shapes and molds the sentences, which shape the words, which determine the letters. Knowing the alphabet tells me nothing about the ideas expressed in the paragraph above. The paragraph is greater than the letters and not the mere sum of the letters, nor is it reducible to the letters. The letters in a very limited sense determine the paragraph to be a paragraph in so far as there is no paragraph without the letters. But they don't determine the meaning of the paragraph. The letters are more of a "material" cause of the paragraph, and not a "formal" cause.

The meaning of the word is not contained in the letter, nor is the meaning contained in the sum of the letters. The sentence is a series of words, but not a mere series. The meaning of the sentence is not in the words but in their order or arrangement, and their arrangement is outside the very meaning of the words themselves.

The meaning determines their arrangement. And so it is the sentence that determines the meaning of the word, not vice versa. We all know what it means to take words out of context. When we do take something out of context, we distort its original meaning. For example, "gray". In one context, "gray" refers to a color, as in "the sky is gray today." But in another context, the word has an entirely different meaning, a more subtle meaning: "this issue takes us into a gray area". The meaning of the whole idea determines the meaning of the word; for the meaning of the whole determines the arrangement of the words.

But even the sentence finds its meaning within the higher context of the paragraph. The paragraph arranges and orders sentences (We often rearranged sentences a number of times before we submit the final draft). It is not enough to have the sentence. The meaning and order of the sentences is determined by the entire paragraph, or the idea that the entire paragraph is ordered to communicate. And the paragraph is situated in the context of the chapter. The chapter in turn is situated within the context of "Part One", and "Part One" is situated in the context of the entire novel.

One cannot write a novel word by word, or even chapter by chapter. A good quality novel knows where it is going before it even begins. So the process begins from the top (idea) down (letters). We begin writing the novel letter by letter, but the letters do not determine the novel. They determine the novel in a very limited sense - they are the material cause of the novel, so to speak. You can't have a novel without letters. But the idea is prior to the "matter" (letters) not merely in the order of time (although this is debatable), but primarily according to the order of perfection and completeness. The idea is in the mind of the author, and it is this idea that is the ultimate determinant of the whole novel, that is, every part of it.

Now the idea of the novel, the experience that the author wishes to communicate to his readers, is far too complex to be captured in "Part One", not to mention the chapter, the paragraph, the sentence, and the word.

A good novelist brings out the beauty of the language and reveals the power of the word. There is more power in the words I am using than I am capable to bringing out, but the novelist who has an eye not simply for truth, but for beauty, can bring out that power in the words. The words, nonetheless, receive their power from the context. It is the context that determines or empowers the words. The words are not actually powerful, but potentially powerful. They receive their actuality from the harmonious arrangement of the words within the larger context of the author's vision. The idea, the familiarity of the author with the language, his sense of beauty, his insight into the human condition, etc., all work to invest his words with power. On their own the words could not hope to acquire such status. They are what they are by virtue of something outside of themselves.

And so the novel is far richer in property than the letter "m" or "p" or "q" etc. The novel's form does not come from the letters, or the words, or the sentences. These latter, what they are, come from the form which exists in the mind of the novelist, and it is this form that seeks to communicate itself, and so it seeks to incarnate itself in the material causality of language.

If all he had were sentences, he could not write a novel. The sentences need a qualitative context much higher than themselves, not to mention mere phonetics. To write a novel, it is not enough to know the alphabet, nor is it enough to just know words, nor is it enough to know how to write a sentence. And it is not enough to be able to write a chapter or an essay. The author has a complex, rich, and beautiful experience he is trying to communicate to others, in the hopes of drawing them into that experience.

Similarly, the rich heterogeneous and polymorphic character of the world we live in can hardly be explained by atoms, any more than a novel is explained by words. Just as the author needs his matter (words, sentences, etc.), so too do the "ideas" of things need properly disposed matter (baryons, mesons, leptons, electrons, protons, neutrons, positrons, atoms, molecules, amino acids, proteins, etc.,) if these ideas are to be spread out materially. This matter does not determine the meanings of things, their natures or essences, much less their existence. They are disposed in a general way; they are orientated potentially towards an idea. And these "matters" do not determine their relationship to one another any more than the words of a novel determine their own relationship to one another. The final cause is determined not by matter, but by form.

But a typical reductionist like Richard Feynman works from the bottom up, that is, from the accents, to letters, to words, to sentences, to paragraphs, etc. When everything is broken down into its fundamental constituents, the reductionist believes he's moved one step closer to explaining everything. In light of the above, though, he has not moved closer at all but away from a genuine explanation of things. To explain the novel, you have to read it first. A novel is understood from a bird's eye view. It is really only understood at the end, for it is at the end of the novel that we get the original idea and can glance back at the whole movement from the beginning to the end. Knowing the alphabet was a means, but by no means a sufficient means to coming to understand the entire novel. Without a good memory, we could not gaze back at the whole experience and look at all the parts in the light of the whole, and most importantly, without a rich life experience we couldn't begin to appreciate a good novel. Moreover, a good novel is one that, among other things, keeps us thinking long after we have finished reading it (the idea within it is complex and profound).

Now the empiriological method has no choice but to work from the bottom up. For the scientific method is ordered primarily toward production. The principal goal of empiriological physics is to manipulate matter and predict. It must understand proximate causes, and there is no other way to do that than through an empiriological method. But a proximate cause is not an ultimate cause any more than the letters are the ultimate cause of the word in which they find themselves. But Feynman believes he is explaining the whole by understanding the material constituents. But this does not explain the whole any more than knowing the constituents of words enables you to explain A Tale of Two Cities or The Brothers Karamazov. Constituent parts are subservient. They serve the whole; they do not determine the whole. They have, nonetheless, a determining role, a causal role; for you can't determine the word without letters, and you can't determine a sentence without words, but the meaning of the word or sentence is not determined by the letter or word. Again, note the two-fold meaning of "determination". The former refers to material determination, the other to formal determination. The meaning (sens) is the direction, and the essence of a thing is known by its direction or tendencies, that is, its activities, and not its parts.

And so physics is not the queen of the sciences, as Feynman so readily believes. Rather, it is the most subservient of them all. It does not "judge" other sciences in a higher light, rather it serves other sciences, just as the science of letters which we learn in grade 1 or 2 serves higher things, such as literature, but does not judge literature. Physics is far from being an all-inclusive science. It is because Feynman confuses proximate causes with ultimate causes, material causality with formal causality, that he sees physics as all-inclusive. The most all-inclusive science will be that whose object is all-inclusive, and the most all-inclusive object of knowing is nothing other than being. And so it isn't physics that is the queen of the natural sciences, but metaphysics or the philosophy of being. And of course the highest science will not be the science that enables us to know the properties of letters, but rather that which enables us to understand the ultimate causes of those letters, the ultimate reason for their existence and their ultimate final cause, that is, the science that enables us to know the rich experiences of the author, his ideas that are too complex to be expressed in a word or sentence. Such a science is metaphysics and sacred theology. No doubt Feynman would likely deny that these are sciences (for not even mathematics and psychology are sciences according to Feynman); for according to him, the test and validating criterion of all knowledge is experiment. The problem with that principle, though, is that it cannot be validated through experiment. Essentially he denies his own principle in the very act of putting it forth.

Moreover, just as a novel does not contain within itself the explanation for its own existence, so too the natures of things do not contain within themselves the explanation for their own existence. Physics is impotent in the face of this question, namely the existential cause of ordinary things. Not only is the existential meaning of things outside of things themselves, but the essential meaning of all things seem to have their meaning outside of them, that is, in their final causes. For the meaning of the letter is in the word, and the meaning of the word in the sentence, and the sentence in the paragraph, and the paragraph in the chapter, and the chapter in the context of the entire novel. In the same way the meaning of the atom is in the molecule, whose meaning is found in a larger whole, such as amino acids, whose meaning is to be found in a still larger whole, such as proteins, whose meaning is to be found in a still larger whole, such as the organ of the eye, etc. The ultimate meaning of things will not be found on the subatomic level, but at the complete opposite end of the extreme. It will be found in the ultimate final cause of all things. And since science cannot measure final causality, the ultimate meaning of things is not something that empiriological science will ever discover. Metaphysics, and in particular sacred theology, can discern the ultimate meaning of matter.

16: "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Matter and energy are equivalent. So isn't everything energy in one form or another."

What do we mean by energy? Power. Work. Force. Tension. Movement. Potential energy is energy "poised and ready for action". Traditionally, energy has been defined as the power to do work.

Now, energy, in so far as it can be measured, can be made an object of empiriological physics. But the "what" of energy (what is it?) is not, strictly speaking, a scientific question. In fact, "we have no knowledge of what energy is", says physicist Richard Feynman. If we are referring to the ultimate nature of energy, we are dealing with something that is prior to measurement.

In the Aristotelian perspective, energy is not some sort of entity, nor is it a kind of substrate that underlies things. The Greek word for act, as in the first act of a material substance, is energy. Aristotle uses the word "energeia" as the act of matter:

"...about the substrate, of which we have said that it underlies in two senses, either being a `this,' which is the way an animal underlies its affections,-or as the matter underlies the act (energeia)"[55]

So, the substantial "energy" of a substance is its substantial act. But just as "act" is the realisation of a potency, so we must not consider energy as some sort of distinct entity, much less should we attempt to picture it, nor must we conceive it as something measurable. Quantities alone are measurable. But the substantial act (energeia) is the act of a potentiality (namely matter). First matter does not have the ability to do work, for what is pure potentiality is not actually anything. But, as realised by form or act, prime matter can then be said to have energy, for it has form or act. Potency and act are distinct, but not separate. The substantial energy of a thing is its essential intelligibility; it makes the thing to be what it is.

A substance has powers or potencies, and these are potencies to further acts, or activity. But these are actual potencies, and so they are powers of the form, powers of the "primordial energy" or substantial act. The entity, as a composite of potency and act, has the ability to do certain kinds of work. The kinds of things it will be able to do will depend on the kind of thing it is (second act follows upon first act).

So, energy does not simply take forms. Energy is form, or the act of matter. It is matter as potentiality that takes form. There are varying degrees of energy in that there are various forms, some of which are more powerful than others. Man has more power than plant, for example.

But this explanation only goes so far philosophically. We have yet to explain the "why" of these varying degrees of power. We can do this only by once again reverting to another level. And this takes us to our next problem, for it is said: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

This is true. To create, in the true sense of that word, is to bring something into being ex nihilo (from nothing). It is not possible for us to impart being. At the most we can beget our likeness, that is, beings of the same nature. We do not, nonetheless, impart existence on a nature like our own. It is not our nature "to be". We have being, but we are human. If I am my own being, then I could impart existence; for like begets like. But my actions are limited by the very limits of my nature. So, I cannot create nor destroy energy, nor can I create or destroy anything. If I cannot impart being, I cannot withdraw being from an existing nature. I can destroy a thing, that is, transform it, but I cannot annihilate. For that is to act existentially, which is impossible.[56]

But energy does not have within itself the explanation for its own existence; for the act of anything does not include within itself its existence. Being is outside the essence of a thing. So existence is also an act; the act of all acts. We could say that the act of existence is an "existential energy". Nonetheless, we should avoid using the word energy for act; for the word 'energy' is so wedded to the framework of empiriological physics that using it in a philosophical context can only generate confusion.

17: Is it true that "without the predictive precision of mathematics, any claim to 'truth' is illusory"?

Can the truth of this statement be established with the predictive precision of mathematics? Obviously not. Therefore, any claim that the above is true must be declared "illusory".

This is a typical self-refuting statement, like the statement that "there is no truth", or the contention that: "Whatever cannot be known by the method of empiriological physics is not knowable or even worth knowing." The conclusion that "whatever cannot be known by the method of empiriological physics is not knowable or even worth knowing" cannot itself be established by the method of empiriological physics. It should therefore follow that we cannot know that "whatever cannot be known by the method of empiriological physics is not knowable or even worth knowing"; or if we could, it isn't worth knowing.

The original statement above is not a mathematical statement, but a philosophical one. The mathematician in fact does not study math. It is the philosopher who studies math, for mathematics is a science, and it is the philosopher that studies the science of math, that is, what it is we do when we do math, the object of mathematical knowledge, the nature of mathematical entities, etc. The mathematician studies quantities, that is, numbers, magnitudes and their relations.

The term empiriological (as in "empiriological physics") is used here to express both the experimental character (empeiria) of the science as well as its theoretical (its logos) character. Now, the investigative sciences resolve their conclusions in the observable and measurable. But such resolution is not enough. It is in deduction that the most perfect type of scientific explanation is to be found, and that is why empiriology has sought to link itself to a deductive science. There are but two deductive sciences of a pure type, and these are mathematics and philosophy. Mathematical physics is precisely empiriological knowledge linked to the deductive science of mathematics, which plays a formal and directive role with regard to the experience of the physicist. In this case, empiriological science is subalternated to a deductive science.[57]

Subalternation

A science is subalternated to another when it derives its principles from this other science, which Maritain calls the subalternant.[58] Now the subalternate science (in the case of mathematical physics, the subalternate science is physics) does not by itself resolve its conclusions into the first principles of reason, but the subalternant science resolves its own conclusions into first principles and these conclusions of the subalternant becomes the principles for the subalternate science. Classic examples include geometry (subalternant science) with regard to optics (subalternate), which, with geometrical laws, explains the properties of light rays. Acoustics is a subalternate science to arithmetic, and astronomy is as well subalternate to mathematics. Maritain calls this type of empiriological analysis in which the sensible is interpreted mathematically, empiriometrical.

So the mathematical sciences, which are deductive and explanatory sciences, draw the sensible real into their own proper domain in order to "explain" the sensible real and to construct a system of explanatory reasons and causes. This system takes in all the sensible real and explains it not by real or ontological causes and principles (which are real entities or 'real being' of the intelligible order) but by mathematical or logical entities ('logical being', or beings of reason, or ideal entities). As Maritain puts it, "there is a constant coming and going from observed and measured real beings to mathematical beings of reason and vice versa".[59] The mathematical science will use mathematically constructed entities (logical being as opposed to real being) to explain the sensible real, and so the danger here is that of mistaking these mathematically constructed, ideal entities with their grounding in reality, for ontological causes ('real being', entia realia), which alone explain the essence of the physical real.

This confusion of logical being with real being is very commonplace in the world of science and is in fact the root of the self-refuting contention that without the predictive precision of mathematics, any claim to "truth" is illusory.

18: Is it true that "If you cannot express your knowledge in mathematical form, you may know something; you may have the beginnings of knowledge, but your knowledge is inevitably of a rudimentary and incomplete form"?

Another classic self-refuting statement. For no part of the above statement is expressed in mathematical form, nor can it be so expressed. If the author really believed what he said, you wonder why he didn't even attempt to express his thought or idea in mathematical form. And if the statement were true, it would only represent the beginnings of knowledge, an inevitably rudimentary and incomplete knowledge. But the truth of the matter is precisely the opposite. The only thing that can be expressed in mathematical form is that which is quantifiable. And, what is expressed mathematically is itself in an incomplete and rudimentary form with regard to knowledge proper.[60] Consider graphs, opinion polls, and anything else that are mathematicized. The mathematical expression leaves out all sorts of things that are knowable and considers only the quantifiable. Consider what an opinion poll tells us, for example, about a people, and/or about the political party that is ahead in the polls. Opinion polls provide us with knowledge that is very useful, but nonetheless incomplete. The mind needs more than a number, even though the numbers may prove very useful.[61]

Consider the Guttmacher Institute's statistic on teen pregnancy. The statistic tells us little about the cause of increased sexual activity among teenagers, if anything at all. In itself, the statistic tells us nothing about the character of the teenagers involved nor the culture in which they live.[62]

The mathematicization of time, moreover, does not tell us what time is. Scientists and philosophers still wonder about the nature of time, even though we've measured time for centuries.

So it is not true that if we find we are unable to express our knowledge in mathematical form, we only have the beginnings of knowledge, but fundamentally a knowledge of a rudimentary and incomplete nature. The truth is in the opposite of the statement. The mathematical is always rudimentary (for elementary school children are taught mathematics, but they are not taught philosophy) and incomplete, which is why it fails to satisfy the mathematical physicist.[63] For he still seeks to know what the electron is. He wants to understand what is really going on at the subatomic level despite probability equations, which is why they still ask the "quantum-reality" question: because mathematical entities do not reach ontological causes. If mathematical expression really did amount to complete knowledge, physicists would not seek to know whether in reality the electron is a wave or a particle, and whether it is actually something independent of our act of perceiving. For the complete contains the incomplete, not vice versa. But since the physicist does indeed ask further questions about an area of reality for which he has more than ample mathematical knowledge, it follows that he feels his present knowledge (for the most part mathematically realized) to be woefully inadequate.

19: Doesn't the uncertainty principle show that nature is indeterminate?

The uncertainty relation does not represent a real disorder in nature, but merely a subjective or logical indetermination, that is to say, an inaccuracy in measurement.

A norm or standard must be chosen in light of which the indeterminism is said to exist. In other words, the very notion of "indeterminacy" can only be understood against the background of what is determinate. If something is said to be disordered, there must be an order against the background of which we can say that this something is disordered. Now this norm in light of which we understand disorder is either a subjective norm or an objective norm. If the standard is subjective, then the indeterminism which it defines is subjective (and we have no business contending that the indeterminism is objective and real).

But if the norm in light of which we understand disorder is objective, then all is not indeterminate in the world, At least this norm or standard, with respect to which disorder is defined, is determinate and law-abiding.

In the area of quantum physics, the definition of chance is grounded in a prior definition of order, and this definition or understanding of order is real or merely ideal depending on whether the norm of order is real or ideal.[64]

20: Doesn't quantum mechanics show that the world is governed by "the random", that is, by chance?

Randomness is not chance. A statistical whole composed of elements that are apparently disordered is in reality an ordered whole. Now such a whole is nothing but the sum of its parts, and so if the whole is ordered, the parts must in turn be ordered, only in ways that we are unable to follow at this point.

It follows that if the units that form a collection were mere chaos, following the lawlessness of chance, then it would be impossible to have an order like the law of averages or radioactive half life or thermal equilibrium in the whole.[65]

The parts are clearly law abiding if there is law in the aggregate. And so order does not depend for its existence on our ability to measure it.

Strictly speaking, order has nothing to do with quantity. Order is detectable in the tendencies of a thing's nature towards its proper end. If the small particles, which some believe to be governed by chance (which is not to be governed at all), had no tendencies of their own towards ordered ends, then they would be entirely indeterminate. They'd be unable to act; for everything that acts, acts for an end. Not only would they be unable to act if they were wholly indeterminate, but they'd be unable to exist. For existence is an act.

Chance, in the physical and real sense of the word, can only be defined and understood in light of final causality. Chance involves motion. Chance is an aberration from a motion's natural destiny. Chance is, in this light, something quite different from randomness.[66]

So if the random collection were to be set in motion, then would it be subject to chance. Its random character might be disturbed by an extrinsic causal series, and in this case the disturbance of the random order would be a chance event.[67]

21: Isn't empty space pure nothingness? Isn't a vacuum simply "nothing"?

A Vacuum is simply impossible, and only philosophical reasoning can show this, strictly speaking. But even physicists do not regard vacuums as "emptiness". Paul Davies writes: "The physicist regards space as more like an elastic medium than as emptiness....even the purest vacuum is a ferment of activity and is crowded with evanescent structures. To the physicist 'nothing' means 'no space' as well as no matter."[68]

Now this is something Zeno understood centuries ago without the aid of empiriological science. Regarding empty space he argued that if something is happening in it, it is not nothing, but something.[69]

But Smith takes another approach. He argues that whatever is moved is moved by another. Once the initial mover has ceased moving a body, the medium does the rest, facilitating motion.[70] If this is true, no motion could occur in a vacuum since a vacuous medium is not a medium and hence not a mover. Motion would collapse in a vacuum.[71]

Moreover, place is the term of local movement, as Aristotle points out. For local motion is the result of the fact that a body is first in a less natural place and tends towards its natural home, i.e. steam rising out of the kettle, or air seeping out of the tire. But a vacuum would not allow such a hierarchy motion. A vacuum is entirely indifferent. It could not act as a motivating force, that is, attract a thing as an end towards which it would move. Also, a vacuum having no parts, there could be no reason why a thing in a vacuum should rest in one region of it rather than another. Nor would there be any reason why the thing moving through it, like a ray of light, should take one path over another path, this path or that path.[72]

Also, a body at rest in a vacuum would be coterminous with the vacuum, that is, a reality coterminous with a vacuum, something coterminous with nothing simultaneously. But a vacuum is not a place. A place is simply the immediate, immobile surface of a surrounding body. Place is external. It is a fixed frame that a material thing abandons in local motion to seek a station more fitting to its nature.

Granted for a moment then that an entity could occupy a vacuum as its place, and even move to another vacuum or another part of one. Movement from one place to another in the vacuum would produce no changes since the thing moved would in the end be where it was before-in a vacuum.

22: Is the Universe really infinite?

Firstly, the universe is not a single substance. The universe is the sum of individual entities that constitute it. So, is there an infinite multitude of distinct material substances, stretching one after the other without end?

Let's begin by pointing out that if one body in the universe is finite in extension, then every other body must be finite. So right away we can rule out the existence of an infinite body in the universe. But can there be an infinite multiplicity of finite bodies? No. There reason is that there is no such thing as an actually existing infinite series. Multiplicity is always actually finite, and only potentially infinite. Let me explain.

For there is no infinity in the direction of the small, that is, in terms of division. A finite line is not infinitely divided, but only infinitely divisible (potentially divisible). And neither can there be an actual infinity in the direction of the large. For it is by dividing matter that units are gained for the addition, and so there is no infinite multitude of bodies stretching out into space if division can still free new unities to be added to the sum.[73] If infinity is truly infinite, nothing new can be added to it. We can only add a unit to an actually existing number. So, a proton, to use Smith's example, which is released from an atom, would have no place to move in an infinitely populated world. And also, if there is an infinite multitude of bodies in the universe, thus constituting its infinite expanse, then the bodies themselves must be infinitely divided in order to account for the infinite series. And of course, matter is not infinitely divided, only infinitely divisible.

A universe of infinite extent would abolish the reality of distinct places, and motion would thus be impossible. Also, "place" would perish because there would be no immediacy of surface; all would be mediate. And since place is the term of local movement, and local movement without place is unthinkable, motion would be impossible.

Moreover, there are opposite tendencies in the world, i.e. the upward tendency of smoke, or the downward tendency of an apple falling off a tree. Smith argues that there is a constant tension upward, otherwise the universe would be crushed. And there is a constant downward directivity in nature, for otherwise the universe would explode. There has to be a balance of forces in the universe. The same fact of opposite tendencies in the order of local movement applies to the other two dimensions, that is, longitude and latitude. So the universe is not simply unilinear and univalent in its tendencies but diversified and multidirectional. Now motion achieves something definite; it is not absorbed into an infinity. But extensive infinity would be unidirectional and indeterminate. It would not be divided locally into up and down or sidewise since it would admit of no centers, no definitions, no determinations (for it is indeterminate in all directions, that is, all directions are indeterminate and without reference point; there can be no talk of directions), no immediacies and the immobilities that are places. Place is the term of local movement, but infinity is that which is not terminated. It is the indeterminate. A moving thing would thus be going everywhere at once, and a thing would be in every thing at once (An onion, for instance, that had an infinite number of layers would have no center).

Also, if there is an expanding universe, there must be forces canceling the expansion, or the whole of material reality would be scattered in a single instant.

23: Won't physics eventually arrive at a complete explanation of things? How can you deny that physics is not the new "first philosophy", that is, metaphysics?

Each being is what it is. Few of us would argue with that. We readily understand that each being is what it is. A being cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. I cannot say that John is, and that John is not. He either is or he isn't. We can say John is, but in a different respect say John is not, as if to say that John is here with us, but he is in another world (daydreaming, for instance). But to say absolutely that John is (that he exists), and affirm at the same time and in the same respect that John is not (that he does not exist) is irrational and absurd.

Now, the fact that we understand the principle of identity testifies to our contact with the reality of being. We have contact with being. The first apprehension of the intellect is precisely being. Before we know anything about an object, we apprehend first and foremost that it is. The most ultimate remark we can make about a thing is that it is something, or, that it is not nothing.

Now this may seem obvious, and it is. But knowing this and focusing on what this means can go a long way, especially when dealing with those who tend to make empiriological physics a metaphysics. I will try to explain.

The apprehension of being is the starting point for the mind, and is the condition for the possibility of any form of intellectual knowledge. It is our first idea, and this idea is not formed with the aid of any previous framework or previous intellectual horizons or interpretations. Before we know what this particular being is, we at least know that it is something. This apprehension of being does not in any way depend on another idea. All other more determinate ideas regarding what this being is come after or follow upon the apprehension of being. Being is intuited immediately. Nothing can be known previous to the intuition of being; for there is nothing prior to being. For the same reason, the intuition of being is non-relative. There is nothing beyond the idea of being to be relative to. So any knowledge, such as "The weather is cold", or "The background of this page is white", or "I am thinking about being" shows by the reference to "is" that the idea of being has been apprehended previously.

Outside of being is only the darkness of non-being, or nothing. And so we speak intelligibly of the light of being. It is this light that enables us to know that outside of being is the darkness of nothingness. As Vincent Edward Smith points out: "To understand being in terms of nothingness is to understand it in terms of itself."[74]

Now, whatever is, is one. Unity or oneness is a property of being. This means that a being cannot be divided. If we divide being, we end up with two, for example, we divide being A into A and B. What distinguishes the two from one another? It will have to be something they don't have in common. They cannot possibly have their being in common: A is not B; rather, A is A (each being is what it is). If they had their being in common, then what would distinguish A from B? It would have to be something outside of what they have in common. If they have their being in common, then it follows that what distinguishes them from one another is that which is outside of being, namely non-being. So, non-being or nothing distinguishes them. Hence, they are not two, but one being.

If they do not have their being in common, then they are two distinct beings.

So, being cannot be divided. No being can be divided - on the level of being. Each being is what it is; it is not what it is not. Each being is itself, not something else. And so each being is one in so far as it is. If it is one, it cannot be divided into two and remain a being.

If being is one, then being is outside of the scope of the empiriological or scientific method. Being cannot be divided, and so dividing a material or quantified thing can never end in an explanation of the being. A material being is quantified, that is, the nature is spread out into parts outside of parts. Quantity is a plurality; for the parts are plural. But being is one and undivided. So it follows that you (a being) are not your parts, or rather, you are not reducible to your parts. You are a being, and being is one. You are one, but your parts are plural. The parts, therefore, do not constitute the being that you are. If you, a being, are your parts, which part are you? You would have to be all of them. But each being is what it is. A being cannot be what it is and be something else at the same time. Again we can ask: "what distinguishes this something from the something else?" Outside of being is non-being, and so if they have their being in common, nothing distinguishes them. Hence, they are not "they", but "it", one entity, one being. So the parts do not reveal the being. Dividing or splitting does not manifest the being of a thing. The parts are unified and organized. Wherever you have unity, you have form. The form is the intelligible determination of the entire thing, and this intelligible determination is found entire and whole in every part of the being. But the most important and most organizing character about things is that of being.

Now in the law of inertia, one thing is moved by another, which is in turn moved by another, and so on indefinitely. When this law is extended to its limit to explain everything, then a being would be determined wholly by outside agents. In this case, a thing would have its being entirely from agents outside of it, owning nothing in-itself. A nature has its principle of movement within it, but if the law of inertia is extended to explain everything, a nature does not have its principle of movement within it, but rather outside of it. For example, What is this? This is nothing but its parts that we acquire after dividing it. And what in turn are these parts? This is nothing but these new and even smaller constituents or building blocks. And what are they? They too are composed of even smaller parts. And these? Composed of even smaller parts. So if the whole is nothing other than these smaller constituents, how do we explain the activity of the whole? By the activity or movement of these smaller constituents. And how do we explain the activity or movement of these smaller constituents? By the activity or movement of their smaller constituents. And so on and so forth.

But if this were true, one could never apprehend being. Being is one, simple, intrinsic, and immediate, and as such is not subject to the laws of division that characterize an inertial universe. But we do apprehend being. We readily understand that each being is what it is. And that is because your pet cat is a being, and as such is not reducible to its parts. The parts are parts of the one being. The multiplicity of parts does not make up the being like the multiplicity of bricks makes up a house. A house is not one being. What parts can one get by dividing being? There is no plurality that determines being. There is nothing outside of it. And so being is not an outcome, not a result of outside factors.

If you are not convinced, then just continue to divide. When will you arrive at something that exists in itself? When you do so finally arrive, how will you explain this being that exists in-itself? By dividing it? By splitting it up? It has to be explained on its own terms.

So being is self-intelligible or self-evident; for it is grasped not in terms of something outside of it, but on its own terms and in its own nature and as it is. Explaining being requires not an empiriological method that depends on dividing, but reasoning that respects the intrinsic unity of being. It is no coincidence that some physicists deny "entity" or "thing". These are the physicists who turn their empiriological science into a first philosophy or metaphysics. By dividing, one never arrives at a being in itself. Rather, a thing is always defined in terms of what is outside of it or in terms of outside factors, such as a yardstick or voltmeter, a frame of reference, or an equation. And how can the empiriological method possibly deal with entity? It cannot. It is the human person (the scientist is a human being before he is a scientist) who encounters being. Empiriological physics does not come close to explaining the nature or being of anything. The method aims at the manipulation of matter and aims to predict behaviors. By descending into the divisible, it descends towards the potential and the plural; and actuality or being is not explained by potentiality and plurality.

24: Isn't it true that if a being is nowhere, it is not? How can a being be nowhere, and yet exist?

What the above seems to imply is that if a being does not have place or is not in a place, then it is not. Now place is an immediate surface. A material and quantified thing occupies place. This quantified thing must, of course, be limited, otherwise there would be no place for anything else, nor could this quantified thing move from one place to another. Place is, because a material thing is. But to say that a being, if it is at all, must have place, is to say that a being, if it is at all, must have quantity or extension (a surface), that it must have parts outside of parts. Or in other words, it must be a material kind of being.

Now, a quantified being has being. It is not being itself. If existence belongs necessarily to matter so that whatever is is material and extended, thus occupying place, then matter or extended substance would necessarily be. If matter is necessarily, that is, if it is matter's nature to be, then matter could not not be. Moreover, matter would be one, not many. For matter is Being Itself, and there can only be one Being Itself. How could we divide Being Itself into two. As we said many times before, the only thing that could distinguish the one from the other is something outside of what they are in common, which is non-being, or nothing. Hence, nothing would distinguish them, and so they would be one (not "they"). And for this reason matter would not have parts outside of parts, that is, matter could not be extended. For matter would be necessarily. Its nature would be to exist. But how could one part, which shares in the nature of matter, which is to exist, be outside another part? What is outside of being is non-being. Matter would thus have no parts. And if it had no parts, no extension, then it could not occupy place, for it would have no surface. In short, matter would be God, not matter.

So, "where" is not a property of being. Rather, it belongs to a particular kind of existence, namely material existence. Make it a necessary property of being and you end up immaterializing matter. Extended substance has being. A being that is nowhere can still be. Remember, place depends upon entity or substance. But there is nothing in the nature of any substance that requires it to be. A substance or entity is capable of existing, that is, potentially existing, not necessarily existing. It is actually existing not by virtue of itself, otherwise it would necessarily be, and be one, and not quantified, and immaterial. The act of existing is the act of matter as well as the act of form, and so it is the act of quantity, quality, and therefore of surface and place. And so there is no necessary link between being and "where".

But it can be shown that "where" is not a property of being in a way much simpler than the above. Consider intellectual abstraction for a moment. When you abstract the nature of something or conceive an idea, such as triangularity, humanity, equinity, particularity, where, space, etc., you are conceiving an idea that is universal, for it has been abstracted or separated from its individuating conditions in the real world. Equinity outside the mind is found only in particular instances, that is, individual or particular horses having definite place. Similarly, outside the mind are individual triangles, humans, places, and extended things. The triangular stop sign has a definite place, as well as humans, horses, and other things. But the universal has no place. Where is equinity? You could answer: "in my mind". But this is not so, strictly speaking. You have place, and you are the subject of your ideas, and your ideas are in you. But the ideas themselves have no place. It is you, a material and quantified being, who have place. Equinity or triangularity do not in themselves have place, otherwise they would not have a universal mode of being. They would not be abstract. They would have no universal scope. The idea triangularity or humanity could not embrace every possible triangle. It would simply be another particular triangle occupying a definite place, having a definite size (for instance, 3 inch sides, which would be outside the very meaning of triangularity, otherwise all triangles would have to have 3 inch sides). But it is because it has been abstracted from its individuating conditions that it now exists intentionally and universally in the mind. We know the thing as it is essentially, and therefore without having any particular place.

The essence of anything is existentially neutral; for essence and existence are really distinct. The essence can exist intentionally and universally, that is, immaterially; and it can exist really, extramentally, and individually.

So already we know that for a thing to be, it need not necessarily occupy place, that is, have "where". If "where" was a property of being (a transcendental), science would be impossible (for there is no science of particulars).

But show me a being that exists outside the mind and yet has no place? That I cannot do. For me to point it out, I'd have to see it or sense it in some way. Hence it would have to be quantified and qualified. But the possibility of a subsistent being having no place is not logically impossible or contrary to reason, as was shown above. For "where" is not a property of being. Can God, Whose essence is to exist and Who alone imparts the act of existence, bring into being an immaterial essence? Yes, for reasons stated above. A subsistent and immaterial essence is an angel. Can we know through reason alone whether or not He has done so? To a certain degree we can. There is a basis to suspect the existence of angels. Looking at the hierarchy of being, the jump from human beings to God is a large one indeed. As we climb the scale of the hierarchy of being, we see that beings become more and more like God. Is it not fitting that there should be individual substances of a rational nature that are entirely free from matter, and hence more like God than the rational animal? Only through Revelation do we know for certain that angels exist. But the very possibility of beings existing without place-pure spirit rather than spirit and matter-is in no way repugnant to reason.

"Where" is an accident, that is, it is an accidental mode of existing that is dependent upon a substance (which is an independent mode of being, or being per se). In other words, only material things have place. Now, substance does not depend upon place, rather place depends upon substance. Substance is prior to "where"; for it does not depend upon "where", even though it always has a "where". But substance always remains the same throughout the never-ending changes of place. Place changes, but the substance itself remains unchanging because the substance does not depend upon "where". The substance in itself is capable of extension and figure. Now, not only is substance prior to "where" in the order of perfection and completeness, but substantial form is prior to matter in the order of perfection and completeness. Form does not depend upon matter, rather matter depends upon form. Now this does not mean that forms have their own act of existing and thus exist independently of matter, hanging from a hook somewhere after the substance has been transformed. No, the act of existing belongs to the whole substance (except in the case of man), and so when the substance is transformed, such as sodium to salt, the sodium is no longer; for it has been transformed.

But form is nonetheless prior to matter and is logically independent of matter - not really separate, just as substance is logically independent of "where", not existentially separate from "where". Certainly the nature of a material thing includes matter. That point is not being disputed. But it is not logically necessary that form have matter (but matter without form would be purely potential, and therefore would be as nothing).

Again this does not answer the question whether there actually are subsisting forms or angels in creation. But it does show that it is not unthinkable that there are angels (just unimaginable, since the object of imagination is always a particular, material kind of thing).

25: Is it true that "There is no common truth. What is true for you may not be true for me. You have your truth, I have my truth"?

Immediately one may reply by saying that there is at least one common truth, namely that there is no common truth. The subjectivist may in turn reply that there is no common truth except this truth (that there is no common truth).

So there is at least one common truth, namely that there are no common truths except this one. All else that we can affirm or deny about anything is not truth that is objective, hence true independent of my affirming it or denying it. Rather, the truth is subjective, that is, dependent upon and linked inexorably to the person affirming it or denying it. Hence the claim to objectivity is unfounded.

But the question can be posed: "What are your reasons for saying 'there is no common truth, except this truth'? If you begin to provide me with reasons, you begin sharing truths with me. You begin by establishing premises that you hold to be true for me as well as for you, and you begin drawing a conclusion from those premises, namely that there is no common truth. But if that statement is true, it can only be true on the basis that the prior premises are true--not to mention sound reasoning. But if the prior premises are true, then the conclusion, in this case, is false. There would have to be more than one common truth. For example, if I were to say that all birds have wings (first premise), and then say my bluejay is a bird (second premise), I can logically conclude that my bluejay has wings. But the conclusion does not follow if the premises are false. If my conclusion is true and derived from the middle term, and if the reasoning is sound, the premises must be true. If the premises were false (which they would have to be if there were only one common truth), the conclusion could not be derived from them. Now, I cannot logically conclude an argument with a true statement unless the premises are true and reasoning is sound. But if the premises are true, then there are more common truths than the one supposed truth that "there is no common truth except this one". And so, the conclusion is false. But you cannot derive a false conclusion from true premises if the reasoning is sound. Which means that if the conclusion is true, it cannot be true on the basis of true prior premises. That means that the conclusion cannot be established. One cannot provide reasons for saying, "there is no common truth". And so the statement is indefensible. It is arbitrary and unfounded.

But even in putting forth the statement "there is no common truth except this one", it is obvious that I imply that there are many truths we hold in common other than the above. It is true that we have ideas in common; it is true that we can communicate those ideas; it is true that we can disagree; it is true that truth is worth knowing and worth trying to communicate; it is true that I can know something other than myself - it is true that I at least believe it as a condition for communication. It is true that you can know something other than yourself, otherwise I wouldn't bother trying to communicate with you. Even if I hold that language is prior to thought, I hold it to be true. If I affirm that I could be wrong, then I affirm that it is true that I can be mistaken. If it is true that I can be mistaken, then I also imply that it is true that I am not the measure of what is true, that there is something outside of me that is the measure of what is true and that I am to conform to that measure.

Also, to be able to see or understand that there is no common truth, that is, no truth that we hold in common, implies the intellectual ability to grasp what is common and what is not common. In other words, it requires the ability to grasp universality, for I can't deny what I cannot grasp. Not only does it require the ability to grasp universality, but it also implies the ability to" step outside myself" so to speak. In other words, I am able to know something other than myself. I can see into your reality, enough to know that we don't hold any truth in common. I also presuppose that you can do the same, for I am telling you that there is no common truth. Hence, I expect you to understand that.

If I am completely locked inside myself, if I have no contact with that which is outside of me, then I cannot affirm or deny that there are truths that we hold in common. For it is not possible for me to grasp the "we" (for I am stuck inside myself).

But the subjectivist would not go this far. He believes that he can know something outside of himself, and if he attempts to communicate what he discovers to others, he seems to believe that others have the same ability, otherwise they couldn't begin to understand him (at the most they would only be able to know themselves). If I communicate something to you, I imply that I at least believe that we have some abilities in common. For we are able to commun / icate, enter into communion, enter into a common arena, so to speak. We have a lot in common, which is why we can communicate, and which is why I communicate to you that "there is no common truth". Yet it is true that we have "common ground" on which to communicate. We have this common ability to "exit ourselves" and know something other than ourselves. There is a world outside of ourselves, something other than ourselves, otherwise the ability to exit ourselves would be entirely useless. If there is nothing outside of ourselves to know, why do we have the ability to exit ourselves? But there is something outside of ourselves, at least the person to whom I am communicating my idea that "there is no common truth". I can know something about him, namely that we have no truth in common. If I know that, then what I know about him is not mere opinion, but truth. Hence, there is a lot more that I can know than the inability to hold truth in common.

No matter how we come at this problem, denying that we can hold the truth in common is entirely self-refuting.

26: Why did Spinoza say that the universe is one substance? And since "entity" is a concept with which physicists have difficulty, wouldn't it make sense to affirm that the universe as a whole is really one substance?

In his Ethics, Spinoza begins his entire philosophy with the concept or idea of being.

He writes: "By cause of itself I understand that whose essence involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing"[75] (emphasis mine).

Now, for Descartes, substance is of two kinds: spiritual (whose primary attribute is thinking), and corporeal (whose primary attribute is extension).

The next "Definition" in the Ethics runs: "That thing is called finite in its own kind (in suo genere) which can be limited by another thing of the same nature. For example, a body is called finite because we always conceive another which is greater. So a thought is limited by another thought; but a body is not limited by a thought, nor a thought by a body."[76]

Note the use of the term "conceived". Under the influence of Descartes, Spinoza begins with the idea, that is, he begins in the mind in order to determine the nature of what is real.

Next, Spinoza writes: "By substance I understand that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; in other words, that the conception of which does not need the conception of another thing from which it must be formed."[77]

Now at this point, we should recall the principle that Descartes established in his Meditations:

...all the things which we apprehend clearly and distinctly belong to the realm of possibility. Ie, they can be created by God, even if we do not yet know whether they have been so created....Therefore, it is sufficient that I should be able to apprehend one thing clearly and distinctly apart from another to be assured that the two are really different and that the one can be created without the other.[78]

So Spinoza is in his mind, and the idea of substance is the simplest of ideas in that it does not require any other concept in order to be understood or formed. And if he can conceive of it by itself, that is, with the help of no other concept, then it exists by itself and in itself, and does not require anything other than itself to be. This, recall, was Descartes' notion of substance: "An existent thing which requires nothing but itself in order to exist". And Descartes argued that only God fits this description, and so only God is substance primarily. Spinoza will capitalize on this idea.

Now, let's return to the first line of the Ethics: "By cause of itself I understand that whose essence involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing". A being whose essence involves existence is a being who is "Being Itself." Now Spinoza argues that substance is that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; in other words, that the conception of which does not require the conception of another thing from which it must be formed. Hence, substance is being.

And just as Substance is the simplest of ideas in that it requires nothing but itself in order to be conceived, so too is Being the simplest and clearest of ideas that requires nothing but itself in order to be understood.

For the sake of clarity we will stay with the term "being" instead of "substance". In this way we will more readily why according to Spinoza there can only be one Being. We have seen that he, in line with Descartes, identifies logical being with real being. He begins with the idea of being. As an idea, being is the simplest and clearest of ideas, and it is true that the idea of being is the ground of intelligibility. Unless I understand being, I cannot understand anything else; for I first have to understand that something is before I can come to understand "what it is". Now being or substance can only be one. For the idea of Being excludes multiplicity, as Parmenides makes clear. As an idea, how can Being be two? What would distinguish them? Something they don't have in common? But all they are is Being, and outside of Being is non-being. Therefore nothing outside of Being would distinguish them, so they would be one, not two.

If the idea of Being excludes multiplicity, then for Spinoza Being is really One, and not multiple. And since Being and Substance are the same thing, there is only one Substance in reality.

Not only is Being (Substance) One, according to Spinoza, but it is infinite, since there is nothing outside of Being to limit it. So Being or Substance is infinite in all lines of being. But even though it is infinite in all lines of being, substance is only known under two attributes: thought and extension. Being or Substance is both extended and thinking.

Now, according to these principles, you and I are not substances, because Substance is One. We are only finite modes of the One Substance. This is called Pantheism (God and the Universe are One), which is why some have referred to Spinoza the father of modern Pantheism.

So what is this One Substance? Descartes said it, "only God fits the description of substance." According to Spinoza, Being is Substance, and Substance is God. The Universe is God's infinite mode, and the particular things that make up the Universe (ourselves included) are God's finite modes.

God is not only One and infinite, but God is indivisible and simple. This must be the case because division produces multiplicity, and Being as the simplest of ideas excludes multiplicity.

God is incorporeal yet corporeal. His finite modes are corporeal (bodily). But the infinite cannot degrade itself into the finite, or into a finite mode. And so God is incorporeal, yet corporeal.

And God is thought whose finite modes are particular human spirits. So for Spinoza, God is not and cannot be a human for the same reason as above: Infinite Substance cannot degrade itself into one a finite mode. And so a true Spinozian would have to reject Christianity insofar as Christians profess that God the Son joined Himself to a human nature and became man.

Now God is infinite in action. His activity though is not transitive but immanent. In other words, God does not cause things to happen outside of Itself because God is Being, and there is nothing outside of Being. So God is not a transitive cause. This is why Spinoza rejected his Jewish heritage. For the Hebrew Scriptures reveal a God who is a transitive cause; for He created the Universe from nothing, and all that is created is really distinct from God. But not for Spinoza.

God is supremely free in "his" action since he is not coerced; for there is nothing outside of Being. There is no other substance to coerce God to act. Yet, the finite modes proceed necessarily from God. "Creation" is therefore necessary - free and not free at the same time. Just as the mathematical properties of a triangle proceed from it in a necessary, eternal and infallible way, so too does all activity within the Universe proceed necessarily and infallibly from the One Substance.

But the universe is not one substance, but a multiplicity of substances. When being is treated as a genus, the inevitable result is a monism. Being is not an idea, that is, not a universal. Essences can have a universal mode of existing in the intellect, and certainly being can be treated as an idea, which is precisely what Parmenides, Spinoza and Hegel in fact did. But being is not the poorest, the emptiest of concepts, which is what happens to being when treated as a concept. Being, rather, is the richest content of our knowing, and it is apprehended in the second act of the intellect, which is judgment, not the first act of the intellect (simple apprehension). Being is not pure potentiality, which is what it would amount to if it were a universal idea. Rather, it is the act of the potentiality which is an essence. It is the act of all the acts of a thing; for it is the perfection of all perfections. God, who is Being Itself, does not have His act of existing in common with other beings. He is His own unique act of existing, just as you have your own unique act of existing that has nothing in common with mine.

27: Davies, like Spinoza, rejects the notion that the universe as a whole must have been created by a superbeing who existed before the big bang. He says: "This line of reasoning is, of course, hopeless as it begs the question of who created the superbeing. More seriously, the concept of a causal chain stretching back to an uncaused cause, or prime mover, assumes that the act of creation occurs within time. Modern cosmology suggests that time itself came into existence with the big bang. There was simply no `before' for a god, or anything else, to form in. It was Einstein who demonstrated convincingly that time is an integral part of the physical world. Indeed, time can be manipulated in the laboratory, warped by both motion and gravitation. Clearly, a full explanation of the physical universe has to include an explanation of time itself....So if the universe does not require a creator in the causal, temporal sense, do we need any sort of God?"

Indeed, this line of reasoning is hopeless when taken outside its "existential" context, which is exactly what Davies and others have done with the argument. It is this "existential" level that Davies and his colleagues overlook as a result of their habitual empiriological frame of mind. Let me explain.

Time is relative to motion. It is the number or measure of movement according to a before and after. Time is not absolute, as Newton thought. As Aristotle clearly taught long ago - which Einstein resurrected - time follows upon motion or depends upon a moving thing. Because time follows upon motion, there is something prior to time, that is, prior not according to the order of time, but according to the order of perfection and completeness. Time depends upon motion, and motion depends upon a thing. For motion is the fulfillment of what exists potentially, in so far as it exists potentially. Time is not absolute; much less is motion "absolute" or independent. It is always a "thing" that moves, an entity, or a per se being or substance (not Spinozian substance). And since motion is the fulfillment of what exists potentially in so far as it exists potentially, the substance that moves exists in some way potentially. It does not have its being completely.

Let us move to the level of existence. The substance exists actually, but a being such as an atom of an element does not exist necessarily. An atom of gold has existence, just as a cat (even Schrondinger's cat), a plant, or a person has existence. But a gold atom does not have gold; rather the gold atom is gold. A thing is what it is (this is the principle of identity). This cat is a cat; it does not have cat. Conversely, a cat is not its existence; rather, it has existence. Recall that the "what" of a thing is its essence. A being, accordingly, is really a composite of essence and existence. If the cat is `what' it is and has existence, then existence is not part of the very essence of cat, nor is existence included in the essence of gold, iron, phosphorus, or a plant. These all have a received existence - they have being.

One cannot deny this without serious difficulties. For what belongs to the essence or nature of a thing does so necessarily. Right angles are part of the very essence of square. It is necessary that a square have right angles. Without them, it would not be a square, just as without circumference a circle would not be a circle. A square cannot not have right angles; a circle cannot not have a circumference.

But existence is not part of the essence of any contingent being. If existence were part of the essence of my cat, then my cat could not not be. My cat would necessarily exist. And if it could not not be, then it always was and ever will be. But this is not the case. My cat had a beginning and will have an end. Living, on the other hand, is part of my cat's very nature. Without life, it is not an animal; for an animal is a living sentient creature. But living and existing are not identical. Existence is not part of the very meaning of "living thing", otherwise all living things would necessarily be, and all beings would be living, which is clearly not the case. So, if my cat exists, it is necessarily living. It is also necessarily sentient. But it is not necessarily. It exists contingently. The essence of any contingent (non-necessary) being is in potentiality to existence.

It becomes an actual existent not by virtue of its nature or essence, but by virtue of an act that it receives. This act is the act of existing.

Now, nothing can bring itself into being; for then it would have to be prior to itself. It would have to exist in order to impart existence on itself - which is absurd. Nothing can reduce itself from potentiality to actuality. What is in potentiality to existence is reduced to actuality not by virtue of itself (prior to existence there is no "itself"), but rather by virtue of another already in act. Now, Davies writes: "...who created the superbeing....the concept of a causal chain stretching back to an uncaused cause, or prime mover, assumes that the act of creation occurs within time. Modern cosmology suggests that time itself came into existence with the big bang. There was simply no `before' for a god, or anything else, to form in."[79] But the causal chain in Thomas' argument does not stretch back at all; rather, it stretches upward (not in terms of space). It is not a question of stepping back into time. Right now Davies' existence (which he has as received) is not sufficiently accounted for by his nature (which is a human nature - and existence is not part of his essence). His nature accounts for his ability to communicate ideas in writing, his ability to see the ink on paper, but his nature does not account for his act of existing. As a human kind of being (nature) Davies is necessarily rational and sentient, but it is not necessary that he exist, otherwise he would have always existed. But at one time Davies was not, that is, he did not exist. He came into existence. He was a possibility that became an actuality.

Not only is it impossible that he bring himself into being, it is also just as impossible for him to sustain his existence. Whatever he does, he can only do on condition that he exist, i.e. feed himself. We keep ourselves alive, but we do not preserve our existence. We need to be before we can keep ourselves alive. We do not impart existence, that is, bring something into being from nothing; we can only act according to the powers of our nature, within the limits of that nature, and since existence is not part of my nature, we cannot act to impart being from nothing.

Now, there is no being in our experience whose essence includes existence. Nor is there anything within the physical universe whose essence is to exist. For if there is a being whose essence is to be, this being could not not exist. It would be a necessary being, and therefore it could not have come into being. It would have always existed, exist now, and will forever exist. And there could only be one being whose nature includes existence. For if there were two, what would distinguish the one from the other? This necessary being does not have being, but is its own being. This second necessary being would not have a received being; rather it too would be its own being. What would distinguish the one from the other would have to be something outside of what they are in common. Outside of being is non-being, or nothing, therefore nothing would distinguish them.

So this necessary being is one, eternal, and unchanging. Change or motion is the fulfillment of what exists potentially in so far as it exists potentially. But this necessary being is its own act of existing. If it is its own being, if its existence is necessary, then it does not exist potentially. And this necessary being cannot exist necessarily and yet at the same time have potentiality for any other mode of being (it cannot cease to be; it cannot change; it cannot be actualized by any accident, including time). For it is its own being completely and necessarily. For instance, Davies exists, he is a potential being realized or actualized, that is, made actually to be. But his existence is not possessed completely; for he, like the rest of us, lacks perfection. We continually become what we are. And so there is a great deal of potentiality within us (there is much that we don't know, for example). That potentiality is what we are (our nature). What he is is always potential, forever potential. It is this potentiality that his unique act of existing has made to be. It is a potentiality that is made to exist, that is, an essence (which has the potential to be). So, as long as we are, we are a composite of potency and act. We are radically potential. As a really existing being I am always in further potency to more being (not more act of existing, but a fuller realization of my nature).

But this being who exists necessarily, whose essence is not in potentiality to existence, but whose essence is to be, is not radically potential and consequently not open to further perfection. This being is its own act of being. This being is Act. This being Is most fully and perfectly. There is no potentiality in this being whatsoever. And if there is no potentiality in this necessary being, it is immaterial; for matter is potentiality towards act or form. Nor is this being extended (quantified), for what is quantified is potentially divisible, but a being whose essence is to be is not divisible into a multiplicity - for there can only be one of them. Moreover, it cannot have quantity; for only a substance that is potentially extended has quantity, but there is no potentiality in this being. Also, quantity gives us parts outside of parts. But a being whose essence is to be cannot have parts. Consider an entity that is extended, i.e., a block of iron. This part on the left is not found in this part on the right, rather it is found outside the other. But this necessary being whose essence is to be cannot have parts outside of parts; for if this part is being, there cannot be another part outside of this part; for what is outside of being is non-being or nothing. So there is nothing outside of being. Hence, this necessary being is immaterial and unextended, indivisible, unchanging and eternal. It cannot lack any perfection because it would then be in potentiality to being, i.e., more knowledge.[80]

This necessary being cannot be in the physical universe, for it cannot be contained. It has no extension, no limits (potentiality limits, but this being has no potency), and so it cannot be contained or circumscribed. It cannot have place, for then it would be subject to place - in potentiality to this place or that place. But we have shown that there is no potentiality in this necessary being. Neither is this being subject to time; for time is the number of movement according to a before and after. But this necessary being, this Ipsum Esse (Being Itself) does not move; for movement is the fulfillment of what exists potentially in so far as it exists potentially. And time is not absolute. Time is not prior to being. Being is prior to time. Only a material, extended, and moving thing is subject to time. But if this necessary being was subject to time, it would not have its being completely, but potentially. Hence, its essence would be distinct from its existence, that is, it would have existence. It would simply be another contingent being.

Now if all that exists now (at this indivisible instant) are contingent beings, then there is no sufficient reason for their existence. Since existence is outside of essence, not included in the essence (otherwise a necessary being would exist, which is what we are trying to prove), then not one of these beings accounts for its own existence or any other existent. If there is no cause of their existence, no sufficient reason for their existence, then they are not, which is absurd. For all of them are possibly not, for they possibly are. They are not reduced to actuality through themselves, as we have shown. They are reduced to actuality through another. This other is not a contingent being; for contingent beings can only act according to the powers of their nature, that is, according to the limits of their nature. If their nature is not their existence, then they cannot impart being, but can only make something out of something that already exists. A rock does not discuss concepts, nor does it reproduce. A plant reproduces, but it does not imagine and remember things. No contingent being imparts the act of existing on a non-existent (that exists potentially). A pine tree begets pine trees, rabbits beget rabbits, humans beget humans, but only a being whose nature is to be begets beings, that is, imparts the act of existing. And so rabbits can only beget their like (other rabbits of the same nature) if and only if this necessary being imparts existence on the rabbit and preserves the rabbit's act of existing throughout the rabbit's sexual and reproductive activity.

Even if we suppose matter (extended substance) to have always existed - the elements, for instance, it remains that extended substance always fails to provide a sufficient reason for its being or existence. The sufficient reason for its existence is outside of it. If there is no cause of the carbon atom's act of being, then it was never reduced from potency to actuality, and hence it does not exist.

So, creation in time is not a problem here. The reduction from non-being to being does not take place in time. For time follows upon an actually existing substance that is extended and actually moving. Creation does not take place in time, but always outside of time. And so there is creation even if we suppose the Universe to have always existed. Creation as such takes place outside of time, but the created material being came into existence in relation to its secondary cause (parent) who exists temporally. So there is a temporal relation, which is why there are birthdays.

So Davies is mistaken when he says that the concept of a causal chain stretching back to an uncaused cause assumes that the act of creation occurs within time. Moreover, there is no need to "stretch back" at all. Right now at this instant, there cannot be an infinite series of causes stretching upward. If there is no First uncaused cause of my existence (which I do not have necessarily), then there are no intermediate causes of my existence (for what is intermediate is so in relation to what is first and last). And since my own nature does not account for my existence, I do not exist, which is plainly false.

When Davies says: "there was simply no 'before' for a god to form in," he is treating time as an absolute despite the fact that he knows time to be relative. He is also imagining or trying to picture a god creating, which he can do only in time. And so he shows himself to be about as anthropomorphic as the naive populace he so arrogantly criticizes at the beginning of his article.

God's nature is to be, and so there is nothing that happens without His existential causality - for no contingent thing is the sufficient reason its own existence. No thing and no thing's activity has being without the primal causality of the First Being. He is involved in every existing process, and because He is the existential cause of all that is, nothing can happen by chance for Him. There is no chance with God. For anything outside His knowledge and will has no being.

But Davies says he is intrigued to know where the laws of physics "come from".[81] This is interesting because it shows that he clearly sees that these laws do not have their sufficient reason within them. He not only insists they have a cause, he wants to know the cause of these laws. So he has a desire for a knowledge that exceeds the limited scope of the empiriological method. He does not want a measurable object, but an account of a thing's measurability. We do not account for a thing's measurability by measurement - for this begs the question. So he is looking for something that science cannot give him.
 

NOTES
 

¹ See F. F. Centore, Being and Becoming. A Critique of Post-Modernism (New York:. Greenwood Press, 1991), 71-83.

²V.E. Smith, Philosophical Physics (New York:. Harper & Brothers, 1950), 16-17, 141-144.

³See Paul Feyerabend, "Quantum theory and our view of the world" in Physics and our view of the World, ed. Jan Hilgevoord (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 149-168. For an idealist perspective on the quantum reality question, see Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality. Beyond the New Physics (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 117-121.

⁴"And besides these nothing else comes into being nor ceases to be; for if they were continually being destroyed, they would no longer be; and what could increase this whole, and whence could it come? And how could these things perish too, since nothing is empty of them? Nay, there are these things alone, and running through one another they become now this and now that and yet remain ever as they are." Fr. 17, 1. 14, Simplicius Phys. 158, 13. Tr. Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 328.

⁵"One way only is left to be spoken of, that it is; and on this way are full many signs that what is is uncreated and imperishable, for it is entire, immovable and without end. It was not in the past, nor shall it be, since it is now, all at once, one, continuous; for what creation will you seek for it? How and from what origin did it grow? Nor shall I allow you to say or to think, `from that which is not'; for it is not to be said or thought that it is not. And what need would have driven it on to grow, starting from nothing, at a later time rather than an earlier? Thus it must either completely be or be not. Nor will the force of true belief allow that, beside what is, there could also arise anything from what is not; wherefore Justice loses not her fetters to allow it to come into being or perish, but holds it fast; and the decision on these matters rests here: it is or it is not. But it has surely been decided, as it must be, to leave alone the one way as unthinkable and nameless (for it is not a true way), and that the other is real and true. How could what is thereafter perish? And how could it come into being? For if it came into being, it is not, nor if it is going to be in the future. So coming into being is extinguished and perishing unimaginable."

(Fr. 8, Simplicius Phys. 145, 1.). Tr. Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 273. See also Joseph Owens, A History of Ancient Western Philosophy (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1959), 64-65.

⁶See V. E. Smith, Philosophical Physics, 49-58, 162-69.

⁷Ibid., 189.

⁸On the inertialism of atomism and mechanism, see ibid., 75-55. "But quantum mechanics still amounts to an atomism by regarding wholes in partitive terms. All processes are referred to smaller ones. What ahppens in the visible world is only a forest of microscopic trees, and the microscopic in turn is explainable in terms of the submicroscopic, making matter into a labyrinth where the paths become narrower for man to tread but never run out. The claim of quantum mechanics to dispense with mechanism because of the rank it assigns to wholes cannot be made good for another reason. Like the rest of empiriological physics, it is still mechanistic in viewing whatever is and whatever moves as entirely the result of outside forces." Ibid., 76.

⁹Ibid., 184.

¹⁰Ibid., 185.

¹¹Ibid., 185.

¹²See Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1985), 185-190.

¹³For a clear treatment of Aristotle's hylomorphic doctrine, see Larry Azar, Man: Computer, Ape, or Angel? (Hanover, Mass: Christopher, 1988) 33-43.

¹⁴"Now the Pythagoreans also believe in one kind of number - the mathematical; only they say it is not separate but sensible substances are formed out of it. For they construct the whole universe out of numbers - only not numbers consisting of abstract units; they suppose the units to have spacial magnitude....All...suppose numbers to consist of abstract units, except the Pythagoreans; but they suppose numbers to have magnitude,..." (Aristotle Met. M8, 1083b8)

¹⁵For an excellent treatment of the quantity-quality leap, see F. F. Centore, Persons. A Comparative Account of the Six Possible Theories (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1979) 69-72.

¹⁶Since formal cause and final cause coincide, and since nothing is in the intellect that is not first in the senses, it follows that we come to know "what" a thing is, that is, its nature, through its activities.

¹⁷See V. E. Smith, Philosophical Physics, 200-201.

¹⁸Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy. The Revolution in Modern Science (New York: Harper, 1962), 70.

¹⁹Ibid., 159-160.

²⁰See Aristotle, Metaph., Z 13,1038b5-6.

²¹Ibid., 180-81. Cf. Nick Herbert Quantum Reality, 40, 90, 124. "But matter is unknowable of itself." Aristotle, Metaph., Z 10,1036a8-9. "--all things produced either by nature or art have matter; for each of them is capable both of being and of not being, and this capacity is matter in each." Z 7,1032a20-22. Oxford trans. See also Q 7, 1049a27-28.

²²Ibid., 186.

²³Aristotle, Ph., II, 1, 192b10-193b20. "So we affirm: potency is referred to act. Fundamentally it is the very notion of potency which is thus explained. For of its notion potency, and this is its intelligibility itself, all the intelligibility it possesses, is reference to a particular act. We can conceive potency only in reference to act. Pure indeterminacy is unthinkable. Therefore potency and reference to an act are synonymous." Jacques Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1948), 106. See also V. E. Smith, Philosophical Physics, 93-96, 97-99.

²⁴The indeterminate cannot be known. Consider the answer to the question: What is it? It is indefinite, indeterminate. Hence, we cannot definitely say or determine what it is; for it is indeterminate.

²⁵Smith, Philosophical Physics, 98.

²⁶Ibid., 107. "...chance cannot possibly be the origin of things. For it presupposes an encounter of causal series, and further that each of these series exists only because the causes it contains are determined to a particular end. Chance, that is to say, necessarily implies preordination. To hold that the universe can be explained by a primordial chance is self-contradictory." Jacques Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics, 148.

²⁷See Friedrick Nietzsche, The Will to Power, transs. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1968) Book 3, sections 515-19, 534-35, 552. "Parmenides said, 'one cannot think of what is not'; --we are at the other extreme, and say "what can be thought of must certainly be a fiction." Section 539. "The biggest fable of all is the fable of knowledge." Section 555.

²⁸Physics and Philosophy, 160.

²⁹See Thomas Aquinas. On Being and Essence, c. 4, 7. Tr. Armand Maurer, (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies) 56.

³⁰See Smith. Philosophical Physics, 101. Smith also treats of the secondary character of measurement in his Science and Philosophy, (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1965), 221-25. Cf. Alfred North Whitehead. Process and Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1979), 184-185.

³¹See F. F. Centore. Being and Becoming: A Critique of Post-Modernism, Appendix, 229-235.

³²"Quantity differes from the extended substance, not in actuality, but only as regards our way of conceiving them; just as number does from what is numbered." Descartes: Philosophical Writings, ed. and tr. by e. Anscombe and P. T. Geach (London: Nelson, 1966), 201. A material thing, according to Descartes, is its quantitative extension. See also F. F. Centore. "Potency, Space, and Time: Three Modern Theories," The New Scholasticism, Vol. LXIII, 4, Autumn, (1989): 436-39.

³³"Where is Science Going?" The New Science (New York, 1959), p. 43.

³⁴"In biology there is no doubt that, by our own internal experience of being alive, we get a knowledge that can never be furnished by a test tube or a microscope. Even though this initial knowledge is vague and general, it is a fundamental knowledge that is never surrendered. It is sometimes argued that the microbiologist will crack the secrets of life when he gets further knowledge of entities like the virus, a tiny parasite that outside its host seems to have only mineral properties but inside the host is associated with a process like reproduction. But as the biologist's knowledge increases, what criterion will he use to determine whether the virus in question is alive? It will be the knowledge of life as self-motion, experienced in himself and inother living things of his immediate environment." V. E. Smith. Science and Philosophy, 222.

³⁵The Fourth Dimension: A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984) 145-146.

³⁶Philosophical Physics, 409.

³⁷Aristotle. Metaph., D . 13, 1020a6-30; Cat., 6,4b20-6a35.

³⁸See F. F. Centore, Persons, 69ff.

³⁹Metaph., Z 10,1036a1-12; Z 11,1036b32-1037a5.

⁴⁰See Etienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Scribner's, 1937) 125-151.

⁴¹See Larry Azar. Man: Computer, Ape, or Angel? 78.

⁴²"Since, however, some things are-potentially while others are-actually, the constituents combined in a compound can 'be' in a sense and yet 'not-be'. The compound may be-actually other than the constituents from which it has resulted; nevertheless each of them may still be-potentially what it was before they were combined, and both of them may survive undestroyed. (For this was the difficulty that emerged in the previous argument: and it is evident that the combining constituents not only coalesce, having formerly existed in separation, but also can again be separated out from the compound.) The constituents, therefore, neither (a) persist actually, as 'body' and 'while' persist: not (b) are they destroyed (either one of them or both), for their 'power of action' is preserved. Hence these difficulties may be dismissed.." Aristotle, Gen. Cor. I, 10 327b25-32; Cf. II, I 328b25-329b5; II, 6 333a16-334a15; II, 7 334a16-334b30; Also, see Thomas Aquinas. How elements are Present Within Compounds in Selected Philosophical Writings. Tr. Timothy McDermott (Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1993) 117-121.

⁴³See V. E. Smith, Philosophical Physics, 205.

⁴⁴Ibid., 205-206.

⁴⁵Ibid., 207.

⁴⁶Physics and Microphysics, (New York: Random House), 111, 135. Margenau writes: "The essence of mechanistic reasoning is seen to cluster around two beliefs: first that entities are divisible into parts, and second that these parts are localizable in space and time....Prior to [the exclusion principle], all theories had affected the individual nature of the so-called "parts"; the new principle regulated their social behavior. With respect to a single particle it has nothing to say. And what it says for aggregates, though most important, cannot be expressed in terms of dynamic regulation. It is as though here, for the first time, physics had discovered within its own precincts a purely social law, a law that is simple in its basic formulation and yet immense in its collective effects. Mechanistic reasoning, already far behind, has gone out of sight as a result of this latest advance....In the Pauli principle is a way of understanding why entities show in their togetherness laws of behavior different from the laws which govern them in isolation....The emergence of new properties on composition is a rather general phenomenon in modern physics and owes its occurrence to the exclusion principle" The Nature of Physical Reality, (New York: McGraw-Hill) 442, 444.

⁴⁷See Mortimer J. Adler. "Questions Science Cannot Answer" in The Logic of Science ed. V. E. Smith (N.Y., 1963), 10.

⁴⁸Philosophical Physics, 209.

⁴⁹Ibid., 209.

⁵⁰Ibid., 209.

⁵¹Ibid., 212.

⁵²Ibid., 214-15.

⁵³Ibid., 224-25.

⁵⁴Ibid., 229.

⁵⁵Metaph., Z 13,1038b5-6.

⁵⁶See Joseph Owens. An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1986), 132ff.

⁵⁷See Jacques Maritain. Philosophy of Nature (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951) 102.

⁵⁸Ibid., 102-114.

⁵⁹Ibid., 105.

⁶⁰"Physico-mathematics works in the terms of the physical real, but in order to envisage them from the formal standpoint of mathematics, and of mathematical laws which connect together the measurements collected by our technical instruments from nature. All its concepts are resolved in the measurable. And what verifies the deductive synthesis which it erects is simply the coincidence of its numeric results with the measurements given by experiment; it does not follow that the mathematical beings which intervese in this synthesis represent determinatively real causes and entities which are like the ontological articulations of the world of the sensible nature. Physical theory is verified en bloc, by means of the correspondence established between the system of signs which it employs and the measurable data which have been recognised by experiment.... The system of mathematical relations which it seeks to establish between sensible phenomena, and which constitutes its highest formal object, does not in itself sufficiently satisfy or stimulate the mind of the scientist. His interest is directed towards the physically real." Jacques Maritain. The Degrees of Knowledge (London: Centenary Press, 1937) 168-69.

⁶¹"Considering things from the standpoint, not of the physicist, but of the philosopher, and to express ourselves in his language, quantity, i.e. the extension of substance and the metaphysical unity of its parts which are diverse with regard to position, is a real property of bodies. There are, in nature, dimension, numbers, real measurements, real space, real time, and it is under the conditions and modalities of this real quantity, quantitatively measured and regulated, that the interacting causes in nature develop their qualitative activities....Physical reality breeds a rich harvest of entitative riches irreducible to terms of quantity; but by reason of its materiality, and becuase it emanates from the substance of bodies mediatized by quantity, this world of qualities is intrinsically subject to quantitative determinations (that is why it is accessible by our extrinsic and artificial measurements)....But quantity can be considered in another way: when disengaged from its subject by abstractio formalis, set before the mind in itself, as constituting in itself a separate universe of knowledge (the universe of the preter-real), it is then treated no longer ontologically and from the point of view of being, but quantitatively or from the standpoint of those relations of order and measurement which sustain the objects of thought so discernible as the forms or essences which are proper to them." Ibid., 172-73.

⁶²"Mathematics alone among the sciences deliberately 'leaves out' much that is knowable in the things with which it deals. It omits, in fact, everything knowable in them except quantity." Joseph Owens. The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), 384.

⁶³Cf. supra, n. 60.

⁶⁴V. E. Smith, Philosophical Physics, 275-276.

⁶⁵Ibid., 276.

⁶⁶"A random distribution of units forming a collection means that the whole is homogeneous and is a form of order where the parts are scattered equally throughout the aggregate. Such an aggregate is mathematically treated. The order which it reflects is defined by reference to a mathematical system, and mathematics, unconcerned with final causes, does not deal with chance" Ibid., 275.

⁶⁷Ibid., 276.

⁶⁸God and the New Physics (New York: Penguin, 1983), 18.

⁶⁹Aristotle. Ph., IV 3, 210b22.

⁷⁰This is true even in light of the law of inertia. "...a mover is needed not merely to initiate a motion or to change the velocity of a moving body. Indeed, a mover is necessary wherever there is motion and for as long as the motion endures. Assume a body moving along a straight line XY and having arrived at some intermediate "point," C. On this supposition, it would be proper to say that the body had completed the XC part of its trajectory but has yet to accomplish the CY portion of its movement. Now having arrived at C, the body is potential to cover the distance CY--indeed just as potential to go through CY as it was potential, prior to the motion, to go through the whole XY. Since the body at C is only potential to cover the distance CY, it needs a mover to move it through the distance in question; it cannot move itself through CY in a primary way ...A body needs a mover not only to start in moving but to keep it moving as long as the motion goes on." V. E. Smith. The General Science of Nature (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1958) 374.

⁷¹See F. F. Centore, "Aquinas on Inner Space" Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Vol. IV, Number 2, December (1974), 353-54.

⁷²See V. E. Smith, Philosophical Physics, 334-39.

⁷³Ibid., 339-43.

⁷⁴V. E. Smith, Footnotes for the Atom (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1951), 49.

⁷⁵Benedict de Spinoza. Ethics, I, Def. I.

⁷⁶Ibid., I, Def. II.

⁷⁷Ibid., I, Def. III.

⁷⁸Descartes. The Philosophical Works of Descartes. Tr. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 158. It is at this point that Descartes identifies logical being with real being, and it is this principle that accounts for his resurrection of dualism.

⁷⁹Paul Davies, "Getting to Grips with God: science and the superbeing," [http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/itp/staff/pcwd/Guardian/1995/950504God.html], May 04, 1995.

⁸⁰See Thomas Aquinas. The Compendium of Theology (New Hampshire: Sophia Institute, 1993), I, sections 3-35.

⁸¹Op.cit., "Getting to Grips with God: science and the superbeing."

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