Are You Infected with Materialism?

You might be more than you realize. Here's a test.

Not to be dramatic, but I struggle with Aristotelian natural philosophy as a chemist. That is the point, I suppose, of learning philosophy—to examine the way you view the world. I was utterly unprepared for just how much I needed to rethink things.

As I imagine must be the case for many a convert to Catholicism, learning about Aristotle seems like I am late to the game. When you read works like Physics, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, you can see how much Western civilization was influenced by ideas from ancient Greece. I picture all the cradle Catholics nodding at me as if to say, It’s about time you caught up!

However, as I am also learning by talking to more people, it’s not a given that a cradle Catholic, or anyone else, just knows what Aristotelian natural philosophy is all about. This view was lost with the rise of modern science. Long story short: the revival of ancient Greek thought during the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries gave way to the rationalism and empiricism of the Age of Enlightenment of 17th and 18th centuries as more materialistic ideas were adopted. As modern science began to rise, Aristotelian philosophy was abandoned. We live in a time after the Scientific Revolution, a technological age. The reason (forgive the broad strokes) most people do not know much about Aristotelian natural philosophy is because it is not valued or taught, except maybe in some Catholic or liberal arts schools. I surely did not learn about Aristotle in the McGraw Hill and Pearson science textbooks of my Texas youth, but I always heard about Democritus and his ideas about the atom.

My husband and I recently had the pleasure of dining with another couple in Budapest, both devout Catholics, who happened to be traveling through the same time we were there earlier this month. She is an anatomy professor. He is a military test pilot and, like me, quantitatively minded. I mentioned that philosophy was toppling my world. He asked why? I said the concept of nature is completely backwards to everything I thought I knew as a chemist. He asked for an example, and I gave this one: The substantial form of a natural thing determines the structure of the matter, and the matter is disposed to that form.

He agreed. Gibberish. It’s not just me.

Fortunately, a real Cambridge-level philosopher was also dining with us, and he let me explain for practice but made sure I got it right.

Materialism is Bottom Up

In philosophy, materialism refers to the view that only matter exists. (It’s not about shopping, ladies, although…it kind of is.) Materialism leaves out the immaterial realm, and it is generally considered a result of the rise of modern science. Today, it has gone so far as to be called “scientism,” or the idea that scientific knowledge is the only true knowledge. Materialism is opposed to the belief in God’s existence or that of angels or the human soul.

Students and professionals of science don’t realize how materialistic their views become. We just learn about matter, energy, and quantities. We learn how nature works, and then we make stuff. (At least, that is what chemists do.) If you asked pre-philosophy me what natural bodies are made of, I would have said atoms. Of course! A lot of people would say that; we are to varying extents infected with materialism in our culture today.

For example, in a cow, atoms make up compounds. Compounds make up cells. Cells make up tissues. Tissues make up organs. Organs make up systems. Organ systems (cardiovascular, digestive, respiratory, etc.) make up the cow. If we want to understand cows, we study those parts. Indeed, molecular biology at the cellular level takes apart cells, studies different processes, and tries to reassemble the picture. This is the “bottom up” view of nature. Particles and matter first.

Hylomorphism is Top Down

Hylomorphism is the fancy word for saying that existing material things are matter and form composites. It does not work with materialism. When I try to imagine how a “the substantial form of a natural thing determines the structure of the matter, and the matter is disposed to that form,” I picture some spooky ghosty thing floating through the air and capturing atoms to swirl them into the shape of a cow or whatever other living thing. It just…doesn’t work. It’s weird and disconnected, like Descartes’ dualism.

What is substantial form? According to Bernard Wuellner’s Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy: Substantial form is the intrinsic incomplete constituent principle in a substance which actualizes the potencies of matter and together with the matter composes a definite material substance or natural body. It is the first principle by which a natural substance is what it is; in other words, the formal cause (p. 48).

Let’s break that down. It is internal but on its own (without matter) incomplete (for material things). It is that which makes the existing material thing real (actualizes it) from matter. Matter is said to be in potency. Some readers will know this already; some will be new. There is much more to say, but that will suffice for now. Where does substantial from come from?

God is the Form Giver

Aristotle thought substantial form comes from nature, which is eternal. Things are what they are because, well, that is how they are. Aquinas took the argument further and identified the triune and incarnational God of Christianity as the form-giver, the Creator. In creation, there is a beginning in time and God creates out of nothing and holds all things in existence. Aquinas says, “Both reason and faith bind us to say that creatures are kept in being by God” (ST.I.104.1). (There is a lot more to say about divine governance too.)

In this view, divine revelation is compatible with Aristotelian natural philosophy. If God creates by giving the substantial form of a natural thing to it, then that form determines the structure of the matter, and the matter is disposed to that form. Matter and form are one. God orders all things.

If that is still difficult to see, think of how we make things. If I want to make a birthday cake, I have the form of it in my mind. (I determine the structure.) I put the ingredients together in the right way. (The matter is disposed to the form.) The difference between something artificial or man-made and something natural or God-made is that the natural thing has its form intrinsically and internally granted (per the Wuellner dictionary definition), and the man-made thing has its form extrinsically and externally imposed. To make something myself, I must avail myself of natural things. I do not create the flour, milk, eggs, and sugar. I make use of them. Art, as they say, imitates nature. Mind first—as opposed to materialism, which is matter first and bottom up.

What this means is that the parts belong to the whole. We do not think of a cake as a flour-milk-egg-sugar composite but as a cake. The ingredients belong to the cake. They are still there but not there in the same way as individual ingredients.

Another example that Aristotle and Aquinas both give is the way we use letters to make words. The letters combined into the word “c-o-w” are more than three letters. Together they make something new, a word that expresses an idea in the mind, and a blend of the sounds of the letters.

So, what’s the test for materialism?

The test, for me anyway, was in asking myself to what extent I see things as collections of parts instead of parts oriented toward a whole. When I converted to Catholicism, I was shocked to realize that there is language for understanding a human person as more than a highly complex composite system of atoms. The human person is body and rational soul, i.e., matter and form. The body is matter. The soul is the form of the body. For humans, the soul is rational.

This is in the Bible. From the “formless” void (Genesis 1:2), God “formed” man from dust (Genesis 2:7) and “forms” us in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5).

I just never really thought about form and matter at a deep ontological level philosophically. I did not realize how materialistically chemistry was taught and engrained in my mind. We learn to think of substances as the kind and number of atoms of various elements. C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁ is sucrose, otherwise known as sugar.

Here’s the thing. This building block view works at a very beginning textbook level, but even as a narrowly minded chemist bereft of any theological or philosophical training, I still knew that matter acted more like cake than building blocks. Sometimes you can separate mixtures, such as with oil and vinegar or iron filings and sand. But when atoms react, even if you can chemically separate them again later, while they are bonded, they are something new all working together. It is very much like the word example. Words make paragraphs. Paragraphs make chapters. Chapters make stories. On the view of creation, the ultimate guiding principle is the mind that tells the story in the first place, not the individual letters or atoms.

And if you push the idea, materialism is actually absurd. If a living thing, such as our cow, is just “atoms up” as materialism would have it, then there’s no reason a cow could exist without the collection of atoms that should be its head or any other body part. The organism would function differently for sure, but there’s no ultimate reason this could not happen. There is no unity in nature. There’s no reason to even call it a cow. The idea of a cow is just a name to label on a collection of particles (nominalism). In the word analogy, we wouldn’t say a cow goes “moo.” We’d have no words and only pronounce individual letters. The cow goes “m-o-o.” Or rather, “T-h-e-c-o-w-g-o-e-s-m-o-o.”

Getting back to creation, hylomorphism applies pervasively. God holds all creation in existence. The substantial form of parts give way to the substantial forms of the wholes to which they belong, from the smallest subatomic particles all the way to organisms, to ecosystems, to humans, to human communities in towns and states and nations, to all human communities living on planet Earth, to our relationships with each other, to our families, to our organizations, to our purpose we play in all these higher forms. The idea of parts belonging to wholes goes all the way to the universe. That is what the word means—one.

So, that is the test—>Do you see all creation as everything having its place?

Who cares?

I think this philosophical idea radically changes the way we place our trust in God. We cannot see the entire big picture from the beginning of time or even right now in this moment as the electrons on the tips of our noses do their quantum mechanical thing while our hearts go on beating and some eight billion people carry on with their lives around the world. Instead of worrying about breaking things down into parts with bottom-up thinking, we search for the bigger purpose and our role with a top-down approach. It means the world is not our stage but that we are actors on everyone else’s stage, or that we are all actors together in big stage of history, God’s stage. We all have a role.

We see this in the Bible too. Last Sunday’s reading (August 25, 2024) was from Ephesians 5: “Brothers and sisters: Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.” We are to work together as one body, the Church. Marriage is two become one.

Monday’s reading (August 26, 2024) was about blind fools.

Woe to you, blind guides, who say, “If one swears by the temple, it means nothing, but if one swears by the gold of the temple, one is obligated.” Blind fools, which is greater, the gold, or the temple that made the gold sacred?

And you say, “If one swears by the altar, it means nothing, but if one swears by the gift on the altar, one is obligated.” You blind ones, which is greater, the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred?

One who swears by the altar swears by it and all that is upon it; one who swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it; one who swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who is seated on it.

That is another way to put the test. To what extent do we hold things sacred. The temple is sacred because it’s a temple, not because of the expensive material of which it is made. The altar is sacred because of the gift, not the other way around.

I think there is a lot to ponder here. It’s all top down, not bottom up.