Did Aristotle Fail in Physics? Part 4

I'm on to Premise B and why Feser, Crane, and Jaki confuse me.

Hi, welcome back to my crazy. This is going to get detailed, but I hope you follow and let me know your thoughts. As a reminder, I use this Substack sometimes to write about writing, like I did with that philosophy thesis on elements. I’m working on a paper now for the International Congress on Science and Faith honoring Stanley L. Jaki in His Birth Centenary (1924-2024). The conference is held at the CEU Universidad San Pablo on October 22-26, 2024. Um…in one week! My paper is titled, “Jaki on Aristotle’s Failure in Physics.” I chose that topic because I want to get to the bottom of some confusions I came across while reading Jaki, Aristotle, Aquinas, Feser, and Crane. I’m also working out my method for continuing my work on elements in a dissertation.

This post will begin the examination of Premise B.

Here’s the argument again from Part 1:

Premise A—>An organismic world view causes a failure in physics. (Part 2, 3)
Premise B—>Aristotle held an organismic world view.
Therefore, Aristotle failed in physics.

Premise B is going to take a lot of parts, I’m afraid, if it doesn’t kill me first.

Aristotle, Aquinas, Jaki

Premise B is controversial among Thomists, and that is one reason I want to understand what Jaki, Aristotle, and St. Thomas mean regarding an organismic world view. More so, the reason I want to understand their meaning is so I can take a look at chemistry, physics, biology and dogmatic theology and develop the most responsible method for uniting these disciplines, even if I only ever make a small contribution. To me, getting the method down first is critical. As a scientist, I absolutely had to master the methods before anyone let me crank up that Nd:YAG laser and set up the optics for femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy. (Rolls off the tongue, huh?) Same thing now. I’m not just after truth, but truth that does not contradict truth. No one has given me a user manual.

If you ask a Thomist whether Aristotle held an organismic world view, the answer is likely to be in the negative. “No, he did not! He knew the difference between living and non-living things, and he allowed for mechanisms within living things.” That’s true. But Jaki’s point (that I covered in Parts 1-3) seems ignored. Some Thomistic philosophers just say Aristotle did not have an organismic world view without addressing why. Other modern, more materialist philosophers make the accusation as an attempt to discredit Aristotle’s old-fashioned ways. Jaki is neither. He insists that Aristotle held an organismic world view and uses Aristotle as an example of what not to do in physics, but he also admires Aristotle for his metaphysical views of wholeness and purpose. So, who is correct?

If Jaki is correct, and it’s no secret that I am a Jaki-disciple or cheerleader, as one not-so-kind man once called me, then Jaki is also correct that an incomplete world view imposed onto science does damage to scientific progress. Methodologically, and obviously, I want to avoid that error. If Jaki is wrong, then perhaps we should consider once again viewing the universe as Aristotle did, but that will still require settling the question of his world view. There are aspects of such an organismic world view that contradict Catholic doctrine, namely that the world is an eternally cycling cosmos. In Science & Creation Jaki explains how the Greeks not only viewed the world as an organism but how that also led them to posit the Great Year, contradicting a beginning in time. I’ll get to that later.

On the other hand, an organismic-like world view would not necessarily contradict the doctrine of creation in the sense that we consider the universe as a whole system of parts. That is, after all, the meaning of uni-verse. In the Thomistic tradition, it is good methodology to comb through ideas, accepting what is true in light of divine revelation and rejecting what contradicts it. Aquinas certainly rejected parts of Aristotle’s teaching. Therefore, to my mind, this question is important if we are to figure out how to unite Aristotelian natural philosophy and metaphysics with modern science. In addition, we need to remember that Jaki was a physicist and theologian, so he is going to have a different perspective than contemporary philosophers. Ask me how I know.

Feser and Crane

That said, I’ll begin with the perspective of a Thomistic philosopher who has been indispensable for my studies, Edward Feser. In Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundation of Physical and Biological Sciences (which I love), Feser rejects that Aristotle held an organismic world view (p. 65):

Tim Crane has suggested that the Aristotelian conception of nature led to an essentially “organic world picture,” on which even “the earth itself was thought of as a kind of organism” (Crane 2016, p. 2). In fact this is not true of Aristotle, Aquinas, or other mainstream Aristotelians, who certainly did not think that any natural substances other than the three kinds just described [vegetative, animal, rational] were alive.

I hope you can appreciate my disquietude. Context matters. Feser is in the process here of explaining the difference between an organismic and mechanical world view (“world picture” for Feser), just as Jaki does in the first part of Relevance, but Jaki and Feser are opposed on this question. Jaki was well aware that Aristotle made a distinction between living and non-living things, but he did not think that meant Aristotle did not have an organismic world view. The question instead is related to whether or not Aristotle thought the universe has a soul or is ensouled-like, i.e., is an organism or is organism-like.

Tim Crane is also a philosopher, one of the most cited philosophers today and author of A Mechanical Mind: A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machines and Mental Representation. He begins his book with an explanation about how the modern Western view of the world arose from the Scientific Revolution, a mechanical world view that stems from the ideas of Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, and Newton. He says that before and up to that time, in the Middles Ages and Renaissance, the world was viewed as a kind of organism. Everything had its natural place and condition. “This applied,” he says, “to inorganic things as much as to organic things — stones fall to the ground because their natural place is to be on the ground, fire rises to its natural place in the heavens, and so on” (p. 2).

Crane notes that viewing everything as having an end (i.e., teleology) was consistent with “a conception of the universe whose ultimate driving force is God” (p. 2). That’s right. The idea that God created everything with a purpose is teleological, but Aristotle’s teleology was due to nature, whereas Aquinas updated Aristotle’s arguments to show that the One and Triune God of Christianity is the Creator. Then Crane says that this all fell apart in the seventeenth century with the mechanical world view of modern science, repeating the same old tired tale of how modern science did away with outdated philosophy and theology, a narrative that just won’t seem to die in spite of all the lively work in this area today.

So, it is understandable that Feser would want to refute Crane’s narrative. But does he do so successfully? It seems not. Now, to be fair, that wasn’t his purpose in this part of his book. I’m trying to answer the question of Premise B, however, and it matters to me what Feser thought, what Jaki thought, and what is true.

Did Aristotle hold an organismic world view?

Guess what that means I have to do? I’ve got to lay out Jaki’s examples one by one and analyze them. You would think this would be an easy task — just summarize Jaki’s writing — but no, no, no, no, no. I literally spend days tracing Jaki’s claims in single sentences from his books. His reasoning is at times difficult to follow because he makes leaps and includes, ahem, polemics. But I have yet to find that Jaki was wrong. I have had some rather un-lady-like utterances in the privacy of my office directed at Jaki for the headaches he causes me. Many times, I think he might be wrong on the surface, but then I trace his path and, dang it, he is right.

Go! Fight! Win!

I’ll start with one example from Jaki’s early book, The Relevance of Physics, in the first chapter, “The World as an Organism.”

Example 1 - Physics, Book VIII

I’m quoting the whole, lengthy paragraph from Relevance.

In fact, it is in Aristotle’s Physics that one finds the first simultaneous occurrence of the terms microcosmos and megacosmos (macrocosmos), terms which were to serve as the characteristic stamp on every organismic theory about the universe until the very modern times. In the eighth book of the Physics, Aristotle reviewed several objections to a fundamental doctrine of his, the eternity of motion. According to these objections, motion need not always be caused by another motion but can at times be preceded by absolute rest. For proof one of the arguments refers to the case of living beings, to human consciousness and animal behavior in particular. “If this [transition from complete rest to motion] is possible in an animal,” runs the argument, “why not in the universe? Surely, what can happen in a microcosmos can happen in the megacosmos.” Curiously enough, all Aristotle found to criticize in this objection, so contrary to the foundations of his system, was the conclusion alone and not the organismic analogy on which it rested. With the general organismic principle that allows one to move without qualification from the small world of an animal to the large world of the inanimate universe, Aristotle was not disposed to find fault. It was a principle that had to appear to him as basically sound, convinced as he was that the universe was supremely a living being both in its entirety and in its parts. (Jaki 1966, pp. 13-14)

In Physics, Book VIII, Chapter 2, Aristotle refutes arguments trying to prove that motion did not always exist. His goal is to prove that nothing moved moves itself and, ultimately, that there is a First Unmoved Mover.

The first objection is that it seems no change is infinite since every motion is from something to something else. These somethings are contraries, so the change (or motion) begins and terminates and cannot be infinite. Also, according to the objection, nothing is moved to infinity because infinity cannot be reached. Since motion cannot be infinite, then it cannot be eternal. Aristotle answers this objection by pointing out that there could be perpetual motion, back and forth between the contraries, or that motion could be circular and, therefore, eternal.

The second objection to eternal motion is that some things that are at rest can be put into motion. Since things can be at rest, motion is not eternal because it can come to be. Aristotle answers this objection by pointing out that inanimate things (like rocks) at rest are put into motion by something external that is already moving. So, this objection does not prove that motion is not eternal.

The third objection is similar to the second but brings in animals and humans, living things with senses (touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell). Both can be at rest (like napping) and then move themselves (by getting up). Therefore, there is a beginning to motion spontaneously without anything external having caused the motion, thus restoring the second objection. Motion is not eternal.

And HERE is where Jaki quotes Aristotle. “If this [transition from rest to motion] is possible in an animal, why not in the universe?” If you go back and look at Jaki’s full quote, his concern is that Aristotle only criticizes the conclusion (he thinks motion is eternal) and does not criticize the organismic analogy on which the conclusion rested, “…possible in an animal, why not the universe?” (252b28)

Jaki seems to think Aristotle could have refuted this objection to eternal motion by maintaining that it does not follow that what happens in an animal could happen in the universe as a whole because there is no observational evidence that the universe is, in fact, an organism or organism-like. And the reason Aristotle does not see this easier objection is due to his organismic a priori commitments.

Okay, then. While this alone doesn’t prove Aristotle held an organismic world view, it suffices as an example that he does. Point taken, Jaki.

Then I wanted to see what Aquinas says about the organismic analogy in his commentary on the Physics, and I noticed something else (Book 8, Lecture 4). Yes, I’m reading it in Latin and English together. I care about the text.

Aquinas actually goes a step further in the microcosmos to macrocosmos analogy. In the second objection, he adds a comparison of inanimate objects and the whole universe, something Aristotle does not do. He says, “For if in one movable thing there can sometimes be motion and sometimes not, why not in the same way the whole universe” (998)? Why does he do this?

Remember, both Aristotle and Aquinas are only summarizing the objections of others, not making arguments themselves. The refutations to the second and third objections are basically this:

If something at rest, living or non-living, can be moved by something external to it that is already in motion, then it is false that either kind of thing moves itself completely absent an external source of motion. Neither objection (that things move themselves) proves that motion is not eternal.

Regarding animals and man in the third objection, Aquinas further adds these comments to Aristotle’s microcosmos to macrocosmos analogy:

And, if this can occur in an animal, there is nothing to prevent its occurring in the universe. For an animal, and especially man, possesses a likeness to the world; therefore, it is said that man is a small world. Accordingly, if, in this small world, motion can begin after previously not existing in it, it seems that the same can happen in the large world. And, if this happens in the world, it can happen in the infinite whole, which some assumed exists beyond the world—provided, of course, that there is something infinite that can rest and be moved. (Commentary on Physics, Book 8, Lecture 4, 999.5)

What I find interesting is that where Aristotle extrapolates from animal to universe, Aquinas goes in the reverse. He calls man “a small world” not the universe a large man (or animal). It’s a nuance, but I think it hints that Aquinas may have had something similar to Jaki’s criticism in mind as well. Aquinas is focused on “creation” throughout his works. (See this post about St. Thomas of the Creator.) Calling the human a small world emphasizes the wholeness of the creature as a substance without implying that the universe is an organism.

Aquinas also emphasizes that intellectual powers are not necessary for the kind of motion Aristotle describes. Animals can respond, for example, to cold air by waking up and moving. They can want to eat something and be moved toward food. Likewise, humans can be moved by senses (appetites), but we also can be moved by intellect. We can desire something and be moved. However, intellectual powers are not necessary for a living thing to be moved by an external mover. There are all kinds of processes going on in our bodies that we do not think about or will to occur, such as our hearts beating and food digesting. This fits with Aquinas’s metaphysics of creation. Where Aristotle thought that nature is the source of motion and change in an eternally cycling cosmos, Aquinas does not. For Aquinas, the God of Creation grants existence and essence to all things. Perhaps Aquinas is being careful to avoid problematic analogies.

To summarize: Aristotle sought to show that the arguments intended to refute eternal motion are themselves refuted. He seems untroubled by an organismic analogy. Aquinas navigates through the refutations without any overly organismic commitment.

One last interesting point. Aquinas completes the three-argument set about eternal motion differently than Aristotle. “Thus, it is clear to anyone who considers the matter diligently that no motion ever newly appears in us unless some other motion preceded” (1003.3). Not only did Aquinas avoid an organismic world view, but he also refocused the questions away from eternal motion and onto a first source of motion. I don’t think I would have caught that before today.

Thanks! See you next time with more examples from Jaki’s work.

Sources

Aristotle. Physics. Trans. Joe Sachs. (2004). Rutger’s University Press.

Aquinas, T. Commentary on the Physics. Trans. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye. Edited by The Aquinas Institute. (2004). At aquinas.cc/la/en/~Phys.

Crane, T. (2016). The Mechanical Mind: A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machines and Mental Representation. 3rd Edition. Routledge.

Feser, E. (2019). Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Sciences. Editiones Scholasticae.

Jaki, S. L. (1966). Relevance of Physics. University of Chicago Press.