Aristotelian Science, Part 2

In my last post I discussed Aristotle's cosmology and physics. To continue, let's go over Aristotle's four causes, which touch on his physics, then move on to the soul and to Aristotle's concept of God.

The Four Causes

The causes are four, say the ancient pupils of Aristotle, and they are the Material, the Efficient, the Formal and the Final causes. Ok. To grasp this, consider any object whatsoever, and ask yourself, what is this, and why is it here? And what is its purpose? So pick up a thing. I have a mouse here (computer kind) so let's look at it. What is its material cause? I would say the plastic, the electronics, the "stuff" of which it is made. What is its Efficient cause? That would be the 'source' of the mouse. It was manufactured somewhere, so the factory would be part of that, as would the market forces which demand a steady supply of computer mice. So it came to be because I have a need for it and a supplier met that need in order to make a profit. Keep in mind I might be off-base here from "formal Aristotelian thought" in some way, because I am a student. Never forget that. <g> And by all means, post a reply if you catch me off-base, as I would like to be right, so as not to mislead the unwary.

Moving on, what is the mouse? What is its "essence"? That is its formal cause. It is a device to help manipulate a computer. And, it is a lump of plastic and electronics. And finally, what is the ultimate reason that this mouse exists? The mouse exists so that hundreds of web bloggers can ramble on about Aristotle, a very prescient fellow.

Perhaps it would help to examine another object, say the left mouse button. That is an object unto itself even though it is a part of the mouse itself. Its materal cause would be plastic. Its efficient cause would also be the factory, possibly a different one than where the parts were assembled. Its formal cause would be its function for selecting objects on the screen. However, I have configured my mouse to switch the roles of the left and right buttons on my mouse. So in my case, the formal cause is to allow right-mouse menus to appear on my screen (Windows-based). But either way, its formal cause is also a lump of plastic in the shape that allows it to interlock with the rest of the mouse parts to form a complete mouse. It's final cause is the same as for the mouse, I think. It enables me and others to ramble on about Aristotle, and there could be no higher final cause, other than to ramble on about Jesus. Or Mohammed.

I'm sure you've noticed these causes overlap. I did read one commentator on Aristotle who remarked that not every thing has every cause. It could be my mouse is such a thing, or it could simply be that the causes overlap naturally.

The Soul

Moving on, Aristotle taught about the soul. What is the soul? To Aristotle, the soul was the "actuality" of a living thing. Thus, plants and animals have souls, as do humans. To greatly simplify this, the soul is the part of us that makes us alive. And our souls have different potentialities which equate pretty close to the common definition of what it means to be alive. Alive things nourish themselves, they grow, they move about, they perceive things with senses, and they think, and these are the actualities that comprise the soul of a living thing. Obviously not all living things have all these actualities, so the soul of a plant will be much "simpler" than the soul of a human being. Animals will be more complex, being able to move about and perceive, and humans will have the added actuality of rational thought.

Does the soul live on after death? Aristotle would say no. The soul is as intertwined with the body as say, the light is to a fire or to a lightbulb. When the body dies, the soul goes away, just as when the bulb burns out, the light goes away.

God, the Unmoved Mover

What about God? Did Aristotle believe in God? Yes, sort of. However, Aristotle's God is not quite like the God of the Hebrews, who reigns over the entire world. To Aristotle, God was more the solution to a dilemma than anything else. Harkening back to the "Efficient cause", we recall that everything has a source, or a "mover", that which causes it to become. That is well and good, but it means that there is no way to resolve causation--there is no beginning. To resolve this, Aristotle posited the First Cause, the Unmoved Mover--God.

What does the Unmoved Mover do? One thing it does not do is move. However, it is alive despite that. And how is it alive? It thinks. the Unmoved Mover thinks, and thus the Unmoved Mover is alive. What does the Unmoved Mover think about? Thought. the Unmoved Mover thinks about its own thoughts eternally. So why would the Unmoved Mover think about thought? Because thought is the best thing that one can think about, and the Unmoved Mover is the "best" of all possible "things." It's more involved than this, I'm sure, but essentially this is what the Unmoved Mover is and does. For one thing, if the Unmoved Mover were to think lower thoughts, that would be unworthy of the Unmoved Mover , and the Unmoved Mover would not be the Unmoved Mover . So because the Unmoved Mover is the highest of all, Gothe Unmoved Mover's thoughts are continuously the highest sort of thoughts, thoughts about thought itself.

Somehow the Unmoved Mover's thoughts formulate the final cause of things, which sets them in motion (motion again being understood as many things including growth, change, decay, as well as travel). Coupled with this notion of the first cause is the First Heaven, the outermost sphere of the universe. The motion of the first heaven is circular, as is all heavenly motions in the superlunar realm. This first heaven is in eternal motion, having as the cause of its motion the first cause, God. Now keeping in mind that the first mover cannot move, how can the first cause impart motion? Apparently there is love between the First Cause, God, and the First Heaven. Somehow this love imparts motion to the first heaven, and the first heaven, once in motion, can then impart motion to the rest of the Universe.

One other thing to understand is that in order to love, both God and the First Heaven are alive and have souls. Another thing to understand is that with Aristotle there is no creation per se--the universe and everything in it are eternal. So apparently it's wrong to think of the first cause as a creative cause. It's actually a final cause for the first heaven, and it's what sets the first heaven in motion. And all the motions have been going on forever.

This stuff can be really hard to process, since Aristotle seems to have come up with the whole idea of a first cause to solve the dilemma of eternal causation, then maintains that there is no beginning, which presents its own dilemma. I think the issue here is not so much that eternity itself is a dilemma as it is that eternal causation is a dillemma. You see this in the modern debate about intelligent design, which attempts to explain the complexities of living organisms by saying they cannot have occurred naturally, but must have been built according to a design, implying a designer (they are "irreducibly complex"). But the dilemma there is one of causation--how can the designer of an irreducibly complex organism not be itself irreducibly complex? And if so, then who designed the designer? And how could that designer not be irreducibly complex? Aristotle anticipated this dilemma of eternal causation, and quite naturally his solution was the First Cause, just as it is for the modern proponents of intelligent design.

-Jay-

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Aristotelian Science, Part 1

I'm a student of history, and I'm posting this primarily to help me sort some thoughts out about some things that I've wondered about for many years. I've had questions nagging just beneath the surface, because of things I've heard regarding Aristotle. I would read a book, and somewhere in there it would say that Galileo or Kepler or Copernicus had broken free of Aristotelian science, and in so doing defied the church authoriites and risked imprisonment or death.

You invariably read things like this when you pick up a magazine article or watch a History channel program about the middle ages. The Church was this monolithic, anti-scientific, dogmatic beast that was ready to pounce on anyone who would challenge the Bible. Well, being the skeptic that I am, I gradually came to wonder just how much the church actually persecuted scientists. I would read Christian apologetic literature that would seem to suggest otherwise, that the church actually promoted science. But then, if that were the case, why did they try Galileo? And if it was an issue of church vs. science, how did Aristotle fit into all this? I mean, Aristotle was a Greek. What did he have to do with the Bible? He certainly wasn't a Christian--he lived before Christ. So while it's one thing to say the church gave scientists trouble for defying the Bible, how did Aristotelian philosophy enter into the picture?

I found out that that these are very complicated questions. And, I only have part of the answers, and I'm still digging for more information on the whole story. So, I'll start tonight by telling you a few things that I know so far, and a few areas in which I hope to explore along the way. I expect that this will take several weeks if not months to do, and it will probably benefit me more than it will you, but then, if you find it interesting to watch a fellow struggle and squirm and dig for answers, then maybe this will be your cup of tea. Anyway, enough said, let me begin by telling you what I know about Aristotle.

Aristotle was, as you probably have heard, a student of Plato, who was a student of Socrates. Now Plato is regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of them all, the person who established philosophy as a rigorous discipline. One guy, whose name I'll fill in when I can, said that all of western philosophy is really only a series of footnotes to Plato. That's high praise there. And Aristotle? Those great experts who don't think Plato was the best generally think that Aristotle was the greatest of all philosophers. And of course Plato was an enormous influence on Aristotle, although Aristotle broke away from Plato in many ways. If it seems right, I'll include a comparison of the two great thinkers some other evening.

Aristotle was a naturalist of sorts. It turns out he was the son of a physician, and some think this is how he got his fascination for the human body as well as plant and animal life. So, his writings are filled with information and thoughts on living things. Aristotle also taught about physics and astronomy, and he developed a cosmology that was relied on throughout ancient times and the middle ages until around the seventeenth century.

Aristotle's cosmology was based on his physics, which relied on a few basic ideas. First, there were four elements; earth, air, fire and water (actually five, but we'll get to that). Second, these elements had natural motions, and they moved in accordance with those natural tendencies, or potentialities. That is to say that earth, the heaviest, fell downward toward the center of the universe. Water, being heavy but lighter than earth, fell down and settled in low spots in the earth. Air, of course, settled above the earth, and fire, being the lightest, would rise up through the air. These elements were "seeking" their place in the universe, so to speak.

Now like I said, the universe had a single point as its center, and because all the earth moved toward that, the earth formed a sphere around that center. In other words, Aristotle thought the world was a sphere. In addition the entire universe was spherical, and that's where the heavenly bodies come in. Aristotle taught that there were a large number of glass-like transparent spheres above the earth, surrounding the earth. On these spheres were the planets, the sun, and the stars, all of which moved in spherical orbits around the earth.

This is where that fifth element, called the "quintessence," comes in. Whatever this is, it's very light, lighter than the fire, because it's way up there. And, whatever it is, it's solid enough that it formed regular planets and stars. The quintessance is found only in the "superlunar" spheres, from the moon on out, and there are different laws of motion in play out there than on earth. In the superlunar, bodies moved in spherical motions. That was the motion of the heavens, spherical. And, the quintessence was the only substance out there--there was no earth, air, fire or water above the earth's atmosphere.

On earth, motion took several forms. There was the natural motion of things. Earth things moved toward the center, as did water. Aristotle spoke of actualities and potentialities in motion. Thus, as something falls, it is seeking its potential of being at the center of the universe. And there are things that Aristotle thought of as motion that we might not think, such as the growth of a plant or animal. A child, for instance, moves toward adulthood. It is seeking its potential.

It's important to state somewhere along the way here that Aristotle didn't "discover" this stuff in the way a modern scientist would discover, say, a new star. Instead, Aristotle simply made things up that matched what he observed, using pure reason and logic. Aristotle was a philosopher and not a scientist, and when philosophers mused about things in nature, it was referred to as natural philosophy. In fact the word "scientist" wasn't actually coined until the 19th century--people who did science were essentially known as natural philosophers up to that time. This is important in undestanding Aristotle, because all these things he taught were based on his own observations of nature. He watched the sky, the plants and animals, and he just kind of figured things out.

Amazingly he was able to construct a system of thought that held up for centuries, primarily because it adequately explained nature and because it was a complete and interlocking system of thought. In fact, Aristotle was one of the few people, perhaps the only person, who wrote on practically every single subject that was studied in his time. Aristotle was a very astute observer and empirical thinker who was able to arrive at some pretty reliable teachings, even though he turned out to be wrong when his ideas were compared with what we know now.

This is getting long, so I'm going to break it off, and finish this off on my next post. I think I'm about halfway through what I want to say about Aristotle. Essentially this post is just to lay some groundwork. In future posts I'll explore ways in which Aristotle influenced future generations, which will lead to an exploration of the church and it's view of science, and then move on toward some of the events that led to the eventual rejection of the teachings of Aristotle in the seventeent century, which is where we're headed on a very slow cruise.

Bear with me. If you're bored to tears, don't fret. There's plenty of other things to read on the Internet.

-Jay-

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Papias, Matthew, and Judas Iscariot

I was looking over Papias' writings today and caught this tidbit in the 3rd fragment:

"Judas walked about in this world a sad example of impiety; for his body having swollen to such an extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out."--Roberts-Donaldson English Translation: Fragments of Papias, courtesy of EarlyChristianWritings.com

Papias was Bishop of Hierapolis in the early 2nd century, and the significance and importance of the writings of people like Papias can't be overstated, because they shed just a glimmer of light on the earliest years of the Christian church. He is believed to have been written between 110 and 140 ce, which make his writings almost as old as the New Testament books themselves. Papias' writings survive today only as very short fragments included in citations of other early church fathers, Irenaeus (late 2nd cen) and Eusebius (early 4th cen). These two scholars state that Papias was a companion of Polycarp, who knew John. Papias says he asked everyone he could about the teachings of the apostles, and apparently wrote from his own recollections, since he says he valued the spoken testimony above the written word.

Anyway, getting back to what Papias wrote about Judas Iscariot, this is definitely not the story that appears in either the book of Acts and the gospel of Matthew regarding Judas' death. There is already a discrepancy in those two accounts in that Matthew says Judas hanged himself while Acts says he died after falling and splitting asunder. And of course apologists who defend Biblical inerrancy will insist that both accounts are true, that Judas hanged himself and then his body fell down from the gallows and his bowels gushed out. Now here's this third version of the story, involving a chariot. Perhaps Judas hanged himself downtown in the street, and fell in front of a chariot. Who knows?

Also interesting here is that in Fragment VI of Papias, he says:

"Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could." --ibid.

This has been cited numerous times as the basis for naming the apostle Matthew as the traditional author of the first gospel in the New Testament. Now, later scholars have disputed that, primarily because it's obvious to people who know the ancient languages that the gospel of Matthew was originally written in Greek and not Hebrew.

Now what's really intriguing here is that if Papias knew about the book of Matthew, why does he tell this tale of Judas and not the version that Matthew tells, that Judas hanged himself? Either Papias didn't know about that work, or he didn't agree with it for some reason. Of further interest here is that clearly the early church was intrigued by the character of Judas Iscariot. He was the hated betrayer, and he met a bitter end. But which bitter end? Did he fall and did his bowels gush out? Did he get hit by a chariot? Did he commit suicide by hanging himself? And why didn't everyone know exactly how Judas died? Why so many versions?

I'm guessing that Judas must have somehow disappeared after the death of Jesus, leaving people to speculate. And with a story that juicy, speculate they did, in spades. The speculations seem to have taken at least two forms--in Matthew we see Judas as remorseful, depressed, realizing the awful magnitude of what he's done, and driven quickly to suicide. In Acts, we see Judas as a cold, calculating monster who betrays his Lord to die, then goes and spends his ill-gotten money on real estate as if he hasn't a care in the world. Needless to say, God strikes him down, and his bowels gush out. Papias' version seems more in line with the version in Acts, of course, although he doesn't say anything about Judas' state of mind, only that he was hit by a chariot, and that he was grossly overweight due to "impiety."

So to sum up, we have another version of the death of the hated Judas, and the version raises further questions, in my mind at least, regarding Papias' claim that Matthew wrote a gospel in the Hebrew language. The work he's referring to is apparently lost, and that in itself would be an odd thing if it were true that an eyewitness had actually written an account of Jesus' life or sayings. Like so much else in church history, or ancient history in general, there are tantalyzing mysteries and unanswered questions.

Jesus, the Good Samaritan

One of my "pet peeves" is the fact that so many people of faith seem to think that their beliefs are the key to eternal life. Somehow people can't seem to comprehend that God, if God exists, is capable of figuring out that we people are helplessly ignorant of God's ways, and that we have no way of knowing who's beliefs are right among all the countless beliefs.

It makes far more sense to me to think that God is rather like the Good Samaritan as told by Jesus. The Good Samaritan picked up that dying fellow along the road without inquiring about his theological understandings. I posted the following a couple of years ago, and I hope it helps you see what I mean:


Originally posted on Yahooo Message Boards: 02/20/04 11:48 am

Think about the parable of the good Samaritan. In this story, Jesus presented the model of a true savior, the one who simply sees a dying man on the side of the road, and helps him without asking any questions, without requiring anything.

Notice that in the story, nothing is said that would indicate that the victim of the roadside crime ever spoke to or knew the person who saved him. The Samaritan simply picked him up in a state of unconsciousness and took him to someone else who could help him, and paid the bill.

That is our Savior, IMO. Too many Christians think that Jesus is waiting for a person to accept that He is God, that He rose from the dead, and that without such beliefs a person is not saved in the eyes of God. Sure, most Christians will say God takes us "just as we are" but there always seems to be this implied "grace period" in which the new convert must come to saving knowledge, that is, they must eventually accept the fundamental teachings.

But that's not how Jesus told the story. His was a tale of a compassionate person, a tolerant person who only saw the needs of others, and met them in the best way that he knew how.

Jesus also said that it would be the ones who do His teachings, not the ones who cry his name, who would be saved. While this seems in conflict with what I said earlier about the good Samaritan setting no requirements for salvation other than lying unconscious on the road, in fact it is not, because when it comes to things of God, all of us are lying unconscious on the road; God is a mystery, an unseen force, that cannot be pinned down with certainty, no matter how much we wish or believe that He can be understood. Thus, all are lost, all are beaten unconscious, and we remain in this state all our lives, at least with respect to an understanding of God, who is only understood through the mist and fog of a semi-conscious state, blurry, through a glass darkly. So given this state of things, about all we can do is follow the teachings of a great and respected teacher such as Jesus and hope for the best.

So that's why I say you don't have to believe certain things in order to be a Christian. Jesus never said you did, he only required that people live right, with the caveat that to those who are given more, more will be required. Thus, we see that salvation is not limited to people of certain religious leanings, nor is it linked to religion at all.

A Short Sermon

Now and then, I write something that might be inspirational to someone, in the Christian sense of the word. If I do, I might post it here. Here's something I wrote years ago:

Consider this; "what is man, that thou art mindful of him?" Science, with all the energy, financing, and raw mental power it has, cannot penetrate the mind of even the simplest person; we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

I read a newspaper article this morning about another upcoming 'man vs. machine' chess match. The human thinks he can beat the computer if he plays his "A" game and makes no mistakes. Somewhere in the article someone was quoted saying something like "This may be the last opportunity for man to defeat the computer in a mental matchup." Or something like that. I'm lousy at remembering quotes.

Anyway, I thought about that, and recalled seeing another article a while back that Honda, or one of the Japanese auto makers, has been trying for ten years to teach a robot to walk. Computerised speech synthesis is in its infancy; researchers don't know if they will ever figure out something as basic to us as human speech. When they can program a computer to beat Michael Jordan at basketball, they will only be at the threshold.

I said all that to say this. We ourselves are impenetrable, ineffable, beyond our ability to understand ourselves, yet we are a tiny fragment of the fulness of God, who made us in His image. It's awesome how unbelievably huge God is.

Now, I said all of that to say this. The waste of a single human life is a tragedy beyond our comprehension. God alone can comprehend the enormity of that. And, that's why I believe that, while the gospel is the greatest gift that God gave to us, it is not the whole story, or else God would have ordered things in such a way that everyone understood it from the beginning.

-Jay-