Substantial Form and the Recovery of an Aristotelian Natural Science

Abstract

The Thomist 66 (2002): 519-33 SUBSTANTIAL FORM AND THE RECOVERY OF AN ARISTOTELIAN NATURAL SCIENCE JOHN GOYETIE Thomas Aquinas College Santa Paula, California THE AIM OF THIS PAPER is to show the continued validity of Aristotelian natural science in light of the challenges posed by modern science. More specifically, I aim to defend the concept of nature as an intrinsic principle of motion and rest, especially the notion ofsubstantial form that Aristotle deems to be "more nature" than matter. The recovery of Aristotelian natural philosophy must begin with a defense of the notion of substantial form not only because this is the foundation of Aristotelian natural science, but also because it has been systematically rejected by modern science. Of the Aristotelian four causes, the formal cause has been the subject ofthe greatest attack. Modern science has, of course, always made use of material and efficient causality. And the notion of final causality, although criticized by the founders of modern science as well as contemporary scientists, has never been subject to the same kind of critique as the notion of substantial form. Newton, for example, endorses the modern rejection of "substantial forms and occult qualities" in the beginning of the Principia, but defends the use offinal causality in the "General Scholium" that concludes the work. For Newton the world is a machine, but it is a machine that exhibits purpose: "it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions.. . . This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an 519 520 JOHN GOYETTE intelligent and powerful Being."1 He explicitly defends the indusion of final causes and discourse on divine providence within the scope of natural philosophy.2 Substantial form is abandoned, but final causality is retained. We find something similar among contemporary design theorists such as Michael Behe and William Dembski, who argue, contrary to the neoDarwinian orthodoxy, that intelligent design is the only reasonable explanation of the origin of living organisms. The design theorists do not dispute that living things are mere machines, only that their "irreducible complexity" is a product of blind chance.3 While scientific reductionism goes unchallenged, the daim to explain the order of the world by chance has never gained universal approval among the proponents of modem science. 1 Sir Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles ofNatural Philosophy, trans. Andrew Motte and Florian Cajori, vol. 2 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1962), 544. 2 "We know [God] only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes ... and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothings but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing.... And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appeamnces of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy" (ibid., 546). 3 Michael Behe, who coined the phrase "irreducible complexity," refers to living things as "biochemical machines." ~All organisms are made of molecules that act as the nuts and bolts, gears and pulleys of biological systems" (Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution [New York: The Free Press, 1996], p. x). William Dembski, who has a Ph.D. in philosophy, has a better sense of the position of Aristotle. In Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology (Downers Grove, HI.: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 123, he notes that modem science, which is predominantly Baconian in character, limits science to material and efficient causes, thereby exduding design, which for Aristotle is related to formal and final causality. But Dembski does not advocate a return to Aristotle's four causes: "There are problems with Aristotle's theory, and it needed to be replaced" (ibid., 124). Although he believes thatAristotle's theory has been discredited by modem science, he believes that chance and necessity are not sufficient to explain the phenomena. Thus, while he does not call into question the mechanistic approach of modem...