Unmoved Mover Research Articles

Nature and Nature's God: A Philosophical and Scientific Defense of Aquinas's Unmoved Mover Argument. By DanielShields. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2023. Pp. 328. $75.00.

Nature and Nature's God: A Philosophical and Scientific Defense of Aquinas's Unmoved Mover Argument. By DanielShields. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2023. Pp. 328. $75.00.

Nature and Nature's God: A Philosophical and Scientific Defense of Aquinas's Unmoved Mover Argument by Daniel Shields (review)

Nature and Nature's God: A Philosophical and Scientific Defense of Aquinas's Unmoved Mover Argument by Daniel Shields (review)

‘Immediacy’ in Whitehead and Blaga

In Whitehead’s metaphysics there is a concept of ‘immediacy’ which is interesting to interpret in relation to the concept of ‘immediacy’ found in Lucian Blaga’s metaphysics. Immediacy stands in opposition to the wholeness of existence and the complexity of reality in both thinkers. In Whitehead, immediate experience is merely a facet of the constructed series of events and processes fundamental for existence and reality and for connecting our objective, scientific and logical descriptions of the world, and the more everyday world of subjective experience. In Blaga, immediacy is the label for limited (animal-like) existence deprived of the metaphysical dimension. However, in Blaga, man is defined by the metaphysical dimension and thus, in terms closer to Whitehead’s view, always engaged in a crusade to comprehend both ‘physical multiplicity’ (the World) and ‘the infinite ground of all mentality’ (God), which is consonant with Blaga’s concept of man’s defining situation within ‘the horizon of mystery’. Both metaphysics accepted a perspective, or, an interpretation of the idea that God creates the World as well as the World creating God. In our view, the Unmoved Mover image of God remains as a ‘trace’ in the idea of permanent reference for the World. This is comparable with the perspective found in the metaphysics of Lucian Blaga, where the metaphysical center, the ‘Great Anonymous,’ ‘pushes’ backwards the human being, via limitative ‘divine differentials’ occasioning the limiting stylistic matrices for the creative and intrusive ontological and metaphysical drive of man.

Review: The Construction of the Supernatural in Euro-American Cultures: Something Nice About Vampires, by Benson Saler

Review: <i>The Construction of the Supernatural in Euro-American Cultures: Something Nice About Vampires</i>, by Benson Saler

Is There a Principle of Continued Material Being?

Abstract What is the relation of an earlier being to a later such that given the earlier there is or will be a later? I call this the question of material continuation. To answer, I offer a review of several philosophers’ thoughts, including those of Zeno, Aristotle, Descartes, Bertrand Russell, Henri Bergson, and Alfred North Whitehead. While there is considerable variety among the ontological views of these philosophers, and indeed some direct opposition of both method and assertion, my review suggests that material continuation may be explained by reference to a principle of continual creation. This principle is reflected in Aristotle's unmoved mover, in Descartes's account of God's activity in persistence, in Bergson's concept of la durée, and in Whitehead's principle of creativity. It disappears from view in objective methodologies first emerging in pre-Socratic thought, made rigorous by the development of science by the modern philosophers such as Descartes, and realized in the scientist philosophy of Russell. I include some consideration of whether the creative principle might be ideal or divine.

Teleology in Natural Theology and Theology of Nature: Classical Theism, Science-Oriented Panentheism, and Process Theism

Teleology in Natural Theology and Theology of Nature:Classical Theism, Science-Oriented Panentheism, and Process Theism Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. Introduction The world is full of teleological dimensions. When we search for them, we can easily see that virtually any of the main aspects of our world can be taken as a particular case of teleology. Although this holds especially for living beings, the physicochemical world also exhibits many directional features that acquire a special meaning when seen as necessary conditions for the existence of living beings. Directionality indicates the existence of tendencies toward goals, which is the hallmark of natural teleology. . . . It is not difficult to find examples of directionality and cooperativity. If we begin with the most elementary components of the world, we find out that subatomic particles and the four basic interactions behave according to well-known specific patterns and collaborate to build up successive levels of organization—atoms, molecules, macromolecules, and the bigger inorganic and organic beings. The entire construction of our world is the result of the deployment of tendencies that collaborate to make up unitary systems.1 If Mariano Artigas is right in his assertion—and many seem to agree that he is2—it seems reasonable to ask about the ways in which the notion of [End Page 1179] teleology may inspire theology, especially in the context of the ongoing dialogue between science and theology. We may think about at least two possible answers to this question, in reference to two related, yet distinctive strategies pursued in theological reflection, (1) the approach of natural theology and (2) the approach of theology of nature. What brings them together is their close attention to nature and our attempts to understand it. Avoiding theological and spiritual escapism and dismissive detachment from nature and natural phenomena, both natural theology and theology of nature point toward their ultimate grounding in God. While doing so, both approaches strive to remain free from the errors of panpsychism, vitalism, and pantheism, thus enabling nature to be natural, available to a thorough and meaningful analysis and description at the level of the research pursued by natural sciences and philosophy of nature and of science. What differentiates these theological approaches are their starting and ending points. Natural theology departs from the observation of natural phenomena. In a search for their ultimate explanation, in reference to philosophy of nature and metaphysics, it arrives at the theological conclusion that only the existence of God offers a satisfying and conclusive answer to the human search for understanding and meaning of the reality that surrounds us. Consequently, one may say that natural phenomena, or at least some of their most fundamental aspects such as teleology, can be used as a basis for arguing in favor of the existence of God. The advantage of such an approach—notes Ian Barbour—is that "it starts from scientific data on which we might expect agreement despite cultural and religious differences."3 However, taken alone, it may reduce the notion of God to the God of philosophers, the unmoved mover, [End Page 1180] or even a deistic Creator, remote and not engaged in his relation to the created reality. Moreover, although we know many examples of people who actually did go through a conversion and discovered the existence of God following the path of natural theology, one might ask whether at least some of the arguments developed within it do not presuppose God's existence as rhetorical exercises for the expression of religious faith, compromising thus its principal commitment. In contrast to natural theology, theology of nature begins with a firm belief in God, based on historical revelation—codified in the Scriptures and reflected upon within theological Tradition—and religious experience (personal and communal). It applies this perspective as an explanatory tool, providing a definitive answer to the questions of origin and ultimate fulfillment of natural phenomena observed in the universe. Hence, while it would be rather strange to claim that the existence of God proves the existence of the natural world—which is better known to us (quoad nos) than the principles of theology—we may still argue that, from the point of view of theology of nature, our knowledge...

La cosmología aristotélica y su influencia en la astrología de la baja edad media

Aristotelian cosmology and physics received by the medieval occident justify the scientific view of the (medieval) astrology. How so? Well, let’s consider the aristotelic theory of the tripartite man: body, soul and pneuma (as the link between both and as the reason of the ability of the soul to catch inmaterial knowledge from the material one). Now, let’s consider the aristotelian view of the cosmos as a system of celestial spheres –moved by the Unmoved mover – and that influences on earth in a way that they produce its movement. These two prior considerations will serve as a support to talk about the relation man-cosmos throughtout the pneuma (made from the aristotelian quintessence, the eter). This view, altogether, will be useful to justify some medieval views about the astrology as a scientific discipline, as starting in natural philosophy. Once this cosmological system falls, the magic-astrological believes that were supported by so will subsequently lose their epistemic-scientific level.

Unmoved movers: a very simple and novel form of indeterminism

It is common knowledge that the Aristotelian idea of an unmoved mover (Primum Mobile) was abandoned definitively (from a mechanical standpoint, at least) with the advent of modern science and, in particular, Newton’s precise formulation of mechanics. Here I show that the essential attribute of an unmoved mover (in a non-trivial sense, and in the context of infinite systems theory) is not incompatible with such mechanics; quite the contrary, it makes this possible. The unmoved mover model proposed does not involve supertasks, and (perhaps precisely for this reason) leads both to an outrageous form of indeterminism and a new, accountable form of interaction. The process presents a more precise characterization of the crucial going-to-the-limit operation (which will admittedly require further development in future research). It has long been acknowledged in the existing literature that, theoretically, in infinite Newtonian systems, masses can move from rest to motion through supertasks. Numerous minor variations on the original schemes have already been published. Against this backdrop, this paper introduces three significant additions: 1) It formulates for the first time a limit postulate for systematically addressing infinite systems; 2) It shows that an Aristotelian unmoved mover (with no supertask) is possible in systems of infinitely many particles that interact with each other solely by contact collision; 3) It shows how interaction at a distance can emerge in systems of infinitely many particles (at relative rest) that interact with each other solely by contact.

Intuition in Plato and the Platonic tradition

ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine what is for Plato and all those who follow in his footsteps the ne plus ultra of cognition, namely, intuition (nous or noēsis). This is the paradigm of cognition, meaning that all forms of human (and even animal) cognition are inferior manifestations of this. Intuition is mental seeing, analogous to physical seeing. Among embodied souls, it is seeing a unity of some sort manifested in some diversity or plurality. Thus, someone who sees that the Morning Star is the Evening Star, or that S at t1 is identical with S at t2, or that f = ma, etc., sees the unity ‘behind’ the diversity. The disembodied intellect that is the Demiurge (or, for Aristotle, the Unmoved Mover) sees paradigmatically the diversity of all intelligible being as a unity. Because mental seeing or intuition is paradigmatic for all cognition, cognition is essentially a unificatory process. Plato's method of collection and division displays both this process and its reverse. In the light of this core doctrine, I examine some of the insights that Platonists, especially Plotinus and Proclus, arrived at regarding a host of issues, including the nature of the first principle of all and the nature of normativity.

Can Video Advertisements Change Partisanship? Results from Panel Survey Experiments

UPDATE: Please see updated paper for a description of a differential attrition problem that will require changes to the analysis and further experimentation. Although partisan orientations are sometimes characterized as the unmoved movers of political evaluations and vote choice, both panel surveys and aggregate time-series indicate that partisan change does occur. To date, however, researchers have seldom attempted to induce a change in partisanship experimentally. Guided by longstanding explanations of how people come to acquire and update their partisan attachments, we worked with media consultants to develop persuasive political advertising designed to win partisan converts. These video ads were deployed in a series of multi-wave survey experiments that tracked panel respondents over time in an effort to gauge the messages' immediate and persistent effects on party identification, as well as their downstream effects on political evaluations and voting preferences. We find that party-focused messaging operates as theoretically expected, especially at high dosages, producing small but demonstrable effects on partisanship with downstream consequences for political preferences. The fact that these effects dissipate over time helps illuminate individual- and aggregate-level patterns of partisan change.

Gwenaëlle Aubry, Genèse du Dieu souverain. Archéologie de la puissance II

The present volume is the successor to Dieu sans la puissance. Dunamis et energeia chez Aristote et chez Plotin (Paris, Vrin, 2006). In that book, the author examines Aristotelian metaphysics as an ontology of act-potency (energeia-dunamis). Her conclusion is that the act that is the life of the unmoved mover is pure or complete actualization, which means that it has no further actualizations. In that case, the effect of the unmoved mover as first principle of all can only be as an ideal that...

Divinity, Noēsis, and Aristotelian Friendship

Aristotle's NE X claim that the best human life is one devoted to contemplation (theoria) seems in tension with his emphasis elsewhere on our essentially political nature, and more specifically, his claim that friendship is necessary for our flourishing. For, if our good can be in principle realized apart from the human community, there seems little reason to suggest we 'need' friends, as he clearly does in NE VIII &amp; IX. I argue that central to Aristotle's NE X discussion of contemplation is the claim that our chief good accords with whatever is 'most divine' in us, viz. our rational nature (NE 1177b2-18). Thus, the best human life involves the excellent exercise of our rational capacities. I distinguish two ways in which human beings flourish through exercising their rationality. The first is in the activity of theoria. The second, I argue, can be found in the virtuous activity of complete friendship (teleia philia). For Aristotle the truest form of friendship is an expression of rationality. It is characterized not merely by our living together, but conversing, and sharing one another's thoughts (NE 1170b12-14). Examining Aristotle's notion of a friend as 'another self (alios autos), I argue that through friendship human beings come to better know themselves and the world in which they live. Complete friendship involves a (uniquely human) second-order awareness of oneself in another, and through this awareness our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live is enriched, confirmed, and enjoyed through the presence of other minds. Thus, the highest form of Aristotelian friendship is an intellectual activity through which we attain an analogue of the divine contemplation of the unmoved mover, thereby living with respect to what is most divine in us, but doing so in accordance with our uniquely rational-political nature.

Sinonimia causal y filosofía natural. Aristóteles, lector del Timeo

Aristotle’s argument against Timaeus’ view of intellection as an endless circular motion can be divided into two main sections: a categorial one, which rests upon the impossibility of intertwining material and immaterial ingredients into a single (albeit twofold) substance; and a geometrical one, which highlights those features of circular magnitudes which render them unsuitable for performing intellectual tasks. This paper focuses on the first set of reasons that Aristotle puts forward, by stressing the productive philosophical outcome of this otherwise perplexing doxographical survey. It is argued that Aristotle’s own notions of ‘contact’ and ‘unmoved mover’ are greatly indebted to his critical scrutiny of Timaeus’ cosmogony. Further, the paper holds that the version of ‘causal synonymy’ that Aristotle discovers in Timaeus’ εἰκὼς μûθος leads him to recast this principle, in order to avoid unwelcome ‘physiological’ consequences. In this way, Aristotle’s literal reading of Timaeus’ εἰκὼς μûθος emerges as a plausible interpretive stance

Living without a Soul: Why God and the Heavenly Movers Fall Outside of Aristotle’s Psychology

Abstract I argue that the science of the soul only covers sublunary living things. Aristotle cannot properly ascribe ψυχή to unmoved movers since they do not have any capacities that are distinct from their activities or any matter to be structured. Heavenly bodies do not have souls in the way that mortal living things do, because their matter is not subject to alteration or generation. These beings do not fit into the hierarchy of soul powers that Aristotle relies on to provide unity to ψυχή. Their living consists in their activities, not in having a capacity for activity.

Substance et essence, entre Aristote et Thomas d’Aquin

The article shows that Thomas Aquinas in many of his works (De ente et essentia, Summa theologiae, Sententia in Aristotelis Metaphysicam) interprets the passage Aristot. Metaph. II 1, 993 19‑31, as expounding a theory of degrees of truth and of being, which is not the true Aristotelian doctrine. This is due to the fact that he interprets ≪the eternal things≫, mentioned by Aristotle in that passage, as the heavenly bodies, and their principles as the unmoved movers, while Aristotle is speaking of the eternal truths, i.e. the truths of scientific knowledge, and of their principles, which are the axioms. The origin of Thomas’ interpretation is the commentary by Alexander of Aphrodisias, which Thomas knew via Averroes.

Identity as Dependent Variable: How Americans Shift Their Identities to Align with Their Politics

AbstractPolitical science generally treats identities such as ethnicity, religion, and sexuality as “unmoved movers” in the chain of causality. I hypothesize that the growing salience of partisanship and ideology as social identities in the United States, combined with the increasing demographic distinctiveness of the nation's two political coalitions, is leading some Americans to engage in a self‐categorization and depersonalization process in which they shift their identities toward the demographic prototypes of their political groups. Analyses of a representative panel data set that tracks identities and political affiliations over a 4‐year span confirm that small but significant shares of Americans engage in identity switching regarding ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and class that is predicted by partisanship and ideology in their pasts, bringing their identities into alignment with their politics. These findings enrich and complicate our understanding of the relationship between identity and politics and suggest caution in treating identities as unchanging phenomena.

A Comparative Study on the Theory of Form and Matter and Its Role in Aristotle and Avicenna's Cosmology

Aristotle's cosmology, especially his viewpoint about generation, is deeply rooted in the theory of form and matter. Although Avicenna accepts the Aristotelian theory of form and matter, he makes some alterations in this theory and redefines it in a new manner. His theory of form and matter despite its Aristotelian background is mostly influenced by his own metaphysical bases which are originally inspired by the monotheistic spirit of Islamic teachings. As a result, while in Aristotelian cosmology the prime matter of the world is eternal and uncreated, Avicenna by making a distinction between temporal eternity and essential eternity of the world, rejects the former while accepts the latter. Accordingly, the prime matter is essentially in need of an efficient cause to bring it to existence. Besides, since prime matter as the mere potentiality cannot exist without any actuality or form, necessarily the efficient cause at the same time bestows forms upon it. Consequently, while in Aristotelian viewpoint, forms are emerged in the prime matter due to its eternal motion toward the full actuality, or as he occasionally calls it, unmoved mover, in Avicenna’s philosophy forms are bestowed upon matter by an external cause and the internal motion of matter just plays a preparatory role for its actualization.

Paradiso 29: Saving the Appearances

Paradiso 29:Saving the Appearances* Alison Cornish In the May 2019 issue of Scientific American, staff writer John Horgan (best known for his 1996 book, The End of Science) recollects how in the 1980s, Stephen Hawking and other big-shots were proclaiming that science was on the verge of solving the riddle of existence and revealing "the mind of God," as Hawking put it. This possibility thrilled me, but eventually I concluded that science, for all its power, cannot give us a genuine theory of everything. Science is bumping into what may turn out to be absolute limits, and it will never tell us why there is something rather than nothing.1 "Why there is something rather than nothing" is among what Horgan calls "some major remaining mysteries" which include "Where did the universe come from? How did life begin? How, exactly, does a chunk of meat make a mind?" and the "biggest problem of all," "the mindbody problem: how matter generates mind." Horgan, ever dismissive of scientists when they get too grand, concludes that mind-body theories are mere stories; he writes: "but none really solves the mind-body problem, any more than The Inferno or War and Peace do." Interesting that he thinks the mind-body problem might be solved in Inferno and not, as we know, in Paradiso: in fact, in Paradiso 29. I like this image of science bumping up against a limit. I would call this limit the primum mobile, the first moveable thing, beyond which there is only the prime mover, the unmoved mover, outside of space and time, beyond which there is only metaphysics. Metaphysics is defined in various ways, but perhaps the simplest would be to call it the science of what is, rather than of what appears. [End Page 107] The primum mobile is material but invisible. This was not always so. For Aristotle the outermost, first moved sphere in the nested spheres of the geocentric cosmos was the eminently visible, brilliant heaven of the fixed stars—those numerous, awe-inspiring, pulsating lights—that maintain their relationships with one another in familiar, recognizable figures—constellations—even as the whole vault of the sky apparently moves over us during a single night, perceptibly shifting over the course of a year to present us with different vistas, familiar from years past. The primum mobile became invisible when an additional movement was perceived in the firmament, the one that has gradually shunted the constellation of Aries off of its astrological sign, and off of what the astronomers still refer to as the first point of Aries, the location of the vernal equinox, when night and day are of equal length all over the world. The first point of Aries, which is used as a point of reference in celestial coordinate systems, has now slipped all the way into the preceding constellation of Pisces, while the corresponding opposite point, the autumnal equinox, has moved out of Libra into the adjacent constellation of Virgo. This is due to what is now called axial precession: rotating on its inclined axis, the earth "wobbles" like a spinning top due to the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun on its equator.2 It is sometimes called the "precession of the equinoxes" because, as noted above, the equinoxes have been observed to be moving backward (against the daily rotation of east to west) along the track of the ecliptic, which is the path of the sun over the course of the year (thus called because planets risk eclipse only when they happen upon that narrow path; or, in our terms, the plane of the earth's orbit). This displacement of the equinoxes, this slippage of key points of the sun's journey off the background of constellations against which they were first noticed, will complete a full circuit in approximately 25,775 years. Suffice it to say, with Macrobius, that "no mortal's life span is sufficiently long to detect" it.3 Dante calculated the age of the child Beatrice when he first met her as one twelfth of one degree of its movement, based on the approximation of one degree every one hundred years.4 The movement...

Two Diverse Notions of the Deity in Jewish Thought

The essay presents two different concepts of God in Jewish thinking. The first underlines the perfection of God, in the Aristotelean manner, and the second the personhood of God. It seems as if the second concept reflects better the approach of the Hebrew Bible, however, traces for the first concept can also be found in the same biblical text. On the one hand, the Maimonidean approach that rejects totally the anthropomorphic portray of God is deeply accepted, but, on the other hand, the biblical God is not unmoved mover or nature, but he is a person. His way with human beings is not blind or mechanical but intentional and deliberate. He reacts and responds to the actions of human beings. The essay discusses two modern Jewish thinkers: Abraham Joshua Heschel, a philosopher who emphasized the personhood of God, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz who is the successor of the Maimonidean approach.

General Revelation and the God of Natural Theology

In Who’s Afraid of the Unmoved Mover? Postmodernism and Natural Theology, I defend natural theology against its postmodern evangelical detractors, including Myron Bradley Penner. Penner rejects natural theology because it attempts to ground knowledge of God in human reason, and he claims that my treatment of Acts 17:16–34 is fatal to my argument. However, Penner does not engage my explication of the doctrine of general revelation. The catastrophic effects that Penner perceives turn out to be only against a straw man of the version of natural theology that I defend.