It is indeed very difficult to avoid temporal terms when using human language.
rossum:
Sorry for the length of this diatribe!
Like so many others – including, to some extent, me! – Kaku has completely misunderstood what
motion means, as Aristotle and Aquinas understood it, as any kind of change and
cause is that upon which something else depends for its being or coming to be. You, too, unfortunately, have misinterpreted cause as many who have made the same mistake have, as a succession of events where there is some sort of hidden connection.
David Hume interpreted cause, for the most part, as a succession of events without any kind of connection that could be sensed or known. Hume did admit to certain few real causes, but, once again, and for the most part, since we can’t sense cause, all we can do is postulate a connection because certain actions always seem to follow certain other actions, in proximity or time. This creates special problems when one brings time into the explanation.
Although the following is not a particularly great analogy of an effect that represents
being, from it you may be able to get some idea of what is meant. Picture in your mind a television set. Picture the interior of the television. Understand that that television set is not just any pile of parts, even if the parts were the exact same parts that were inside the TV set. Such a pile of parts would be nothing more than a pile of parts.
However, once organized and assembled as a television set, the television performs its formal function, that of producing picture and sound from analog or digital signals captured from the air or delivered by a cable. The television set now has
being-ness, in the sense of this analogy; it has species and essence. From it, we can abstract the essence of what all units of this species have in common. But, it’s not just its parts-in-a-box that makes it so, rather, it’s the order and organization of the parts in the box. It’s the entirety of all of the parts put together in a specific order that make it function and make it a species of thing that is distinguished from all other species of at least electronic things.
Now each part, ordered and placed just so, in the TV set, is an efficient cause of the effect, the box producing sensible and knowable picture and sound; that which renders species to the thing. Considered as a chain of efficient causes, we can see that even if we count all of the parts within the TV set, we would still have to add more. We would have to add the electricity. We would have to add the electric power plant. We would have to add the parts of the turbines, and wires, at the power plant. We would have to add that which effects the motions of the turbines, be it the force of water or, fuel. We would have to add the engine that would make the turbines turn. We would have to add the fuel pumps. We would have to add the ignition system that would ignite the fuel, as well as the mixing system to mix air into the fuel. We would have to add the pistons. We would have to add the lifters and its related parts, etc. - all working together.
The above chain of causes operates simultaneously (the instant that the electricity is supplied). Time is a function here, but only to the extent that the TV is supplied from outside of itself with electricity and the producers of electricity want us to pay for its consumption. But, at least we can see a causal chain in an analogous way to what Aristotle and Aquinas have shown what metaphysical causal sequence to consist of. They are not talking about knocking a bunch of billiard balls around on a table. They are talking about real metaphysical cause: that cause which brings being into being; that cause which maintains being in being; that cause upon which the effect (the being) depends.
The first of the causes of being is primary matter. As matter, it cannot bring itself into being; it cannot provide its own form. Matter is the principle from which a thing comes to be. It is an intrinsic cause because it is necessary to the effect. As an intrinsic cause, matter is different from privation in that privation does not enter into the ultimate effect as does the matter, thus, privation is extrinsic to the effect. For example, a man wants to create two statures, one out of clay and one out of marble. The effects, the statues, however they may appear, consist of the matter, the clay or the marble. But, the motion tends towards the effect so the matter is not the end of the motion. Rather, it is a sort of matrix from which the motion occurs.
Form intrinsically determines and organizes the matter. As a pile of parts, they are not a television set. As an ordered and organized set of parts, they form the television set. Since the parts cannot organize themselves, another cause (or, perhaps a group of causes) must be present that moves each part in its proper sequence to create the effect, the television set operating and producing picture and sound.
Because the form (formal cause) exists prior to change only in the potencies of matter, the form cannot bring itself into the determination of the matter, and matter cannot on its own make the form emerge from itself since matter as matter, being only potential, cannot operate. Therefore, another cause is necessary and this is the efficient cause (or, perhaps a group of efficient causes). It is the agent or the mover. By its (their) action(s), the being (the operating TV set) becomes being.
continued . . .
