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Alan_Wostenberg
Guest
We get a sense from St Thomas who writes in Summa Theologiae Part I question 2 article iii: “We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result”. And again in "“Every agent acts for an end: otherwise one thing would not follow more than another from the action of the agent, unless it were by chance” (S.T. I.44.iv).
We tend to understand order – acting for an end – as conscious activity. But this is not what the Angelic Doctor means, according to Aquinas expert Ed Feser, who writes:
"By “agent” he doesn’t mean only conscious rational actors like ourselves, but anything that serves as an efficient cause. For example, insofar as a chunk of ice floating in the North Atlantic tends, all things being equal, to cause the water surrounding it to grow colder, it is an “agent” in the relevant sense. And what Aquinas is saying is that given that the ice will, unless impeded, cause the surrounding water to grow colder specifically – rather than to boil, to turn into Coca Cola, or to catch fire, and rather than having no effect at all – we have to suppose that there is in the ice a potency, power, or disposition which inherently “points to” the generation of that specific effect. That the ice is an efficient cause of coldness entails that generating coldness is the final cause of ice. And in general, if there is a regular efficient causal connection between a cause A and an effect B, then generating B is the final cause of A. ".