Why do we still rely on Aristotelian philosophy and metaphysics?

[Vouthon]

Many of Aristotle’s theories (for instance, his identification of the soul as the “form of a body” and tripartite division of it into the vegetative, animal and rational varieties), would appear to have been shaped by a pre-scientific, teleological understanding of the world which modern science has discredited.

We now know, thanks to the advent of the empirical method, that the physical world is both mechanistic (in terms of classical Newtonian physics/general relativity) and probabilistic at the subatomic, ‘quantum’ level. It is not teleological.

As such, I am unsure why some contemporary Catholic theologians and philosophers persist in their reliance upon questionable or falsified Aristotelian concepts, as filtered through Thomism: for example in our explanation of the soul-body relationship.

St. Thomas Aquinas made use of the best secular philosophy, metaphysics and physics at his disposal. And Thomism has been of inestimable value to the Church for centuries. But today, we know that Aristotle got a lot of things wrong (i.e. he had no awareness of inertia or momentum).

So why do we continue to rely on his discredited theories (as mediated through the medieval scholastic tradition)?

The deposit of faith emerges from Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. That is divine revelation. So, why is a secular philosopher, who lived a long time before the birth of experimental science, accorded such a high stature of authority as evidenced by many works of even modern theology?

 

[Kei]

He got much wrong.

But such metaphysical concepts are not as “falsified” as you may think.

 

[GodSoughtMe]

I disagree that teleological causes or even formal causes have been or could be discredited by empirical science - but it doesn’t matter.

As Maurice Blondel argued, Aristotelian philosophy is not needed for the Christian faith.

We have a good two hundred years of existentialist theology.

Philosophy is the hand maid of theology. We explain the truth in different models, but we are not bound by them.

 

[IWantGod]

It is not teleological.

What do you mean by teleological?

 

[IWantGod]

St. Thomas Aquinas made use of the best secular metaphysics at his disposal. But today, we know that Aristotle got a lot of things wrong (i.e. he had no awareness of inertia or momentum).

What has inertia or momentum got to do with metaphysics?

 

[Arkansan]

Because it’s true.

If you believe that empirical observation can disprove the truths of metaphysics (e.g. causality), then you’ve been sold a bill of goods.

 

[Vouthon]

I was only using it as an example of how his teleological metaphysics or philosophical idea (i.e. that a continuous external agent was required) resulted in him having an inaccurate understanding of actual physics (no concept of momentum could be conceived in his framework).

 

[IWantGod]

I was only using it as an example of how his teleological metaphysics (i.e. that a continuous external agent was required) resulted in him having an inaccurate understanding of actual physics (no concept of momentum could be conceived in his framework).

What do you think a continuous external agent means in a metaphysical framework? Do you think he is doing physics?

 

[Arkansan]

Inertia and momentum aren’t metaphysical questions.

 

[MPat]

Aristotle’s metaphysics (for instance, his identification of the soul as the “form of a body” and tripartite division of it into the vegetative, animal and rational varieties), would appear to be shaped by a pre-scientific, teleological understanding of the world which modern science has discredited.

So, can you give a bibliographic record of a paper or a book which did the discrediting?

Of course, nothing like that has ever been done. On the contrary, metaphysics of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas is, for example, the basis of Object-Oriented Programming.

For example, there are papers like https://www.researchgate.net/public...ng_Why_modern_students_need_traditional_logic (Derek Rayside, Gerard T. Campbell “Aristotle and object-oriented programming: Why modern students need traditional logic”, “Proceedings of the 31st SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education”, 2000).

I must admit that I don’t really like Aristotle. The deposit of faith emerges from Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. That is divine revelation. So, why is a secular philosopher, who lived a long time before the birth of experimental science, accorded such a high stature of authority via the scholastics, as evidenced by many works of even modern theology?

He got so much wrong!

He also go so much right!

I was only using it as an example of how his teleological metaphysics or philosophical idea (i.e. that a continuous external agent was required) resulted in him having an inaccurate understanding of actual physics (no concept of momentum could be conceived in his framework).

Then read Edward Feser: Aquinas versus Newton? and http://faculty.fordham.edu/klima/SMLM/PSMLM10/PSMLM10.pdf (the paper that blog post links to), and think so no more.

 

[JanSobieskiIII]

Because there is truth in his work.

 

[Vouthon]

So, can you give a bibliographic record of a paper or a book which did the discrediting?

It is my understanding that Aristotelian teleology was largely ‘discredited’ by the advent of the scientific revolution.

Thinking about it in the sense of a bibliographic record is the wrong way of going about this IMHO. We’re talking about an entire approach to understanding the world, dependent upon how one answers the following simple question:

Q. If the world is made up of “things”, why do they act the way they do?

Rather than explaining “things” in terms of their alleged purpose or goal as per our buddy Aristotle, scientists came to realize that “things” should instead be explained by means of mechanistic processes and formal properties. Dysteleology, not teleology. The world consists of things, which obey rules.

This fundamental tenet inhibited ancient minds from thinking outside the box and performing proper experiments. And Christianity, sans the Aristotelian-tinged variety, actually provided a major theoretical impetus (pun entirely intended! ) in this respect.

In his Mechanics, for instance, Hero of Alexandria (10 AD – c. 70 AD) states unambiguously and uncritically on the authority of Aristotle that heavy objects fall faster than light ones. Now, this is a fundamental error that could have easily been proven wrong were Hero to have engaged in the simplest of experiments. Yet Hero did not do this. He simply accepted the authority of Aristotle on this question, rather than subjecting this theory to an empirical test.

It was not until the Christian worldview started to loosen stringent attachment to the ideas of Aristotle, that a Christian philosopher named John Philoponus (490–570) was in a position to actually perform one of the earliest recorded experiments to support his theories, by dropping a heavy and light ball in the sixth century AD.

Philoponus discovered that both balls fell at almost the same speed: the objects (regardless of their mass) experienced the same acceleration when in a state of free fall.

This was later picked up and further developed in the 14th century by the Catholic priest Jean Buridan, who postulated the notion of motive force, which he named impetus. Buridan pointed out that Aristotle’s unmoved movers were not biblical in origin.

He wrote on the celestial impetus of the spheres as follows:

"God, when He created the world, moved each of the celestial orbs as He pleased, and in moving them he impressed in them impetuses which moved them without his having to move them any more…And those impetuses which he impressed in the celestial bodies were not decreased or corrupted afterwards, because there was no inclination of the celestial bodies for other movements. Nor was there resistance which would be corruptive or repressive of that impetus."

When Philoponus and Buridan moved towards the idea that motion does not require a continuous impulse — that objects left to themselves simply keep moving without any outside help — they enabled later generations to break with Aristotelian teleology, which had resulted in bad physics courtesy of his flawed metaphysics.

 

[Arkansan]

Why do “things” obey the rules that they do?

 

[TheOldColonel]

Offer us proofs of his errors and I’m sure all will believe you.

 

[AlNg]

So why do we continue to rely on his discredited theories as understood by the medieval scholastics?

Because science and mathematics are too difficult to learn. Wiener Hopf operaors, K theory, Cech cohomology, gauge theoretic instantons, index bundles, spectral sequences of filtered complexes, Poincare duality, the Herzsprung Russell diagram, the Chern classes, etc, are not thoroughly understood by experts in medieval and ancient philosophy.

 

[Vouthon]

Teleology is a philosophical doctrine which Aristotle understood to imply that all of nature was essentially goal-oriented or organized functionally. Nowadays, we know that this simply isn’t true: in terms of the laws of nature and natural processes, this does not hold. I view that as an “error” on his part.

The universe in fact doesn’t operate according to the way Aristotle thought it did.

His belief in natural slavery is philosophically (and religiously from a Catholic point of view) untenable and indeed modern genetics proves that we are all about 99.9% genetically similar to the next human, such that women and others are not inferior by “nature” as he claimed. As you know, St. Thomas Aquinas was obliged by Catholic doctrine to correct Aristotle on this point and insist that in the original, pre-fall state humans had not been enslaved to one another. So that’s another error.

Aristotle believed in the “eternity of the world”, which our church condemned outright as a heresy along with a whole set of other propositions of his:

Condemnations of 1210–1277 - Wikipedia

The Condemnations at the medieval University of Paris were enacted to restrict certain teachings as being heretical. These included a number of medieval theological teachings, but most importantly the physical treatises of Aristotle. The investigations of these teachings were conducted by the Bishops of Paris.

Of these, the Condemnations of 1277 are considered particularly important by those historians who consider that they had a side effect of encouraging scholars to question the tenets of Aristotelian science.[2] From this perspective, some revisionist historians maintain that the condemnations had positive effects on the development of science, perhaps even representing the beginnings of modern science.[2]

Thirteen propositions were listed as false and heretical, some relating to Averroes’ doctrine of the soul and the doctrine of monopsychism, and others directed against Aristotle’s theory of God as a passive Unmoved Mover.[6] The banned propositions included:

Late 13th century French manuscript of Averroes’ commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima

"That there is numerically one and the same intellect for all humans".[6]
"That the soul separated [from the body] by death cannot suffer from bodily fire".[6]
"That God cannot grant immortality and incorruption to a mortal and corruptible thing".[6]
"That God does not know singulars" (i.e., individual objects or creatures).[6]
"That God does not know things other than Himself".[6]
"That human acts are not ruled by the providence of God".[7]
"That the world is eternal".[8]
"That there was never a first human".[8]

Those who “knowingly” taught or asserted them as true would suffer automatic excommunication, with the implied threat of the medieval Inquisition if they persisted

Aristotle didn’t believe in the immortality of the soul but thought it died with the body…

Need I go on?

He espoused so many doctrinal and scientific errors, I might be here till next Christmas typing…

 

[Arkansan]

Teleology is a philosophical doctrine which Aristotle understood to imply that all of nature was essentially goal-oriented or organized functionally. Nowadays, we know that this simply isn’t true

When and how was it disproved?

His belief in natural slavery is philosophically untenable

You must not get out much.

This is also not a metaphysical claim.

 

[TheOldColonel]

I suppose you’ve defeated Aristotle. It took centuries, but you alone have done it. You’ve laid his shame bear for all to see and thus destroyed the very foundation of Western Philosophy. And, you did it without help. Amazing! I just wish you hadn’t waited so long. It would have been nice if you’d done this before so many of us had to suffer through years of philosophy studies.

 

[MPat]

Thinking about it in the sense of a bibliographic record is the wrong way of going about this IMHO. We’re talking about an entire approach to understanding the world, dependent upon how one answers the following simple question:

Q. If the world is made up of “things”, why do they act the way they do?

So, unsurprisingly, you do not have an actual source, but you can offer a hand wave instead.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s how science works.

If someone somehow disproved Aristotle’s metaphysics (and didn’t keep that to himself), there had to be a publication. If there was a publication, there has to be a bibliographic record. But there is no bibliographic record you can offer. Therefore, Aristotle’s metaphysics haven’t been disproved. Q.E.D.

In his Mechanics, for instance, Hero of Alexandria (10 AD – c. 70 AD) states unambiguously and uncritically on the authority of Aristotle that heavy objects fall faster than light ones. Now, this is a fundamental error that could have easily been proven wrong were Hero to have engaged in the simplest of experiments. Yet Hero did not do this. He simply accepted the authority of Aristotle on this question, rather than subjecting this theory to an empirical test.

And, let me guess, you also proclaim all that without actually making any real experiments.

For it is easy to make an experiment that would seem to demonstrate that light things fall more slowly. Drop a feather and a stone - feather will fall slower. Yes, it is easy to explain why that happened, if one already knows the right answer, but it is not so easy when one still has to discover it.

Given that you didn’t demonstrate such a good ability to perform a literature review and to design an experiment yourself here, perhaps you shouldn’t judge Aristotle so harshly.

 

[Vouthon]

You must not get out much.

Ad hominem, thanks.

This is also not a metaphysical claim.

Since it was founded on his belief in a great chain of being (scala natura), I would disagree with you there.

Besides, I was asked for evidence of his “errors”, any error. While I entitled it metaphysics (my bad), I’m really voicing criticism of his philosophy in general. So I rhymed off as many “errors” as I could think of.