Philosophy of Nature Updates

In my ongoing effort to update and fill in gaps in the content of the Thomistic Philosophy Page, I have revised and greatly expanded the material on Natural Philosophy. While this area of philosophy is based on Aristotle’s cosmology, it provides compelling insights into the nature of physical existence which continue to be relevant even given the advances of modern experimental science (biology, chemistry, physics, and even quantum theory). The revision and expansion of the website includes more complete treatments of topics like efficient causality and especially of prime matter and the Aristotelian-Thomistic account of chemical components and processes, against the standard scientific and reductive materialist account in terms of atomic and molecular composition of complex material substances. Here is the list of new and revised pages and topics:

Philosophy of Nature: the Study of What Is in Matter and Motion

• I. Logical Notions
  • Forms, Being, and Knowledge
  • Substance and Accident
• II. Change and Motion
  • The Problem of Change
    • Three Principles of Change
    • Accidental Change
    • Substantial Change
  • Motion
    • Kinds of Motion
    • Two Kinds of Alteration
• III. The Four Causes
  • Material Cause
    • Prime Matter: Principle of potency for substantial change
    • Proximate Matter: What material substances are made from
    • Virtual Presence: Chemical elements in complex substances
    • What Underlies the Conversion between Particles and Energy
    • Principle of Corruptibility
    • Principle of Individuation
  • Formal Cause
  • Efficient Cause
    • General Principles of Causality
      • Whatever is moved, is moved by another
      • Every agent acts insofar as it is in act
      • Nothing causes except by an act which it possesses.
    • Principle of Proportionate Causality (resemblance between cause and effects)
      • Formal
      • Virtual
      • Eminent
    • Causal Subordination
      • Incidental (per accidens)
      • Essential (per se)
    • First Cause of Motion, Efficient Causality, and Existence
  • Final Cause

This material also constitutes Chapter 3 of To Know the Truth of Things: An Overview of the Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, my forthcoming book. Completion and release are getting closer!

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