Intellectual History, Liberal Arts, Metaphysics, Natural Theology, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science

Lucretius: A Conversation Between Science and Philosophy, Part One

by Dave Seng

This will be the first post of three regarding the Roman poet Lucretius (99 BC – 55 BC) and his philosophical poem, The Way Things Are. When one comes to Lucretius, his poem is often interpreted in terms of atomism, materialism, or strict philosophical naturalism. There is much truth to this interpretation. In this series, however, I want to make a larger metaphysical analysis and discuss the intersection of science and philosophy that was articulated by the poet. I thought it would be helpful to use Aristotle’s ideas to augment, clarify, and critique parts of Lucretius. Along the way we will bring Descartes and A. N. Whitehead for reflection. I hope you find the discussion helpful.

What we learn from the Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius is that when we explore questions about the nature of Being, including its properties, nature, and development, there is always a philosophical and scientific aspect to them. In The Way Things Are, Lucretius investigates the nature of reality poetically as he examines the physical world and draws philosophical implications about it. His approach is not necessarily new among the classical authors, but his insight that what we learn from physical reality has a philosophical dimension, is significant. Most ancient philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle held to this dual aspect of inquiry into the nature and development of the cosmos. Aristotle, more than Plato, took physical reality seriously and begins his philosophical and scientific investigations empirically and inductively drawing from the facts of the natural world around him. Aristotle was careful to articulate that his logical abstractions and conclusions corresponded to reality (much of his logical reasoning was drawn from external reality and conducted to show how nature works. After all, the laws of logic are simple properties of being). Lucretius, too, was very interested in the workings of the world around him and wrote The Way Things Are as an attempt to describe the properties and principles of natural science. Lucretius’s poem is a fascinating examination of a number of very important questions related to the intersection of philosophy and science. In other words, whenever the nature and character of Being is explored, philosophical and scientific questions are always involved.

Throughout his poem, Lucretius poetically describes the nature of Being (all of reality), the importance of induction, the scientific principles of uniformity and conservation, the law of causality, and the nature of explanation. Lucretius, is not the only important author who has articulated and explored these questions. The conversation Lucretius engaged in about science and philosophy is also augmented and developed by such thinkers as Aristotle, Descartes, A. N. Whitehead, among others.

In a broad interpretation, then, Lucretius’s poem can be read as a conversation between science and philosophy. Here, science is defined as the knowledge of our physical world which is discovered through testable and reproducible empirical experimentation, and is quantifiable and objective. Simply put, science is knowledge of the world obtained by the five senses and verified through repeatable inductive processes. Philosophy, or how one thinks rationally and critically about the natural world, is concerned—in this context—about how scientific knowledge corresponds, or is in agreement with metaphysical first principles, and how philosophical concepts relate to physical reality. Lucretius helps us to understand that a philosophy of science is important when examining both the philosophical and empirical implications of science. In this case, philosophy of science is not only interested in how empirical scientific results correspond to logical analysis, but is also interested in discovering the relationship and interaction between metaphysical first principles and scientific knowledge. Such philosophical concepts as being and becoming, the law of noncontradiction and other laws of logic which are the foundations for mathematics and critical reasoning, along with the principle of causality (which, we will see below is a logical extension of the law of noncontradiction), and the principle of the uniformity of nature are important philosophical aspects of reality that are assumed in the scientific process and must be held in order for science to function coherently. To summarize, science is descriptive, inductive, and empirical while philosophy, and particularly, metaphysics, seeks to understand the first principles of reality which are not empirical, and seeks to interpret scientific conclusions through the right use of reason and logic and to learn how both science and metaphysics provide insight into reality or Being. Lucretius wanted us to explore the philosophical and scientific foundations for Being, causation, and the nature of change.

First, however, it is important to examine Lucretius’s scientific postulations. Scientifically, Lucretius is an “atomist,” meaning he holds that all physical reality can be reduced to atoms and tiny indestructible material objects.1 Among other places, the poet tells us,

Seeds of things, firstlings, atoms, and in

them lies

The sum of all created things. (7)

Furthermore, Lucretius seeks to investigate the physical world “by insight into nature” and “systematic contemplation” (3). It is clear throughout his poem that his process is empirical and inductive. Interestingly, Lucretius had some sophisticated ideas about science and nature, itself, which still resonate with philosophers of science today. These ideas are centered around scientific concepts of the uniformity of nature and the conservation of energy. Lucretius’s inductive methodology laid the foundation for his scientific conceptual scheme. Induction is the logical process of coming to general conclusions drawn from particular instances. For example, one can correctly reason that since Socrates is mortal, Aristotle is mortal, and Ralph is mortal that all humans are mortal. (It is not necessary to examine every single individual to know that humans are mortal.) As a methodology, induction itself rests upon important metaphysical concepts. A. N. Whitehead, for example, explains this point,

Induction presupposes metaphysics. In other words, it rests upon an antecedent rationalism. You cannot have a rational justification for your appeal to history until your metaphysics has assured you that there is a history to appeal to; and likewise your conjectures as to the future presuppose some basis of knowledge that there is a future already subjected to some determinations. (A. N. Whitehead, Vol. 55, 156)

Whitehead explains what Lucretius understands intuitively and poetically. Induction, the process of generating generalized conclusions from particular instances, rests upon the idea that there is an order and unity to events in the world, and that past events can be understood in light of the present and applied to the future based on the principle of uniformity. Induction is one of the basic properties of Being. Lucretius showed that order, unity, and induction rely on prior philosophical postulates. The scientific method, which is based on induction and repeatable events, rests on metaphysical assumptions. This is one reason why questions about the physical universe always involve both empirical and philosophical concepts.

Works cited:

Lucretius. The Way Things Are. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 11. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 55. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

1Lucretius was not the first to hold such a view. The pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus was also an atomist. Ancient atomists believed atoms were indestructible. It is now known, however, that atoms are destructible, but in general, Lucretius seems to have been on the right track. In addition, it is unclear how strict an atomist Lucretius was. For example, he referred to the goddess Venus as the “creatress” in the first page of the poem and referres to her throughout the work.

Intellectual History, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Augustine’s Modified Platonism

by Dave Seng

There can be no change where there is no form.—St. Augustine

One thing that I have discovered in my reading of classical and contemporary philosophers is how those who consider themselves Platonists often have to modify their position to account for a more accurate understanding of concrete reality. For example, Plotinus had to adopt Aristotle’s categories of act and potency to account for change in the world, and Augustine, too, had to concede that form and matter must be united (in order to understand motion, change, and avoid some theological concerns). Contemporary Platonists are rarely strict Platonists. One way or another, everyone on the philosophical spectrum has to come to terms with physical reality. The question is, what is the correct approach? I believe Aristotle and Aquinas provide the best understanding of ontology (the nature of existing things) and metaphysics (the nature and properties of existence). I have already pointed out how Aristotle argues for the union of form and matter. Here, I want to explicate how and why Augustine, a Platonist, needs to modify his position in order to account for reality. Although it is rare to compare Augustine with Aristotle, in some ways he must adjust his overall approach and comes very close to Aristotle’s position.

In the physical and contingent world, matter and its forms must begin at their creation. Since matter and its forms can not exist separately, philosophers and theologians, of both Platonist and Aristotelian varieties, think that God could not have made them separately. It can not be thought, according to Augustine, “that God first created matter without form and then gave it form” (138). To explain this, he offers us an analogy of how music works. “Song is ordered sound, and although a thing may very well exist without order, order cannot be given to a thing which does not exist … We do not first emit formless sounds, which do not constitute song, and then adapt them and fashion them in the form of song (139). Thus, Augustine believes that God made form and matter at the same time. God “concreates” matter and form, puts them together at the same time and is the one who puts the form into matter. For Augustine, the form is not a separate entity, as Plato believed, but put into the matter by God. Augustine clearly modifies his Platonism at this point.

Struggling with the theological and philosophical implications of the created world, Augustine tells us “For the matter of heaven and earth is one thing, their form another. You [God] created the matter from absolutely nothing and the form of the world from the formless matter. But you created both in one act, so that the form followed upon the matter with no interval of delay” (italics added, 157).

The above passages are best read in light of Aquinas because Augustine provides the foundation for the Thomistic doctrine of concreation. Concreation simply means “created together.” In fact, it was Augustine’s teaching that form and matter had to be created at the same time, and that form must follow upon matter, that leads Aquinas to coin the term “concreation” meaning that God created Form and matter at the same time. Why do both Augustine (a Platonist) and Aquinas (an Aristotelian) believe that form and matter must have been created at the same time? Simply because it is impossible to have form without matter, and matter without form. Both Platonists and Aristotelians must face the concrete facts of reality.

Aquinas is helpful here. When examining Augustine’s position of concreation, Aquinas says “if formless matter preceded in duration, it already existed; for this is implied by duration … To say, then, that matter preceded, but without form, is to say that being existed actually, yet without actuality, which is a contradiction in terms … Hence we must assert that primary matter was not created altogether formless” (344). Neither, however can the form of a material thing be created without matter. Aquinas reminds us, “Forms and other non-subsisting things, which are said to co-exist rather than to exist, ought to be called concreated rather than created things. (245)” The old Aristotelian adage, “no form without matter, no matter without form” still holds true.

Even more fascinatingly, Augustine believes that the form must be in the material object itself in order to account for change. “There can be no change where there is no form” (129), according to Augustine. This parallels exactly what Aristotle and Aquinas hold to. Without the potentiality of form, something can not change. If the acorn does not have the form and potency of the oak tree, it will not grow into a majestic oak tree.

Aquinas was one of the first great thinkers to realize that Platonists must modify there position at times. He tells us in his Summa Theologica, “Consequently whenever Augustine, who was imbued with the doctrines of the Platonists, found in their teaching anything consistent with faith, he adopted it; and those things which he found contrary to faith he amended” (446). Clearly, Augustine understood the metaphysical and theological problems which arise when form and matter are separated. For Christians, Christ shed real human pH typable blood on the cross—not some Platonic version where the real blood exists as an ideal in the transcendent realm. The union of form and matter has significant implications when it comes to Christ’s atoning death. For rightly believing Christians, Holy Communion makes no sense without the union of form and matter.

Christian Platonists such as Augustine, do need to modify their position in order to correspond to correct theology. They also need to modify their position to account for a correct understanding of ontology and metaphysics. When I read contemporary Christian Platonists, such as J. P. Moreland and Peter van Inwagen, they too make similar adjustments to their ontology and metaphysics. It is simply very difficult to account for a pure separation of form and matter in physical reality without going into one error or another. Reality has its own intractable way of being. Aristotle was on the right path by adopting a common-sense approach which accounts for reality as we know and experience it. As T. S. Eliot discovered after converting to Christianity, reality is the determinant of order.

Works Cited:

Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica, Volume 1. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 17. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999

Augustine. Confessions. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 16. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Intellectual History, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Empty Words and Poetical Metaphors: Aristotle’s Critique of Platonic Forms

by Dave Seng

For more context about Plato’s metaphysics these posts should be helpful. For Aristotle, these might provide a helpful background.

It is important to realize that Aristotle did not entirely reject Plato’s view of reality. He did, however, believe it needed improvement. In this essay, we turn to Aristotle’s view of ultimate reality and contrast it with Plato’s because that is where the biggest difference lies between the two thinkers. It is certainly the most significant difference when it comes to the development of metaphysics in Western intellectual history.

We saw in our series on Plato, that his conception of Forms1 (or universals) were his answer to the classical problem of the one and the many. He believed that by positing universal forms he could explain the unity of the diversity we see all around us. Aristotle agreed with Plato on this point. Only by the objective essences of things, can we account for the order around us, both in nature and in morality. Further, essences account for the very possibility of knowledge about things. The difference, however, between Plato and Aristotle, rests in how the Forms or essences are related to particular things.

Early in the Metaphysics, Aristotle provides his own summary of Plato’s conceptual scheme:

…[Plato], having in his youth first become familiar with Cratylus2 and with the Heraclitean doctrines (that all sensible things are ever in a state of flux and there is no knowledge about them), these views he held even in later years. Socrates, however was busying himself about ethical matters and neglecting the world of nature as a whole but seeking the universal in these ethical matters, and fixed thought for the first time on definitions; Plato accepted his teaching, but held that the problem applied not to sensible things but to entities of another kind—for this reason, that the common definition could not be a definition of any sensible thing, as they were always changing. Things of this other sort, then, he called Ideas, and sensible things, he said, were all named after these, and in virtue of a relation of these; for the many existed by participation in the Ideas that have the same name as they.3

Aristotle goes on in his Physics, Nichomachean Ethics, and Metaphysics, to critically examine Plato’s theory of Forms. Some scholars have found twenty five or more arguments against the Platonic theory in Aristotle’s works. Here, we will only focus on a few of the more important ones.

The first one, is famously known as the “third man argument.” He develops this argument in his Metaphysics and Sophistic Refutations. In this argument, Aristotle states that in order to explain the similarity between a man (1) and a second man (2) we must posit a third ideal man or form of a man, a third man. But then we must explain the similarity between the first two men and the form of a man with another, “higher” form of a man. The situation becomes an endless regression of positing further higher forms and the original instance of the first man or thing is never explained. Because the forms are not only patterns of sensible things, but of Forms themselves, nothing gets resolved.

In book two, chapter two of his Physics, Aristotle argues against the existence of separated Forms based on the mathematical properties inherent in physical objects. Here, Aristotle makes the point that physical bodies contain surfaces and volumes, lines, and points, and these are all mathematical properties. Aristotle makes the common-sense observation that material objects have mathematical properties and uses this fact to mount an interesting critique of Plato’s Forms. Remember, for Plato, forms are separate from matter. Forms exist in an ideal transcendent realm away from the realm of becoming and change. According to Plato, there are not any Forms in material objects. Aristotle finds this situation incredibly hard to believe. Plato’s theory of the Forms says that among the Forms are mathematical objects such as the form of equality, the form of a triangle, the form of a triad, and so forth. Aristotle reasons that mathematical objects can not be separated from material objects because material objects have mathematical properties. He concludes that if mathematical objects (a sample of Forms) could not be separated from material objects (physical things), then forms can not be separated from matter. Physical things have mathematical order to them.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes an important ethical objection. He points out that Plato’s Form of the Good is only an ideal to to be contemplated. It does not have effective power itself. The Form of the Good is an ideal that can not effect change or transmit potency. If, on the other hand, particulars have no form in them and are only matter, what then inclines the particular towards orderliness, beauty and to its good? What is there in matter, material beings, that gives them their natural impetus and direction towards the good, if Forms are transcendent and not immanent in matter?

All these questions and objections, point to the biggest problem that Aristotle believes is at the center of Plato’s theory. It is the problem that the Forms are separated from matter and sensible things. Aristotle correctly represents Plato as having placed the ultimate causes of things (the Forms) in a transcendent world and thus separated from the things they are supposed to be the causes of. Aristotle’s great concern was to discover the cause of a thing or the cause of a property of something. He thought that by studying individual things, one could rationally discern the basic causes and principles of all Being. To understand why something is the case, we must first examine its cause.

In book one, chapter nine of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes what he thinks is the biggest problem with Plato’s view of reality:

Above all one might discuss the question what on earth the Forms contribute to sensible things, either to those that are eternal or to those that come into being and cease to be. For they cause neither movement nor any change in them. But again they help in no wise either towards the knowledge of the other things (for they are not even the substance of these, else they would have been in them), or towards their being, if they are not in the particulars which share in them; though if they were, they might be thought to be causes, as white causes whiteness in a white object by entering into its composition …

But, further, all other things cannot come from the Forms in any of the usual senses of “from.” And to say that they are patterns and the other things share in them is to use empty words and poetical metaphors …

Again, it would seem impossible that the substance and that of which it is the substance should exist apart; how therefore, could the Ideas, being the substances of things exist apart? In the Phaedo the case is stated in this way—that the Forms are causes both of being and becoming; yet when the Forms exist, still the things that share in them do not come into being, unless there is something to originate movement.4

Aristotle points out that, by definition, Forms do not change because they exist in an unchangeable realm of being without becoming. The result is that Forms have no potency or ability to effect change. The separation between being and becoming, Form and matter, is very significant indeed. Platonic Forms have no way to account for the change, motion, coming into being and ceasing to be that one experiences every day.

As we have seen, Aristotle does not reject the idea of essence or Form entirely. In the next post, we will explore the most important elements of Aristotle’s metaphysics and his solution to the Platonic separation of Form and matter.

1It may not be entirely correct, but for our purposes, we’ll use “forms,” “universals,” and “essences” synonymously. The term “idea” is also used to describe the Platonic Form.

2Cratylus was a follower of Heraclitus but pushed the teaching of his master even further, for he said that one could not step into the same river even once!

3Aristotle, Metaphysics, 987a-b, tr. W. D. Ross, in Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941).

4Ibid., 991a-b.

Metaphysics, Philosophy

Plato, Final Thoughts, and Aristotle

by Dave Seng

In my recent series on Plato, we discussed his primary metaphysical ideas, how he addressed the philosophical problem of the one and the many, and what he thought the best way to view reality is. We also explored some significant problems that occur in Plato’s metaphysics. If you missed those posts, you can start here and end here. For more context about Aristotelian metaphysics, this post should be helpful.

I want to set out the general context and broad similarities between Plato and Aristotle before developing the significant differences that exist between the two thinkers. It will take another post to really highlight the differences between these philosophers and how they have shaped the conversation regarding metaphysics for the Western intellectual tradition. I plan to make that post soon.

Before we move on to Aristotle, I think it is important to understand that Plato really is a significant thinker in Western thought and it would be impossible to be genuinely educated without reading him or knowing about his ideas. Plato’s political thought, for example, is an important corrective to those who desire an unbridled democratic regime. In education, we learn from Plato that dialectic (the careful analysis of ideas) always involves critical reflection, the free exchange of ideas, and the Socratic conviction that the unexamined idea is not worth having. These are valuable and important gifts that Plato gave to Western civilization. The questions Plato raises in the Republic and all of his other dialogues are still with us today in many ways.

To get started, then, Aristotle was a student of Plato’s and studied with him for about twenty years. In many ways, Aristotle had a very high regard for his teacher and was broadly sympathetic to his views. He believed that his critiques were important correctives to Plato’s metaphysics. In many ways, Aristotle thought he was helping to improve and advance Plato’s overall philosophical project. There is a kind of Platonism, although very different at some points, in Aristotle’s work.

There are other points of contact as well. Aristotle shared Plato’s concern for the improvement of the soul. In his ethics, and in the area of knowledge, Aristotle like Plato, is very anxious to distinguish between what appears good to some people and what is really and genuinely good as both believed in a good which has eternal intrinsic value and should be pursued by all people everywhere. Further, Aristotle agreed with Plato that there are unchanging Forms or essences which represent what is the ideal good for various classes of things (qualities, relationships, properties of objects and so forth). When something is developing, growing, thinking, or acting as it should, it is good.

There are some general differences we should address before getting to more specific dissimilarities between the two philosophers. Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics demonstrates a different approach than Plato’s. It is important to keep in mind, however, that Plato never systematized his thought in the way Aristotle did. The difference in approach between Plato and Aristotle has interesting and significant ramifications for intellectual history. Aristotle’s method is much more systematic in nature and scope. He is analytic, descriptive, and demonstrates a love for cataloging and ordering ideas and things. Aristotle’s work has the feel of a disinterested scientist as he was intensely focused on classifying things, defining their important concepts and properties, and setting it all in proper order. In modern terms, it is not too far off to say that Aristotle was the first Analytic philosopher (due to his careful focus on language and logic) and Plato could be considered the first of the Continental philosophers (with his impulse for difficult narrative and language). Readers of Aristotle, however, will have no problem at getting at his main themes while Plato’s structure is often difficult to discern.

In future posts, we will discover how Aristotle’s conceptual framework of reality avoided Plato’s inherent Gnosticism. It is no surprise that when Socrates was to be executed, he thanked his executioners. What could be better, for one who believed that the body is the prison house of the soul, than to be released from a physical body? For the Platonist, the body just gets in the way of things. It prevents true disembodied union with the Good. For Plato, Plotinus, and the Platonic tradition generally, the goal of the individual is to escape the physical world of becoming, time, and instability of which the physical body is a part. Death and disembodiment are to be welcomed. On the other hand, Aristotle’s view that all things are made of a composition of form and matter—what has become known as hylomorphism (the view that all natural things require for their existence both passive “stuff” and an active, determining essence)—escapes the problem of Gnosticism.

Metaphysics simply means “after physics” it is a sub-field of philosophy which is interested in the principles, laws, and axioms which make all other sciences possible.

Aristotle believed that metaphysics is a science in a broad or general sense. In German, the word Wissenschaft refers to any theoretical study. In this sense, theology is a science, the study of ethical theory is a science, and the study of political thought is a science. Any theoretical study is a science and that is the way Aristotle approaches metaphysics.

But he distinguishes between particular sciences and what he calls “first wisdom,” “first philosophy” or “first principles,” what he calls the proper areas of focus for metaphysics.1 For Aristotle, metaphysics is the study of “being as being” in the most general sense. Metaphysics is the science of sciences. It is the overarching science of all the sciences. The most general of all the sciences. Now, particular sciences, are concerned with the various principles that are at work in a particular area of things and in different kinds of things. And it is Aristotle who introduces classification in terms of species and family and so forth. “First Philosophy” according to Aristotle, is the “science of sciences” or the science of all being and reality. It is the study of the universe and its basic properties that are not empirical. There are sciences having to do with animals, sciences having to do with plants, there are sciences having to do with heavenly bodies and their movements, sciences having to do with all sorts of things. All of the things that the physical sciences are about are beings. They are all particular sciences about specific things.

When it comes to metaphysics, however, Aristotle is concerned with what makes it all possible in the first place. Metaphysics is the investigation of “being as being” or being in the most general and richest sense. He wants us to think about the most universal principles and questions of reality. Why is there something rather than nothing? What makes unity out of the diversity we see all around us? These are the great metaphysical questions of being.

For Aristotle, then, metaphysics is the science which supplies the knowledge and foundation for which all other fields are grounded. The science of metaphysics applies non-empirical truths to the world around us by developing common-sense reasoning through studying the nature of existing things and developing philosophical principles from them. Ultimately, the study of metaphysics is concerned with foundational first principles such as the laws of logic, the law of noncontradiction, the principle of causality, the principle of predictive uniformity, and the principle that an effect can not be greater than its cause, an event can not precede itself, and other first principles of reality. What is to be … and to become? What is being itself? What does it mean to exist and stand out of nothingness? Now those are questions for the science of sciences, the science of being, the first wisdom we call metaphysics.

1It is true that Aristotle never used the term “metaphysics” in his work. He used the term “first philosophy,” “first wisdom” or “first principles” which marked out the field of metaphysics. His work entitled Metaphysics was a title given to a collection of works that went beyond physics by an early editor. Nonetheless, his work clearly laid the foundation for what we now think of as metaphysics as the primary field of philosophy and that which has to do with the ultimate principles of reality. I will use the term “first philosophy” for his understanding of metaphysics.

For those who want to dig more deeply into the important ideas that Aristotle gave us, here are some great resources:

A. E. Taylor, Aristotle

Mortimer J. Adler, Aristotle: Difficult Thought Made Easy

Henry B. Veatch, Aristotle: A Contemporary Appreciation