Motion and Motion's God: Thematic Variations in Aristotle, Cicero, Newton, and Hegel

by Michael J. Buckley

Overview

The existence of God as demonstrated from motion has preoccupied men in every age, and still stands as one of the critical questions of philosophic inquiry. The four thinkers Father Buckley discusses were selected because their methods of reasoning exhibit sharp contrasts when they are juxtaposed.

Originally published in 1971.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691620435
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	03/08/2015
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #1555
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

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Motion and Motion's God

Thematic Variations in Aristotle, Cicero, Newton, and Hegel

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By Michael J. Buckley S.J.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1971 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07124-4

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CHAPTER 1

Problematic Method

The problem which initiates the Aristotelian inquiry into a single principle beyond sensible form is that of the endless perdurance of natural motion. That motion is eternal is not a given of observation and experience; it is a conclusion obtained through an investigation whose methods and devices have been specified by the character and attributes of motion and whose alternatives are framed within its opening question:

Whether motion became once, not having been before, and will perish again so that there will be nothing moved,

Or it neither became nor will perish, but always was and always will be, and this deathless and pauseless (reality) inheres in beings, being a kind of life to all those things which are constituted by nature.

The dialectical structure of the sentence focuses the general problem of endless motion through the immediate issue which it generates: Is natural motion eternal or not? This is a on question, the first of the four which Aristotle lists as propaedeutics of scientific inquiry and the particular one which examines the composition or division of a subject and a predicate, i.e., the affirmation or the denial of a fact. It is an either/or question: Is eternality to be affirmed or denied of motion? Its resolution closes the first phase of the investigations of Physics viii.

Once such a connection between a subject and an attribute has been established, the search turns for the reason that it is so. It is a second inquiry, begun by a [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] question and terminated in the reasoned fact. Granted such-and-such a synthesis of subject and predicate, why is it so? What is the principle of their conjunction? Thus the second moment of the general problem follows hard on the heels of the first; it is a question about principle and cause: Because of what [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is motion eternal? Unlike the previous question, this can be neither posed in simple alternatives nor answered in composition or division. The inquiry is for a middle term, for a cause which will scientifically explain the fact because it has really effected the fact. And each of the four causes can be the middle term of such a demonstration. The fact [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] has indicated that a principle must exist; the reasoned fact [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] shows what this principle is. The phases of inquiry follow the pattern of questions: The endless duration of natural motion is first to be established as a fact; then it must be understood in terms of the principle which has authored the fact.

The simplicity of this formula, however, belies the enormous difficulties inherent in the terms of the questions. The problem of the eternality of motion cannot even emerge until the definition of the terms has been established, until "nature," "motion," and "eternal," as well as the plurality which enters the subsequent questions and resolutions, have been understood. This determination of crucial terms is the task belonging properly to the prior question, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Aristotle uses a "problematic method," a method whose discursive processes and analytic instrumentalities are directly determined by the subject under investigation and by the principles proper to that subject. The content of the terms is of critical importance in working out the intelligibility of a problem. Consequently, definition is not accomplished in the problematic method through an initial imposition of meaning and its arbitrary application nor through a matrix of precisely formulated symbols and formal relationships. The significance of the important terms which compose the problem of eternal motion has been the product of the painstaking inquiry of the previous books of the Physics. Critical definitions have come as results of investigations and as clarified through inductions, not at the beginning of either. There is no single method with which to obtain definition; it depends directly upon the principles employed and the thing to be defined. For to define a word problematically is at the same time to define the reality for which it stands. Whether this "reality" is in the order of things or thoughts or words, is a question of selection; but that the scientific definition of the term is accomplished only through the definition of that to which it is applied, whether thing, thought, or word, is a characteristic of the problematic method. The method of definition of poetic reality is quite different from the one traveled in defining a natural thing, and even among natural things, "If there is no single or general method for solving the question what it is [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ... for each subject, we shall have to grasp what is the method." The method is specified by the subject and its principle and cannot pass from one subject to another. So, for example, physics cannot take up questions of mathematical infinity because "we are examining sensibles and it is concerning these that we construct the method [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]."

This specification of method by the problematic proper to a particular subject obviates any single "scientific method" appropriate to all reality. The distinction of subjects provides for a radical particularization of methods. Even if the definitional question, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], is always identical in form, the manners of its revolution will be as different as the subjects at which it is leveled. Though all four lines of dialectical investigations, predicables dealing with "property," "genus," "accident," and "definition," can be called "definitory," neither singly nor together do they offer a unique method by which definitions are obtained:

This means, to use the phrase previously employed, every manner [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] We have enumerated might in a certain sense be called "definitory." But we must not on this account expect to find a single method [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] applicable universally to them all. For this would not be a very easy thing to find; and even were one found, it would be very obscure indeed, and of little service for the treatise before us. Rather a special method [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] must be laid down for each of the genera we have distinguished ... The way through the subject [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] will be easier if we begin from the things proper to each.

There is a reflexive relationship between the principles, the methods, and the subject of a science, a relationship of interdependence by which the province and procedure of each science is established. The sciences can be distinguished from one another by their ultimate principle, their final cause: the theoretical sciences aim at knowledge; the practical, at action; the productive or poetic, at making. Physics, mathematics, and theology form the most general divisions of the speculative sciences, each of which admits further specification as the subjects treated are further refined. And each will have its own method. One can speak properly of the "physical method" or "political method" or "dialetical method." In all of these subdivisions, the problematic method insists upon the priority given to the subject of inquiry: one does not set up an intelligible structure and bring it to bear upon the object of inquiry, as one would with nominal definitions or formal matrices. Rather intelligibility is brought out of the subject, is actualized, through the methodological operations proper to each. One does not bring meaning to the subject; the meaning of the subject is realized. And it is precisely for this reason that the definition of terms must be worked out of the subject as a prior task of inquiry.

Thus neither the meaning of the "motion," "nature," etc., nor the order of the inquiry is an arbitrary one; the definition of terms must precede questions of further conjunctions or predications. But even the understanding of terms is subsequent to the assertion of the existence of the subject to which they are applied. One cannot first define and then search for a subject in which the definition might be realized. Just as the fact (To on) must be known prior to or simultaneously with the reasoned fact [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], so "we cannot apprehend a thing's essence [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] without apprehending that it exists, since while we are ignorant whether it is [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] we cannot know what it is [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]." [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] takes a certain priority over the other three in scientific procedure as it asserts the existence of its generic subject-matter. It is here that the Aristotelian selection of terms becomes of operative importance.

When Aristotle claims a science to be "of nature" or "of being," he does more than title his work. He selects a simple term to indicate what he is talking about; he gives the subject of investigation through the single term or phrase. One term involves many others: "nature" is an internal principle of "motion"; "being" is primarily realized in "substance" or is distinguished into states of "act" and "potency." Each method has a limited number of critical terms, the least units of its propositions and arguments, which mark off a certain area for subsequent affirmations or denials. But just as the subject and principles of investigation specified Aristotle's problematic method, so the known took a priority in the selection of simples for argument and discourse. The term is a word with the meaning of a thing. The three are identical: the meaning of the word is the same as that of the corresponding concept or of its correlative reality. The three are made intelligible simultaneously: the selection of terms does not give linguistics a priority over judgment nor make thought a criterion for extra-mental natures and dispositions. The term cuts through all three: the verbal, the mental, and the real, for the term is a word whose meaning is the significance of what is apprehended, what is meant, and what is said. Thus Aristotle can study "nature" or "motion" and simultaneously define the reality, clarify the concept, and delimit the symbol. This selection of terms allows him to deal with "motion" in inanimate processes, animal functions, movements of thought, and changes of discourse.

These individual terms are neither true nor false, but true and false propositions are composed of them. They indicate the subject of the science or the object of investigation. They draw in the discussion upon themselves, and they do this by signifying a reality whose definition is in question. The Aristotelian selection answers the initial question, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], not by providing a definition of the term, but by indicating the reality of its referent. Selection allows it to be the recipient of consequent definition or of accidental predication. The selection of terms does not preempt the task of the method; it indicates that there is something to which the method can be conjoined, providing the simples of subsequent assertions and denials and introducing the subject-genus to which they apply.

The structure of the Aristotelian method of attaining the unmoved mover follows closely the demands of the questions of inquiry. The reality of motion and of nature is submitted as the hypothesis of all physical investigation and defended dialectically against Eleatic denials. The proper subject of physical inquiry is what nature and motion are, not whether they are, and it is here that Aristotle joins issue with his fellow physicists. Once the [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and the [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] of motion have been established, one can open the questions of motion's duration and its cause. Just as these initial questions drew attention to Aristotle's selection and his method, so the latter focused particular attention to his interpretation and his principle.

Actually all four coordinates of inquiry — selection, method, interpretation, and principle — figure in every discourse responding to any of the four questions. One cannot put together propositions without an interpretation of the evidence or of the criteria for truth or falsity, nor can one justify the interpretation without method and principle. Thus Aristotle joins all four coordinates of inquiry in the initial sentence with which he opens the physical investigations, indicating the program of method, the subject of his science, the criteria for knowledge, and the pivotal importance of principle:

Concerning all methods of which there are principles or causes or elements: Since understanding and scientific knowledge occur through knowing these — for we only think that we know each thing when we know the first causes and the first principles and even the elements — it is clear that the science of nature must first determine what pertains to principles.

A number of assertions are contained in this rather complex sentence. Three factors are listed in order of progressive particularity: principle, cause, and element. A principle is any beginning, any source. A cause is that upon which another depends for movement, state, or knowledge — thus all causes are principles. An element denotes the first component of a thing which remains within it — thus, one kind of cause. There is an inclusiveness about principle, then, which embraces them all and which will justify the primary question to be about principles. Understanding and science, the one referring to a direct grasp of the whole, and the other to an understanding mediated through that which is previously established, result when these questions of principles have been resolved, i.e., when the subject-matter under investigation is finally grasped in terms of all of its sources, the relationships through which it exists in the manner in which it does, and its internal components.

But the principles are said to belong to a method; they are "of a method." And there is an admitted plurality of methods. In sharp contrast to the Kantian transition from one critique to another, an Übergang which is made possible by keeping a single, universal method and varying the principle commensurate with each kind of knowledge, every Aristotelian method is covariant with its principle. Change either of these two basics, principle or method, and the other is necessarily altered. Thus "nature" as the internal principle of motion and physical method were so interdependent that to deny the principle was to subvert the entire method. The principles of the various methods or sciences differ among themselves to the degree to which the sciences differ. They are commensurate with their subject-matter and cannot substitute one for the other: "Units, for instance, which are without position, cannot take the place of points, which have position." The principles of each method are not only commensurate with that method, but they are reflexively self-instantiating, as will be seen in the case of nature and the unmoved mover.

The other coordinate to which Aristotle draws attention here is that of the location of intelligibility. First philosophy opens with the acknowledged drive of a man to know, while the initial sentence of the Physics asserts as a reflexive awareness that this desire is satisfied only in grasping principles, causes, and elements. These, then, are the criteria of assertions and denials as the method progresses. They are that in virtue of which the subject of investigation is to be understood and that understanding formulated in definition and propositions. They are equally, then, the measure of the truth or falsity of any sentence which purports to make affirmative statements during the method about the subject. This is a question of "interpretation" — that in terms of which any proposition within the method is true or false. An author's "interpretation" is the character of the reality by which he asserts meanings, conjoins or separates subject and predicate, and makes a claim to fact or fiction. In Aristotle, there is a coincidence of these critical criteria with the structure and functions of the objects presented as empirical data. The Aristotelian science of natural motion presupposes that natural things possess their own meaningful patterns, that each of them has its significance identified with itself, a significance which emerges through the methodological operations upon the subject-genus in an effort to determine principles and properties. Thus the legitimacy of the predication of eternal of motion is argued from the structures of the mobile and the formal relationships of "now." The character of the known is the criterion for assertion and denial. The object to be known contributes the formal structures of the known, as it has supplied the referents for the terms and the principles of the subject and has specified the method itself. The human intellect does not contribute the structure, but gives intelligibility through the movement of the thing known from potency to actualization. Thus, understanding — the goal of the desire to know — is a single action, but with diverse relationships. Paradigmatically, it refers back to the object known; in its mode of induction or abstraction, it results from the method of the intellect. What is known, i.e., the "facts" grasped or asserted about the subject-matter, are expressed in propositions, and the "essentialist interpretation" of Aristotle forms or judges these propositions both for their meaning and for their truth by the attributes and principles which are given in the structural content of the phenomenal. The essentialist interpretation resolves the questions of truth or meaning by an appeal to the patterns and intelligibility of the experienced.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Motion and Motion's God by Michael J. Buckley S.J.. Copyright © 1971 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• Frontmatter, pg. i
• CONTENTS, pg. viii
• INTRODUCTION: Problem and Procedure, pg. 1
• PART I. ARISTOTLE, pg. 13
• PART II. CICERO, pg. 87
• PART ΙII. NEWTON, pg. 157
• PART IV. HEGEL, pg. 205
• CONCLUSION: Theme and Pluralism, pg. 267
• INDEX OF PERSONS, pg. 277
• INDEX OF SUBJECTS, pg. 280