St. Robert Bellarmine

Today is the feast day of St. Robert Bellarmine, famously involved in the "Galileo affair:"

In his Système du monde, Duhem suggests that in one respect, at least, Bellarmine had shown himself a better scientist than Galileo by disallowing the possibility of a “strict proof” of the earth’ motion, on the grounds that an astronomical theory merely “saves the appearances” without necessarily revealing what “really happens.”

Duhem said in ΣΩZEIN TA ΦAINOMENA: Essai sur la notion de théorie physique de Platon à Galilée

that logic was on the side of Osiander, Bellarmine, and Urban VIII, and not on the side of Kepler and Galileo; that the former had understood the exact import of the experimental method; and that, in this regard, the latter were mistaken

Peirce's concise refutation of Kant

From The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings, a very concise refutation of Kant (pg. 15, his "Fixation of Belief" article, CP 5.358-87), Kant believes that

An opinion that something is universally true clearly goes further than experience can warrant. An opinion that something is necessarily true (that is, not merely is true in the existing state of things, but would be true in every state of things) equally goes further than experience will warrant.
…
Kant proceeds to reason as follows:

• Geometrical propositions are held to be universally true.
• Hence, they are not given by experience.
• Consequently, it must be owing to an inward necessity of man's nature that he sees everything in space.
• Ergo, the sum of the angles of a triangle will be equal to two right angles for all the objects of our vision.

But the dry-rot of reason in the seminaries has gone to the point where such stuff is held to be admirable argumentation.

Quantum Mechanics (an embarrassment)

See the full paper here.
100% of the problems with QM are philosophical/metaphysical.

St. Thomas Aquinas in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography

Happy feast day of
Aquinas, Saint Thomas
from the Dictionary of Scientific Biography.

One of a handful a chants he composed in Orvieto, Italy:

SACRIS solemniis iuncta sint gaudia, et ex praecordiis sonent praeconia; recedant vetera, nova sint omnia, corda, voces, et opera.	AT this our solemn feast let holy joys abound, and from the inmost breast let songs of praise resound; let ancient rites depart, and all be new around, in every act, and voice, and heart.
Noctis recolitur cena novissima, qua Christus creditur agnum et azyma dedisse fratribus, iuxta legitima priscis indulta patribus.	Remember we that eve, when, the Last Supper spread, Christ, as we all believe, the Lamb, with leavenless bread, among His brethren shared, and thus the Law obeyed, of all unto their sire declared.
Post agnum typicum, expletis epulis, Corpus Dominicum datum discipulis, sic totum omnibus, quod totum singulis, eius fatemur manibus.	The typic Lamb consumed, the legal Feast complete, the Lord unto the Twelve His Body gave to eat; the whole to all, no less the whole to each did mete with His own hands, as we confess.
Dedit fragilibus corporis ferculum, dedit et tristibus sanguinis poculum, dicens: Accipite quod trado vasculum; omnes ex eo bibite.	He gave them, weak and frail, His Flesh, their Food to be; on them, downcast and sad, His Blood bestowed He: and thus to them He spake, "Receive this Cup from Me, and all of you of this partake."
Sic sacrificium istud instituit, cuius officium committi voluit solis presbyteris, quibus sic congruit, ut sumant, et dent ceteris.	So He this Sacrifice to institute did will, and charged His priests alone that office to fulfill: tn them He did confide: to whom it pertains still to take, and the rest divide.
Panis angelicus fit panis hominum; dat panis caelicus figuris terminum; O res mirabilis: manducat Dominum pauper, servus et humilis.	Thus Angels' Bread is made the Bread of man today: the Living Bread from heaven with figures dost away: O wondrous gift indeed! the poor and lowly may upon their Lord and Master feed.
Te, trina Deitas unaque, poscimus: sic nos tu visita, sicut te colimus; per tuas semitas duc nos quo tendimus, ad lucem quam inhabitas.	Thee, therefore, we implore, o Godhead, One in Three, so may Thou visit us as we now worship Thee; and lead us on Thy way, That we at last may see the light wherein Thou dwellest aye.

(lyrics and translation of Sacris Solemnis, from the Feast of Corpus Christi)

From the matins of the feast:

That splendid adornment of the Christian world and light of the Church, blessed Thomas of Aquino, was the son of Landulph, Earl of Aquino, and Theodora of Naples, his wife, being nobly descended on both sides. (He was born in the year of salvation 1226,) and even as an infant gave token of the love which he afterwards bore to the Mother of God. He found a little bit of paper upon which was written the Angelic Salutation, and held it firm in his hand in spite of the efforts of his wet-nurse; his mother took it away by force, but he cried and stretched out for it, and when she gave it back to him, he swallowed it. When he was only four years old, he was given into the keeping of the Benedictine monks of Monte Cassino. He was thence sent to Naples to study, and there, while very young, entered the Order of Friars Preachers. This displeased his mother and brothers, and he left Naples for Paris. When he was on his journey his brothers met him, and carried him off by force to the castle of Monte San Giovanni, where they imprisoned him in the keep. Here they used every means to break him of his intention, and at last brought a woman into his room to try to overcome his purity. The lad drove her out with a fire-brand. When he was alone he knelt down before the figure of the Cross, and there he fell asleep. As he slept, it seemed to him that angels came and girded his loins and from this time he never felt the least sexual inclination. His sisters came to the castle to beseech him to give up his purpose of leaving the world, but he so worked on them by his godly exhortations, that both of them ever after set no value on earthly things, and busied themselves rather with heavenly.

Being let down from a window, Thomas escaped out of the castle of Monte San Giovanni, and returned to Naples. Thence he went first to Rome, and then to Paris, in company of Brother John the German, then Master-General of the Friars Preachers. At Paris he studied Philosophy and Theology under Albert the Great Doctor. At the age of twenty-five years he took the degree of Master, and gave public disquisitions on the Philosophers and Theologians with great distinction. He never set himself to read or write till he had first prayed, and when he was about to take in hand a hard passage of the Holy Scriptures, he fasted also. Hence he was wont to say to Brother Reginald his comrade, that whatever he knew, he had learnt, not so much from his own labour and study, as from the inspiration of God. At Naples he was once kneeling in very earnest prayer before an image of Christ Crucified, when he heard a voice which said Thomas, thou hast written well of Me what reward wilt thou that I give thee? He answered: Lord, thyself. He studied most carefully the works of the Fathers, and there was no kind of author in which he was not well read. His own writings are so wonderful, both because of their number, their variety, and the clearness of his explanations of hard things, that his rich and pure teaching, marvellously consonant with revealed truth, is an admirable antidote for the errors of all times.

The Supreme Pontiff Urban IV. A sent for him to Rome, and at his command he composed the Church Office for the feast of Corpus Christi. The Pope could not persuade him to accept any dignity. Pope Clement IV. also offered him the Archbishoprick of Naples, but he refused it. He did not neglect the preaching of the Word of God. Once while he was giving a course of sermons in the Basilica of St Peter, during the octave of Easter, a woman who had an issue of blood was healed by touching the hem of his garment. He was sent by blessed Gregory X. to the Council of Lyons, but fell sick on his way to the Abbey of Fossa Nuovo, and there during his illness he made an exposition of the Song of Songs. There he died on the th day of March, in the year of salvation 1274, aged fifty years. He was distinguished for miracles even after his death, and on proof of these Pope John XXII. added his name to those of the Saints in the year 1323. His body was afterwards carried to Toulouse by command of blessed Urban V. He has been compared to an angel, both on account of his innocency and of his intellectual power, and has hence been deservedly termed the Angelic Doctor. The use of which title as applied to him was approved by the authority of holy Pius V. Leo XIII. cheerfully agreeing to the prayers and wishes of nearly all the bishops of the Catholic world, and in conformity with a vote of the Congregation of Sacred Rites, by his Apostolic letters declared and recognised Thomas of Aquino as the patron in heaven of all Catholic schools, as an antidote to the plague of so many false systems, especially of philosophy, for the increase of scientific knowledge, and for the common good of all mankind.

Read G. K. Chesterton's St. Thomas Aquinas.

Everything is not Mathematics.

Regarding cosmologist Max Tegmark's "Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH)" (cf. Is the Universe Actually Made of Math?, interview with me about Level IV in Discover Magazine, 6/16 2008), it seems he has an overly broad conception of what mathematics is.

• Mathematics is the study of discrete or continuous quantity;
• Mathematics is not the study of all relations.
• Semiotic is the general science of relations (signs).
• Physicist and America's greatest philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce said (CP 5.448) that "this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs."
  
• Cf. John Deely's physiosemiosis, the action of signs in the physical universe, in his free bestseller Basics of Semiotics, ch. 6.
• Boethius's famous definition of mathematics is (De Trinitate q. 5):

"Mathematics does not deal with motion [change] and is not abstract [for this sense of abstract, see Armand Mauer's introduction to his translation of Thomas Aquinas's Division and Methods of the Sciences], for it investigates forms of bodies apart from matter, and therefore apart from movement, which forms being connected with matter cannot really be separated from bodies."

• Thomas Aquinas, in Division and Methods of the Sciences q. 5 a. 3, argues that mathematics treats "without motion [change] and matter, of what exists in matter."
• See also this question's 5th objection, regarding how "mathematics treats without motion," and his reply to it, where he says "it does not belong to the mathematician to treat of motion, although mathematical principles can be applied to motion." He also shows mathematical physics is an "intermediate science" (scientia media), since it's materially physical and formally mathematical.
  
• Cf. Peirce's "The Nature of Mathematics," ch. 10 (p. 135) of The Philosophy of Peirce.

• quantity does not comprise the substances of material things;
• Aristotle writes (Metaphysics 1017b16-22):

"substance means those parts which, being present in such things, limit them and designate them as individuals and as a result of whose destruction the whole is destroyed; for example, body is destroyed when surface is, as some say, and surface when line is. And in general it seems to some that number is of this nature; for [according to them] if it is destroyed, nothing will exist, and it limits all things."

Thomas Aquinas commentates (Sententia Metaphysicae, lib. 5 l. 10 n. 3 [900-1]):

"He gives a third meaning of substance, which is the one used by the Platonists and Pythagoreans. He says that all those parts of the foregoing substances which constitute their limits and designate them as individuals, according to the opinion of these thinkers, and by whose destruction the whole is destroyed, are also termed substances. For example, body is destroyed when surface is, as some say, and surface when line is. It is also clear that surface is the limit of body and line the limit of surface. And according to the opinion of the philosophers just mentioned the line is a part of surface and surface a part of body. For they held that bodies are composed of surfaces, surfaces of lines, and lines of points; and thus it would follow that the point is the substance of the line, the line the substance of surface, and so on for the rest. And according to this position number seems to constitute the entire substance of all things, because when number is destroyed nothing remains in the world; for what is not one is nothing. And similarly things which are not many are non-existent. And number is also found to limit all things, because all things are measured by number.

"But this sense of substance is not a true one. For that which is found to be common to all things and is something without which they cannot exist does not necessarily constitute their substance, but it can be some property flowing from the substance or from a principle of the substance. These philosophers also fell into error especially regarding unity and number because they failed to distinguish between the unity which is interchangeable with being and that which is the principle of number."

• rather, quantity presupposes a substance: "of all the accidents [properties of a substance] quantity is closest to substance" (Sententia Metaphysicae, lib. 5 l. 15 n. 7 [983]).
  
• ∴ everything is not mathematics.

A Sign is What?

"A Sign is What? A dialogue between a semiotist and a would-be realist" by John N. Deely, Presidential Address to the Semiotic Society of America

Published Works of C.S. Peirce

Published Works of C.S. Peirce just released today!

Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., RIP

Angelicum Newsletter Blog: Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., RIP

He wrote his last email to me when he just turned 97 years old!

See my Aristotelian Thomism page (he preferred that term to River Forest Thomism) and his page on MoreC.com. He assumed a special rôle in the review process of Physics for Realists by Dr. Anthony Rizzi of the Institute for Advanced Physics.

Requiescat in pace.

UPDATE: A close correspondent of Fr. Ashley just wrote to me what could be considered a good obituary, the beginning of which is below:

As you probably have heard by now, Father Ashley died on Saturday, only 69 days short of his 98th birthday. He is a tremendous loss to all of us. I am told that he was intellectually active until the end, and that a month before he died, he was able to receive into his hands the printed version of his autobiography [available online] published now by the New Priory Press. In one of my letters to him, I had written that in my opinion, that is his most important book, since it supplies the absolutely essential keys to understanding his whole philosophical and theological enterprize (the 'experimentum' which serves as both the ground and the terminus of all human knowing in this life). In reply to my letter of condolance, the provincial, Fr. Bouchard, told me that, at the time of his death, Ashley had several completed or almost completed manuscripts on his desk and that his confreres are now preparing them for publication. I don't know their content as yet, but I can hardly wait to see them.

C. S. Peirce

The 20th century philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce is America's greatest thinker so far. He was a logician, specialized in semiotics, a realist, renouncer of Kantianism, and was vigorously anti-Cartesian. See:

• C. S. Peirce's 5 famous The Monist papers
• John N. Deely's "Charles Sanders Peirce and the Recovery of the Signum" and "The Impact of Semiotics on Philosophy"
• Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway
• Dictionary of Peirce's Terms
• Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism
• Peirce.org
• physicist Peder Voetmann Christiansen's papers on applying Peirce's thought to physics (quantum semiotics)
• cf. also A Triadic Theory of Elementary Particle Interactions and Quantum
• and the related U.S. Patent 6819474.

Medieval scientists presentation by J. Hannam

“God’s Philosophers: the Medieval World and the Foundations of Modern Science”, Dr James Hannam - 18th October 2012

The Adobe Flash Player plug-in is required to view this webcast which can be downloaded from the Adobe website|. Most computers already have Flash Player installed as it is required to view many online videos embedded in web pages - YouTube etc. Some mobile devices including iPhone and iPad do not support Flash Player.

Physics & Metascience (Metaphysics)

George Mason University physicist (and author of TheTheory of Almost Everything) Robert Oerter, discussing act in potency in in physics, writes "it seems to me that the concepts of time and change are metaphysically prior to those of potentiality."

My response:

The French physicist, philosopher and historian of physics Pierre Duhem would agree with you, Dr. Oerter, that physical theories do not depend upon a choice of metaphysics. Duhem masterfully shows this, with many historical examples, in his classic philosophy of science work The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (excerpt). He also treats this in "Physics & Metaphysics," "Physics of a Believer," and this excerpt from To Save the Phenomena.

His reply:

Thanks, that's very helpful. From the second link:

"That Physics Logically Precedes Metaphysics

...We cannot come to know the essence of things except insofar as that essence is the cause and foundation for phenomena and the laws that govern them. The study of phenomena and laws must therefore precede the investigation of causes."

That's what I was groping for in my attempts to answer Feser.

However, I think there's a distinction that must be made between the metaphysical essences that Duhem is talking about and the metaphysical principles that Feser is talking about. Don't we need concepts of cause and change before we can even begin a physical investigation?

My response:

Your question appears to be a question on the method and division of the sciences. Boethius, following Aristotle, proposed that the "Speculative sciences may be divided into three kinds: physics, mathematics, and metaphysics.":

1. Physics [(the natural sciences)] deals with that which is in motion and material [(ens mobile or "mobile being")].
2. Mathematics deals with that which is material and not in motion [(∵ mathematical objects, or "mathematicals," do not move or change)].
3. Metascience deals with that which is not in motion nor material.

(cf. §II of his De Trinitate)

In this context, Thomas Aquinas writes in his Division and methods of the sciences, a commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate questions V and VI (my adapted translation follows):

q. 5 a. 1 objection 9: That science on which others depend must be prior to them. Now all the other sciences depend on metascience because it is its business to prove their principles. Therefore Boethius should have placed metascience before the others.

reply to objection 9: Although metascience is by nature the first of all the sciences, with respect to us the other sciences come before it. For as Avicenna says, the position of metascience is that it be learned after the natural sciences, which explain many things used by metascience, such as generation, corruption, motion, and the like [(e.g., actuality, potentiality, matter, form, etc.)]. It should also be learned after mathematics […]. […] Nor is there necessarily a vicious circle because metascience presupposes conclusions proved in the other sciences while it itself proves their principles. For the principles that another science (such as natural philosophy) takes from first philosophy [(i.e., from metascience)] do not prove the points which the first philosopher [(metascientist)] takes from the natural philosopher, but they are proved through other self-evident principles. Similarly, the first philosopher does not prove the principles he gives the natural philosopher by principles he receives from him, but by other self-evident principles. So there is no vicious circle in their definitions. Moreover, the sensible effects on which the demonstrations of natural science are based are more evident to us in the beginning. But when we come to know the first causes through them, these causes will reveal to us the reason for the effects, from which they were proved by a demonstration quia [(i.e., a demonstration a posteriori, a demonstration from effects to causes)]. In this way natural science also contributes something to metascience, and nevertheless it is metascience that explains its principles. That is why Boethius places metascience last, because it is the last relative to us (quoad nos).

See The Way toward Wisdom by Benedict Ashley (read the first chapter, this excerpt, John Deely's review). His main theses are that:

1. the natural sciences are epistemologically prior to metaphysics  
2. metaphysics, which he proposes we term "metascience," is the true philosophy of science.

Pragmatism or Realism?

Realism opposes a relativism of truth and upholds absolute truth. Realism says that truth is the "adequation of intellect and thing." Pragmatism says something is true insofar as it is useful. While utility might be a sign that something is true, as, e.g., the usefulness of Newtonian mechanics in inventing new technologies is a sign that it is a true explanation of the natural world, utility does not necessitate it to be true, for there might be radically different yet accurate explanations of the natural world, like quantum mechanics, which employs a completely different conceptual and philosophical framework than Newtonian mechanics.

Why must scientists return to a realist and not pragmatist definition of truth? Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., a correspondent with the French physicist Pierre Duhem, proves that a realistic definition of truth opens one up to lines of reasoning inaccessible with a pragmatist definition of truth:

In sciences, physical and physico-mathematical, those facts which exist independently of our mind are considered certain, as laws which express constant relations among phenomena. Postulates, hypotheses, are defined by their relation to the truth to be attained, not as yet accessible or certain. To illustrate. On the principle of inertia, many scientists hold that inertia in repose is certain, meaning that a body not acted upon by an exterior cause remains in repose. But others, H. Poincare, for example, or P. Duhem, see in this view a mere postulate suggested by our experience with inertia in movement, which means that "a body already in motion, if no exterior cause acts upon it, retains indefinitely its motion, rectilinear and uniform." Experience suggests this view, because as obstacles diminish, the more is motion prolonged, and because "a constant force, acting on a material point entirely free, impresses on it a motion uniformly accelerated," as is the motion of a falling body. But the second formula of inertia, as applied to a body in repose, is not certain, because, as Poincare [La science et l'hypothese, pp. 112-19. of French original] says: "No one has ever experimented on a body screened from the influence of every force, or, if he has, how could he know that the body was thus screened?" The influence of a force may remain imperceptible.

Inertia in repose, then, remains a postulate, a proposition, that is, which is not self-evident, which cannot be proved either a priori or a posteriori, but which the scientist accepts in default of any other principle. The scientist, says P. Duhem, has no right to say that the principle is true, but neither has he the right to say it is false, since no phenomenon has so far constrained us to construct a physical theory which would exclude this principle. It is retained, so far, as guide in classifying phenomena. This line of argument renders homage to the objective notion of truth. We could not reason thus under truth's pragmatic definition.

—Reality Chapter 57: Realism And Pragmatism, III. Pragmatic Consequences

A Vatican scientist

What is metaphysics?

Metaphysics, according to the Aristotelian Thomistic meaning, is several things:

1. The science of being as being
2. The "First Philosophy" (first in the sense of "ultimate", but last in the order of our learning)
3. "Beyond physics"
4. The study of "one"

Modern philosophy, however, gives a much broader definition of metaphysics: "The branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things or reality, including questions about being, substance, time and space, causation, change, and identity (which are presupposed in the special sciences but do not belong to any one of them); theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of being and knowing." (OED).

For a Thomist, "questions about" "time and space, causation, [and] change" are parts of natural philosophy, not metaphysics.

St. Thomas says of "metaphysics":

1. "one" which is convertible with being is a metaphysical entity and does not depend on matter in its being. (ST I q. 11 a. 3 ad 2)
2. …the highest of [the sciences], viz. metaphysics… (ST I q. 1 a. 8 c.)
3. …acquired knowledge about Divine things, for instance, the science of metaphysics… (ST II-II q. 9 a. 2 arg. 2)
4. …metaphysics, which treats of being or substance… (Post. Anal. I lec. 41 b)
5. Metaphysics at once studies being in general and first being, which is separated from first matter. (De generatione proem.)
6. It is called metaphysics inasmuch as it considers being and the attributes which naturally accompany being (for things which transcend the physical order are discovered by the process of analysis, as the more common are discovered after the less common). (In Meta. proem.)
7. metaphysics, which deals with divine things, is the last part of philosophy to be learned (CG I a. 4)

St. Thomas says of "physics" (natural philosophy, natural science, or philosophy of nature):

1. …physics, which treats of mobile body [i.e., changeable bodies]. (Post. Anal. I lec. 41 b)

Basically, if there are no such things as immaterial beings, physics would be the ultimate or first science (In Meta.VI lec. 1 [1170]):

if there is no substance other than those which exist in the way that natural substances do, with which the philosophy of nature deals, the philosophy of nature will be the first science. But if there is some immobile substance, this will be prior to natural substance, and therefore the philosophy which considers this kind of substance, will be first philosophy.

Also, check out the 8 tenets of River Forest / Aristotelian Thomism, which are elaborated in The Way toward Wisdom (vide the first chapter, this excerpt, John Deely's review) by Benedict Ashley, O.P., which discusses the question "What is metaphysics?"

The ultimate goal of the natural sciences is to show the existence of immaterial being(s).