Pierre Duhem & Thomas Kuhn

On St. Albert the Great's Feast Day: Magisterium on the True Scientific Method

Pope Leo XIII says in his 4 August 1879 encyclical on the restoration of Christian philosophy, Æterni Patris:

30. And here it is well to note that our philosophy can only by the grossest injustice be accused of being opposed to the advance and development of natural science. For, when the Scholastics, following the opinion of the holy Fathers, always held in anthropology that the human intelligence is only led to the knowledge of things without body and matter by things sensible, they well understood that nothing was of greater use to the philosopher than diligently to search into the mysteries of nature and to be earnest and constant in the study of physical things. And this they confirmed by their own example; for St. Thomas, Blessed [now Saint] Albertus Magnus, and other leaders of the Scholastics were never so wholly rapt in the study of philosophy as not to give large attention to the knowledge of natural things; and, indeed, the number of their sayings and writings on these subjects, which recent professors approve of and admit to harmonize with truth, is by no means small. Moreover, in this very age many illustrious professors of the physical sciences openly testify that between certain and accepted conclusions of modern physics and the philosophic principles of the schools there is no conflict worthy of the name.

Happy feast day today of St. Albert the Great!

Science, Truth, & Morality

Just as Einstein noted that a physicist must not restrict himself solely to physics but must also be a philosopher so that he can "make clear in his own mind just how far the concepts which he uses are justified, and are necessities," Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2009 encyclical letter Caritas in Veritate ("Charity in Truth"), relates the importance of combating a segmentation of knowledge to that of economic prosperity (my emphasis and [comments]):

30. In this context, the theme of integral human development takes on an even broader range of meanings: the correlation between its multiple elements requires a commitment to foster the interaction of the different levels of human knowledge in order to promote the authentic development of peoples. Often it is thought that development, or the socio-economic measures that go with it, merely require to be implemented through joint action. This joint action, however, needs to be given direction, because “all social action involves a doctrine”. In view of the complexity of the issues, it is obvious that the various disciplines have to work together through an orderly interdisciplinary exchange. Charity does not exclude knowledge, but rather requires, promotes, and animates it from within. Knowledge is never purely the work of the intellect. It can certainly be reduced to calculation and experiment, but if it aspires to be wisdom capable of directing man in the light of his first beginnings and his final ends, it must be “seasoned” with the “salt” of charity. Deeds without knowledge are blind, and knowledge without love is sterile. [Summa Theologiæ, Iª q. 12 a. 13 ad 3: "[Faith is] a kind of knowledge, inasmuch as the intellect is determined by faith to some knowable object." Cf. this.] Indeed, “the individual who is animated by true charity labours skilfully to discover the causes of misery, to find the means to combat it, to overcome it resolutely”. Faced with the phenomena that lie before us, charity in truth requires first of all that we know and understand, acknowledging and respecting the specific competence of every level of knowledge. Charity is not an added extra, like an appendix to work already concluded in each of the various disciplines: it engages them in dialogue from the very beginning. The demands of love do not contradict those of reason. Human knowledge is insufficient and the conclusions of science cannot indicate by themselves the path towards integral human development. There is always a need to push further ahead [This is what Einstein means, too, by saying: "At a time like the present, when experience forces us to seek a newer and more solid foundation..."]: this is what is required by charity in truth. Going beyond, however, never means prescinding from the conclusions of reason, nor contradicting its results. Intelligence and love are not in separate compartments: love is rich in intelligence and intelligence is full of love.

31. This means that moral evaluation and scientific research must go hand in hand [Morality involves determining what the greatest good is in a given situation. It involves much more than resolving never to kill anybody, to "be nice," etc. It guides even questions in science such as "How should I approach this problem?", "What methodology should I use?", "Where is it taking me?", "It is worth it?", etc.; consequently, morality is vitally important for those who seek truth (cf. Veritatis Splendor).], and that charity must animate them in a harmonious interdisciplinary whole, marked by unity and distinction. The Church's social doctrine, which has “an important interdisciplinary dimension”, can exercise, in this perspective, a function of extraordinary effectiveness. It allows faith, theology, metaphysics and science to come together in a collaborative effort in the service of humanity. It is here above all that the Church's social doctrine displays its dimension of wisdom. Paul VI had seen clearly that among the causes of underdevelopment there is a lack of wisdom and reflection, a lack of thinking capable of formulating a guiding synthesis, for which “a clear vision of all economic, social, cultural and spiritual aspects” is required. The excessive segmentation of knowledge [Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical LetterFides et Ratio (14 September 1998), 85: AAS 91 (1999), 72-73.], the rejection of metaphysics by the human sciences [Cf. ibid., 83: loc. cit., 70-71.], the difficulties encountered by dialogue between science and theology are damaging not only to the development of knowledge, but also to the development of peoples, because these things make it harder to see the integral good of man in its various dimensions. The “broadening [of] our concept of reason and its application” [Benedict XVI, Address at the University of Regensburg, 12 September 2006.] is indispensable if we are to succeed in adequately weighing all the elements involved in the question of development and in the solution of socio-economic problems.

An excellent book that tackles this problem is The Way toward Wisdom (vide this excerpt and this article) by Benedict Ashley, O.P., a proponent of River Forest Thomism.

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

Review of Hannam's God's Philosophers

Igal Galili is an excellent physics education researcher who believes the history and philosophy of science (HPS) must be incorporated into physics education—something Duhem advocated, too, in his Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. See, e.g., Galili & Hazan (2001).
Last year Galili wrote an excellent review of James Hannam's book God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science:

Book Review
James Hannam: God’s Philosophers. How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science?

Science and the Big Questions

On the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas, here's a good video from the Templeton Foundation:

Problems of Cartesianism in Modern Science

Regarding the Guardian article "It's time for science to move on from materialism" that Luboš Motl mentions on The Reference Frame:

The real problem is that modern science unfortunately presupposes a Cartesian philosophy, which not only opposes Aristotelian hylemorphic theory of matter (potency) and form (act) but also introduces the false dichotomy of the res cogitans (thinking thing) that is completely divorced from the res extensa (extended thing, i.e., things with length, breadth, and width); this is Cartesian dualism.

Regarding hylemorphism, the Oxford English Dictionary says:

This use of form (Aristotle's μορφή or εἶδος) and matter (ὕλη) is a metaphorical extension of their popular use. In ordinary speech, a portion of matter, stuff, or material, becomes a 'thing' by virtue of having a particular 'form' or shape; by altering the form, the matter remaining unchanged, we make a new 'thing'. This language, primarily applied only to objects of sense, was in philosophical use extended to objects of thought: every 'thing' or entity was viewed as consisting of two elements, its form by virtue of which it was different from, and its matter which it had in common with, others.

Thus the soul is the form of a living body.

Regarding res cogitans versus res extensa, the Oxford English Dictionary defines res cogitans as "Substance which has or is regarded as having the power of thought; spec. (in Cartesian metaphysics) the human mind viewed as a substance distinct from the material world." Descartes coined the term in his 1641 Meditationes ii. 23:

Sed quid igitur sum? res cogitans: quid est hoc? nempe dubitans, intelligens, affirmans, negans, volens, nolens, imaginans quoque, & sentiens.

[But what therefore am I? A thinking thing: what is this? Certainly a doubting, intelligent, affirming, denying, willing, unwilling, imagining, & sentient thing.]

The Oxford English Dictionary defines res extensa as "Matter, material substance; a material body."

Werner Heisenberg recognized these two problems of Cartesian dualism in his Physics and Philosophy when he wrote that the probability wave concept in quantum mechanics

was a quantitative version of the concept of 'potentia' [potency] in Aristotelian philosophy (p. 41)

and that the

concept of the soul for instance in the philosophy of [Saint] Thomas Aquinas was more natural and less forced than the Cartesian concept of 'res cogitans,' even if we are convinced that the laws of physics and chemistry are strictly valid in living organisms. (p. 80)

Physicsts Must Also Be Philosophers.

Einstein, in his Physics & Reality, says that physicists must also be philosophers:

It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher. Why then should it not be the right thing for the physicist to let the philosopher do the philosophizing? Such might indeed be the right thing at a time when the physicist believes he has at his disposal a rigid system of fundamental concepts and fundamental laws which are so well established that waves of doubt can not reach them; but it can not be right at a time when the very foundations of physics itself have become problematic as they are now. At a time like the present, when experience forces us to seek a newer and more solid foundation, the physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical foundations; for, he himself knows best, and feels more surely where the shoe pinches. In looking for a new foundation, he must try to make clear in his own mind just how far the concepts which he uses are justified, and are necessities.

And by being its philosophers, he does not mean being its undertakers; for, as Étienne Gilson observed, philosophy "always buries its undertakers." Hence the necessity for a Thomistic revival in modern mathematical physics, Thomism being the philosophical foundation of modern science.

The Truth of Science for Justice and Peace

Monsignor Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, who graduated from the Angelicum magna cum laude and is chancellor of both the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences, gave the keynote speech for Arizona State University (ASU)'s Consortium of Science, Policy, & Outcomes entitled "The Truth of Science for Justice and Peace" on May 18, 2010. It included many references to St. Thomas Aquinas. Here is an excerpt of the interview afterwards:

The transcript and full presentation slides:

And a commentary by the ASU philosopher Farzad Mahootian:

Other enlightening reactions to the Monsignor's speech include those of Heather Douglas, Associate Professor, Philosophy, University of Tennessee and Carl Mitcham, Professor, Liberal Arts and International Studies, Colorado School of Mines.

Heather Douglas's article quotes this by St. Bernard of Clairvoux, which the Monsignor quoted in his speech:

“There are people who only wish to know for the sake of knowing: this is base curiosity. Others wish to know in order that they themselves may be known: this is shameful vanity, and such people cannot escape the mockery of the satirical poet who said about their likes: ‘For you, knowing is nothing unless someone else knows that you know.’ Then there are those who acquire knowledge in order to re-sell it, and for example to make money or gain honours from it: their motive is distasteful. But some wish to know in order to edify: this is charity. Others in order to be edified: this is wisdom. Only those who belong to these last two categories do not misuse knowledge, since they only seek to understand in order to do good.” (Quoted on pp. 5-6, from St. Bernardus, Sermo XXXVI in Cantica, PL, CLXXXIII, 968.)

Historical Method in Physics

The following email exchange with a professor in the State of Israel who studies physics education makes me really wonder if there is something flawed with the way physics is taught today (cf. "Why No 'New Einstein'?"). Out of all disciplines with PhDs, graduate students are obtaining fewer and fewer PhDs in physics than in any other field and more and more in psychology. There must be a reason for this. I wrote:

Dr. Galili,

I was glad to see that you do research following the admonition of Pierre Duhem in your "HISTORY OF PHYSICS AS A TOOL FOR TEACHING:"

The legitimate, sure and fruitful method of preparing a student to receive a physical hypothesis is the historical method. To retrace the transformations through which the empirical matter accrued while the theoretical form was first sketched; to describe the long collaboration by means of which common sense and deductive logic analyzed this matter and modeled that form until one was exactly adapted to the other: that is the best way, surely even the only way, to give to those studying physics a correct and clear view of the very complex and living organization of this science.

(And apparently Mach's "textbooks in mechanics and optics that adopted this approach remain to be valuable and interesting teaching resources.")

Your studies seem to focus on physics in secondary education. Has the historical method been applied in undergraduate and graduate physics programs? Do you do research on this?

I am a graduate physics student, and graduate-level physics seems mostly taught to a certain type of learner, i.e., to one who "learns by doing," who learns solely by solving written problems. I am from the United States, and this seems to be the predominant method most of the physics departments employ in training their students. Are there graduate programs—besides those HPS departments—that do things differently, who maybe even implement the historical method?

Thank you

(The quote is from Duhem's Aim and Structure of Physical Theory pg. 268.) He responded:

Thank you for your message and interest to my work.
The subject you write about actually presents a sensitive discourse in physics teaching. Nothing is harder than to cause a conceptual change to physics educators,and researchers especially. Currently, the prevailing mode of teaching adopts profession oriented pragmatic approach which is very instrumentalist although widely uses the rhetoric of conceptual understanding. Within this understanding problem solving and modeling occupy the central role. I hold a different perspective oriented to physics education (different from physics as a profession). Such education aims at learning physics as a special culture people create in making sense of nature and natural phenomenon.
Not to cause people much negative emotions and resistance, I prefer to investigate secondary school students. However, I am convinced that my materials are applicable and perhaps even more effective for university students who deal with these the same subjects. They all need good conceptual bases in the physics they learn. Complex formalism does not replace understanding fundamentals. Such is, for example the issue of weight definition. Although included in middle school physics curriculum, it presents a great controversy in university physics textbooks of physics.
Best regards,
igal

Where did this "profession oriented pragmatic approach which is very instrumentalist although widely uses the rhetoric of conceptual understanding" originate? Perhaps the pragmatism originates from the progressive education movement of John Dewey (cf. these articles by Fr. Hardon, S.J., on Dewey: Part 1, 2, and 3)? Duhem's philosophy of science is considered instrumentalist, yet he would agree that "modeling," which he criticized the English physicists like Maxwell for advocating as physical explanations, should not "occupy the central role." And "the rhetoric of conceptual understanding?" Rhetoric? Would all physicists agree what they do is rhetoric? Feynman might have, because he said he won the Nobel prize for "sweeping [e.g., inconsistencies] under the rug." Perhaps all the psychology PhDs will finally get it across to physicists what it actually means to know and to understand, assuming an epistemology grounded on sound philosophy,

Crisis of Faith in Science

The Crisis of the Faith in Science

The resistance of creation to its manipulation by men has become a new factor in the intellectual situation in the last decade. It is impossible to evade the question of the limits of science and of the criteria it must follow. The change in the way in which the case of Galileo is evaluated seems to me characteristic of the change of climate. This event, to which little attention was paid in the seventeenth century, was elevated in the following century to nothing less than the my of the Enlightenment: Galileo appears as the victim of the medieval obscurantism in which the Church persists. Good and evil stand in a distinct confrontation: on the one side, we find the Inquisition as the power of superstition, as the opponent of freedom and knowledge; on the other side stand the natural sciences, represented by Galileo, as the power of progress and of the liberation of man from the fetters of ignorance that kept him powerless vis-à-vis nature. The star of the modern period arises over the darkness of the Middle Ages.

Strangely enough, Ernst Bloch with his romantic Marxism was one of the first to oppose this myth openly and to offer a new interpretation of the events. For him, the heliocentric world-system, just like the geocentric system, rests on unprovable presuppositions, including above all the supposition of motionless space, which has since been shattered by the theory of relativity. He states:

Consequently, since an empty motionless space no longer exists, no movement toward it occurs, but merely a relative movement of bodies toward one another, the determination of which depends on the choice made of the body that is to be taken to be at rest. Thus, if it were not for the fact that the complexity of the calculations involved makes this appear infeasible, the earth could continue to be taken as stable and the sun as moving. [E. Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung (frankfurt am Main, 1959), 920]

According to this view, the advantage of the heliocentric system over the geocentric does not consist in a greater degree of objective truth but merely in an easier calculability for us. Up to this point Bloch is doing no more than expressing the insight of the modern natural sciences; but the conclusion he derives from this now is astonishing:

Since the relativity of the motion is beyond doubt, an older man-centered Christian reference system does not indeed have the right to involve itself in the astronomical calculations and their heliocentric simplification; but it does have its own methodological right to hold fast to the earth as far as the question of the importance of mass is concerned and to impart an ordered structure to the world around what happens and has happened on the earth. [Bloch, 920f.]

The two methodological spheres are clearly distinguished from one another here, and the rights, as well as the limitations, of each are acknowledged. But the summary of the skeptical agnostic philosopher P. Feyerabend sounds much more aggressive when he writes:

The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and she took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's teaching too. Her verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and the revision of his verdict can be justified only on grounds of what is politically opportune. [P. Feyerabend, Wider den Methodenzwang (Against Method) (Frankfurt am Main, 1976, 1983), 206.]

C. F. von Weizäcker (to take one example) goes even one step farther in considering the prictical effects when he sees a "perfectly straight path" leading from Galileo to the the atomic bomb. To my surprise, when I was interviewed recently about the case of Galileo, I was not asked (for instance) why the church had presumed to hinder the knowledge of the natural sciences but, quite to the contrary, why the Church had not taken up a clearer position against the disasters that were bound to result when Galileo opened Pandora's box. It would be foolish to construct an impulsive apologetic on the basis of such views; faith does not grow out of resentment and skepticism with respect to rationality, but only out of a fundamental affirmation and a spacious reasonableness; we shall come back to this point. I mention all this only as a symptomatic case that permits us to see how deep the self-doubt of the modern age, of science and of technology goes today.

—Then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, A Turning Point for Europe, pg. 95-98 (Cf. "Ratzinger's 1990 remarks on Galileo")

Galileo Truly Recanted.

Was Galileo really a martyr of modern science, the theories and explanations of which are in a constant state of flux, or did he ultimately seek an absolute, unchanging, objective Truth and recant of holding a changeable scientific theory to be objectively true? Galileo wrote to Francesco Rinuccini, Arcetri, 29 March 1641, the year before his death:

The falsity of the Copernican system needs not be called into doubt, and especially by us Catholics, having the irrefragable authority of Sacred Scripture, interpreted by the supreme masters in Theology, whose concordant consensus renders us certain of the stability of the Earth placed in the center, and of the mobility of the Sun around it. The conjectures then for which Copernicus and his other followers have professed the contrary, are all lifted with that most solid argument of the Omnipotence of God, Who can do in diverse—rather, in infinite ways—that to our opinion and observation seem done in one particular way; we should not want to shorten the hand of God and tenaciously sustain that in which we can be deceived.

—Le opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. 7 edited by Vincenzio Viviani [my translation]

Galileo, were he alive in the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively, would agree with these statements:

[...] if writers on physics travel outside the boundaries of their own branch, and carry their erroneous teaching into the domain of philosophy, let them be handed over to philosophers for refutation.

—Pope Leo XIII's Providentissimus Deus

Human science gains greatly from revelation, for the latter opens out new horizons and makes known sooner other truths of the natural order, and because it opens the true road to investigation and keeps it safe from errors of application and of method. Thus does the lighthouse show many things they otherwise would not see, while it points out the rocks on which the vessel would suffer shipwreck.

—Pope St. Pius X's Iucunda Sane

Interface between Theology and the Other Sciences

Related to this is again the question of why intellectual knowledge must come through the senses (Nothing is in the intellect that is not first in the senses: Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu.). The faithful hold by faith that:

For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity.

—Romans 1:20

As well as these:

If anyone shall have said that the one true God, our Creator and our Lord, cannot be known with certitude by those things which have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema

—Denzinger 1806

The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certitude by the natural light of human reason from created things; "for the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made" [Rom 1:20]; nevertheless, it has pleased His wisdom and goodness to reveal Himself and the eternal decrees of His will to the human race in another and supernatural way, as the Apostle says: "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by His Son" [Heb. 1:1].

—Denzinger 1785

Most relevant is this:

All knowledge of God, even natural knowledge, even in the pagan philosophers, cannot come except from God; and without grace knowledge produces nothing but presumption, vanity, and opposition to God Himself, instead of the affections of adoration, gratitude, and love.

—Denzinger 1391

How does the study of God's creatures, by doing physics in the broad sense of studying the natural world, lead to knowledge of Him? St. Thomas elucidates this:

Chapter 1

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE FOLLOWING CONSIDERATIONS AND THE PRECEDING ONES

“I meditated upon Your works: I meditated upon the works of Your hands” (Ps. 142-5).

[1] Of no thing whatever can a perfect knowledge be obtained unless its operation is known, because the measure and quality of a thing’s power is judged from the manner and type of its operation, and its power, in turn, manifests its nature; for a thing’s natural aptitude for operation follows upon its actual possession of a certain kind of nature.

[2] There are, however, two sorts of operation, as Aristotle teaches in Metaphysics IX [8]: one that remains in the agent and is a perfection of it, as the act of sensing, understanding, and willing; another that passes over into an external thing, and is a perfection of the thing made as a result of that operation, the acts of heating, cutting and building, for example.

[3] Now, both kinds of operation belong to God: the former, in that He understands, wills, rejoices, and loves; the latter, in that He brings things into being, preserves them, and governs them. But, since the former operation is a perfection of the operator, the latter a perfection of the thing made, and since the agent is naturally prior to the thing made and is the cause of it, it follows that the first of these types of operation is the ground of the second, and naturally precedes it, as a cause precedes its effect. Clear evidence of this fact, indeed, is found in human affairs; for in the thought and will of the craftsman lie the principle and plan of the work of building.

[4] Therefore, as a simple perfection of the operator, the first type of operation claims for itself the name of operation, or, again, of action; the second, as being a perfection of the thing made, is called making so that the things which a craftsman produces by action of this kind are said to be his handiwork.

[5] Of the first type of operation in God we have already spoken in the preceding Book of this work, where we treated of the divine knowledge and will. Hence, for a complete study of the divine truth, the second operation, whereby things are made and governed by God, remains to be dealt with.

[6], In fact, this order we can gather from the words quoted above. For the Psalmist first speaks of meditation upon the first type of operation, when he says: “I have meditated on all your operations”; thus, operation is here referred to the divine act of understanding and will. Then he refers to meditation on God’s works: “and I meditated on the works of Your hands”; so that by “the works of Your hands” we understand heaven and earth, and all that is brought into being by God, as the handiwork produced by a craftsman.

Chapter 2

THAT THE CONSIDERATION OF CREATURES IS USEFUL FOR INSTRUCTION OF FAITH

[1] This sort of meditation on the divine works is indeed necessary for instruction of faith in God.

[2] First, because meditation on His works enables us in game measure to admire and reflect upon His wisdom. For things made by art are representative of the art itself, being made in likeness to the art. Now, God brought things into being by His wisdom; wherefore the Psalm (103:24) declares: “You made all things in wisdom.” Hence, from reflection upon God’s works we are able to infer His wisdom, since, by a certain communication of His likeness, it is spread abroad in the things He has made. For it is written: “He poured her out,” namely, wisdom, “upon all His works” (Eccli. 1:10). Therefore, the Psalmist, after saying: “Your knowledge is become wonderful to me: it is high, and I cannot reach it,” and after referring to the aid of the divine illumination, when he says: “Night shall be my light,” etc., confesses that he was aided in knowing the divine wisdom by reflection upon God’s works, saying: “Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows right well” (Ps. 138:6, 11, 14).

[3] Secondly, this consideration [of God’s works] leads to admiration of God’s sublime power, and consequently inspires in men’s hearts reverence for God. For the power of the worker is necessarily understood to transcend the things made. And so it is said: “If they,” namely, the philosophers, “admired their power and effects,” namely of the heavens, stars, and elements of the world, “let them understand that He that made them is mightier than they” (Wis. 13:4). Also it is written: “The invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made: His eternal power also and divinity” (Rom. 1:20). Now, the fear and reverence of God result from this admiration. Hence, it is said: “Great is Your name in might. Who shall not fear You, O King of Nations?” (Jer. l0:6-7).

[4] Thirdly, this consideration incites the souls of men to the love of God’s goodness. For whatever goodness and perfection is distributed to the various creatures, in partial or particular measure, is united together in Him universally, as in the source of all goodness, as we proved in Book I. If, therefore, the goodness, beauty, and delightfulness of creatures are so alluring to the minds of men, the fountainhead of God’s own goodness, compared with the rivulets of goodness found in creatures, will draw the enkindled minds of men wholly to Itself. Hence it is said in the Psalm (91:5): “You have given me, O Lord, a delight in Your doings, and in the works of Your hands I shall rejoice.” And elsewhere it is written concerning the children of men: “They shall be inebriated with the plenty of Your house,” that is, of all creatures, “and You shall make them drink of the torrent of Your pleasure: for with You is the fountain of life” (Ps. 35:9-10). And, against certain men, it is said: “By these good things that are seen,” namely, creatures, which are good by a kind of participation, “they could not understand Him that is” (Wis. 13:1), namely, truly good; indeed, is goodness itself, as was shown in Book I.

[5] Fourthly, this consideration endows men with a certain likeness to God’s perfection. For it was shown in Book I that, by knowing Himself, God beholds all other things in Himself. Since, then, the Christian faith teaches man principally about God, and makes him know creatures by the light of divine revelation, there arises in man a certain likeness of God’s wisdom. So it is said: “But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image” (2 Cor. 3:18).

[6] It is therefore evident that the consideration of creatures has its part to play in building the Christian faith. And for this reason it is said: “I will remember the works of the Lord, and I will declare the things I have seen: by the words of the Lord are His works” (Sirach 42:15).

Chapter 3

THAT KNOWLEDGE OF THE NATURE OF CREATURES SERVES TO DESTROY ERRORS CONCERNING GOD

[1] The consideration of creatures is further necessary, not only for the building up of truth, but also for the destruction of errors. For errors about creatures sometimes lead one astray from the truth of faith, so far as the errors are inconsistent with true knowledge of God. Now, this happens in many ways.

[2] First, because through ignorance of the nature of creatures men are sometimes so far perverted as to set up as. the first cause and as God that which can only receive its being from something else; for they think that nothing exists beyond the realm of visible creatures. Such were those who identified God with this, that, and the other kind of body; and of these it is said: “Who have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon to be the gods” (Wis. 13: 2).

[3] Secondly, because they attribute to certain creatures that which belongs only to God. This also results from error concerning creatures. For what is incompatible with a thing’s nature is not ascribed to it except through ignorance of its nature—as if man were said to have three feet. Now, what belongs solely to God is incompatible with the nature of a created thing, just as that which is exclusively man’s is incompatible with another thing’s nature. Thus, it is from ignorance of the creature’s nature that the aforesaid error arises. And against this error it is said: “They gave the incommunicable name to stones and wood” (Wis. 14:21). Into this error fell those who attribute the creation of things, or knowledge of the future, or the working of miracles to causes other than God.

[4] Thirdly, because through ignorance of the creature’s nature something is subtracted from God’s power in its working upon creatures. This is evidenced in the case of those who set up two principles of reality; in those who assert that things proceed from God, not by the divine will, but by natural necessity; and again, in those who withdraw either all or some things from the divine providence, or who deny that it can work outside the ordinary course of things. For all these notions are derogatory to God’s power. Against such persons it is said: “Who looked upon the Almighty as if He could do nothing” (Job 22:17), and: “You show Your power, when men will not believe You to be absolute in power” (Wis. .12: 17).

[5] Fourthly, through ignorance of the nature of things, and, consequently, of his own place in the order of the universe, this rational creature, man, who by faith is led to God as his last end, believes that he is subject to other creatures to which he is in fact superior. Such is evidently the case with those who subject human wills to the stars, and against these it is said: “Be not afraid of the signs of heaven, which the heathens fear” (Jer. 10:2); and this is likewise true of those who think that angels are the creators of souls, that human souls are mortal, and, generally, of persons who hold any similar views derogatory to the dignity of man.

[6] It is, therefore, evident that the opinion is false of those who asserted that it made no difference to the truth of the faith what anyone holds about creatures, so long as one thinks rightly about God, as Augustine tells us in his book On the Origin of the Soul [De anima et ejus origine, IV, 4]. For error concerning creatures, by subjecting them to causes other than God, spills over into false opinion about God, and takes men’s minds away from Him, to whom faith seeks to lead them.

[7] For this reason Scripture threatens punishment to those who eff about creatures, as to unbelievers, in the words of the Psalm (27:5): “Because they have not understood the works of the Lord and the operations of His hands, You shall destroy them, and shall not build them up”; and: “These things they thought and were deceived,” and further on: “They did not esteem the honor of holy Souls” (Wis. 7:2122).

Chapter 4

THAT THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE THEOLOGIAN CONSIDER CREATURES IN DIFFERENT WAYS

[1] Now, from what has been said it is evident that the teaching of the Christian faith deals with creatures so far as they reflect a certain likeness of God, and so far as error concerning them leads to error about God. And so they are viewed in a different light by that doctrine and by human philosophy. For human philosophy considers them as they are, so that the different parts of philosophy are found to correspond to the different genera of things. The Christian faith, however, does not consider them as such; thus, it regards fire not as fire, but as representing the sublimity of God, and as being directed to Him in any way at all. For as it is said: “Full of the glory of the Lord is His work. Did the Lord not make the saints declare all His wonderful works?” (Sirach 42: 16-17)

[2] For this reason, also, the philosopher and the believer consider different matters about creatures. The philosopher considers such things as belong to them by nature-the upward tendency of fire, for example; the believer, only such things as belong to them according as they are related to God—the fact, for instance, that they are created by God, are subject to Him, and so on.

[3] Hence, imperfection is not to be imputed to the teaching of the faith if it omits many properties of things, such as the figure of the heaven and the quality of its motion. For neither does the natural philosopher consider the same characters of a line as the geometrician, but only those that accrue to it as terminus of a natural body.

[4] But any things concerning creatures that are considered in common by the philosopher and the believer are conveyed through different principles in each case. For the philosopher takes his argument from the proper causes of things; the believer, from the first cause—for such reasons as that a thing has been handed down in this manner by God, or that this conduces to God’s glory, or that God’s power is infinite. Hence, also, [the doctrine of the faith] ought to be called the highest wisdom, since it treats of the highest Cause; as we read in Deuteronomy (4:6): “For this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of nations.” And, therefore, human philosophy serves her as the first wisdom. Accordingly, divine wisdom sometimes argues from principles of human philosophy. For among philosophers, too, the first philosophy utilizes the teachings of all the sciences in order to realize its objectives.

[5] Hence again, the two kinds of teaching do not follow the same order. For in the teaching of philosophy, which considers creatures in themselves and leads us from them to the knowledge of God, the first consideration is about creatures; the last, of God. But in the teaching of faith, which considers creatures only in their relation to God, the consideration of God comes first, that of creatures afterwards. And thus the doctrine of faith is more perfect, as being more like the knowledge possessed by God, who, in knowing Himself, immediately knows other things.

[6] And so, following this order, after what has been said in Book I about God in Himself, it remains for us to treat of the things which derive from Him.

—Contra Gentiles, lib. 2 cap. 1-4

Current Methodologies of Physics & Astronomy

Regarding the correct division and method of the sciences, this lecture, given at the American Astronomical Society (AAS)'s January 2008 meeting in Austin, Texas, highlights the current state of the methodologies in two branches of physical science (specif. scientia media), astronomy and physics.

[Duhem] seems to regard [the non-falsifiability theses, which "is that 'if the predicted phenomenon is not produced, not only is the questioned proposition put into doubt, but also the whole theoretical scaffolding used by the physicist' (Duhem 185),"] as an obvious corollary of another thesis, which could be called the non-separability thesis, that the physicist can never submit an isolated hypothesis to experimental test: “To seek to separate each of the hypotheses of theoretical physics from the other assumptions upon which this science rests, in order to subject it in isolation to the control of observation, is to pursue a chimera” (Duhem 199-200).

—Roger Ariew, "Pierre Duhem"

Modern scientists do indeed consider issues pertaining to this, else their science's arguments risk being circular.

Epistemology of Modern Physics

How does one understand the physical world? How does one know he understands it, viz., what is his epistemology? To answer these questions from a modern physicist's perspective, I comment below on questions 84 through 89 of the first part of St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica.

Here is a brief overview of what these questions address:

Question 84. How the soul while united to the body understands corporeal things beneath it

1. Does the soul know bodies through the intellect?
2. Does it understand them through its essence, or through any species?
3. If through some species, are the species of all things intelligible naturally innate in the soul?
4. Are these species derived by the soul from certain separate immaterial forms?
5. Does our soul see in the eternal ideas all that it understands?
6. Does it acquire intellectual knowledge from the senses?
7. Can the intellect, through the species of which it is possessed, actually understand, without turning to the phantasms?
8. Is the judgment of the intellect hindered by an obstacle in the sensitive powers?

Question 85. The mode and order of understanding

1. Does our intellect understand by abstracting the species from the phantasms?
2. Are the intelligible species abstracted from the phantasms what our intellect understands, or that whereby it understands?
3. Does our intellect naturally first understand the more universal?
4. Can our intellect know many things at the same time?
5. Does our intellect understand by the process of composition and division?
6. Can the intellect err?
7. Can one intellect understand better than another?
8. Does our intellect understand the indivisible before the divisible?

Question 86. What our intellect knows in material things

1. Does it know singulars?
2. Does it know the infinite?
3. Does it know contingent things?
4. Does it know future things?

Question 89. The knowledge of the separated soul

1. Can the soul separated from the body understand?
2. Does it understand separate substances?
3. Does it understand all natural things?
4. Does it understand individuals and singulars?
5. Do the habits of knowledge acquired in this life remain?
6. Can the soul use the habit of knowledge here acquired?
7. Does local distance impede the separated soul's knowledge?
8. Do souls separated from the body know what happens here?

Some terminology:

• "Soul," or anima in Latin, means "The principle of thought and action in man, commonly regarded as an entity distinct from the body; the spiritual part of man in contrast to the purely physical." (Oxford English Dictionary). The soul is the form of the human body and is roughly synonymous with "mind."
• "Phantasm" is a philosophical term for "A mental image, appearance, or representation, considered as the immediate object of sense perception (as distinct from the external thing itself or, in Platonic thought, its underlying form), or as the means by which the mind grasps the intelligible form of an object." (Oxford English Dictionary).
• "Motion" is "Any kind of change; becoming." (Oxford English Dictionary).
• "Angels" are "intellectual beings."

Definitions for other terms will arise in the commentary itself.

Beginning with the first article of Question 84, again with my commentary in [red]:

Article 1. Whether the soul knows bodies through the intellect?

[How else would one know them? Through the means of physics experiments and instruments only?]

Objection 1. It would seem that the soul does not know bodies through the intellect. For Augustine says (Soliloq. ii, 4) that "bodies cannot be understood by the intellect; nor indeed anything corporeal unless it can be perceived by the senses." He says also (Gen. ad lit. xii, 24) that intellectual vision is of those things that are in the soul by their essence. But such are not bodies. Therefore the soul cannot know bodies through the intellect.

[Thus St. Augustine would agree that one cannot understand, e.g., the hydrogen atom without first performing experiments with instruments that make its effects perceptible to us; viz., we cannot understand corporeal objects with our intellects only, as Aristotle tried: Theoretical physics without experimentation is pure speculation.]

Objection 2. Further, as sense is to the intelligible, so is the intellect to the sensible. But the soul can by no means, through the senses, understand spiritual things, which are intelligible. Therefore by no means can it, through the intellect, know bodies, which are sensible.

[Atheists, e.g., would deny that spiritual things are intelligible, though.]

Objection 3. Further, the intellect is concerned with things that are necessary and unchangeable. But all bodies are mobile and changeable. Therefore the soul cannot know bodies through the intellect.

[That "the intellect is concerted with things that are necessary and unchangeable" is another way of saying that the intellect strives for universal, certain knowledge. It tries to understand not just why, e.g., this particular measured hydrogen atom displays certain properties but what the universal nature of all hydrogen atoms must necessarily be.]

On the contrary, Science is in the intellect. If, therefore, the intellect does not know bodies, it follows that there is no science of bodies; and thus perishes natural science, which treats of mobile bodies.

[No natural scientist can deny this claim. Also, by "mobile bodies" St. Thomas means changeable ones.]

I answer that, It should be said in order to elucidate this question, that the early philosophers, who inquired into the natures of things, thought there was nothing in the world save bodies. And because they observed that all bodies are mobile, and considered them to be ever in a state of flux, they were of opinion that we can have no certain knowledge of the true nature of things. For what is in a continual state of flux, cannot be grasped with any degree of certitude, for it passes away ere the mind can form a judgment thereon: according to the saying of Heraclitus, that "it is not possible twice to touch a drop of water in a passing torrent," as the Philosopher relates (Metaph. iv, Did. iii, 5).

[It is interesting that St. Thomas says that "that the early philosophers, who inquired into the natures of things, thought there was nothing in the world save bodies." Many modern scientists, from Descartes to Galileo to those in the present today, still believe in this claim. They believe in materialism, which says only matter and its movements exist, and in positivism, which holds that empirical science can justify every rational truth and therefore denies the supernatural or metaphysical, that which is "beyond physics." Galileo, being a mechanist, wrote extensively on how there is nothing more to the nature of, e.g., a feather than its mechanical movement, and this is all that is necessary for describing how we sense its tickling the skin.]

After these came Plato, who, wishing to save the certitude of our knowledge of truth through the intellect, maintained that, besides these things corporeal, there is another genus of beings, separate from matter and movement, which beings he called "species" or "ideas," by participation of which each one of these singular and sensible things is said to be either a man, or a horse, or the like. Wherefore he said that sciences and definitions, and whatever appertains to the act of the intellect, are not referred to these sensible bodies, but to those beings immaterial and separate: so that according to this the soul does not understand these corporeal things, but the separate species thereof.

[This makes more sense because the objects physicists study through the mediation of experimentation are not the same as those one directly perceives in everyday experience. Who has ever touched or tasted, e.g., a quantum wavefuction? These things are indeed in the physical realm, not the directly sensible corporeal realm; they are a "separate species."]

Now this may be shown to be false for two reasons.

First, because, since those species are immaterial and immovable, knowledge of movement and matter would be excluded from science (which knowledge is proper to natural science), and likewise all demonstration through moving and material causes.

Secondly, because it seems ridiculous, when we seek for knowledge of things which are to us manifest, to introduce other beings, which cannot be the substance of those others, since they differ from them essentially: so that granted that we have a knowledge of those separate substances, we cannot for that reason claim to form a judgment concerning these sensible things.

[Notice he says modeling "things which are to us [already] manifest" is ridiculous. He is not saying that modeling the nature of subatomic particles, e.g., is ridiculous because their nature is not manifest, hence it is necessary that we model them since we cannot directly sense them.]

Now it seems that Plato strayed from the truth because, having observed that all knowledge takes place through some kind of similitude, he thought that the form of the thing known must of necessity be in the knower in the same manner as in the thing known. Then he observed that the form of the thing understood is in the intellect under conditions of universality, immateriality, and immobility: which is apparent from the very operation of the intellect, whose act of understanding has a universal extension, and is subject to a certain amount of necessity: for the mode of action corresponds to the mode of the agent's form. Wherefore he concluded that the things which we understand must have in themselves an existence under the same conditions of immateriality and immobility.

[According to Pope Benedict XVI, modern science is Platonic. Aristotle would say that the form exists in the matter, not separate from it. It is only our intellect that abstracts different formal objects from a certain material object.]

But there is no necessity for this. For even in sensible things it is to be observed that the form is otherwise in one sensible than in another: for instance, whiteness may be of great intensity in one, and of a less intensity in another: in one we find whiteness with sweetness, in another without sweetness. In the same way the sensible form is conditioned differently in the thing which is external to the soul, and in the senses which receive the forms of sensible things without receiving matter, such as the color of gold without receiving gold. So also the intellect, according to its own mode, receives under conditions of immateriality and immobility, the species of material and mobile bodies: for the received is in the receiver according to the mode of the receiver. We must conclude, therefore, that through the intellect the soul knows bodies by a knowledge which is immaterial, universal, and necessary.

[When we understand gold, we do not have gold in our soul; rather, we have a particular formal object "in the receiver according to the mode of the receiver." This is not invented by the particular intellect, as the Kantians or Cartesians would say, nor is it equal to the material object as it would be in the intellect of an angel ("intellectual being"), which perceives things at once, not through reasoning, dividing, or composing as humans must do. For example, we consider charge separately from mass, then recompose the concepts to understand what a "charged mass" is. We start from axioms, such as in Euclidean geometry, and argue discursively to conclusions; but to angels these things are apparent at once.]

Reply to Objection 1. These words of Augustine are to be understood as referring to the medium of intellectual knowledge, and not to its object. For the intellect knows bodies by understanding them, not indeed through bodies, nor through material and corporeal species; but through immaterial and intelligible species, which can be in the soul by their own essence.

[Yes, sense-knowledge—even that obtained through empirical data and experiments—is the medium through which we ultimately gain knowledge, which ultimately resides in the soul.]

Reply to Objection 2. As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xxii, 29), it is not correct to say that as the sense knows only bodies so the intellect knows only spiritual things; for it follows that God and the angels would not know corporeal things. The reason of this diversity is that the lower power does not extend to those things that belong to the higher power; whereas the higher power operates in a more excellent manner those things which belong to the lower power.

Reply to Objection 3. Every movement presupposes something immovable: for when a change of quality occurs, the substance remains unmoved; and when there is a change of substantial form, matter remains unmoved. Moreover the various conditions of mutable things are themselves immovable; for instance, though Socrates be not always sitting, yet it is an immovable truth that whenever he does sit he remains in one place. For this reason there is nothing to hinder our having an immovable science of movable things.

—St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica Iª q. 84 a. 1

See future posts for the continuation of the commentary.

Why Methodological Naturalism in Empiriological Sciences?

The basis of modern empiriological sciences, such as experimental and theoretical physics and astronomy, is "naturalized epistemology," called also "methodological naturalism" or "scientific naturalism." This holds that the methods of empiriological sciences should assume that phenomena they study have only natural causes irrespective of whether supernatural agents can or do effect them. This has allowed for scientists to reproduce experiments and verify results regardless of the scientists' non-scientific beliefs. Science has relegated the Why? questions for the How? questions; final causes are no longer addressed. Because we can only know God and other non-physical realities via the physical word (Rom. 1:20), this implies that the immaterial or supernatural order affects the material or natural order.

Let us address these questions:

1. Does the supernatural affect the natural?
2. If so, why should we incorporate their effects into our physical theories?
3. How would we avoid considering "God did it" as a sufficient explanation of a natural effect?
4. How would we know an exception to a natural law due to something supernatural from an exception due to natural causes?

St. Thomas Aquinas provides an answer to questions 1 and 3 in his discussion on how the universe has a rational plan:

Accordingly that God love His own goodness is something necessary, but it does not necessarily follow from this that it should be reflected in creatures, since the divine goodness is perfect without this. Consequently although the divine goodness is the reason why creatures were originally brought into being, yet this depends on the simple will of God. Supposing, however, that God wishes to communicate His goodness to His creatures by way of likeness as far as it is possible, this is the reason why creatures are of divers kinds: although there is no necessity for this diversity being according to this or that degree of perfection, or this or that number of things. And supposing it to be God's will to establish a particular number in things, and to bestow on each thing a particular measure of perfection, this is the reason why a particular thing has such and such a form and such and such matter: and so on in like manner.

It is therefore clear that the dispensations of providence are according to a certain reason, and yet this reason presupposes the divine will.

Accordingly a twofold error is refuted by what we have said. First, there is the error of those who maintained that all things are the result of God's simple will without any reason. This is the error of the Moslem theologians in the law of the Mohammedans, as Rabbi Moses relates (Doct. Perp. iii. 25.), according to whom the sole reason why fire heats rather than chills is because God so wills. Secondly, we refute the error of those who assert that the ordering of causes proceeds from divine providence by way of necessity. Both of which are false, as is clear from what has been said.

There are certain expressions of Scripture that would seem to ascribe all things to God's simple will. But such things are said, not to remove reason from the dispensations of providence, but to show that God's will is the first principle of all things, as we have already shown. Such are the words of the Psalm cxxxiv. 6.: Whatsoever the Lord pleased, He hath done, and of Job ix. 12: Who can say: Why dost Thou so? and of Rom. ix. 19: Who resisteth His will? Augustine likewise says (3 De Trin. iii., iv.): God's will alone is the first cause of health and sickness, reward and punishment, grace and retribution.

Accordingly if we be asked the wherefore of a particular natural effect, we can assign the reason to some proximate cause: provided, however, that we refer all things to the divine will as their first cause. Thus if it be asked: Why was the wood heated at the presence of fire? we reply: Because to heat is fire's natural action: and this, because heat is its proper accident: and this results from its proper form: and so on until we come to the divine will. Hence if we reply to the question Why was the wood made hot? by saying: Because God so willed: we shall answer rightly, if we intend to trace the question back to its first cause, but incorrectly if we intend to exclude all other causes.

—Summa Contra Gentiles, lib. 3 cap. 97 n. 13-17

Hence in empiriological sciences "we intend to exclude all other causes," i.e., we only focus on the natural cause. But, related to the induction hypothesis, what if our repeated observations of the fire in St. Thomas's example conclude only 99.999% of the time that "to heat is fire's natural action?" What if there were another cause, one supernatural, 0.001% of the time? Would this falsify the theory that "to heat is fire's natural action?" No, it would not falsify the natural theory, for in this case it would be a miracle. Determining when a miracle occurs would answer question 4 above. St. Thomas offers some insights into what a miracle is when he says:

These works that are sometimes done by God outside the usual order assigned to things are wont to be called miracles: because we are astonished (admiramur) at a thing when we see an effect without knowing the cause. And since at times one and the same cause is known to some and unknown to others, it happens that of several who see an effect, some are astonished and some not: thus an astronomer is not astonished when he sees an eclipse of the sun, for he knows the cause; whereas one who is ignorant of this science must needs wonder, since he knows not the cause. Wherefore it is wonderful to the latter but not to the former. Accordingly a thing is wonderful simply, when its cause is hidden simply: and this is what we mean by a miracle: something, to wit, that is wonderful in itself and not only in respect of this person or that. Now God is the cause which is hidden to every man simply: for we have proved above that in this state of life no man can comprehend Him by his intellect. Therefore properly speaking miracles are works done by God outside the order usually observed in things.

Of these miracles there are various degrees and orders. The highest degree in miracles comprises those works wherein something is done by God, that nature can never do: for instance, that two bodies occupy the same place, that the sun recede or stand still, that the sea be divided and make way to passers by. Among these there is a certain order: for the greater the work done by God, and the further it is removed from the capability of nature, the greater the miracle: thus it is a greater miracle that the sun recede, than that the waters be divided.

The second degree in miracles belongs to those whereby God does something that nature can do, but not in the same order: thus it is a work of nature that an animal live, see and walk: but that an animal live after being dead, see after being blind, walk after being lame, this nature cannot do, but God does these things sometimes by a miracle. Among these miracles also, there are degrees, according as the thing done is further removed from the faculty of nature.

The third degree of miracles is when God does what is wont to be done by the operation of nature, but without the operation of the natural principles: for instance when by the power of God a man is cured of a fever that nature is able to cure; or when it rains without the operation of the principles of nature.

—Summa Contra Gentiles, lib. 3 cap. 101

If our intellects can abstract the supernatural from the natural in an object under study, why should we worry about the supernatural? Our findings will never contradict the supernatural because God never contradicts nature, Who is the very rational Author of it. But what about question 2? Consider this: Understanding the natural order to the exclusion of the supernatural order is akin to understanding the moon with astronomy to the exclusion of mathematics. Why do that? St. Thomas, on the difference between mathematics and physics, says:

Since, therefore, the objects of mathematics are abstracted from motion according to the intellect, and since they do not include in their intelligibility sensible matter, which is a subject of motion, the mathematician can abstract them from sensible matter. And it makes no difference as far as the truth is concerned whether they are considered one way or the other. For although the objects of mathematics are not separated according to existence, the mathematicians, in abstracting them according to their understanding, do not lie, because they do not assert that these things exist apart from sensible matter (for this would be a lie). But they consider them without any consideration of sensible matter, which can be done without lying. Thus one can truly consider the white without the musical, even though they exist together in the same subject. But it would not be a true consideration if one were to assert that the white is not musical.

—In Physic., lib. 2 l. 3 n. 5

He says: "And it makes no difference as far as the truth is concerned whether they are considered one way or the other." Therefore, if the goal of science is to seek truth, then it would not hurt to consider natural phenomena in the light of supernatural, metaphysical, or immaterial causes. But this would be unnecessary because of what St. Augustine says in Contra Faustum, XXVI, 3: "God the creator and author of all natures, does nothing unnatural: because to each thing, that is natural which is caused by Him from whom is all measure, number and order in nature." Does this imply that a Catholic scientist can consistently practice methodological naturalism without worrying about possibly capricious supernatural influences because even supernatural beings, such as angels, have natures created rationally and according to the Divine Reason?

Yet all these arguments assume a sharp division between supernatural and natural orders. Does such a sharp division exist? Should it exist? Or would the physical empiriological sciences prosper if their formal objects were in both natural and supernatural orders?

Philosophy ≠ Metaphysics or Ontology

Many modern scientists misconceive philosophy as being just metaphysics or ontology. Philosophy is not metaphysics nor ontology; metaphysics and ontology are a part of philosophy. This is the proper division of the sciences:

PHILOSOPHY

1. Speculative Sciences
   
   1. Natural Sciences
   2. Mathematics
   3. Metaphysics
2. Practical Sciences
   
   1. Art
   2. Prudence

Instead of this hierarchy of the sciences, Christian von Wolff (1679-1754) proposed his own. He inverted the proper division of the sciences by identifying metaphysics (ontology) as philosophy itself and placing it first:

METAPHYSICS

1. General Metaphysics (Ontology)
2. Special Metaphysics
   
   1. Metaphysics of Bodies
   2. Metaphysics of Spirits
      
      1. of Created Spirits
      2. of Uncreated Spirits

Resulting from this erroneous division of the sciences is the modern separation of natural (now conceived as "naturalistic") and philosophical (now conceived as "ontological") sciences. Humans by nature start with imperfect sense knowledge and gradually build up to more perfect knowledge, not the other way around as Wolff would suggest. Why? Cf. Romans 1:20, which says that we must first start with sense knowledge—from the physical world, God's creation—before proceeding to knowledge further from the senses—such as God Himself. St. Paul does not say, as Wolff would: "[T]he creation of the world from the invisible things of him are clearly seen, being understood by the things unmade." Rather, he says:

[T]he invisible things of him [e.g., His ontology] from the creation of the world are clearly seen [i.e., with our imperfect knowledge from the senses], being understood by the things that are made [e.g., the physical world].

Grand Unified Theory?

There is a correct division of the speculative sciences into physical, mathematical, and metaphysical ones; as Boethius says in his De Trinitate II.:

There are three divisions of speculative science: Natural science¹ deals with motion² and is not abstract³ (ἀνυπεξαίρετος), for it is concerned with the forms⁴ of bodies along with matter⁵, which forms cannot be separated in reality from their bodies. These bodies are in motion (earth, for example, tending downward and fire tending upward), and the form that is joined with the matter takes on its movement. Mathematics does not deal with motion and it is not abstract, for it inquires into the forms of bodies apart from matter and therefore apart from motion, which forms, however, since they exist in matter, cannot be separated from bodies. Theology⁶ does not deal with motion and it is abstract and separable, for the divine substance is without either matter or motion. ¹The terms natural science, physics, and natural philosophy are synonymous. ²Motion means not only movement but also change. ³To abstract means "to consider something separately." ⁴Form is "the essential nature of a species or thing." (New Oxford American Dictionary). ⁵Click here for the difference between form and matter. ⁶Theology here means metaphysics.

Today, however, there is much more division than Boethius envisions. Even within physics, e.g., there is disunity between quantum mechanics and general relativity. Between physics and its subfield, astronomy, there is a culture war, and between physics and biology there is an even greater disunity. A Grand Unified Theory (GUT) or Theory of Everything (ToE) will only be possible if we adopt a "Grand Unified Philosophy." The Society of Scholastics is its proponent:

As modern science has lighted the darkest corners of the discernible universe, the lack of a complete philosophy adequate to synthesize all the empirical results has cloven every field of human knowledge one from the other. Now, each science is autonomous, submitting all reality to its own judgment, and admitting no conclusions outside itself. Every science is an empire and every scientist a tyrant—there is no longer wisdom, only wise men.

—The Origin of the Society of Scholastics

Still applicable today is St. Thomas Aquinas's statement (De ente et essentia, pr.; cf. De Cœlo 1, 5, 271^b8-13): Parvus error in principio magnus est in fine. ("A small error in principle is a big error in conclusion."). Thus if our premises, postulates, or axioms are wrong; so will be our conclusions. Can you imagine what would happen to Euclidean geometry if we submitted all its axioms to the same sort of free skeptical inquiry that characterizes today's misguided academic freedom? We would more often than not be groping in the dark and obtain a geometry with false conclusions. So with science itself we must place our faith in one, true system of philosophy that serves as the axiom from which we can draw error-free conclusions and clearly communicate our results to others. As St. Thomas Aquinas says in his Summa Thelogica Iª q. 1 a. 8 co.: "sciences do not argue in proof of their principles, but argue from their principles to demonstrate other truths in these sciences."

One system of science alone, amidst the incessant endeavors of the many systems through four centuries to investigate the inmost mysteries of reality, has been able to stand without modification in its fundamental tenets, and this is the system of Scholastic Thomism. Today its stability and breadth is such that it serves as an excellent basis and principle of unification for all the results of scientific speculation reached by the various particular sciences of modern times. We are convinced, and in this we feel confident we are not mistaken, that all who have the courage to pursue his philosophy to the bottom and follow its logical conclusions will agree with us that concerning the analysis of the activity and processes of the mind, concerning the inner nature of body, living being and man, concerning the foundations of speculative science and ethical philosophy, no other man has ever thought and written with the power of Thomas Aquinas. Nevertheless, whilst it is true that our philosophy is intimately associated with the name of Thomas, we wish it to be understood that we do not regard the Thomistic philosophy either as an ideal which one must not attempt to surpass or as a boundary which sets limits to personal activity in thought; but our position is that we regard it as a mark no less of prudence than of modesty to make use of his teaching as a starting-point from which we may go further afield in original speculations and as a constant standard of reference. This we feel called upon to say in reply to those, whether opponents or friends, who may feel tempted to ask if it is our intention to lead back the modern mind to the outlook of the Middle Ages. There is no question of retracing our steps back to bygone centuries. But respect for tradition is no indication of servility of mind but rather one of elementary prudence; respect for a doctrine whose merits have been personally ascertained and verified is no mark of a blind devotee, but of a dutiful disciple of truth.

—Adapted from Cardinal Mercier's Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy