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Is Thomism Secular?

Considering St. Thomas Aquinas came in 9th in this poll of "Who are the most important philosophers of all time?", I was curious which of the universities in the Philosophical Gourmet Report's 2009 "ranking of the top facilities in the English-speaking world" is most Thomist. Here is how they performed, based on the number of Google results for "Aquinas" (cf. this, too) at each university's entire website:

Sorted by Google Hits (1st # shown)

1. University of Toronto 24400 6777.8
2. Yale University 6790 1741.0
3. University of Pennsylvania 5150 1775.9
4. University of Notre Dame 3650 1013.9
5. University of Colorado, Boulder 3590 1196.7
6. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2810 685.4
7. Cambridge University 2780 817.6
8. University of Chicago 2000 606.1
9. Stanford University 1920 505.3
10. University of Texas, Austin 1710 502.9
11. Oxford University 1040 221.3
12. City University of New York Graduate Center 981 272.5
13. Princeton University 942 219.1
14. Harvard University 860 215.0
15. Cornell University 801 228.9
16. Rutgers University, New Brunswick 782 170.0
17. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 734 183.5
18. University of Wisconsin, Madison 677 211.6
19. University of Massachusetts, Amherst 629 209.7
20. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 589 155.0
21. Columbia University 583 157.6
22. University of California, Los Angeles 493 129.7
23. Duke University 493 164.3
24. New York University 440 89.8
25. University of Pittsburgh 423 100.7
26. University of Western Ontario 385 142.6
27. Indiana University, Bloomington 383 119.7
28. University of Maryland, College Park 380 131.0
29. London School of Economics 380 135.7
30. University of California, Berkeley 339 89.2
31. University of California, Riverside 326 112.4
32. Australian National University 296 80.0
33. University of Southern California 295 84.3
34. University of California, San Diego 246 74.5
35. University College London 229 71.6
36. University of Miami 190 67.9
37. King's College, London 183 59.0
38. Syracuse University 181 64.6
39. University of Arizona 179 48.4
40. Washington University, St. Louis 173 59.7
41. Ohio State University 170 56.7
42. Brown University 155 44.3
43. University of Warwick 148 54.8
44. University of California, Irvine 143 44.7
45. University of Nottingham 121 44.8
46. University of Sheffield 66 22.8
47. University of Sydney 52 17.3
48. Birkbeck College, University of London 33 11.0
49. University of Reading 5 1.9

Sorted by Ratio (2nd # shown) of Hits to Mean Ranking

1. University of Toronto 24400 6777.8
2. University of Pennsylvania 5150 1775.9
3. Yale University 6790 1741.0
4. University of Colorado, Boulder 3590 1196.7
5. University of Notre Dame 3650 1013.9
6. Cambridge University 2780 817.6
7. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2810 685.4
8. University of Chicago 2000 606.1
9. Stanford University 1920 505.3
10. University of Texas, Austin 1710 502.9
11. City University of New York Graduate Center 981 272.5
12. Cornell University 801 228.9
13. Oxford University 1040 221.3
14. Princeton University 942 219.1
15. Harvard University 860 215.0
16. University of Wisconsin, Madison 677 211.6
17. University of Massachusetts, Amherst 629 209.7
18. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 734 183.5
19. Rutgers University, New Brunswick 782 170.0
20. Duke University 493 164.3
21. Columbia University 583 157.6
22. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 589 155.0
23. University of Western Ontario 385 142.6
24. London School of Economics 380 135.7
25. University of Maryland, College Park 380 131.0
26. University of California, Los Angeles 493 129.7
27. Indiana University, Bloomington 383 119.7
28. University of California, Riverside 326 112.4
29. University of Pittsburgh 423 100.7
30. New York University 440 89.8
31. University of California, Berkeley 339 89.2
32. University of Southern California 295 84.3
33. Australian National University 296 80.0
34. University of California, San Diego 246 74.5
35. University College London 229 71.6
36. University of Miami 190 67.9
37. Syracuse University 181 64.6
38. Washington University, St. Louis 173 59.7
39. King's College, London 183 59.0
40. Ohio State University 170 56.7
41. University of Warwick 148 54.8
42. University of Arizona 179 48.4
43. University of Nottingham 121 44.8
44. University of California, Irvine 143 44.7
45. Brown University 155 44.3
46. University of Sheffield 66 22.8
47. University of Sydney 52 17.3
48. Birkbeck College, University of London 33 11.0
49. University of Reading 5 1.9

The second sorted list gives one a good idea what are the best secular Thomist universities.

Law is a Teacher

The law is a teacher. Here is an example of why civil laws should outlaw abortion:

1. Women are generally ignorant about reproductive issues.
2. Abortion is a reproductive issue; therefore,
   
   1. women are generally ignorant about abortion.
   2. Women are less ignorant about the law; therefore,
      
      1. women know more about the law than abortion.
      2. The law tells one what is right or wrong; therefore,
         1. women know abortion's rightness or wrongness based on the law.
         2. The law currently makes it legal; therefore,
            1. the law teaches women that abortion is right.
            2. People more often than not do what they think is right; therefore,
               1. women more often than not choose abortion because they think it is right.
               2. Women choosing abortions more often than not is contrary to keeping abortions rare; therefore,
                  1. Abortion should be illegal.
                     

With what premise or conclusion do you disagree?

Learning Order

St. Thomas Aquinas, founder of Thomism (vide 24 Thomistic Theses and Pope St. Pius X's Doctoris Angelici), describes in his Sententia Ethic., lib. 6 l. 7 n. 17 [1211.] which subjects and in what order boys must learn (my emphases):

[T]he proper order of learning is that boys first be instructed in things pertaining to logic because logic teaches the method of the whole of philosophy. Next, they should be instructed in mathematics, which does not need experience and does not exceed the imagination. Third, in natural sciences, which, even though not exceeding sense and imagination, nevertheless require experience. Fourth, in the moral sciences, which require experience and a soul free from passions [...]. Fifth, in the sapiential and divine sciences, which exceed imagination and require a sharp mind.

Can you believe this? If St. Thomas thinks boys (pueri in the Latin of Sententia Ethic., lib. 6 l. 7 n. 17) should learn these, a fortiori college students must.

Master Advice

St. Thomas Aquinas said in De modo studendi: "non respicias a quo audias, sed quidquid boni dicatur" ("Do not heed by whom a thing is said, but rather what good is said").

Similarly, Fr. Sertillanges, O.P., said in his The Intellectual Life (p. 163-164):

    St. Thomas, whose idea I base myself on here, concludes from these observations that we owe gratitude even to those who have thus tested us, if because of them and their action we have made any kind of progress. Directly, we owe everything to truth alone, but indirectly we owe to those who are in error the mental development that, thanks to them, Providence provides for us. [In II. Metaphys. lect. I.]
    Think what the Church owes to heresies and philosophy to its great conflicts of opinion. If it had not been for Arius, Eutyches, Nestorius, Pelagius, Luther, Catholic dogma would not have been constituted. If Kant had not shaken the foundations of human knowledge, criteriology would still be in its childhood; and if Renan had not written on Christian origins, the Catholic clergy would be far from having the historical and exegetical formation they now possess.
    What is true collectively is true individually. We must learn right thinking principally by contact with the wise; but folly itself contains a lesson; he who escapes its contagion draws strength from it. "He who stumbles without falling makes a bigger step forward."

Hume vs. Aquinas on Transubstantiation

Benedict Ashley, O.P., in his book The Way toward Wisdom (p. 511 n. 53), cites Hume's claim, which he borrowed from Dr. Tillotson, that the transubstantiation, "since it denies the evidence of the senses on which all certitude rests," "leads to skepticism:"

I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument of a like nature, which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures.

[...]

Suppose, for instance, that the fact, which the testimony endeavours to establish, partakes of the extraordinary and the marvellous; in that case, the evidence, resulting from the testimony, admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact is more or less unusual. The reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. But when the fact attested is such a one as has seldom fallen under our observation, here is a contest of two opposite experiences; of which the one destroys the other, as far as its force goes, and the superior can only operate on the mind by the force, which remains.

—David Hume's Enquiry of Human Understanding, sec. 10 "On Miracles" part 1

Benedict Ashley, O.P., responds:

Yet we experience that very unusual events do in fact occur! Why must we, then, always doubt the testimony of others about such events? Sense experiences are signs to be intellectually interpreted always in their contexts. The proper accidents of bread and wine naturally signify these substances, but for the Catholic faith the context of the Eucharist established by God permits the appearance of bread and wine to signify without deception [Summa Theologiæ, IIIª q. 75 a. 5 arg. 2 et ad 2] Christ's body and blood. Although this is not strictly a "miracle" (since the change is not evident to our senses and hence is extremely improbable as regard natural reason), as Aquinas shows [Summa Theologiæ, IIIª q. 75 a. 5 arg. 3 et ad 3], it is not impossible; and if the Catholic faith is credible, as apologetic seeks to show, reason demands that it be believed on the testimony of the Church. Similarly, the context of the Bible as read in the tradition of the Church (which one would suppose Tillotson accepted) permits it to signify the mind of God, not merely the intent of its human authors. Hume's argument amount to declaring that he is determined to interpret his experiences a way that will not disturb his "common sense" habits; but life is full of uncomfortable events.

The above-mentioned St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiæ quotes are:

Objection 2. Further, there ought not to be any deception in a sacrament of truth. But we judge of substance by accidents. It seems, then, that human judgment is deceived, if, while the accidents remain, the substance of the bread does not. Consequently this is unbecoming to this sacrament.

Objection 3. Further, although our faith is not subject to reason, still it is not contrary to reason, but above it, as was said in the beginning of this work (Summa Theologiæ, Iª q. 1 a. 6 ad 2 et a. 8). But our reason has its origin in the senses. Therefore our faith ought not to be contrary to the senses, as it is when sense judges that to be bread which faith believes to be the substance of Christ's body. Therefore it is not befitting this sacrament for the accidents of bread to remain subject to the senses, and for the substance of bread not to remain.

[...]

Reply to Objection 2 and 3. There is no deception in this sacrament; for the accidents which are discerned by the senses are truly present. But the intellect, whose proper object is substance as is said in De Anima iii, is preserved by faith from deception. And this serves as answer to the third argument; because faith is not contrary to the senses, but concerns things to which sense does not reach.

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.)

Japan Earthquake ≈ Tsar Bomba's Energy

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS)'s energy and broadband solution of the recent earthquake near the coast of Honshu, Japan, it has radiated an estimated 3.0×10¹⁷ Joules of energy. Fat Man, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki during World War II, was 88 TJ (88 terajoules = 8.8×10¹³ Joules). So this earthquake was about 2,000 times more energetic. The largest nuclear bomb ever detonated was the Tsar Bomba, detonated on October 30, 1961, in Russia. It released 210 petajoules = 2.1×10¹⁷ Joules of energy, roughly 70% what this Japan earthquake released.

Does one need any more proof for original sin?

Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons as they were in fact used dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

—J. Robert Oppenheimer, Physics in the Contemporary World (1948) pg. 66

OnlineSchools.org presents Japan One Year Later

St. Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas

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,

The Magi were astronomers. Really.

The three Magi really were astronomers. This is clever depiction of them from the Vatican Observatory's homepage:

River Forest & Æterni Patris

From Edward Feser's "The Thomistic Tradition (part 1)" (vide also part 2):

This approach emphasizes the Aristotelian foundations of Aquinas’s philosophy, and in particular the idea that the construction of a sound metaphysics must be preceded by a sound understanding of natural science, as interpreted in light of an Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Accordingly, it is keen to show that modern physical science can and should be given such an interpretation. Charles De Koninck (1906-1965), James A. Weisheipl (1923-1984), William A. Wallace, and Benedict Ashley are among its representatives. It is sometimes called “Laval Thomism” after the University of Laval in Quebec [which produced this brilliant thesis: Thomism and Mathematical Physics], where De Koninck was a professor. The alternative label “River Forest Thomism” derives from a suburb of Chicago, the location of the Albertus Magnus Lyceum for Natural Science, whose members are associated with this approach. It is also sometimes called “Aristotelian Thomism” (to highlight its contrast with Gilson’s brand of existential Thomism) though since Neo-Scholastic Thomism also emphasizes Aquinas’s continuity with Aristotle, this label seems a bit too proprietary. (There are writers, like the contemporary Thomist Ralph McInerny, who exhibit both Neo-Scholastic and Laval/River Forest influences, and the approaches are not necessarily incompatible.)

See also:

• River Forest Thomism
• Scholasticism in Empiriological Sciences
• The Modeling of Nature by William Wallace, O.P.
• The Way toward Wisdom or "The River Forest School and the Philosophy of Nature Today" by Benedict Ashley, O.P.
• The Writings of Charles de Koninck (Volume 1) by Charles de Koninck

E.g., Heisenberg recognized in his Physics and Philosophy that the probability wave concept in quantum mechanics "was a quantitative version of the concept of 'potentia' in Aristotelian philosophy" (p. 41) and that the "concept of the soul for instance in the philosophy of 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). Pope Leo XIII, who was trained in the natural sciences as well as in theology, wrote in 1879 that the study of the natural sciences is epistemologically prior to that of theology, viz., that knowledge of immaterial things for us comes after that of material things:

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 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.

—Pope Leo XIII's Æterni Patris

Mathematics: Its Importance and Limitations

Mathematics is most co-natural to man and it is also the most exact science according to St. Thomas Aquinas, says Bernard I. Mullahy in his excellent thesis Thomism and Mathematical Physics. Armand Maurer on pg. xxxv of his translation of St. Thomas Aquinas's Division and methods of the sciences, a commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate questions V and VI, says that

St. Thomas also attributes a major role to reasoning in mathematics. In this respect it is like natural philosophy. The difference in their methods lies in the causes employed in reasoning. Mathematical demonstrations begin with definitions and principles, from which conclusions are deduced by way of formal causality. For example, a certain property of the triangle is shown to follow from its very definition. Unlike natural philosophy, mathematics does not demonstrate through final or efficient causes.

Fr. McCool, S.J., wrote in his book on the history of 20th century Thomism that (pg. 154-155):

A new edition of St. Thomas' In Librum Boethii de Trinitate, Questiones quinta et sexta, published in 1948, led to a major revision of the accepted understanding of St. Thomas' theory of abstraction [which that of Boethius inspired]. Apart from the abstractio totius, abstraction of a sensible whole from its particulars required for any form of conceptual thought, the only other type of abstraction proposed by St. Thomas confines itself to the level of mathematics. This is an abstractio formae, the mind's separation of the form of quantity from the rest of the sensible whole which the mind disregards in mathematics.

Thus we can see that medieval philosophers recognized the great importance and certainty of mathematics. Yet, according to Armand Maurer,

St. Thomas saw that there is a particular temptation to single out the mathematical method for this role [of being a common method for all the sciences, as Descartes wished], since it is the most exact and certain. But he warns against this, insisting on the specificity of method in each of the sciences [natural philosophy (physics in the broad sense), mathematics, and metaphysics; modern physics is a natural philosophy / mathematics hybrid, a scientia media or "middle science"].

St. Thomas warns about this in In II Meta. lect. 5, n. 335-337, which says, commenting on Aristotle's answer regarding "The Method to Be Followed in the Search for Truth:"

ARISTOTLE’S TEXT Chapter 3: 994b 32-995a 20

171. The way in which people are affected by what they hear depends upon the things to which they are accustomed; for it is in terms of such things that we judge statements to be true, and anything over and above these does not seem similar but less intelligible and more remote. For it is the things to which we are accustomed that are better known.

172. The great force which custom has is shown by the laws, in which legendary and childish elements prevail over our knowledge of them, because of custom.

173. Now some men will not accept what a speaker says unless he speaks in mathematical terms; and others, unless he gives examples; while others expect him to quote a poet as an authority. Again, some want everything stated with certitude, while others find certitude annoying, either because they are incapable of comprehending anything, or because they consider exact inquiry to be quibbling; for there is some similarity. Hence it seems to some men that, just as liberality is lacking in the matter of a fee for a banquet, so also is it lacking in arguments.

174. For this reason one must be trained how to meet every kind of argument; and it is absurd to search simultaneously for knowledge and for the method of acquiring it; for neither of these is easily attained.

175. But the exactness of mathematics is not to be expected in all cases, but only in those which have no matter. This is why its method is not that of natural philosophy; for perhaps the whole of nature contains matter. Hence we must first investigate what nature is; for in this way it will become evident what the things are with which natural philosophy deals, and whether it belongs to one science or to several to consider the causes and principles of things.

that

[St. Thomas's] COMMENTARY

335. For this reason one must be trained (174).

He exposes the proper method of investigating the truth. Concerning this he does two things. First (335), he shows how a man can discover the proper method of investigating the truth. Second (336), he explains that the method which is absolutely the best should not be demanded in all matters (“But the exactness of mathematics”) .

He says, first, that since different men use different methods in the search for truth, one must be trained in the method which the particular sciences must use to investigate their subject. And since it is not easy for a man to undertake two things at once (indeed, so long as he tries to do both he can succeed in neither), it is absurd for a man to try to acquire a science and at the same time to acquire the method proper to that science. This is why a man should learn logic before any of the other sciences, because logic considers the general method of procedure in all the other sciences. Moreover, the method appropriate to the particular sciences should be considered at the beginning of these sciences.

336. But the exactness of mathematics (175).

He shows that the method which is absolutely the best should not be demanded in all the sciences. He says that the “exactness,” i.e., the careful and certain demonstrations, found in mathematics should not be demanded in the case of all things of which we have science, but only in the case of those things which have no matter; for things that have matter are subject to motion and change, and therefore in their case complete certitude cannot be had. For in the case of these things we do not look for what exists always and of necessity, but only for what exists in the majority of cases.

Now immaterial things are most certain by their very nature because they are unchangeable, although they are not certain to us because our intellectual power is weak, as was stated above (279). The separate substances are things of this kind. But while the things with which mathematics deals are abstracted from matter, they do not surpass our understanding; and therefore in their case most certain reasoning is demanded.

Again, because the whole of nature involves matter, this method of most certain reasoning does not belong to natural philosophy. However, he says “perhaps” because of the celestial bodies, since they do not have matter in the same sense that lower bodies do.

337. Now since this method of most certain reasoning is not the method proper to natural science, therefore in order to know which method is proper to that science we must investigate first what nature is; for in this way we will discover the things which natural philosophy studies. Further, we must investigate “whether it belongs to one science,” i.e., to natural philosophy, or to several sciences, to consider all causes and principles; for in this way we will be able to learn which method of demonstration is proper to natural philosophy. He deals with this method in Book II of the Physics, as is obvious to anyone who examines it carefully.

Heisenberg: "concept of the soul [...] more natural and less forced"

Heisenberg said in his Physics and Philosophy that the probability wave concept in quantum mechanics "was a quantitative version of the concept of 'potentia' in Aristotelian philosophy" (p. 41) and that the "concept of the soul for instance in the philosophy of 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).