Aquinas on Matter and Form and the Elements

Joseph Bobik

Description

Joseph Bobik offers a translation of Aquinas’s De Principiis Naturae (circa 1252) and De Mixtione Elementorum (1273) accompanied by a continuous commentary, followed by two essays: “Elements in the Composition of Physical Substances” and “The Elements in Aquinas and the Elements Today.” The Principles of Nature introduces the reader to the basic Aristotelian principles such as matter and form, the four causes so fundamental to Aquinas’s philosophy. On Mixture of the Elements examines the question of how the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) remain within the physical things composed from them.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Religious
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Teoría del Big Bang
• Thomism
• Theology
• Ethics
• Big Bang

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 mars 1998
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268076337
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Aquinas on Matter and Form and the Elements
AQUINAS ON MATTER AND FORM AND THE ELEMENTS
A Translation and Interpretation of the de Principiis Naturae and the De Mixtione Elementorum of St. Thomas Aquinas
by JOSEPH BOBIK
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, IN 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Copyright 1998 University of Notre Dame
Reprinted in 2006
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bobik, Joseph, Aquinas on matter and form and the elements: a translation and interpretation of the De principiis naturae and the De elementorum of St. Thomas Aquinas/by Joseph Bobik.
p. cm.
Includes index of names and index of subjects.
ISBN 0-268-00653-9 (cloth ; alk. paper).
ISBN 0-268-02000-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274 De principiis naturae. 2. Philosophy of nature. 3. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274 De mixtione elementorum. 4. Matter. I. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274 De principiis naturae. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274 De mixtione elementorum. III. Title.
B765.T53D744. 1997
97-26521
ISBN 9780268076337
This book is printed on acid-free paper
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
To Teresa
and the children,
Lucy Joseph Teresa Maria Thomas Aquinas Amy
CONTENTS
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PART ONE DE PRINCIPIIS NATURAE
CHAPTER ONE Generation and corruption
1. Being: potential and actual; substantial and accidental
2. Matter: prime matter and subject
3. Form: substantial and accidental
4. Generation: substantial and accidental
5. Corruption: substantial and accidental
6. Generation requires matter, form and privation
The meaning of nature in the title: De Principiis Naturae
CHAPTER TWO Matter, form and privation
7. Privation is a principle per accidens , but necessary for generation
8. Privation, not negation
9. Privation is a principle of coming to be, but not of being
10. Matter and privation
11. Prime matter, simply prime and relatively prime
12. Prime matter and substantial form are ingenerable and incorruptible
13. The numerical oneness of prime matter
14. Though prime matter exists, it does not exist through itself
CHAPTER THREE Agent and end; principle, cause and element
15. In addition to matter and form, there must be an agent
16. In addition to the agent, there must be an end
17. Four causes, three principles
The meaning of reduced
The point of observing that per accidens causes are reduced to per se causes
18. Principle and cause defined
19. Element defined
Prime matter survives in one way, the elements in another
20. Concluding reflection
CHAPTER FOUR Relations among the four causes
21. An effect can have more than one cause; and a cause, more than one effect
22. An agent can be both cause and effect in relation to an end; so too matter in relation to form
23. The matter and the agent are both prior and posterior to the form and the end
24. Absolute necessity and conditional necessity
The necessity of death
25. Three of the causes - form, end, agent - can coincide with one another; the fourth, i.e., matter, cannot coincide with any of the other three
CHAPTER FIVE Divisions within each of the four causes
26. Prior causes and posterior causes
27. Remote causes and proximate causes: the same as prior causes and posterior causes, respectively
Semper debemus reducere quaestionem ad primam causam
28. Causes per se and causes per accidens
29. Simple causes and composite causes
30. Causes in act and causes in potency
31. Universal causes and singular causes
CHAPTER SIX Sameness and difference in matter and form
32. Things: the same in number, the same in species, the same in genus, and the same only according to an analogy
33. Univocal predication, equivocal predication, and analogical predication
34. One end, or one agent, or one subject
35. Matter and form: the same in number, the same in species, the same in genus, and the same only according to an analogy
PART TWO DE MIXTIONE ELEMENTORUM
1. The question
How do elements remain in the physical things which are made up out of them?
2.-3. A first answer
The elements remain with their substantial forms, but their active and passive qualities have been changed into some sort of mean
4.-6. Arguments of Aquinas against the first answer
7.-9. A second answer
The elements remain with their substantial forms, but these substantial forms themselves have been changed into some sort of mean
10.-14. Arguments of Aquinas against the second answer
15.-18. The answer of Aquinas
The elements remain with their powers and with retrievability, but not with their substantial forms
PART THREE ELEMENTS IN THE COMPOSITION OF PHYSICAL SUBSTANCES
1. If a physical substance is composed out of elements, must it also be composed out of prime matter and substantial form?
2. If a physical substance is composed out of elements as well as out of prime matter and substantial form, are the elements ingredients of its essence ?
3. Is an element in any way an agent cause, in addition to being a special sort of material cause?
4. Is a mixed body, i.e., a physical thing made out of certain elements combined in a certain ratio, the same as a natural organed body, i.e., the appropriate subject of soul?
5. Elements in the definition of a mixed body (The elements as definientia )
6. Ingredients in the definiton of an element (The elements as definienda )
7. The elements and creation
8. Opus creationis, opus distinctionis, et opus ornatus
9. The elements and the heavenly bodies
The nature of the heavens and of the heavenly bodies
The causality of the heavens and of the heavenly bodies
10. The seventh day and beyond, like the first day and beyond: unfolding, developing, evolving out of the matter of the elements, and by their agent causality
11. The elements and the eduction of substantial forms from the potency of matter
PART FOUR THE ELEMENTS IN AQUINAS AND THE ELEMENTS TODAY
1. How quarks remain in protons
2. A quark, like any element, is an agent cause of a special sort, besides being a material cause of a special sort
3. Ingredients in the definitions of quarks and leptons
4. Is there such a thing as a mixing? Are protons mixings of quarks?
5. Particle physics and prime matter
6. Eddington s two tables
7. Searle on micro-properties and macro-properties
8. Nahmanides thirteenth-century theological Big Bang
9. Schroeder on Nahmanides account of the beginning and expansion of the universe
10. What Aquinas might have said about Nahmanides account
Index of Names
Index of Subjects
PREFACE
This book has the aim of providing an intelligible interpretation of the views expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas in his De Principiis Naturae and in his De Mixtione Elementorum . Together, these two brief works offer a remarkably clear, sophisticated, and in many ways convincing, account of the nature of physical things, in terms of a theory which combines composition out of matter and form with composition out of elements.
An interpretation is an attempt to bring out the meaning of a work by entering into it in a sympathetic way, i.e., by trying hard to understand what the author of the work is saying. And this, to me, means at least 1) trying to make as clear as possible the sense of the claims being made by the author, and 2) arguing as convincingly as possible either for them or against them, as each of them may require.
An interpretation is intelligible if it 1) squares with the observed facts, i.e., with what is given in sense observation and in introspection, 2) is free of internal inconsistencies, i.e., preserves the inter-connections among ideas as given in analysis, and 3) is in principle capable of coping with objections, and with other interpretations, thereby illuminating its own positions.
The aim of this book is not a scholarly one. There will be no attempt, therefore, to take into account the countless things which countless people have had to say about Aquinas on matter and form and the elements. Nor will there be any attempt to pursue in footnotes, or in appendices, or elsewhere, the generally uninteresting, and only remotely (if at all) relevant, asides which are too often pursued, and in overwhelming detail, in books of a scholarly sort.
The aim of this book, simply put, is to do some philosophy which is as genuine and as straightforward and as unencumbered as possible, using the words of Aquinas as a point of departure.
The translation of the De Principiis Naturae was made from the critical text of John J. Pauson; 1 comparisons were made with the critical edition of Basil M. Mattingly, 2 and with the text of the Leonine edition. 3 The translation of the De Mixtione Elementorum was made from the text as it appears in Spiazzi s Opuscula Philosophica; 4 this too was compared with the text of the Leonine edition. 5 I have tried throughout, both in translating and in interpreting, to use ordinary and understandable English, and still keep the philosophical message intact.
Because the De Principiis Naturae (DPN) was a very early work of Aquinas (around 1252 or 1253) and the De Mixtione Elementorum (DME) a considerably later one (1273), and because the DME adds to what the DPN says about the elements, one should perhaps read and study the DPN before the DME. And that is why the DPN is first in the arrangement of this book, in PART ONE , followed by the DME, in PART TWO ; although my translation, and interpretation, of the DME was actually done before that of the DPN. My hope is that this will have no undesirable effects on those who read this book as arranged.
PART THREE reflects on what Aquinas has to say about matter and f