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Aristotle's Revenge Edward Feser Aristotle’s Revenge The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science editiones scholasticae Edward Feser Aristotle’s Revenge The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science Bibliographic information published by Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de ¤2019 editiones scholasticae 53819 Neunkirchen-Seelscheid - GERMANY www.editiones-scholasticae.de ISBN 978-3-86838-592-2 2019 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany by CPI buchbücher.de GmbH Contents 0. Preface 1 1. Two philosophies of nature 1.1 What is the philosophy of nature? 3 1.2 Aristotelian philosophy of nature in outline 12 1.2.1 Actuality and potentiality 13 1.2.2 Hylemorphism 20 1.2.3 Limitation and change 27 1.2.4 Efficient and final causality 32 1.2.5 Living substances 39 1.3 The mechanical world picture 42 1.3.1 Key elements of the mechanical philosophy 43 1.3.2 Main arguments for the mechanical philosophy 52 2. The scientist and scientific method 2.1 The arch of knowledge and its “empiriometric” core 65 2.2. The intelligibility of nature 75 2.3 Subjects of experience 85 2.4 Being in the world 95 2.4.1 Embodied cognition 97 2.4.2 Embodied perception 106 2.4.3 The scientist as social animal 114 2.5 Intentionality 116 2.6 Connections to the world 124 2.7 Aristotelianism begins at home 132 3. Science and Reality 3.1 Verificationism and falsificationism 139 3.2 Epistemic structural realism 151 3.2.1 Scientific realism 151 3.2.2 Structure 158 3.2.3 Epistemic not ontic 171 3.3 How the laws of nature lie (or at least engage in mental reservation) 177 3.4 The hollow universe 191 4. Space, Time, and Motion 4.1 Space 195 4.1.1 Does physics capture all there is to space? 195 4.1.2 Abstract not absolute 198 4.1.3 The continuum 204 4.2 Motion 208 4.2.1 How many kinds of motion are there? 208 4.2.2 Absolute and relative motion 212 4.2.3 Inertia 216 4.2.3.1 Aristotle versus Newton? 216 4.2.3.2 Why the conflict is illusory 216 4.2.3.3 Is inertia real? 225 4.2.3.4 Change and inertia 229 4.3 Time 233 4.3.1 What is time? 233 4.3.2 The ineliminability of tense 239 4.3.2.1 Time and language 239 4.3.2.2 Time and experience 243 4.3.3 Aristotle versus Einstein? 256 4.3.3.1 Making a metaphysics of method 256 4.3.3.2 Relativity and the A-theory 264 4.3.4 Against the spatialization of time 274 4.3.5 The metaphysical impossibility of time travel 282 4.3.6 In defense of presentism 296 4.3.7 Physics and the funhouse mirror of nature 303 5. The philosophy of matter 5.1 Does physics capture all there is to matter? 307 5.2 Aristotle and quantum mechanics 310 5.2.1 Quantum hylemorphism 312 5.2.2 Quantum mechanics and causality 324 5.3 Chemistry and reductionism 330 5.4 Primary and secondary qualities 340 5.5 Is computation intrinsic to physics? 351 5.5.1 The computational paradigm 352 5.5.2 Searle’s critique 359 5.5.3 Aristotle and computationalism 366 6. Animate nature 6.1 Against biological reductionism 375 6.1.1 What is life? 375 6.1.2 Genetic reductionism 384 6.1.3 Function and teleology 387 6.1.4 The hierarchy of life forms 391 6.2 Aristotle and evolution 400 6.2.1 Species essentialism 400 6.2.2 Natural selection is teleological 406 6.2.3 Transformism 420 6.2.4 Problems with some versions of “Intelligent Design” theory 432 6.3 Against neurobabble 442 Bibliography 457 Index 499 1 0. Preface The central argument of this book is that Aristotelian metaphysics is not only compatible with modern science, but is implicitly presupposed by modern science. Many readers will be relieved to hear some immediate clarifications and qualifications. First, I am not talking about Aristotle’s ideas in physics, as that discipline is understood today. For example, I am not going to be defending the claim that the sublunary and superlunary realms are governed by different laws, or the doctrine of natural place. I am talking about the philosophical ideas that can be disentangled from this outdated scientific framework, such as the theory of actuality and potentiality and the doctrine of the four causes. These are, again, meta- physical ideas rather than scientific ones. Or to be more precise, they are ideas in the philosophy of nature, which I regard as a sub-discipline within metaphysics, for reasons I will explain in chapter 1. Second, I am not arguing that working scientists in general ex- plicitly employ or ought to employ these philosophical ideas in their eve- ryday research. I am arguing that the practice of science, and the results of science at least in their broad outlines, implicitly presuppose the truth of these ideas, even if for most practical purposes the scientist can in his ordinary work bracket them off. I am primarily addressing the question of how to interpret the practice and results of science, not the question of how to carry out that practice or generate those results. Third, even then my remarks about those results will be very general. To be sure, I will have a lot to say about why relativity theory, quantum mechanics, chemistry, evolution, and neuroscience in no way undermine the central ideas of Aristotelian philosophy of nature, and even presuppose those ideas in a very general way. But there are in each case a number of different ways the Aristotelian might work out the de- tails, and I make no pretense of having done more than scratch the sur- face here. An Aristotelian philosophy of physics, an Aristotelian philoso- phy of chemistry, an Aristotelian philosophy of biology, and an Aristote- lian philosophy of neuroscience would each require a book of its own ad- equately to work out. If the relatively cursory treatments I provide en- courage others to carry out these jobs more thoroughly, I will not be dis- pleased. 2 This work is a sequel to my book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contem- porary Introduction, and builds on the main ideas and arguments developed and defended there. To be sure, this new book can be read independently of the older one, since I summarize in chapter 1 the most crucial points from the earlier book. But the skeptical reader who suspects that I have in the present work begged some question or insufficiently defended some background assumption is advised to keep in mind that he will find the full-dress defense in the earlier book. I borrow the title Aristotle’s Revenge from an article by the late James Ross (1990), from whose work I have learned so much. One of Ross’s key insights concerns the ways that contemporary analytic philosophers have rediscovered and vindicated Aristotelian ideas and arguments, al- beit often without realizing it. Scholastic Metaphysics developed that theme at length, and this new book continues in that vein. My subtitle is an homage to E. A. Burtt’s classic book The Metaphysical Foundations of Mod- ern Physical Science. Burtt’s book is essential reading, but it raises more questions than it answers. The point of my book is to answer them. This is the fruit of many years of work, and as always, I owe my wife and children an enormous debt of gratitude for patiently bearing with my absence through the hours I spend chained to the desk in my study. So, I give my love and thanks to Rachel, Benedict, Gemma, Kilian, Helena, John, and Gwendolyn. I also thank my publisher Rafael Hüntel- mann for the superhuman patience he showed in awaiting delivery of the book, which came long after the original deadline. In the years during which I worked on this book, I lost my sister Kelly Eells to pancreatic cancer, and then my father Edward A. Feser to Alzheimer’s disease. I dedicate this book to their memory, and to my mother Linda Feser, whose example of self-sacrifice and dignity in the face of great suffering has been heroic and inspirational. Mom, Dad, and Kelly, I love you. 3 1. Two philosophies of nature 1.1 What is the philosophy of nature? The nature of the philosophy of nature is best understood by way of contrast with natural science on the one hand and metaphysics on the other, between which the philosophy of nature stands as a middle ground field of study. The nature of natural science is itself a topic about which I will have much to say in this book, but for present purposes we can note that the natural sciences are concerned with the study of the actually existing empirical world of material objects and processes. For example, biology investigates actually existing living things – the structure and function of their various organs, the taxa into which they fall, their origins, etc.
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