Aristotle’s Physics

The word physics comes from the Greek word for nature: phusis. As Aristotle himself uses it, the Greek term translated as physics in this context refers to natural science as a whole, including cosmology, biology, chemistry and meteorology, as well as the sort of investigation of the fundamental elements of things, and the laws that govern their behavior, for which we use the term today. The work we call “Aristotle’s Physics” was not published as a book in his own day, and it was not intended for publication as it stands. Instead, like his Metaphysics, it is a compilation—probably by Aristotle himself—of a number of separate writings: they may have been research papers and/or the basis for lectures (the ancient title for the Physics is Lectures on Natural Science, but there is no evidence that this title goes back to Aristotle). Nonetheless, the writings which make up the Physics exhibit a clear thematic unity. Aristotle explains “nature” as “an internal principle of change and rest”: change is thus central to the idea of nature as he understands it. Linked by the notions of nature and change, these writings are all concerned with foundational issues in natural science as Aristotle conceives of it. It is clear from other works that Aristotle took natural science as a whole to be a systematic body of knowledge which should be presented and studied in a systematic order (see Meteorologica I.1 338a20-26 and 333a5-9); in this order, the material in Physics comes first. Aristotle’s other works on natural science, such as De Caelo (On the Heavens), De Generatione et Corruptione (On Coming to Be and Ceasing to Be), De Anima (On the Soul), and De Partibus Animalium (On the Parts of Animals) constantly make reference, explicitly or implicitly, to notions developed and argued for in the Physics—most especially to matter and form; the four types of cause, chance, teleology, and hypothetical necessity; and the nature of change and agency. Matter and form, and the four causes, also play a key role in Aristotle’s metaphysics: see especially the so-called central books (Books Ζ, Η, and Θ), and Book Λ, chapters 1–5. The Physics is divided into eight Books (perhaps corresponding to the length of a scroll of the papyrus on which Aristotle’s works would have been written); in the Renaissance each Book was divided into chapters by the publishers of printed versions, and these are still used for ease of reference.

Plato’s Teleology

This chapter analyses the basic features of Plato’s teleology. His dialogue Phaedo presents certain requirements for a proper causal account which, it is claimed, only the good can satisfy. It is particularly the demand for holism that singles out the good as the only proper cause. It is then argued that the cosmology of the Timaeus is consistent with the Phaedo’s requirements. While the Timaeus introduces “Necessity” as an additional cause, this can also be understood as a cause that contributes to good ends and to that extent as part of an overall teleological account. Hereby a notion of necessity comparable to Aristotle’s hypothetical necessity emerges, which the Timaeus’s craft model of the creation helps articulate. The chapter ends with a partial comparison of Plato’s with Aristotle’s natural teleology.

The Symbiosis of Philosophy and Theology in Blondel’s Supernatural Hypothesis

Maurice Blondel’s philosophy makes strong claims about the theological enterprise. Namely, philosophy and theology achieve their fulfillment only in mutual dependence and both court superstition to the extent that they attempt self-sufficiency. This symbiotic relationship drives Blondel’s seminal work Action, which not only deduces a hypothetical necessity for the supernatural from a realist phenomenology but also establishes strictly philosophical exigencies with theological import: a true revelation in sensory signs, a historical Savior as Mediator, and a sacramental practice, a robust response to the Enlightenment critique of the Christian religion.

Hobbes’s De Corpore on Modalities and Its Contemporary Critiques

Hobbes considered as unambiguous and unproblematic his demonstration in De Corpore that every effect past, present or future is necessary, since it always requires a sufficient cause that cannot be sufficient without being necessary, so that nothing is possible which will not be actual at some time. Now, this approach to necessity and possibility was received by his contemporary readers as missing its aim. Two immediate criticisms of De Corpore by Moranus and Ward exhibit from this viewpoint an interesting difference as to their common argument that only hypothetical necessity can result from Hobbes’s premises. My essay relates this argumentative difference to the absence (Moranus) or presence (Ward) in the background of the free-will dispute between Hobbes and Bramhall. From there, I examine also different interpretations of the ‘hypothetical necessity-argument’ in the indirect critical reception of De Corpore, when the target is Hobbes’s necessitarianism in the controversy with Bramhall, based on significant material from his De Corpore project. Remarkably, although Leibniz agrees with Bramhall that Hobbes only proves a hypothetical necessity, Leibniz’s understanding of hypothetical necessity is not that of Bramhall. Another striking difference is displayed in the use of the ‘hypothetical necessity-argument’ by More, which as it were blurs the connection of the free-will issue with Hobbes’s general doctrine of causality.

The Demand for Systematicity and the Authority of Theoretical Reason in Kant

Kant’s notoriously unclear attempt to defend the regulative principle of systematic unity as the supreme principle of theoretical reason in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic has left its status a source of controversy. According to the dominant interpretation, the principle ought to be understood as a methodologically necessary device for extending our understanding of nature. I argue that this reading is flawed. While it may correctly affirm that the principle is normative in character, it wrongly implies that it binds with mere hypothetical necessity. I offer novel grounds for thinking that if reason’s principle is normative, then it binds agents categorically instead.

ALEXANDER ON PHYSICS 2.9

In this paper, Bob Sharples considers a report regarding Alexander in Simplicius’Physics commentary, which touches on the problem of hypothetical necessity and how it relates to unqualified necessity. Simplicius seems to think that for Alexander, necessity imposed by matter is not purposive. This is why bricks do not necessarily give rise to a brick house. He here exploits the genuinely Aristotelian idea that form and end account for the matter, rather than vice versa; yet Alexander will have been motivated also by his opposition to the Stoics.

Eloquent Silence: The Doctrine of God in the Synopsis of Purer Theology

This article sketches the theological profile of the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae (1625) by focusing on its exposition of the doctrine of God. Earlier disputations by Leiden theologians Franciscus Junius (1545–1602) and Franciscus Gomarus (1563–1641) are discussed as a background for the theology of Antonius Thysius (1565–1640), the author of the disputation in the Synopsis on God’s nature and attributes. For a further specification of the doctrinal position presented in the Synopsis, it is contrasted with the more innovative accounts proposed by Jacob Arminius (1559–1609) in his disputation “De natura Dei” (1603) and by Conrad Vorstius (1569–1622) in his Tractatus theologicus de Deo (1606). This analysis yields the conclusion that both Arminius and Vorstius advocated a structural differentiation between God’s inner essence and his outward operations, which leaves room for human freedom and independence. While the Synopsis does not explicitly discuss their views, in its own formulations itmaintains the common Reformed orthodox notion of divine simplicity, and keeps the balance between—on the one hand—the (hypothetical) necessity of God’s foreknowledge and decree, and—on the other hand—the contingency and freedom in the created world.