Motion and Its Principles (part 2)

Regina Cœli Academy
Natural Philosophy – Physics
Lecturer: Mr. Alan Aversa

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O Creator ineffable, who of the riches of Thy wisdom didst
appoint three hierarchies of Angels and didst set them in
wondrous order over the highest heavens, and who didst
apportion the elements of the world most wisely: do Thou,
who art in truth the fountain of light and wisdom, deign to
shed upon the darkness of my understanding the rays of
Thine infinite brightness, and remove far from me the twofold
darkness in which I was born, namely, sin and ignorance. Do
Thou, who givest speech to the tongues of little children,
instruct my tongue and pour into my lips the grace of Thy
benediction. Give me keenness of apprehension, capacity for
remembering, method and ease in learning, insight in
interpretation, and copious eloquence in speech. Instruct my
beginning, direct my progress, and set Thy seal upon the
finished work, Thou, who art true God and true Man, who
livest and reignest world without end. Amen.
(St. Thomas Aquinas Oratio ante studium)
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Substance is a Nature Existing.
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4 kinds of being that manifest motion:
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Substance
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Place
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e.g, chemical changes
Locomotion

Quantity
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Augmentation or diminution
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Quality
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e.g, when a plant grows larger or smaller

e.g, the sonic properties of liquid versus solid water
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Substance is a Nature Existing.
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6 species of motion (review):
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Generation

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Destruction (corruption)

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Local movement

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Augmentation

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Diminution

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Alteration

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Substantial Changes

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Substance is a Nature Existing.
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What is substance?
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Not considered qua being as in metaphysics
Philosophical physics treats substance as that in
which accidents adhere.
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E.g., the element iron – with its accidents of density,
color, electrical conductivity, specific heat, magnetic
properties, etc. – is a substance.

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Substance is what a being is.

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An accident is what a substance has.
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Accidents are called ens entis.
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Substance is a Nature Existing.
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What is substance’s relation to nature?
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Is substance nature?

Distinction:
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Nature = “second substance”
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Substance proper = “first substance”
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“a universal community of a given kind”
“individually existent thing within the kind”

We understand substances by their accidents.

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Substance is a Nature Existing.
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Do substantial changes exist?
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Experience says: “Yes!”
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E.g., hydrogen and oxygen gases combine to form a liquid
that is neither hydrogen nor oxygen but water.

Substantial versus accidental changes. Identify:
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Apple growing on a tree, changing from green to red

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Apple eaten and digested by a man

Empiriological physics, because it deals only with
quantity and locomotion, does not treat
substantial change.

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Substantial Changes Involve
Prime Matter.
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Form and matter of substantial changes:
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Substantial form

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Prime matter
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Differs from “second matter” in that it is pure potency

Why do we need prime matter?
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∵ something cannot come from nothing

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Change must have a subject.

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Substantial change is not annihilation followed by
creation.
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Substantial Changes Involve
Prime Matter.
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Aristotle’s definition of prime matter:
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Positively: “the primary substratum of each thing from
which it comes to be without qualification, and which
persists in the result.”
Negatively: “that which in itself is neither a particular
thing nor of a certain quantity nor assigned to any
other of the categories by which being is determined.”

Prime matter is not nothing; it is pure potency.
It “is the fundamental changeless element in
change.”

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Substantial Changes Involve
Substantial Form.
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Form is prime matter’s first act.

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Erroneous explanations of novelty in the world:
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St. Augustine thought that forms were pre-contained
in matter in a “seminal existence” (rationes
seminales).
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This view argues against a substantial unity of composite
being.
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Scientism
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Viz., substance is not an aggregate.

Hearkens to Descartes’s mechanism
Substantial change is just a rearrangement of particles.
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Substantial Changes Involve
Substantial Form.
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Eduction: Form of new substance educed from
prime matter
Old form returns to the potency of prime matter.
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Prime matter (PM) + form (F) 1 → PM → PM + F2

Form and matter immediately united
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Suarez thought the union of matter and form
occurred through a medium.
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PM + medium (M+F) + F1 → PM + medium (M+F) → PM
+ medium (M+F) + F2
This denies intrinsic unity of substances.
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Substantial Changes Involve
Substantial Form.
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Problem of the plurality of forms
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Debated by Abelard and William of Champeaux in
12th century until Ockham
St. Thomas opposed it.
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His contemporaries Bonaventure, Alexander of Hales,
and St. Albert the Great supported it.

But how would unity of substances be
achieved?
Forms are not generated or corrupted.

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Substantial Changes Involve
Substantial Form.
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Substantial motion is, strictly speaking, not
motion. It is a change (mutatio).
There is no gradation between being and nonbeing.
Substantial form is in every part and the whole
of a substance.
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E.g., the substantial form of a human
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The intellectual soul

E.g., the substantial form of an iron atom
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Substantial Changes Prove MatterForm Dualism
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The dialectical proofs:
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“Material substances reflect unity and multiplicity.”
“Material substances display both passivity and activity,
and there must be a corresponding principle for each.”
“Time and space are often differentiated.”
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Time reflects dynamism (form). Space is like matter.

“There is a determination (form) and an
indetermination (matter) in everything.”
“There is a principle of limit (matter) and of
limitlessness (form) in corporeal reality.”
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Atomism and Mechanism are
Inertialisms
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Modern attempts to explain change without
matter/form dualism:
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Mechanism (atomism)
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Dynamism
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Dates back to pre-Socratics like Anaxagoras,
Anaxamander, Empedocles, Democritus, and Epicurus
“[A] thing is viewed as a machine without intrinsic unity
and with all its principles, art-like, outside of it.”
Greek dyn- = force or energy.
Everything comprised of energy or forces
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Atomism and Mechanism are
Inertialisms
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Mechanism in Cartesian philosophy:
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Body = extension.

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Change = local movement.

Advances in empiriological chemistry and
physics seem to support atomism:
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e.g, Max Planck’s early 20th century discovery that
energy is quantized (discrete)
Splitting the atom

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Atomism and Mechanism are
Inertialisms
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Hylosystemism = “mechanism dressed in
scholastic terminology”
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“Hylosystemists want philosophy to pitch its camp
on empiriological terrain”.
Hylosystemists deny that:
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Philosophy of nature is concerned primarily with motion,
not with the constitution of bodies.
Philosophy of nature studies change.

Hylosystemists’ dogma: matter is art, not nature

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Dynamism Reduces Matter to the
Immaterial
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Heraclitus a great ancient dynamist.

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Leibnitz’s monadology
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Monads = inextended, quasi-alive substances

Fr. Boscovich, S.J., “held that matter is
composed of indivisible points”.

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Einstein held matter is energy (E=mc2).

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Quantum mechanics
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Energy in discrete quanta (“bits”) comprises
everything.
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Mechanism and Dynamism are
Inadequate
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Both mechanism and dynamism deny
substantial changes.
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Mechanism cannot explain novelty.
– It explains “the persistency factor in
change”.
Dynamism cannot explain “the persistency
factor”
– It does explain novelty.
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References
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V. E. Smith’s Philosophical Physics
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Please finish reading ch. 2 (Motion and Its
Principles).
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We will send out a scanned PDF of this required reading.

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Aristotle, Physics, Bks. I, II.

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Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bks VII, VIII.

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