Section Three, Aquinas

0001 Armand Maurer publishes a short paper tracing a path, through time, of the idea of secondary and primary causes.  I follow the timeline, which starts in section three.

Around two decades after the death of the seventh Abbasid caliph, al-Ma’mun, in 6633 U0’, someone puts pen to paper.  Centuries later, when the Book of Causes is translated into Latin, some medieval scholastics assume that this “someone” is Aristotle.  Thomas Aquinas writes a commentary on the work.

0003 The irony?

Al Ma’mun’s story as caliph calls to mind our world, in the 7800s.

First, al Ma’mun tries to directly reconcile Sunni and Shi’a branches of Islam.  This approach dramatically fails within his lifetime.

Second, during his remaining 15 years, he tries an indirect reconciliation by promoting Islamic thinkers familiar with the rationalist methods of ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers.  He encourages translations from Greek into Arabic.  He promotes an academy called, “The House of Wisdom”, in Baghdad.  Again, this approach fails.  Many of his subjects refuse to believe that the Qur’an is a “created” work.

Thus, the Book of Causes may address a question relevant to our time.

Could the the Qur’an be ascribed to secondary causation, in concert with a primary cause, God’s Will and Presence?

0004 Here is how this might look as a category-based nested form.  See required reading.

Note that God’s Presence₁ is the potential underlying the normal context of God’s Will₃.

0005 Okay, on to Thomas Aquinas (7025-7074 U0’).

In 7068, he notices a similarity between The Book of Causes and a newly translated work, The Elements of Theology, by Neoplatonist Proclus (6210-6285 U0’).  This suggests that the idea of primary and secondary causation is much older than the Arabic translation of The Book of Causes.

0006 What does Aquinas say about The Book of Causes?

He focuses on two propositions (A and B).

0007 First (A), primary cause has greater impact than secondary cause.

Thomas notes (more or less), “This is true for God as a primary cause.  God causes being to exist.”

The Latin term, ‘esse’, refers to being as existent, in contrast to “ens”, being as being.

God may bring things into being (esse) from nothing, that is, without a pre-existing ens.

Otherwise, God creates ens, being as being, then ens enters form and becomes esse, being as existent.

The pattern of ens preceding esse appears in the Genesis Creation Story.  On several days, God says, “Let there be (ens)…” and then, the earth brings forth, (esse).

In this, the earth has the power to bring forth.

These powers go with secondary causation.

0008 Second (B), we see causes in the nature of things.

Things have their own powers.  These are not the powers of the Divine.  Rather, these are particular powers, characteristic of the substance of each creature.  These powers specify one or another outcome. They are called, “secondary causes”.

0009 These two propositions, A and B, associate to a nested form in the following manner.

0010 The actuality is dyadic.  This is typical in the category of secondness.  Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.  In the above notation, one real element [is contiguous with] another real element.  The contiguity is placed in brackets.  The contiguity bears the marks of causality.

There is a certain circularity to this actuality.  The earth holds creatures, even though it brings creatures forth as existent beings.  Existent beings that the earth brings forth participate in the earth’s powers, once they are present.  So, as the earth brings forth, the earth appears to increase in its powers.  Each additional type of creature adds to the capacities of the earth.  When a type of creature disappears, the earth loses the power to make that specific creature.

Does that sound sufficiently circular?

0011 Compare this circularity to the following example of secondary causation.

Consider a pen.

A pen cannot write a note to a my friend.

Instead, the pen is an instrument for me, the writer.

So, if I am going to be a writer, I better acquire a pen.

0012 The writer and the note constitute a dyad.  The writer is a real element.  The letter is a real element.  The pen is the instrument that brings the two real elements together.  Is it not curious that the word, “pen”, is also a verb?

Here is a picture of this actuality.

0013 The pen is an instrument.  The actuality₂ has been alchemically isolated from its nested form.  So, no one can determine the aims and designs of the note.

Here I may ask, “Does the instrumentality of the pen account for the realness of the writer and the note?”

Of course, a scientist may reply, “If I observe the writer and all the notes that the writer produces, then I can generate a mechanical model accounting the use of a pen, and publish the results in the Empirical Journal of Pens.” 

In short, the scientist focuses on actuality₂.

0014 However, the instrumental causality of the pen occurs within the actuality₂ itself. It offers no clue to the question that everyone asks.

Why is the writer penning a letter?

Material, final and formal cuases address this question.  Once answers come to light, the actuality₂ is no longer alone.  It participates in a category-based nested form.

0015 Here is a picture of the way that Aristotle’s four causes, starting from within actuality₂, intimate normal context₃ and potential₁.

0016 What does this imply (C and D)?

0017 Instrumental causes are secondary causes (C), without the primary cause.

Consequently, I anticipate that instrumental causes may be confounded with secondary causes.  

In the above example, the scientist does this.  The scientist focuses on the instrumental and material causality of the pento the exclusion of final and formal causes for the writer and note.

0018 Aristotle’s remaining four causes (D) construct a nested form around a dyad in actuality.

Material causes link actuality₂ to the possibility of ‘something’₁.

Final causes connects the actuality₂ to both normal context₃ and potential₁.

In this example, the writer [pens] a letter₂ occurs in a particular normal context₃, say, remembering an old friend₃.  Plus, there is an incentive to say ‘something’₁, recalling a fond memory.

Formal causes draw the writer to compose the note₂ in a certain style, suitable for conveying a particular mood.

0019 Here is how that looks.

0020 Overall, Aristotle’s four causes are neither secondary or primary causes.  Rather, they draw a creaturely power (the power of the pen) into its corresponding category-based nested form.  This corresponds to a transition from instrumental to secondary cause₂, as well as a transition from the remaining causes to elements that point to a primary cause_3,1.

0021 Are these surprising claims?

Consider a thing₂ or event₂.

How do Aristotle’s four causes come into play?

When we explore its instrumental causes, actuality may become a dyad in secondness.  Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.

When we look at its₂ material causality, potential₁ comes into consciousness.

When we consider final attributes.  Potential₁ is clarified.  Normal context₃ comes to consciousness.

When we think about formal requirements and design, normal context₃ is clarified.

Secondary causality associates to actuality₂ in a category-based nested form.

Primary causality associates to normal context₃ and potential₁ in a category-based nested form.

0022 At the time of Thomas Aquinas, several philosophical schools argue that secondary causes detract from the idea that all causation rests in God.  So, actuality₂ is just a residue of the divine.

Aquinas argues against this proposition, saying that this point of view reduces the dignity of the creature and by extension, God’s creation.

If the Ash’arite school is correct, then the creature cannot be responsible for its own actions.  Only God is responsible.

If creatures are not responsible, then why do they take care of themselves so well?

If the claims of Bonaventure and his followers are correct, and secondary causes are not sufficient, then how do creatures get along in the world?

Indeed, they get along so well that the seem designed to do what they do.

0023 Aquinas never envisions that the word, “adaptation”, could replace the word, “design”.  Why?  Aquinas lives in the enternal now.  Species of plant and animal are always the same.  Each bears according to its kind.

0024 Franscisco Suarez (7348-7417 U0’) lives at the time of Galileo.  He continues the scholastic tradition.  He comments on Aquinas, just as previously, Aquinas comments on the Book of Causes.  The doctrine of secondary causes is well established, not as I portray it here, using category-based nested forms, but as a foil to primary causation and a mirror to instrumental causes.

Suarez writes the first systematic treatise on metaphysics in the Western world.  His book is translated and read across Europe.

0025 He makes four points about primary and secondary causes (C-F).

The first created thing is being (C).  God is the primary cause of being (A).

Secondary causes are true causes (D).  They are not symptoms of primary causation (B).  Creatures have powers that make events happen.

Secondary causes cannot be divorced from primary causality (E).  This point distinguishes secondary from instrumental causality.

The claim that creatures exhibit true active powers gives a greater dignity to creatures and their Creator, than claims that secondary powers are symptoms of primary causation (F).

0026 Darwin grasps this last point (F) as a metaphysical justification for his theory of evolution through natural selection.

Ramifications

0065 Armand Maurer offers an essay that traces the notion of secondary causes from Darwin, back through Suarez and Aquinas, all the way to the Neoplatonic Book of Causes.  He aims to show that God’s greatness is not diminished by NeoDarwinian theory.

Indeed, the working comparison shows that the normal contexts of Divine Will₃, natural selection_3b and body development_3b cannot exclude one another.

0066 This is not the view of the modern Zeitgeist, which declares that, in order for inquiry to be scientific, inquiry must exclude metaphysics.

0067 Darwin does not rise above the modern Zeitgeist.  Nor can a reader expect him to.  After all, the Zeitgeist fills the air that we breathe.  The Zeitgeist stands between heaven and earth.  There is no avoiding it.

At first, Darwin thinks that the concept of secondary causes provides a path to the acceptance of his theory.  Unfortunately, this path is already blocked by the modern Zeitgeist.  Later in life, Darwin declares himself agnostic.

0068 Now, I may ask, “What happens next?”

What happens in Western Civilization between 7660 and 7820 U0’?

If Darwin is on target about secondary causation, and if the modern Zeitgeist denies the possibility, then what happens when the esse of the thing [has power to cause] results₂ is no longer contextualized by the primary cause? 

What if the Divine Will₃ and the Divine Presence₁ are systematically ignored, even ridiculed?

0069 Nature abhors a vacuum.

The positivist intellect rules out metaphysics in scientific inquiry, setting up a scenario where natural selection_3b and body development_3b exclude the Divine Will₃.  Christians do not understand how to counter, because any attempt to respond meets the charge that the Christian is not scientific.

This leaves an opening for a new metaphysic, one that declares itself to be “not religious”.

0070 Does “not religious” mean the same as scientific?

Many moderns think so.

Indeed, how can a modernist distinguish between science and… er… a religious movement that says that it is “not religious”?

(See comments on Pennock’s eEssay on the distinction of science and religion, appearing at the end of June 2020)

Social Darwinism of the late 76^th and early 77^th century serve as an example.  According to their dogma, humans inherit a social phenotype and are bound to certain civilizational adaptations.

Karl Marx, for example, envisions six stages, primitive barbaric communist, the slave, the feudal, the capitalist, the socialist and the communist.  Social phenotypes differ for each one.  For example, for feudalism, the two social phenotypes are the landowner and the serf.

According to Marxist myth, civilization progresses from one stage to another.

Each stage requires a different type of leader.

The esse of a leader includes the power to achieve adaptive organizational objectives.

0071 This calls to mind the master-work, How To Define the Word, “Religion”.

What is the potential_1aC underlying the actuality of an organizational objective_2aC?

Righteousness_1aC.

For Social Darwinism, that righteousness_1aC is “not religious”.

0072 Marxism becomes a brand of Social Darwinism.

Here is a general picture for the modern Zeitgeist.

0073 A vacuum is apparent.

Both modern intellectuals and the leader offer to fill in the blanks.

0074 Notably, the genetic basis of inheritance is not well understood during the century after Darwin.  Mendel starts his experiments in 7653 U0’.  James Watson and Francis Crick determine that the structure of DNA is a double helical polymer in 7753.

Consequently, what I call “body development_3b”, “the phenotype_2b” and “genotype_1b” are more mystically configured by Social Darwinists.  They are conceived as social development_3b, cultural phenotype_2b and identity_1b. These terms appeal to folk psychology.

On top of this, even in very late Modernism, both intellectuals and leaders insist that human evolution is solely due to material and instrumental causes.

No one thinks that immaterial causes are relevant.  This error is refuted in the master-work, The Human Niche.

Also, no one imagines a discontinuity between our current Lebenswelt and the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  This topic is addressed in the master-work, An Archaeology of the Fall.

0072 What is primary causation in modern movements that proclaim themselves to be “not religious”?

Different modern schools fill in the blanks in their own ways.  Mercantilism, Fascism, Communism and Big Government (il)Liberalism each has its day.  They each proclaim a different primary cause.

Maritain sees this.  He lives to a ripe old age.  He writes his essay on evolution, close to the end.  He may not know how to put his vision into a precise, scientifically plausible, argument.  He does know that the issue must be addressed, not by positivist intellects, but by rational intellects.  Secondary causation must no longer be usurped by human agency.  The slots for primary causation cannot remain empty.

0073 NeoDarwinism must be seen as an expression of secondary causation.

It is not the purpose of Maurer’s essay to show how.

The purpose is to show what must be done.

0074 The Book of Causes is translated into Arabic, by a Neoplatonic philosopher, living near Baghdad, shortly after al Ma’mun fails once and fails again, to reconcile Muslims, first, with one another, and second, with the rational intellect.  Who would imagine that, a thousand years later, Charles Darwin would pick one of its key ideas, secondary causation, in order to justify his own scientific proposal?

The popularization of the idea comes through Aquinas, then Suarez. 

The realization of the necessity of the idea comes through Maritain, and here, Maurer.

In this, the beauty of this essay excels.