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Aquinas On Inner Space
Aquinas On Inner Space
Aquinas On Inner Space
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A Cluster of Problems
1 Some modern authors have made a strong case for the existence of the aether. See,
for instance, V. Samuel and H. Dingle, A Threefold Cord: Philosophy, Science,
Religion (London, 1961), Appendix I, pp. 265-269, where Dingle quotes famous
modern scientists such as Einstein, Dirac, and Whittaker in support of the aether.
According to Dingle, radio and television stations do not go "on the air" but "on
the aether."
351
352
around the conditions necessary for projectile motion. What keeps an arrow in
motion after it has left the bow? According to Plato, the originally moved object
moves the medium in front of itself thus giving it the power to be a mover also.
Ipso facto, whatever is moved is a potential mover. The medium in turn
transmits its motive power to the opposite end of the object. The missile is then
pushed again. This process gradually diminishes in strength thus allowing the
projectile to fall back to earth.5
Aristotle rejected his teacher's view because according to it the mover and
moved were not in act simultaneously. Since there is a time interval between the
motivation of the front medium and the action on the rear of the projectile
Plato's theory fails.6 According to Aristotle's view the medium itself must
somehow be made a mover in its own right. That is to say, the medium's power
to move is something over and above the power to move which it has by virtue
of its actual local motion. The projectile is moved and the medium is also moved
by the projector which is directly exerting its influence on the two by being a
moving mover. Once separated from the projector, though, the missile can
acquire its motion neither from the projector nor from the turbulence in the
medium because both would depend upon the continuous action of the
projector which has now ceased its activity. Since everything moved violently
requires a mover simultaneously in act, the only other possibility that Aristotle
could see was that the medium, once agitated by the projector and missile, must
possess a power to move over and above both its own actual local motion and
the motion of the projectile.7 How then can anything move in a vacuum?
Natural motions, such as each element moving to its proper place in the universe,
might continue, but how could forced motions come about without a moving
cause?
If the moved must be in constant touch with a mover, as soon as the
mover is removed the object will immediately stop. Moreover, it will remain
stationary until acted upon. Also, a projectile's coming to rest (provided it is not
an element in its natural place) is due to the effects of meeting resistance from
other things and of the lessening power of the propelling power of the medium.
In a void, however, none of these effects could take place. Consequently there
would be no reason either for a body's moving or ceasing to move. Without a
medium, a body at rest would remain at rest, just as it would in a medium, until
acted upon and a body once set in motion, if it ever were possible for it to move
in a void at all, would continue to move forever.8
353
only St. Thomas but Descartes and Newton would appear to have copied their
statements directly from Aristotle."
9 See Physics, IV, 8,21 5b1 9-21 6a1 9.
10 See De Caelo, IV, 6, 313b18-23. T/SOCR/W=S/TO£ W/R=V«CW/R. Although
Galileo seems to have interpreted the Aristotelians as thinking in terms of only
falling bodies, Aquinas did not do so. See his Commentary on Aristotle's Physics
(trans. R. J. Blackwell, R. J. Spath, and W. E. Thirlkel [Yale University Press,
1963]), IV, 12, 529, p. 235. Neither was Aristotle thinking only in terms of
terminal velocities. See I. E. Drabkin, "Notes on the Laws of Motion in Aristotle,"
American Journal of Philology, LIX (1938), 78. On the dates of Aquinas's works
used in this paper see V. J. Bourke, Introduction to the Works of St. Thomas
Aquinas (New York, 1948).
354
1 1 Sum ma Theologiae, I, 3, 5.
12 See E. Grant, "Medieval and Seventeenth-Century Conceptions of an Infinite Void
Space Beyond the Cosmos," /sis, LX (1969), 41.
355
13 See the translation of his Commentary already cited: IV, 12, 534, p. 238. Some
think that Aquinas was led to his own view by several predecessors such as
Philoponus, Avempace, and Avicenna. See E. A. Moody, "Avempace and Galileo,"
Journal of the H&ory of Ideas, XII (Apri'l 1951), Part I, 163-193; (June 1951),
Part II, 375-422. Others can find little or no continuity. Cf. S. Sambursky, The
Physical World of Later Antiquity (New York, 1962), pp. 174-175: "One is
tempted to speculate on how the course of the history of ideas would have been
changed had the doctrine of Philoponus been accepted by the Church instead of the
Aristotelian conceptions. Had for instance Thomas Aquinas chosen Philoponus'
ideas and incorporated them in the scientific foundations of Christian philosophy,
the birth pangs of the Copernican and Galilean revolution would perhaps have been
less severe and scientific progress possibly accelerated."
14 See Commentary, IV, 12, 534-538, pp. 238-241. Aquinas does not put to Aristotle
the question about how the same medium which causes projectile motion can also
be responsible for stopping it.
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out of nothing. But since a vacuum independent of God is impossible, God could
not have created the world in time. The world, therefore, must be eternal. So
argued Averroes.
Aquinas answers by saying that a vacuum is not only that in which there is
nothing. It is also a space capable of holding a body, but one in which there is in
fact no material entity. He then continues: "But we hold that there was no place
or space [spat/urn] before the world was."17 Apparently, there can be no
vacuum unless such is created by God as an area devoid of body. Now that the
world has been created there is certainly place in the universe. Is the comment
about space to be read in a parallel fashion? Before the world was made there
was no space. But is it the case that now, after the world has been made, there is
space, say, in the heavens?
When one moves to the end of the Summa Theologiae one finds a
modification of Thomas's approach but no essential change from his later
commentary on the Physics. The Supplement to Part III was taken largely from
Aquinas's commentary (1256) on Book Four of Peter the Lombard's Sentences
and compiled after his death. This would place its contents at least a decade
before the commentary on the Physics. It is interesting, though, that his views
on space and nonbeing did not change; he merely made more clear his view that
talk about "lack of resistance" must be construed as talk about "lack of any
medium."
Will the movements of human bodies after death and resurrection be
instantaneous? Aristotle had said that any movement in a vacuum needs be
instantaneous. Now, the effect of an immaterial soul or glorified body moving
through a material medium would be the same as the effect of an earthly
material body moving through a void. Consequently, one could reason, since the
latter must be instantaneous so must the former.
Aquinas supplies an unusually long answer to this objection. First of all,
one could deny that Aristotle is correct in his proportional way of reasoning
against a vacuum such that bodies could still move with a finite speed in a void.
"For every movement has a certain fixed speed, either fast or slow, through the
mover overcoming the movable, although there be no resistance on the part of
the medium; as evidenced in heavenly bodies, which have nothing to hinder their
movement and yet do not move instantaneously."1 8
In the second place, one could go along with Averroes and try to save
Aristotle's doctrine by reinterpreting it in such a way that, although his basic
approach (VD€W/R) would still hold, things would be arranged so that R could
never go to zero. This could be done by regarding the body to be moved or a
358
The question concerning the existence of voids within the universe was
debated long after Aquinas's death. In more modern times a major source of
discussion has been Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
(1687). The mathematics of this work generally commanded the highest respect.
But it could still be asked: what kind of physical interpretation was to be put
upon certain parts of his work? Did, for instance, his physics demand the real
existence of nonbeing in the world? R. S. Westfall maintains that although
Newton began his intellectual career by not seriously questioning the existence
of some kind of aether filling the universe, he gradually came to abandon it.
"The thrust of my argument on Newton," he states, "holds that he started with
aethereal mechanisms- the commonplace orthodoxy of the day-and that he
ultimately dispensed with them and replaced them by forces."19 No one is quite
sure exactly how or when this happened. Newton's views on the aether are
admittedly tentative and vacillating. It seems clear, though, that at no time did
he seriously- maintain the Cartesian doctrine on the aether. Newton was an
atomist who did not wish to fill every niche in the universe by some subtle
matter. However, his atoms were so highly differentiated in type and so
numerous that the effect of his doctrine, at least before his old age, was
practically the same. Newton's final position on the aether and space appears to
have been that, even though the atoms in our solar system are compacted
together, there are still empty spaces among them and that as one moves farther
away from our sun the atoms thin out more and more so that "it is evident that
the celestial spaces are void of resistance."20 Consequently, there is no medium
or matter filling the heavens.
359
But what did Newton mean by "space," "void," "vacuum," etc.? Was this
the nonbeing of Parmenides and the ancient atomists? Newton himself does not
provide a clear answer in his own words.21 To find out what he meant we have
to go to his philosophical surrogate Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), an Anglican
divine noted for his scientific interests.22 Ever since its publication various
aspects of Newton's Principia had come under attack for one or more of its
supposed philosophical implications. Bishop Berkeley thought that it would lead
to pure materialism, while Leibniz thought that it would lead the world back to
occult qualities. These reactions led Newton, under the advice of Roger Cotes,
the editor of the second edition (1713) of the Principia, to add a General
Scholium to the second edition in order to help clear up certain
misunderstandings about what he really believed. Far from being atheistic his
natural philosophy was the most theistic he could imagine. If anything were
likely to push out God it would be Descartes's infinite extension, or Cartesian
matter. Newton's world, in contrast, left ample room for the influence of God.
In Cotes's preface and in the Scholium itself, Newton's critics, especially the
Continental Cartesians and Leibniz, were severely criticized.
After what seems like a long delay, Leibniz sent back to England in
November of 1715 a brief reply by way of Caroline, Princess of Wales. She in
turn passed on parts of the letter to Clarke, thus setting off a series of letters
running to a total of ten between the two men. Clarke's reply to Leibniz's fifth
letter was sent in October of 1716. Leibniz died in November of the same year.
Leibniz's original letter expressed a concern for what Newtonian science
was doing to English religion. When Newton talked about space as the sensorium
of God was he not materializing God? And when he talked about God
intervening in nature from time to time to see to it that the natural laws
continued to work well was he not degrading God to being an inferior
watchmaker? By the fourth and fifth sets of letters Clarke and Leibniz had
21 Cf. Koyre, op. cit., p. 209: In his Opticks, "Newton does not tell us outright- any
more than he does in the Principia- what these various 'Powers' [by which bodies
act across space] are. Just as in the Principia, he leaves that question open, though,
as we know, he holds them to be non-mechanical, immaterial and even 'spiritual'
energy extraneous to matter."
22 Cf. ibid., p. 301, note 3: "I am, thus, morally certain that Clarke communicated to
Newton both Leibniz's letters and his own replies to them. ... As a matter of fact,
the Princess of Wales informed Leibniz . . . that he was right in his supposition that
these letters were not written without the aflvice of Newton. Strange as it may
seem, the importance of Clarke's papers as representing literally the metaphysical
views of Newton has never been recognized, with the result that their study was
completely neglected by the historians both of Newton and of Leibniz." See also his
Newtonian Studies (Harvard University Press, 1965), Appendix D, pp. 164-169. The
Princess had been a friend to Leibniz in her younger days and was now living in
England as the wife of the future George II.
360
moved into the problem of the void in earnest. Leibniz denied that any such
thing was possible, while Clarke defended its reasonableness. It turned out that
Clarke, because of Leibniz's death, had the las,t word. It is doubtful that it would
have satisfied Leibniz but it could have very well satisfied Aquinas. The problem
is to find out if one can make any sense out of "What is not, is." One way of
looking at this is to ask whether when one is speaking about empty space one is
also speaking about nonbeing. Clarke, in some notes he added to the printed
edition (1717) of his fifth reply of the correspondence, sought to resolve the
issue by making some distinctions:
All the conceptions (I think) that ever have been or can be framed concerning
space, are these which follow. That it is either absolutely nothing, or a mere idea, or
only a relation of one thing to another, or that it is a body, or some other substance,
or else a property of a substance.
That it is not absolutely nothing, is most evident. For of nothing there is no
quantity, no dimensions, no properties. This principle is the first foundation of all
science whatsoever; expressing the only difference between what does, and what does
not, exist. 23
This statement deserves some clarification. Space is not nonbeing because space
has quantified dimensions and properties. First and foremost there is the
property of universal gravitational action, that great all-pervasive power which
binds together the universe according to divine plan. In addition, there are
various other forces highly important to the operation of the world, such as
magnetic pushes and pulls, cohesive forces, and electrical phenomena. Absolute
nonbeing, on the other hand, has no reality at all of any kind. Consequently, the
space of Newtonian physics, which offers no resistance to celestial bodies, is not
equivalent to the nonbeing of Parmenides and the ancient atomists.24
361
thing as force out of entire nothingness." The Nature of the Physical World
(University of Michigan Press, 1958), p. 137. Newton's disciples did in fact say the
same sort of thing.
25 See J. A. McWilliams, op. at., p. 18.
26 Commentary, 111,4, 301, p. 143.
27 See ibid., IV, 9, 497, p. 224; 10, 509, pp. 227-228. It should also be remembered
that for Aquinas to be did not mean to have properties. Properties also are and
consequently to view being in such terms would be quite circular.
28 S.T., 1,70, 3, ad 3.
29 See On Spiritual Creatures, 6, ad 1 2; De Potentia Dei, 3, 1 1 , ad 1 4; 6, 6, ad 1 0.
362
They have a very important function to perform, namely, to guide the activities
taking place in the sublunar area of the universe. They are tools which among
other things act through space to bring new life out of the old, dead, and
decaying creatures of the world. From our modern vantage point such views may
sound archaic and strange.30 However, if one troubles to look beneath the
surface one discovers that they are quite modern. The celestial bodies have a
function, they do something, and in order to do it they must fill the universe
with their influence. In other words, empty space is not really Greek atomist
void. It is not a nonbeing. In it and through it there is something going on.
Conclusion
November 1972
30 Modern scientists, of course, recognize the great influences of the sun and moon
upon the earth. Except for gravity, space deformation due to matter, and one or
two other influences, however, most of the influences of stars and planets have been
relegated to astrology. The part about angels propelling the luminous orbs has been
called worse things.
31 SeeS. T., 1,32,1, ad 2.
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