Altabin
Posts: 308
Joined: Sep. 2006
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| Quote (Hermagoras @ Nov. 06 2007,18:35) | | Quote (Altabin @ Nov. 06 2007,11:25) | But there was this thing called the "scientific revolution," one consequence of which was that the notions of "nature" and the "natural" used by Aristotle and his followers were rendered obsolete - in particular, their assertion that natural and artificial action were of utterly different kinds.
Our merry band at UD seems to have missed that bit. |
Missed it? They want to turn back the clock!
| Quote | What to do, then? Return to Aristotle? Certainly he should be read; his “Politics,” for example, is the best book on the subject ever written. But those who are contemplating a revival should consider the fundamental problem of teleology. Kant was not capable of solving the teleology riddle, but this riddle must be solved in some way order to reintroduce Aristotle and the synthetic method back into the public square.
Anyone feeling up to the challenge? |
link
So, who in the room thinks he's smarter than Kant?
(DaveScot, kairosfocus, Dembski, JoeG raise hands.) |
Gahhhh! This kind of thing makes me crazy:
| Quote | | Aristotle (and Thomas) quite literally conceived of nature as the product of the divine intellect as it imposes its forms of value on matter. This notion of a ratio of intellect and matter enables the philosopher to write a book called “Ethics” in which he claims to have discerned the good as a middle term. |
The Ethics thing is a complete non-sequitur. But does Aristotle really think of "nature as the product of the divine intellect as it imposes its forms of value on matter"? Not even a little. Aristotle spanked Plato for that very notion.
As even my most hapless undergraduate knows, Aristotle's source of change, and of motion towards an end is internal to each natural thing. Yes, there is a god in Aristotle's system. But that god, eternally turned in upon itself in contemplation, is unaware that the universe exists.
Aristotle's teleology is a whole lot more subtle than Plato's, or (to say the least) that of the IDers. On the one hand, his teleology was an important step to understanding how things are. Particularly in biology, his observation that each and every part of an animal had to be for something was crucial - and many of his observations of functions were spot on.
On the other, he insisted that the search for teleology must be contained within the natural world itself. A human being has certain ends (notably, to live a life of virtue in accordance with reason). As such, s/he will need to have certain organs and abilities, directed towards the accomplishment of those ends. But these features are not provided by "god" (who, we recall, doesn't know we exist). As he writes in Parts of Animals:
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The fittest mode, then, of treatment is to say, a man has such and such parts, because the essence of man is such and such, and because they are necessary conditions of his existence, or, if we cannot quite say this then the next thing to it, namely, that it is either quite impossible for a man to exist without them, or, at any rate, that it is good that they should be there. And this follows: because man is such and such the process of his development is necessarily such as it is; and therefore this part is formed first, that next; and after a like fashion should we explain the generation of all other works of nature. |
Nature provides these parts. In the development of each foetus, she in effect solves the problem of figuring out what would be best for the life appropriate to a human being. Since the essence of a human requires us to exercise reason, and as subordinate ends to do things like wield tools and write with pens, nature provides us with a hand. Without hands, it would perhaps be impossible for a man to exist qua man; or, at least, it is better that he has them. But nature does this without deliberation or intelligence - just as (in Aristotle's opinion) a craftsman makes a boat without deliberating, or a spider a web. And nature is not separable from the nature of a human being - they are identical.
It's not an altogether coherent notion of development and function (that's why we had a scientific revolution). But it is a brilliant, and subtle one. And a million miles from Jesusdidit. Or, to be more charitable to them, a million miles from the notion that a disembodied telic entity injected "information" at some unspecified point of time. (They should also be aware that Thomas Aquinas had a lot of hard work to do to make Aristotelianism compatible with Christianity. Aristotle's rather radical naturalism had gotten Aristotelian literalists ("Averroists") into some hot water earlier in the thirteenth century (some even found Thomas himself suspect, despite his efforts at reconciliation), and would cause more problems in the sixteenth century when it was revived in places like the University of Padua).
Creationists. Ignorant about a lot more than just science!
I seem to be taking them all too seriously at the moment. Let's get back to the fart jokes.
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