neo aristotelian metaphysics and the theology of nature

A few examples from physics, chemistry, and biology may help here. On this Neo-Aristotelian metaphysical picture, the category to which an object belongs determines what that object is and how it tends to act in concert with other natural objects in the world. Individual natural objects like electrons, gold, and living organisms are all clearly different kinds or categories of natural things, each with their own range of properties, natural tendencies, and activities distinctive of their kind. Natural objects are intrinsically dynamic and active some undergo radioactive decay, some biological assimilation, some spin, some dissolve in water, and others engage in the philosophical enterprise. For the contemporary Neo-Aristotelian, the natural world is a complex array of identifiable and empirically specifiable objects that stand in dynamic causal relations to one another. Teh, (eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science (New York, NY: Routledge, 2018), and Edward Feser, Aristotle’s Revenge (Germany: Editiones Scholasticae, 2019). For a few helpful overviews of the general contours of this neo-Aristotelian metaphysical framework see Brian Ellis, The Philosophy of Nature: A Guide to the New Essentialism (Ithaca, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), Robert C.

Let me begin with a thumbnail sketch of a Neo-Aristotelian metaphysical picture that is currently on the rise in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science.

In this and other respect, Descartes and his followers, far from being representative of seventeenth-century natural philosophy, were outliers.My overall aim in this brief response to Paul Gould’s lead essay is to draw the reader’s attention to an area of contemporary moral philosophy-Neo-Aristotelian metaethics-that is ripe for rediscovery in the wake of the ongoing resurgence of Neo-Aristotelianism in metaphysics and philosophy of science. To the extent that natural philosophers were mechanists, they were operational mechanists, who modelled nature on machines but refused to commit to an ontological reductionism, and often directly opposed it. A major concomitant of this is that the idea that most of seventeenth-century natural philosophy was grounded in ontological mechanism is wrong. Despite a spirited fightback from the metaphysicians, by the middle of the seventeenth century the anti-metaphysical physicians and mixed-mathematicians – often operating in tandem – had won. The erosion of this approach was driven by three factors: 1) the impact of humanist critique 2) The colonisation of natural philosophy by physicians 3) The colonisation of natural philosophy by mixed mathematicians.

At the start of the period, natural philosophy was largely conducted as a form of ‘metaphysical physics’. This chapter charts the way in which the study of nature was made increasingly less philosophical between 15.

Neo aristotelian metaphysics and the theology of nature