In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

REVIEW ARTICLE Thomas and the Physics of 1958: A Confrontation. By HENRY MARGENAU. The Aquinas Lecture, 1958. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1958. Pp. 6L $2.50. The nature of this confrontation, by Professor Margenau of Yale, a man of acknowledged competence both in the realm of the contemporary philosophy of science and in applied science, consists in a twofold view across the centuries: one a view of modern physics from the outlook of St. Thomas; the other a view of St. Thomas from the outlook of modern physics. Of the former, Professor .IVlargenau says, " Thomas would, I think, have seen remarkable justification for his Aristotelianism in the methodology of present natural science." Of the latter, he says, "The comparison of present scientific methodology those aspects of Thomas' system that are applicable to science is more favorable today than at any time in the last two centuries, if not indeed more favorable ever, in the sense of showing parallels and conjectures fulfilled in our epoch." In other words, Professor Margenau finds the results of this confrontation most auspwwus. On what does this favorable and heartening confrontation revolve ? It revolves principally on what Professor Margenau makes out of St. Thomas' doctrine of the intellectus agens. The quotations from St. Thomas' works which he employs are taken from St. Thomas Aquinas: Philosophical Texts, selected and translated by Thomas Gilby (Oxford Press, 1951). In the light of Fr. Gilby's own declared purpose in that work, namely, to produce" a compromise between a paraphrase and an exact and literal :rendering," attention must be drawn to the fact that the passages cited by Professor Ma:rgenau do not always represent, by any means, the exact words of St. Thomas, but rather a literate paraphrase by Fr. Gilby, where, in the synthe68 HENRY MARGENAU: THOMAS AND THE PHYSICS OF 1958 69 sizing process, finer precisions of St. Thomas' text have been passed over. Thus, in the first passage cited by Professor Margenau (p. 7), where St. Thomas has the qualified statement , ... Intellectualis cognitio se extendit ultra sensibilia; intelligimus enim QUAEDAM quae senS'u percipi non posrunt, Fr. Gilby's version simply states unqualifiedly, "... Intellectual knowledge transcends the things of sense." Further on, ... per participationem FORMARUM intelligibilium separatarum, is rendered by, "... shares in intelligible and bodiless ideas." Where St. Thomas says, . . . Non per modum defluxionis, ut Democritus poruit, sed PER QUAMDAM OPERATIONEM, Fr. Gilby's version states,"... Not, however, in the manner of a discharge, as Democritus had said, but in some other way." St. Thomas then continues to show the extent of Democritus' doctrine of everything, including knowledge, being caused by the influx of the atoms, in the subsequent sentence, Nam et Democritus omnem actionem fieri poruit per INFLUXIONEM atomorum. In Fr. Gilby's version this appears in what seems like a new and not obviously related thought, " Democritus, incidentally, had also held that all action is the upshot of atomic changes." It would seem, then, that despite the eminent literacy of Fr. Gilby's version, it would be a little too uncritical simply to accept it without question as the exact rendering of the text of St. Thomas, a claim which Fr. Gilby himself does not make. The passage in St. Thomas to which the above excerpts refer, namely, Summa Theol., I, q. 84, a. 6.-" Whether intellectual knowledge is received from sensible things "-may be said to provide the "frame of reference " for Professor Margenau's confrontation. In it St. Thomas traces the two extreme attitudes with regard to knowledge, as typified in radical sensism as attributed to Democritus, and an equally radical idealism as attributed to Plato. Between them, combining both sense and intellect, St. Thomas locates the theory of knowledge of Aristotle . Professor Margenau will use this threefold division in apportioning off the various modern outlooks, and furthermore will liken them respectively to the intellectus possibilis, the intellectus agens, and the combination of both. 70 PIERRE H. CONWAY Speaking of the first of the three theories-that, namely, which sees thought simply as the rigid product of sensible realities-Professor Margenau places under it both the unflinching sensism of the Humeans and even the detached computer -collated picture of the logicians, modern...

pdf

Share