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"INTEGRATED" KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE I N a previous article/ I discussed the relationship of the philosophy of nature to natural science, considered from a Thomistic standpoint. In that article,2 I suggested the possibility of an " integrated knowledge of nature," a knowledge produced by the philosophy of nature in employing the natural sciences as instruments with which to prolong its penetration of the real. The purpose of this article is to offer some general considerations concerning such " integration." The remarks made below should be taken to apply primarily to modern physics in relation to the Thomistic philosophy. Before any such integration can take place, it is necessary to reflect philosophically on natural science in order to see its intrinsic structure and its precise relation to the world of real being. This is the task of the philosophy of science. It is necessary, therefore, to see, in at least a summary way, what the philosophy of science does: what are its problems? what are some of its general conclusions? But because we advance in knowledge, not by simply forgetting the old in the face of the new, but rather by a process of organic growth, of assimilation of the new into the solidly established whole of knowledge that we already possess, we shall attempt to view the philosophy of science in the framework of the traditional Thomistic logic and metaphysics, so far as this is possible. I. THE NATURE AND DIVISIONS oF THE PHILosoPHY oF SciENCE Let us first say that the philosophy of science is a philosophical analysis of scientific knowledge. By scientific knowl1 "The Philosophy of Nature and Natural Science from a Thomist Viewpoint," Tke Tkomist, XX, 8 (July, 1957). 9 Loc. cit., pp. 842-848. 171 17~ JOSEPH J. SIKORA edge we here mean the knowledge of modern natural science (physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, etc.). As we have said above, we shall here confine our discussion to physics, which is the heart and model of modern natural science. Now scientific knowledge presents two aspects for our study. Science is an ordered knowledge in the intellect. As such it is the subject of logical analysis. But science also refers to reality. As such it is the subject of metaphysical criticism. What is the structure of scientific concepts, of scientific laws, of scientific theory? How does reasoning proceed in science? These are questions of logic. What does this structure of knowledge actually reveal to us about reality? This is a question of metaphysics. The metaphysician, the wise man who knows the causes of all things, is alone qualified to order all the sciences, assigning to each its proper domain of being.3 But the metaphysical criticism of scientific knowledge is of necessity reflective. The first movement of the intellect is toward being itself. This intellectual movement is not one single deductive advance from the first principles of metaphysics to the last details of the physical universe. Rather, we make several-many-movements, none of which taken by itself is adequate to exhaust the intelligibility of being. We cannot deduce the laws of nature from metaphysics (but neither can we grasp metaphysical principles by the study of a particular kind of reality, as Mr. Gilson has shown in The Unity of Philosophical Experience) .4 Metaphysics can only wait until other sciences of reality have already come into being before it can criticize them and assign to each its proper domain of study in the whole of things. Nor can we expect each science to perform a work of selfcriticism . Each science sees reality only through its own aspect of reality. Physics has no vision of the human soul. Astronomy does not see ethical realities. It is necessary for the science • But this task of the metaphysician can only be accomplished if he knows the science which he would order. • New York: Scribner's Sons, 1954. " INTEGRATED " KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE 178 which studies being in itself, the being into which all reality is ultimately resolvable, to accomplish this work of criticism. This task of metaphysics has been described by Alfred North Whitehead in the following terms: Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to...

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