Hylomorphism, Gravity and ‘Tertiary’ Matter

HYLOMORPHISM, GRAVITY AND 'TERTIARY' MATTER T o investigate the reasons for the divorce between the physical sciences and philosophy would demand an article in itself, but no one can deny the fact that such a divorce exists. Yet without sound philosophical principles, the physical sciences remain-as it were-suspended in the air, since by their very nature they cannot penetrate beyond phenomena, leaving their ultra-phenomenal foundations uninvestigated . This limitation of the physical sciences seems to be recognised by scientists today. Sir James Jeans, for instance, says ,"The essential fact is simply that all the pictures which science now draws of nature ... are mathematical pictures. Most scientists would agree that they are nothing more than pictures-fictions if you like, if by fiction you mean that sCience is not yet in contact with ultimate reality. Many would hold that, from the broad philosophical standpoint, the outstanding achievement of twentieth century physics is not the theory of relativity with its welding together of space and time ... it is the general recognition that we are not yet in contact with ultimate reality.... In brief, a mathematical formula can never tell us what a thing is, but only how it behaves." 1 Yet what philosophy the modern scientist possesses is too often of the post-Cartesian and Kantian brand for it to be able to provide a reliable account of the ultimate realities underlying his own science. On the other hand, scholastic philosophy should be capable of providing the principles for which there is such crying need, with its more than two thousand years of tested thought and the acknowledgment given to it by the Church as the handmaid of her theology. And if there 1 The Mysterious Universe, pp. 127 & 14~. (Italics added). 28 24 BRUNO WEBB is one scholastic principle perhaps more than any other that can provide an explanation of the facts coming to light in the physical sciences, it is hylomorphism, which has an almost indefinite capacity for this. Hylomorphism, the system of form and matter, is first and foremost a philosophy of material substance, yet at the same time it presents us with a picture of the universe as a vast hierarchy of specific natures. For by form is meant that which gives the specific nature, and for this reason it is the first principle of limit by which the infinite Being of God is reflected in this or that finite likeness. Each angelic nature is a pure form, each one specifically unique, yet all of them together reflecting in what appears to be a quasi-infinite number of finite ways the infinite Being of God, like a vast spectrum whose colors collectively reflect the sun's colorless light. What the scholastic means by matter is an altogether distinct principle of limit. This does not limit God's likeness to this or that specific nature in creation, but limits a specific nature already existent to this or that numerical individual. This is why in material natures, and in these alone, many numerically distinct individuals can share one and the same specific nature. These material species or grades of being are no more than the few lowest grades in creation's quasi-infinite hierarchysentient , vegetant, mineral, subatomic, and perhaps others still undiscovered; but it is with these only that we are now concerned . For common to all these grades of matter is the universal phenomenon of gravity, holding the material cosmos together against its centrifugal forces and resultant chaos. It is a phenomenon, the nature of which as yet has not received an adequate explanation, yet one which can perhaps be explained on the philosophical level by hylomorphic principles. The distinction made by Jeans between what a thing is (its essence) and its behavior is an important one, because, if we venture to suggest here within the philosophical sphere what may be the ultimate nature of gravity, we have no quarrel with other explanations of it in the sphere of mathematics, such as Einstein's crumpling of the space-time continuum. The HYLOMORPHISM, GRAVITY AND ' TERTIARY ' MATTER 25 reason is the theory of Einstein's seeks no more than to say how gravity behaves within the sphere of quantity...