The theist who takes the prima via (Thomas Aquinas's first way of demonstrating the existence of God) as being about movers that push other things (i.e., an approach that leaves final causality out consideration) is taking nature in mechanistic terms. One who thinks in this manner would be more than a little puzzled by the question, "But don't things just move without being pushed? After all, isn't that what electrons do? And isn't that what things do on their own once they have been pushed (i.e., momentum/inertia)?"
One response would be to restrict the types of movement to which the prima via applies to acceleration/deceleration (perhaps one should rename it the "first Accelerator" argument!). This approach grants that physics since Galileo has marginalized the "all" in "all motion needs a physical cause" to "some" (i.e., to cases acceleration and deceleration). But then again it might not marginalize that claim at all, for every movement that we experience is undergoing a change in its velocity. In fact, it is possible that everything is undergoing some sort of change in velocity. In such a case, Newton's law of momentum refers to an empty set, and every motion needs a cause of at least the variation in its velocity.
A counter to the First Accelerator argument would be to point out that at least some cases of acceleration and deceleration do not ultimately need a "push." Movement "caused" by gravitational attraction, for example has no push-mechanism (or maybe that's what talk of gravitons is about.... hmmm). Nothing in nature impels bodies into pulling each other closer at a higher and higher velocity: they just do it--naturally. Perhaps it is the case that every acceleration (not just gravitational) is due to such sources of action, even those that seem to require a "push" from the outside.
If the latter proposal is correct, then the mechanistic version of the prima via has been defeated. But as a matter of fact, the alternative view of nature is not foreign at all to one who is familiar with Aristotle, for it is of things acting naturallyfor a goal. Granted, significant chunks of Aristotle's understanding of natural movement no longer make sense to us: the earth's center is not the natural target of all "earthy" things, etc. But the new view of nature might not, as has been commonly supposed, have entirely replaced teleology; rather, it has replaced the old with the new. After all, the "attraction" in gravitational attraction is teleological rather than mechanistic. And many other (and perhaps all) natural actions seem to be directed towards a point, that, when arrived at, is followed by a kind or rest or stabilization. Natural things seek equilibrium.
Equilibrium is therefore looks like the purpose or goal of natural processes. Evidence of this is how the language we use to describe change remains saturated with teleology: chemists and physicists, when describing how one atom bonds with another, speak of how one with an incomplete outermost shell "tries to fill that outermost shell....And once it has, it stops grabbing electrons from other atoms." Having shells that are filled is a kind of equilibrium condition, one that we refer to metaphorically as a kind of rest.
At the end of the day, the first mover reduces all other movers from potency to act not by driving a machine-like universe, but by being the final cause of a universe full of striving.
(this may have something to do with what Aristotle has to say around De Caelo III, cap. 2 300b15... must look up).
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Aristotle reasoned toward a teleological first mover. For he thought that the spheres or the planets (I forget which) were the highest movers. No physical thing pushed them. They simply moved in circles, moved as they were by attraction to a yet higher Being. They were drawn by final causality.
Today, it seems that some originating movements are at a much smaller level. And if Stephen Barr is right, they possess a symmetry greater than much of what we observe at a larger scale. It's almost as if the highest movers as understood by Aristotle have been discovered at the smallest level and in rather large numbers. (n.b., & these are nescient)
Keep in mind, however, that higher level behaviors are not simply the sum of the lower level movements. The higher level movements belong to beings with their own natures and goals or equilibria.
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