- Rick
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Re: Prime matter vs physical matter
RomanJoe wrote:
A suppositum's ability to occupy new spatiotemporal locations presumes that it has a potentiality to do so. To have a potentiality for a new state of existence--i.e. existing at location x and potentially existing at location y--requires a metaphysical explanation. There must be some determinable yet undetermined metaphysical part of the suppositum which allows it to take on new existences. This is what the scholastic calls prime matter. Any attempt to replace it with physical laws or space just misses the point because such a replacement presumes that beings have a potential to take on new existences in spacetime.
Why do we need prime matter though? We can understand the motions of material beings through certain physical laws which help us to predict their movements.
I'm not sure it would be presumptuous to stop at physical laws. If physical laws give us a description of material reality, and its motion within spacetime, then it seems superfluous to appeal to prime matter in such a case.
- FrenchySkepticalCatholic
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Re: Prime matter vs physical matter
Why do we need prime matter though? We can understand the motions of material beings through certain physical laws which help us to predict their movements.
I'm not sure it would be presumptuous to stop at physical laws. If physical laws give us a description of material reality, and its motion within spacetime, then it seems superfluous to appeal to prime matter in such a case.
Adding "change" and "time" through "motion" to "matter" and "laws" is basically conceding that these laws alone aren't enough to explain change.
Last edited by FrenchySkepticalCatholic (4/11/2018 4:49 am)
- RomanJoe
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Re: Prime matter vs physical matter
If physical laws give us a description of material reality, and its motion within spacetime, then it seems superfluous to appeal to prime matter in such a case.
This is precisely my point--you say physical laws are descriptive of change. That is, they can describe how substantial change conducts itself via chemical reactions or subatomic rearrangement. But giving a description of particular instances of change cannot substitute an explanation of change as such. That is the metaphysician's job, not the scientist's.
- seigneur
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Re: Prime matter vs physical matter
I find it hard to believe that level-headed Thomists would deny current atomic theory, let alone the very existence of atomic particles.
I think that level-headed theoretical physicists understand that QM denies the concept of atoms as tiny billiard balls.
QM is not contrary to scholastic views of matter, not even with the mystical/alchemical concept of four-five elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether).
Nobody denies the existence of atomic (nor sub-atomic) particles. The question is what those particles are or what they represent. Are they "tiny objects" or more like "subdivisions of a bigger whole"? Scholastics tend to prefer holism.
Here's one account how to reconcile Aristotelian potentiality with QM
Another is Oderberg's Hylemorphic Dualism (longer).
I'm not in the hylemorphic camp myself, but I seriously don't see any contradiction between current physics and scholastic metaphysics. Physics and metaphysics are different domains to begin with, so they could contradict each other only at some putatively overlapping points.
Last edited by seigneur (4/12/2018 9:29 am)