THE PHILOSOPHER
By Donald J. Parker
Delivered to The Chicago Literary Club
May 3, 1999
Century of Progress, Twentieth Century Limited, Twentieth Century Fox all gone now. Once
these names were synonymous with the present day; the very latest, and now the twentieth
century is as old and dated as the gay nineties or the Civil War. The Great War and even the
Second World War are historical curiosities from a bygone era. Already you can see that I too
have climbed to the Millennium pulpit, and shall look back with nostalgia, and forward with hope,
but there will be a difference. In the area about which I wish to speak tonight nothing essential
has changed for well over two millenniums, or millennia, if you prefer Latin.
I thought when I chose this topic that perhaps I had bitten off more than I could chew, but now I
can see that I may be serving up more than you can swallow. In order to make my points I find it
necessary to throw cold water on notions many of you may hold dear. If that is so, I'm sorry. I
have absolutely no desire to do anything but be scrupulously honest.
There is for me but one man who I can call The Philosopher, and furthermore I suggest
this is because he is the one who tells us what philosophy really is, and how the philosopher must
perform his task. The century now ending may well have produced more new knowledge about
the physical universe and how it works than any other century in history. We have learned new
forms of power and locomotion; to communicate with one another at any point on the surface of
our planet; we have travelled out into space; we are rebuilding human bodies in our hospitals as
though they were auto body shops, and we have even brought the toilet in out of the cold for
ordinary people. Nevertheless, the manner of philosophical study has not really changed since
ancient times. It may be that we are only now beginning to fully understand what we have only
partly understood since the time of the ancient Greeks.
If some of you have been hoping that, notwithstanding the title of this paper, I really won't be
talking about philosophy, I'm afraid I have to disappoint you. Nothing could be more appropriate
to Millennium musing than to revisit prior millennia just to consider how well the ideas of ancient
philosophers have stood the test of time. If, after all, I have gone wrong in this I beg your
indulgence, since this is only my very first millennium.
"Philosophy" is an English word derived directly from the classic Greek words philos and logos,
which together simply mean the love of wisdom. Nevertheless, "Philosophy" is one of those
words for which there are almost as many subjective meanings as there are commentators. It is
necessary therefore to stake out very carefully what I mean when I use the term. In my view,
philosophy should be regarded as an intellectual discipline concerned with the organized study of
the nature of man and the physical universe in which he resides. This field of study is, also,
sometimes called Cosmology or Metaphysics. It is not Religion which concerns matters which
cannot be reached by study of the physical universe. Since religion is derived from revealed truths
rather than from the study of physical reality, the method of study is different. It is necessary to
emphasize this difference because many casual commentators seem to consider philosophy and
religion merely different aspects of the same thing. This misunderstanding generates a good deal
of confusion. I emphasize that Philosophy is an intellectual discipline no more Christian than
Hebrew, Arabic or Bhuddist. For reasons that I propose to make more clear as we proceed, I ask
you to consider Philosophy not as a system of Religious beliefs but as a science. A kind of world
wide, all inclusive pure research in which truth is pursued by its practitioners for the sake of truth
by men and women who are willing to follow truth wherever it may lead even though the learning
of today may tend to plow under treasured beliefs from the past. Its stars include names like
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle,Avicebron and Averroes Augustine and Maimonides, Aquinas,
Einstein, Chardin and Hawkins. You may think this an extremely diverse ball team and I must
agree, but that is the kind of game we are playing.
The entire body of scholarship that can be gathered under the heading "Philosophy" is truly
bewildering, including as it does not only the contributions of Hebrews, Greeks, Romans and
Arabians, but there are, also, ancient, medieval and modern versions of each of those branches of
the sport. Consequently, one of the favorite ways critics have for dismissing philosophy as
impractical, time wasting, self deluding nonsense is to describe all of philosophical study as a lot
of pius monks debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The Philosopher would
be very quick to point out that angels may be a proper subject for religion, but certainly have
nothing to do with philosophy, since there is no basis in the physical world by which such beings
could be known. The criticism probably has some basis in fact. Some pius monks probably did
engage in such speculation, and in all seriousness too. But their speculations had to have been just
that: speculations, since there is no concrete physical evidence upon which to base such beings.
The thinker, in such cases, simply believes that such beings must exist, and on that basis posits
their existence. Once having presumed the existence of angels, it is relatively easy to describe the
necessary attributes of an angel in a very logical way. This form of analysis is a classical example
of what is called "a priori" reasoning. It assumes the truth of its major premise without
any actual physical evidence. A Posteriori reasoning, on the other hand, relies on
experience or physical evidence. Webster describes a priori reasoning as the kind which
regards certain principles as self evident or capable of being known by reason alone. The a
priori thinker then proceeds to deduce consequences from these assumed first principles,
rather than waiting for proof from experience or physical evidence. It is because Plato reasoned
like this The Philosopher rejected Plato's methods and therefore questioned his conclusions, and
by necessity all others who use that way of thinking.
It may well be there really are angels, but there is no basis in what we know about our physical
universe with which to prove their existence or even to infer them. We are completely dependent
upon revelations concerning them in scriptural accounts in which they are described as
participants in human events. It would be equally unwise to say they cannot exist, because we
have no knowledge whatever what may take place outside the box of time and space we call the
physical universe.
Early in this century and throughout most of the last "scientists" came to be considered as having
replaced all previous study concerning the universe, and philosophy was relegated by many to
just so much pius nonsense with no basis in reality. Ancient and Medieval thought was consigned
to the trash bin as religious fantasy and modern philosophers were characterized as mere players
with words. Recently those views have begun to change.
The Chicago Sunday Tribune published just weeks ago carried this headline for an article on the
first page. God's place in the universe a vexing issue for scientists. The text goes on to
explain: "Many physicists and cosmologists believe they are closing in on a formula that
would bring together all the known forces of the universe, a theory of everything."
reminiscent of the "unified theory" Einstein spent the rest of his life trying to find. The author
(identified as a Tribune religious writer) further explores his topic with this observation:
"while one group of cosmologists argue that hints of divinity are inescapable in the latest
scientific findings ", others "believe scientists should stop at the bounds of the observable
universe". One of the panelists, a particle physicist according to the writer declaiming in
response to the suggestion that science may be infusing increased credibility to Cosmology, that
"religion is an insult to human dignity".This particular particle physicist does not seem to
have a particle of appreciation for the fact that philosophy is not religion or a branch of it, but
rather a science whose study is mankind and the physical universe of which he is a part.
Philosophers in the time of the ancient Greek scholars did not confine their studies to religious
themes. Aristotle, for example, wanted to know about mathematics, biology, botany, geology,
medicine, language, geography, as well as what we call cosmology and nearly every other subject
capable of organized study In the time of the Greek philosophers science was an important part of
their study. This continued to be the case for many centuries. In fact, it was The Philosopher who
first laid out the rule which governs all scientific study even today. Science did not become a
stand alone discipline until it became too technical for everyone but other scientists to
comprehend.
Steven W. Hawking is one of those scientists from our own era who supports the idea of a creator
of the universe whom we call God. Hawking, who holds the chair as Lucasian Professor of
Mathematics at Cambridge, an honor once held by Newton, and who is generally regarded as the
most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein. The following quote from his work for laymen
called "A Brief History of Time"has these observations:
at p. vi "(when I decided to write a book about space and time) There were already a
considerable number of books about the early universe and black holes * * * However, I felt that
none of them really addressed the questions that had led me to do research in cosmology and
quantum theory: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to
an end, and if so how? These are questions that are of interest to us all. But modern science has
become so technical that only a very small number of specialists are able to master the
mathematics used to describe them."
at p. 173 " When we combine quantum mechanics with general relativity, there seems to be a
new possibility that did not arise before: that space and time together might form a finite, four
dimensional space without singularities or boundaries, like the surface of the earth but with more
dimensions . It seems that this idea could explain many of the observed features of the universe,
such as its large scale uniformity and also the smaller scale departures from homogeneity, like
galaxies, stars, and even human beings. It could even account for the arrow of time that we
observe. But if the universe is completely self-contained, with no singularities or boundaries, and
completely described by the unified theory, that has profound implications for the role of God as
Creator."
"Einstein once asked the question:' How much choice did God have in constructing the universe?'
If the no boundary proposal is correct, he had no freedom at all to chose initial conditions. He
would, of course, still have had the freedom to choose the laws that the universe obeyed. This,
however, may not really have been all that much of a choice; there may well be only one, or a
small number, of complete unified theories, such as the heterotic string theory, that are
self-consistent and allow the existence of structures as complicated as human beings who can
investigate the laws of the universe and ask about the nature of God."
"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it
that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual
approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the question of why
there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of
existing? Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence? Or does it
need a creator, and, if so, does he have any other effect on the universe? And who created him?
"Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that
describe what the universe is to ask the question why. On the other hand, the people whose
business it is to ask why, the philosophers, have not been able to keep up with the
advance of scientific theories. In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of
human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: Did the
universe have a beginning? However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became
too technical and mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists.
Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous
philosopher of this century, said, ' The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of
language.' What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant!'
"However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time to be understandable in broad
principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just
ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the
universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason-for
then we would know the mind of God."
Returning again to that Tribune article from two weeks ago I suggest we consider the comments
of Anna Case-Winters, a Professor at the McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago apropos
of her reaction to the scientific search for the "unified theory of everything";
" Since the time it was formulated in 1930, the Big Bang theory has inspired many to thoughts
of a creator God. Pope Pius XII embraced the theory in 1951, and astrophysicist George Smoot
made headlines in 1992 when he said that receiving Big Bang data coming from a new satellite
was 'like looking at God'
"Recent advances and modifications, including the prevalent 'inflation' theory which says that
expansion of the universe has not been uniform, have done nothing to discourage the divine
explanation."
"On the contrary, the more scientists learn about the nature and history of the universe, the more
improbable the development of life seems. That, in turn, leads some to infer the presence of
intelligence and intent in the universe's design."
"John Barrow, an astronomer at the university of Sussex in England, pointed out that even the
birth of the universe as we know it rested on a precarious improbability: A little less density, and
stars and planets never could have formed: a little more density and gravity would have caused the
infant universe to collapse back on itself."
"That so many conditions have lined up precisely in the only possible configuration that allows life
leads many theoreticians to a choice: Either we are winners of a cosmic lottery with odds so
astronomical they make a powerball ticket look like a conservative investment, or there is some
greater principle that favors the creation of life - the 'anthropic principle'."
"Detractors say the apparent coincidence of so many improbabilities is overstated, and in any
case, it only reveals flaws in the way humans observe natural impersonal phenomena around
them."
"If this debate accounts for the latest in scientific thinking, it hardly represents a great advance in
metaphysics."
As Case-Winters pointed out, Greek Stoics once argued that the manifest order of the heavens
and earth was proof of an intelligent designer, while epicureans countered that it was simply the
result of natural processes. '
"When you listen to those arguments from 45 B.C. today's conversation feels like deja vu all over
again."
Physics, which is preeminitely the study of real things to determine of what they are made and
how they work; not as you might suppose they are constituted or how in theory they should
work. It is a patient study. Conclusions are usually not reached in a flash of insight, but over a
lifetime or perhaps several lifetimes without flash but by mountains of data and brilliant feats of
mathematical analysis. This branch of philosophy; this science; ultimately produces knowledge of
those truths heretofore locked within matter until discovered by man. Not envisioned by man and
then arbitrarily imposed upon the world with no more permanence or certainty than that of one
man's intelligence. Benjamin Franklin's storied kite in a thunderstorm may have proven electricity,
a reality of nature. Regardless of his politics or the quality of his methods, electricity is a truth
which when once discovered has been proven time and again in other ways and has not changed
and cannot change because it is not dependent on man's fruitful imagination. It is a physical reality
that can light up your life and roast your potatoes.
Columbus was not just some daredevil adventurer, he was a man of science not at all unlike the
astronauts of our own time. Columbus believed the world was round and small enough to
circumnavigate with ships capable of only about six knots on average. He set out to prove it, but
he succeeded only in finding a new world, previously unknown to Europeans. Nevertheless he
advanced the scope of knowledge and in due course Magellan did prove it. A round world needed
gravity to keep our feet to the ground. Isaac Newton's apple may be apocryphal, but gravity isn't.
We use it quite a lot these days for many things, and it too is proven fact of the universe.
Without a doubt one of the most interesting scientists of our own time is Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin, a french Jesuit Priest whose special area of study was, of all things, the study of
evolution. Father Chardin was not simply a hobbyist. He was a scientist of the highest order. It
was he who wrote the introduction to Darwin's scientific publication of the theory of evolution,
and has been the most significant commentator on the subject of evolution in the post-Darwinian
period. An amusing anecdote involving Chardin was the way his religious superiors responded to
conservative church leaders who were concerned about the orthodoxy of his substitution of a
scientific explanation for the emergence of human beings by evolution, as opposed to the story of
Adam and Eve. They banished him to China; in particular to the paleontologist excavation at
Choukoutien. There could have been no place on earth he would rather have been or should have
been, since it was here that those engaged in the scientific studies related to evolution had found
the remains of intelligent human life that can be dated in the period 100,000 years B.C.. They
weren't PHDs, of course, these possible first human beings, but fire and tools were part of their
daily lives, and the skulls found were obviously organized in burial in some sort of ceremonial
disposition .You can imagine I'm sure the reaction of those who considered this "science" as an
attack on the Bible version of the origin of man, which had gone from metaphor to description of
a fact that had actually occurred, if at all hundreds of years before the writer of Genesis took pen
in hand. For some this data was just another proof that the God business was a lot of pius
nonsense. To others, whose views were characterized by a willingness to adjust their views of
pre-history to conform to evidence which suggests that it was evolution rather than Adam's Rib
that gave us the first woman (and man too for that matter). The Philosopher would have been
quite comfortable with that, and Chardin, a card carrying Roman Catholic Christian has this to say
about the whole thing: (from his book "The Appearance of Man", first published in French in
1956)
"(at p. 92, speaking of the results obtained so far in the excavations being carried on at
Choukoutien, where Sinanthropus had been discovered): These results clearly favor, at least in
a general way, the transformists' views on the origins of the human species. But, on the other
hand, let us state with insistence, they in no way threaten (quite the opposite) a spiritual
conception of humanity. While extending his roots, thanks to the efforts of prehistory, even more
deeply in the past, man tends, at the same time, by his unique properties, to take a preponderant
place in the theories of modern science: his psychic energies, both individual and social, appear, to
the physicist as well as to the biologist, to be one of the great forces in the universe. Are not there
two complementary ways in which the mind dominates and fills all things? Thought would not be
queen of the world if it were not connected with the world by all the fibres of matter, even the
most humble ones.
"For anyone with vision, the discovery of Sinanthropus, by binding man more intimately to the
earth, merely contributes to augment the supreme importance, in our eyes, of the phenomen of
man in the realm of nature."
As you give consideration to these thoughts you should remember they are from a man who is of
our own time, but distinguished from us like Steven Hawking by being a brilliant scientist,
recognized by his peers as the best authority in his field. In thinking about Chardin's belief that
man is 'one of the great forces of the universe', you should also consider these facts: Any one man
lives only for an instant in terms of geological and spacial time; his habitat is the planet earth
which we see as a monstrous sphere from which the heavens may be observed by man as both
scientist and lover alike, but which is in fact as a grain of sand on a beach in the vast reaches of
the universe. Even so, man, in the brief instant of his days is indeed one of the 'great forces in
the universe'. You and I saw man travel into space to visit another planet. I do not know how
or when, but I am sure that man will continue to learn and to pursue knowledge without ceasing.
There will continue to be a goodly supply of lovers of wisdom, and unless we bomb ourselves
back into the stone age again the intellectual pursuits will open up more knowledge about the
universe and, if Chardin is right, at a much faster rate. Chardin's complete theory is that physical
evolution has come to an end by producing an animal who can think (although he still
often thinks like an animal). Now he says we are in the noosphere, a fanciful term he invented to
describe a new phase in human evolution, namely the period during which the human mind will
physically evolve and man's knowledge will advance at a steady upward rate.
In his work, The Phenomenon of Man, Chardin envisioned a man sitting under a tree
experiencing the first human thought. I wonder was it fear or was it joy? Descartes saw it in his
way. For him the experience of one's humanity is best described by the Latin words Cogito ergo
sum, I think therefore I am. However poetically one may choose to describe it, the philosophical
conclusion advanced by the theory of evolution is that what we call humanity or simply man is the
product of physical evolution through which eventually one particular animal possessed all the
necessary physical properties whereby his body could be a platform for a brain capable of
analytical thought ranging all across the landscape of the universe
What has this to do with The Philosopher you are probably asking yourself, and in answer I
propose to demonstrate that I can shoot an arrow from the bow of Aristotle that soars across the
ancient world through the fog of the dark ages into the sunshine of the Renaissance and now has
passed over Darwin and out into the empty spaces of a vast universe of galaxies, myriad solar
systems, black holes and who knows what all; a flight fueled only by the energy and wit of the
lovers of wisdom among us willing to look up from the mesmerizing everyday business of
"making a living" to see the stars and long to visit them.
I promised at the outset to consider the millennium we are about to celebrate; two and one half
thousand years after the Golden Age of Greece. Are we any different? We look a little different.
We get around in cars, instead of chariots, although it would seem the Romans were better at
building roads than we. We know a lot about the world in which we live we didn't know in
ancient Greece, but the intellectual insight most important to our human life has not changed. We
must still heed the Philosopher. I think it may be time now to introduce you to him.
Fifty years ago when I first learned of philosophy and philosophers I was virtually overwhelmed
by the vase inventory of writing and scholars gathered under the banner of philosophy from the
ancient Greeks to modern times. I centered my thinking on the Renaissance and Thomas Aquinas
in particular, whose Summa Theologica undertook to sort out all that gone before, and especially,
Plato and certain previously "lost" works of Aristotle. I was struck by and somehow deeply
moved by the fact that Thomas always referred to Aristotle as "The Philosopher", implying a
great reverence for Aristotle as the wellspring of essential metaphysical truth. It left me with a life
long desire to understand what there was about Aristotle that caused Thomas to rank him above
all others in the pantheon of lovers of wisdom. Tonight, after a good part of a lifetime of thought
and experience, I think I know what Thomas meant, and I hope I can share it with you.
Almost 400 years before Christ the golden age of Greece produced one of the world's most
perceptive thinkers and eccentric teachers. He was a ragged looking character, an olympian hippy,
who used to prowl the streets of Athens approaching young men ostensibly to ask directions and
soon was engaged in a question and answer dialog in which he would ask questions like where
goodness might be found, and soon Socrates and the young man would be deeply examining some
idea like truth. This method of teaching is still called the Socratic method and it still works pretty
well. It is a method whereby the scholar is encouraged to dig within himself for truth as opposed
to having it implanted by the teacher. Socrates questioned all the accepted values of the
Athenians of his time. He taught that people must examine their ideas by the demanding standards
of truth and reason. Those who understood Socrates admired him deeply. The majority of
citizens, however, could only see him as this strange old man, who seemed to question all the
beliefs and prejudices of the establishment, and the bitterness of a long war made them suspicious
of him.
In 399 B.C. when Socrates was 70 years old, he was put on trial, because the father of one of his
pupils accused him of "corrupting the youth of Athens"and failing to revere "the gods
that the state recognizes." Socrates addressed his jurors himself saying that his teachings were
good for Athens because they forced people to think about their values and actions. He even
suggested that they should vote him a pension. There were 501 jurors, who by a majority of 60
found him guilty as charged and sentenced him to death. In prison he was visited by his friends
who pleaded with him to flee into exile. He calmly explained the flaws in their reasoning and
drank the hemlock.
One of Socrates followers, Plato, was only 28 years old when Socrates died. He was convinced
the average citizens of Athens were not able to govern wisely. He left the city in bitterness, but
eventually he returned to Athens and established an academy of learning that endured for 900
years. The most brilliant student in that academy was Aristotle, who studied with Plato for 20
years. With Aristotle we associate syllogistic reasoning and with Plato we think in terms of
reasoning a priori.
Although it seemed when this century began with a rejection of classic philosophy in favor of
science that science and philosophy were antagonistic. Actually modern science and philosophy
have been coming together in this century in ways scientists for the most part don't recognize,
because they don't know enough about philosophy. Philosophers, on the other hand, even from
ancient times, have always been interested in understanding the physical world. Indeed, in my
view, science is, and has always been a branch of philosophy and in the view of The Philosopher,
who is the subject matter of this paper, the scientific method was the only valid way to draw
philosophical conclusions concerning man and his universe.
Now that Scientists like Steven Hawking have recognized the need to share what they have
learned with those of us who lack a facility with complex mathematical equations the relationship
of scientist and philosopher is no longer antagonistic to anyone schooled by Thomas Aquinas to
accept the Aristotle side of the quarrel with Plato.
My intention has been to present a paper which reviews the development of intellectual history
from the time of the Greeks until today. As we shall see that is not as formidable as it seems at
first glance, since the most important truth discovered by the Greeks is still the most important
truth today.
In general I suppose one should look back on the past millennia with comparative confidence that
whatever is back there is still pretty much where it was when we last looked. As for using that
body of experience for predicting the future; I won't. I agree with Churchill, who after
unsuccessful attempts at looking into the future, decided that, since history when viewed in
retrospect is nothing more than one damn thing after another, there is no reason to expect the
future to be otherwise. Nevertheless, when presented with the opportunity to consider literally
thousands of years one can pick out certain trends, if you will, that one may reasonably theorize
will probably continue.
For example, humankind, (formerly known as mankind) has raised up great civilizations, only to
have them crumble and virtually disappear at the onslaught of barbarism. Why this happened is
difficult to say, but that it did happen is certain. Our own time is beginning to show signs that
such a cycle may be about to begin again. In any event, there does seem to be at least some good
reason to adopt that great Charles Dickens opening line as descriptive of our own era: "it (is) the
best of times. it (is) the worst of times, a time to try men's souls". From my small perch it seems
those lines can be invoked by any society at any time. Perhaps that's why the phrase is always so
well received as gourmet rhetoric at its best.
The real question, of course, is what does it all mean? The ontological question as the philosopher
would put it.
In our own time we divide the academic field of philosophy into ancient, medieval and modern.
Aristotle, of course, was among the ancients. We always stable him with Socrates and Plato, and
many may think of Aristotle and the others of that era as sort of the model "T"s of the thinking
business. In my opinion nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is a principal purpose of
this paper to demonstrate that Aristotle may well be the most important thinker of our own time,
not because he lived in this era, but because his thoughts do. His version of the world and how it
came to be has been verified by every scientist of our day who has undertaken to explain the
origin of the universe.
In this century alone we have seen an explosive growth of human knowledge. We have even
traveled in space; visiting another planet and returning. If I were to race through a list of the
things we have learned about our world in this century it would take all night, even if I talked as
fast as I could. We know that. Most of us have seen it happen. But what is not generally known
is that all of these incredibly successful forays into the realms of modern science have been done
by following the teaching of Aristotle; --- not about what truth is, but how to find it.
For this we needed to have Aristotle's "Physics" and "Metaphysics", works that became lost
during the eight centuries from the fall of the Roman civilization to the Renaissance. Not
completely lost it seems, because these were the centuries during which the Irish saved
civilization. Its a story worth telling, especially for me, an Irishman. Ireland's storied St. Patrick
was actually an Englishman, God forbid. And not only that he was a well off Roman Englishman
who lived on a coast accessible to Irish pirates. They captured Patrick when he was little more
than a boy and spirited him off to the Emerald Isle and a life of slavery. His real name was
Patricius, a Roman name. After six years of slavery as an isolated shepard on an Irish King's land
he was able to escape and return to England, but he had become a changed man. Thomas Cahill's
work on how Ireland saved civilization tells us that after Patricius had endured six years of woeful
isolation he had grown from a careless boy to someone he surely would not have become
otherwise , a holy man; indeed a visionary for whom there was no longer any rigid separation
between this world and the next. After coming home at last he became restless and ridden with
visions calling him back to Ireland. So he finished his education to priesthood and even became a
Bishop. Then he returned to Ireland and the rest is history as they say. His friends in what was left
of Roman Europe by that time thought he was crazy for leaving the pale and going to the wildest
place of them all, Ireland. As the dark ages closed down more thoroughly on all of Europe
Ireland, once converted by Patrick, continued to develop as a Christian country beyond the pale
and outside the day to day influence of Rome. It was a perfect setup for the Irish who didn't mind
a bit they were virtually inaccessible to the Roman Bishops who would have considered their
casual ways with everything from liturgy to architecture so unacceptable as to demand correction,
which would no doubt have put the Irish on to some other solution to their spiritual needs.
As it happened this was the way for an isolated Ireland to foster monasteries where all of the
ancient texts from pre dark ages Europe could be gathered, preserved and copied. The Irish
continued in pleasant isolation until the Viking invasions of the Ninth Century destroyed the safe
and serene character of Irish life. By then the Irish were ready to go to Europe as Missionaries to
the emerging civilization in northern and central Europe, finding and preserving everything they
could find from ancient Greek and Latin books, among which was Aristotle's "Physics" and
"Metaphysics". By the time Thomas of Aquinas was ready to sum up all that had been written up
until the Thirteenth century, the all important link with the dawn of scientific thought, the
"Physics" was available to Thomas with which to sort out the ancient split with Aristotle and
Plato, and to chose Aristotle rather than Plato as up until that time the Catholic church had tended
to do.
Before leaving the Irish contribution to the history of Philosophy I cannot, being Irish, resist the
urge to quote from Mr. Cahill's fascinating work these words from p. 162 of his book:
"Perhaps the clearest picture of what it was like to be a scribal scholar is contained in a four
stanza Irish poem slipped into a ninth century manuscript, which otherwise contains such learned
material as a Latin commentary on Virgil and a list of Greek paradigms: I and
Pangur Ban my cat
'Tiz a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
'Gainst the wall he sets his eye,
Full and fierce and sharp and sly:
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban my cat and I:
In our arts we find our bliss.
I have mine and he has his."
I make these claims concerning the unique role of Aristotle from out of the hundreds of
philosophers I might have chosen, because we have his "Physics" and "Metaphysics" upon which
to base our understanding of Aristotelian analysis, aided in doing so by the exegesis, if you will, of
Aristotle's writings by Thomas Aquinas in his monumental analysis known as the "Summa
Theologica". Since I can claim no facility with classic Latin and Greek language, I am dependent
upon his English translator, and Anton C. Pegis, President, Pontifical Institute of Medieval
Studies, Toronto, who edited, annotated and introduced Random House's mid-century
publication of the two volume English version of the works of Aquinas.
Basic to one's understanding of the difference between Plato and Aristotle is an appreciation of
how each reasons rather than any apparent differences in their respective conclusions. In this
connection that difference is best explained by the following comments by Anton Pegis in his
introduction to the Random House edition to Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica:
"It was no historical accident, therefore, that the more St. Thomas sought
the guiding thread of the history of philosophy, the more he turned towards Plato and Aristotle.
Plato represents for St. Thomas a philosophical tradition in European thought which had explored
in detail the possibilities of one approach to reality--an approach that in St. Thomas' estimation
men ought to refuse. On the other hand, Aristotle's opposition to Plato was no mere ancient
Greek quarrel, but a permanently human one. For there is a potential Plato in every man, as well
as a potential Aristotle; and to see Plato and Aristotle in the image of man is to understand in a
philosophical way those virtualities in their doctrines which were already explicit historical
realities by the time of St. Thomas Aquinas. Whatever errors they may have in common, it yet
remains that Plato and Aristotle represent the two basically different approaches to reality that are
philosophically possible. The great concern of Plato had been to give to knowledge a sure and
firm foundation in reality. But as St. Thomas looked at Plato, what he saw was that Plato had
succeeded, not in founding knowledge in reality, but in putting it there. From this point of view,
the Platonic error would consist in supposing that the intellect's picture of reality was
reality; and to St. Thomas this meant, at once, the destruction of reality and the permanent
dislocation of the human intellect in the presence of reality. The great virtue of Aristotle as a
philosopher (granting his errors) was that he did not allow the human intellect to impose itself
upon the world. In this fact lay the strength and significance of his anti-Platonism. The
Aristotelian man has always lived in a genuine world of things; the Platonic man has always been,
as a philosopher, the victim of his own intellect. So, at least, St. Thomas leads us to think.
That is why in reducing the history of philosophy to the fundamental issues separating Aristotle
from Plato, St. Thomas was saying that that ancient quarrel was a contemporary one for the
thirteenth century because, being a universally philosophical one, it was also a permanent
crossroad for all philosophers. If it is true, as has been said, that a great painter is one who knows
where to sit, it is no less true that a great historian of philosophy is one who knows how to stand
on the crossroad of history.
This is to say no more than that St. Thomas saw the history of philosophy in the present.
He made the thinkers of the past his contemporaries by seeing them in that present which is reality
itself. His criticisms of them were no personal quarrel; they were a vindication of their common
vision, that very vision which he had and which they had helped him to achieve. And when St.
Thomas looked at the history of philosophy in this way he found, amid a variety of opinions and
conflicts, of persons and traditions, a basic thread and pattern. This could not but be so.
Philosophical truth, as St. Thomas sees it, cannot be a provincial episode in any age. Plato and
Aristotle were men as well as Greeks. That is why St. Thomas' efforts to find the basic pattern of
the history of philosophy aimed uniquely at making that history philosophically intelligible. It was
particularly necessary for the thirteenth century that this be done if Christian thinkers were to
assimilate successfully the enormous and complex philosophical literature of the Greeks and the
Arabs. There was only one way in which to bring order out of confusion, and that was to
discover the nature of philosophy itself. In short, to discover philosophy in the history of
philosophy was the only means of voicing for that history its most permanent message. The
successful diagnosis of the history of Greek and Arabian philosophy was thus for the thirteenth
century an indispensable objective. For, to see the history of philosophy with true philosophical
order, to understand, as a consequence, the compelling and permanent motivations of the
development of philosophical doctrines in history, this was to free the thirteenth century
of the danger of historicism in the presence of Greek and Arabian thinkers.
The entrance of the Aristotelian Physics into the Latin world meant the discovery of the
sensible world in all its concreteness. In principle, the Physics put an end to the
Boethian age of Platonic cosmologies so eminently exemplified by the school of Chartres in the
twelfth century. This had been an age of philosophical innocence--an age of physics without
matter, and of a world whose sensible being was constituted by the togetherness of
intelligible forms. This was an age, consequently, when things and knowledge were both abstract,
and when intellectual knowledge differed from sensible things by the separation of the intelligible
parts in a thing. Those who looked out on such an abstract world did not need a physics, for
logic was sufficient to study it. And, in truth, what is the physics of an Abelard or a Gilbert de la
Porree but a concreted logic? It is this use of logic as a science of things which should have come
to an end with the arrival of Aristotle's Physics. The thirteenth century had in its
possession the means of formulating a genuine philosophy of nature--a physics that knew the
meaning of matter and change. That is why St. Thomas' efforts to liberate Aristotle from
Averroes amounted to nothing less than the discovery and the defense of the reality of sensible
things in all their concreteness.
As anyone can see by looking at the entries under Plato in the Index at the end of the
second volume, St. Thomas is constantly of the opinion that Plato committed the fundamental
error of patterning being as it is on being as it is thought. From this there followed the inevitable
consequence (1) that Plato was depriving being of the constitutive causes of its actual existence;
(2) that he was limiting the human intellect to knowing only that sort of being which, in fact,
exists in the intellect and of which the intellect is the author; (3) that he was eliminating the world
of sense from existence to the extent that he was incapable of deriving it from the abstract Forms
or Ideas which are supposed to be its causes; (4) that he was building between thought and the
world of sense an insuperable barrier of essences, a barrier that the human intellect would never
be able to cross.
The only reason for pointing to such a Platonic pattern in history is St. Thomas' steady
polemic against Plato and his equally steady adherence to Aristotle. The Thomistic criticism of
Plato aims at saving reality from the human intellect and the life of the human intellect itself
from its excessive abstractionism. As St. Thomas sees him, Aristotle has a better
understanding than Plato of the activity of the human intellect in the presence of reality.
For from the world of Plato you could go only to the human intellect, there to become a prisoner.
But you could penetrate the Aristotelian world and reach God. Not indeed that
Aristotle reached Him. Yet Aristotle could be
corrected and his world, being a genuine
world, could be made into a creature of God. The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas is a
monument to that
possibility."
In plain English if you are a Thomist (and therefore a
disciple of Aristotle, Darwin and Chardin) come in and sit down in the dining room, and if you
are a disciple of Plato you have no place at the table of true philosophy.
The scientific discoveries of this century, as demonstrated by the writings of both Steven W.
Hawking and Teilhard de Chardin, have brought home rather clearly, I think, that a rigid
adherence to a rule that reality is to be studied and understood is better than a philosophical
approach that posits truth upon the basis of what the mind imagines reality should be. To be sure
Platonic and Aristotelian conclusions do not always differ. For example, both approaches see man
as unique, and ultimately the reason for creation, and not just a part of it. The difference is that
Platonic thinking can embrace the fiction of Adam and Eve, and then feel a need to reject
evolutionary theory, because it does not seem to square with direct creation of man rather than
slow natural development over time. Aristotelian Physics on the other hand, since it is based on
nature as it is rather than as it is thought to be at any given time, leads us to beliefs concerning
which we do not need to reject obvious implications when a clear understanding of nature
emerges.
Throughout recorded history man has demonstrated the intellectual ability for and attraction to
penetration of the secrets of the universe. Side by side with his constant study of the material
world there is evidence in every age in the belief by mankind in the existence of some sort of a
supreme being. Never has this belief in a benevolent creator been stronger than it is today. But the
universal understandings which come down to us through Aristotle and Aquinas go no further
than an absolute acceptance of the idea that the universe is an effect which had to be caused by
someone separate from us and from the universe itself.
It seems to me at this point that there are two great mistakes we humans tend to make. One is:
We already know it all, so why bother , and the other is: We can never know it all, so why bother.
Both mistakes tend to stop the learning process, which like the universe in which we live is always
in motion.
Perhaps you are very disappointed that after all this build-up I really haven't told you much more
than you already know. Is there a life after death? I really don't know, except as to what has been
revealed to me; not from anything I can demonstrate in the world of material things. Cosmology
or Metaphysics don't reach a place that has no physical reality. At least, not yet. My school of
Philosophy is from Missouri. Like Aristotle and Aquinas I don't pretend to know anything for
which I cannot give solid proof. Also, like those philosophers, I will not give in to the urge to
certify guesses with such firmness that when reality does reveal something I've said couldn't be,
that I will have blocked out my ability to go with reality.
I guess I admire the man who discovered that water is not only delicious but necessary, but even
more I admire the man who invented the bucket with which I can carry all the water I need home
to my family.
If you look down to the street from the top of Sears Tower people look like ants. From an
airplane we aren't visible at all, and from the depths of space the earth itself is as a grain of sand.
And yet, here I stand explaining how the whole thing works as though I owned it ----- and you
are listening to me. So if I am the essence of arrogance then so are you. Being unmasked for the
conceited know it all I surely am I might as well take it all the way with this thought. Man may
not be the center of the Universe, but, as it stands, we are the only reasonable explanation for why
it exists. Without going through all of the formal proofs for the existence of God contained in
what is call the Quinque Viae, or five ways for proving the existence of God from scientific rules,
I will cut to the quick: there is no such thing as an uncaused effect, or motion without something
to move it, or nothing turning itself into something. Philosophers and Scientists both believe that a
being we called God created the Universe. And we know that we are a part of that universe; made
of the same stuff of which it is made. We, also know, at least so far, that we are the only part of
that universe that is capable of saying, "Hi God, thanks for the nice universe." I do arrogate to
myself on this occasion the privilege of announcing that the followers of Socrates, both logicians
and scientists are now all back in the same van, patiently pursuing the love of wisdom. Let us
hope the Divine plan will allow us to survive a nuclear holocaust, should one occur, so old mother
earth may still be around when every segment of our brains are in use.
As for myself, I feel quite comfortable in Chardin's "noosphere" in which the evolution of the
mind is picking up speed. To me the incredible facility of the computer, (even personal computers
such as nine year olds are learning to use), by which we can process data in seconds which it took
a colony of monks entire lifetimes merely to record, much less analyze, is the harbinger of the
greatest change in human kind since the first human looked out upon the world and said: I think
this place would be a lot nicer if the weather weren't so damn changeable. This is, indeed, a new
Millennium. Perhaps when our descendants read these lines after another Millennium has passed,
they too will tip their caps to Aristotle, The Philosopher. By then even this fleeting moment in
intellectual history may be responsive to their computer searches from the study of their marble
palace somewhere on some planet we don't yet know exists. Donald J.
Parker
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