Tag Archives: Scientism

Aquinas’ Fifth Way and Science

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While St. Thomas thought his First Way for proving the existence of God was “the most manifest” in his own day, it is the Fifth Way that is the most accessible to modern man.  Among the Five Ways, the Argument from Finality speaks most clearly modern man’s anti-metaphysical language.  In fact, one modern philosopher, Immanuel Kant, thought the Fifth Way oldest, clearest and the most accordant with the common reason of mankind.”  This is a powerful endorsement coming from the man who killed metaphysics and thought that there could be no objective proofs for God’s existence.  Given its accessibility therefore, it is instructive for us to examine it more closely.

The Argument from Finality is often mistakenly confused with its doppelganger, the Argument from Design.  St. Thomas’ proof is deductive and demonstrative while all the variations of the Intelligent Design Arguments are inductive and probabilistic.  The latter always leaves open the possibility, even if it is remote, that there is in fact no Intelligent Designer.  The Argument from Finality, while it too comes to the same conclusion, it proceeds in a logically sound manner leaving no doubt as to the existence of a Supreme Intelligence Who created and sustains all things in existence.

The two types of proofs are different in another important way.  Like the other Four Ways, St. Thomas’ proof is not really concerned with creation, but preservation.  It is concerned primarily with why things are the way they are right now.  In other words, it eliminates the possibility of deism that plagues all of the Intelligent Design-type arguments. 

The Argument

With that said, let us turn to St. Thomas’ rather brief argument directly.

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end.  Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore, some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.                   

  ST I, q.2 a.3

Proceeding from direct sense experience of the world, St. Thomas posits that since non-intelligent beings always (or at least when not impeded) act for an end, that is, act intelligently, there must be an intelligence “underwriting” their intelligent activity.

On the one hand this is common sense.  In fact, this is such a “given” that empirical science treats it as a first principle.  In order for science to proceed, it has to assume that the object of its study is intelligible.  Intelligibility requires intelligence.  Prediction requires predictability which requires a governing intelligence. 

But common sense, especially if it conflicts with a scientistic worldview, is not so common.  This makes philosophical inquiry necessary.  Framing the discussion within philosophical terms such as final causality makes the argument clearer.  Recall that a being can be explained with regard to its four causes.  The first two causes, the material cause, or what it is made out of, and the formal cause, or what makes the thing what it is, are intrinsic.  The other two, efficient and final causes, are extrinsic.  The efficient cause is the external cause that brings about the existence of a thing or a new way of existence.  This need not point to a First Cause (at least directly), but can refer to secondary causes.  The efficient cause of new oak tree is an acorn.  Looked at from the perspective of the acorn, we can say that the final cause of the acorn is to become an oak tree.  Given all the right conditions, it will develop into an oak tree and not anything else like a rosebush or a donkey.  This is always the case, so much so that we can say that the acorn acts towards this end and not another.

This connection between a thing acting as an efficient cause and fulfilling its own final cause is very important for modern science.  For modern science seeks to study efficient causality.  In developing predictive models for inert matter, it seeks to explain what causes changes in matter.  It does not concern itself so much with final causes, but they are always lurking in the background because of this inherent connection between the two extrinsic causes.  Even if it does not so much care about final causes, the modern scientist cannot act as if they don’t exist without simultaneously denying efficient causes.  It is like sawing off the branch you are sitting upon. 

Why There Must be a Final Cause

Because the acorn lacks intelligence, this inner directedness of the acorn to develop into an oak tree must have an extrinsic intelligent cause.  This becomes evident when we realize that Aquinas is talking, not about creation but preservation.  Why does the acorn, here and now, have as its end or telos, the oak tree?  And why must there be Intelligence for this to be the case?  In order for a final cause to be a true cause, then the effect must be in the cause.  To see how this works, we will draw an analogy with a human artifact, say a house.  The builder is the efficient cause of the house, but he is also what is called the exemplary cause.  It is his idea of what the house will look like that is the final cause.  That cause does not exist in the house, but in the mind of the builder.  So if we return to our acorn, we can ask where the final cause exists.  When we do, we realize that it exists as a divine idea.  Now we see why the final cause cannot exist without an intelligence.  It must first exist as an exemplar in order to be a true final cause.  It must exist not just at creation, but also in the here and now.   

Once this link between final causes and intelligence is made, we see why St. Thomas’ argument is true.  The fact that we observe anything that acts as an efficient cause is also acting upon its own final causality.  Because these things act towards ends, and not just any ends, but very specific ends, there must be an intelligence behind it.  “Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.”

Understanding what St. Thomas is really arguing for then becomes important because it differentiates it from other Intelligent Design arguments.  This demonstrative proof is protected from the “God in gaps” arguments that usually plague these types of arguments.  Sharing the same assumptions as modern science, it also makes it especially potent against those who reject God based on scientism.

The Heresy of Scientism

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Modern science has brought us many wonderful things, but we would be naïve to think that it has made us wonder-full.  In fact, our obsession with the empirical has left us wonder-less because we mistakenly believe that everything can be explained.  We can, of course, explain how a lot of things in nature work.  The problem comes in when we accept these merely mechanistic explanations as the only explanation.  Our forefathers may have lacked the empirical skills that we have, but they most certainly were wiser because they were able to order all things.  Like ourselves, these wise men and women were obsessed with answering the question why, but unlike us they were unsatisfied with just knowing how nature worked.  They wanted to know why it worked the way it did more than how it worked.  For all their supposed backwardness they knew that nature could have worked differently, but it worked the way it did for a reason.  They sought to discover the reason first.  To use Aristotelian language, they wanted to understand formal and final causes and not just material and formal causes.

Scientism

The overemphasis on the how without any concern for the why has led to the heresy of scientism.  Notice that I called it a heresy and not just a philosophy.  It is a heresy because it rejects the truth that there is a universe.  It looks only at objects, but never objects as they fit into the whole.  He loves the trees but knows nothing of the forest.  To borrow from Chesterton, the scientistic heretic is “moved to discuss details in art, politics, literature…He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe…Everything matters—except everything.”  It is a heresy because it ignores the religious implications of Nature.  Religious because God is its Creator and He has written into it His-story.  Implications because it is just Creation and never meant to be worshipped.  It is a sign, a sacrament if you will, that reveals to man His Creator.  In fact, creation exists for man so that He might come to know the Creator.  That is its purpose and so we must read it that way.  Just as in the Book of Scripture God has revealed Himself, so too in the Book of Creation.

Like any heresy, there is always a temptation to overcorrect and reject scientistic explanations whole cloth.  But when we do this we are creating a false opposition between the scientistic and sacramental standards.  Both creation and Scripture have the same Author telling the Truth in different forms.  Just as it is foolish to remove Scripture and only “find God in Nature”, it is likewise imprudent to diminish the story that God is telling through Creation.  Aristotle thought all four causes were necessary to come to a more complete understanding of things.  The medievalists may have been wiser because they were able to focus on the formal and final causes, but they were limited in their understanding of the material and efficient causes and therefore were not as wise as they could have been.  We, on the other hand, have at our disposal a great power to more fully plum the depths of the material and efficient causes.  In short we have an opportunity to be wiser than our predecessors, but only if we avoid the heretical pitfalls we are speaking about here.

Our Lady, the Morning Star

An example will help to illustrate what this might look like.  The Litany of Loreto describes Our Lady as the “Morning Star”.  This moniker came about because of the wedding of the book of Scripture with the book of Creation.  The Church has long interpreted a verse from the Song of Songs (6:9) as descriptive of her: “Who is She that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun?”.  Turning towards creation we find that there is, in fact, a  “star” that is found in the sky just prior to the rising of the sun.  This “star” reflects the light of the sun and suggest the rising of the sun.  Our Lady, as the truest reflection of the brightness of her Son, always points to His coming (c.f. Jn 2:5). 

Some might accuse Catholics of over-spiritualizing things by doing this until we actually look at this empirically.  The planet Venus, which is named for a Roman goddess of fertility (could there be anything more fertile than a Virgin Mother?), has its orbit inside of the Earth’s orbit.  This means it is always relatively close to the sun in the sky.  When it is on one side of the sun it appears to follow the sun and brightens in our sky just after the sun sets.  When it is on the other side of the sun it precedes the sun in our sky so that it brightens the sky just before sun rise.  One can readily see how this one aspect of the book of nature perfectly describes Our Lady.  Apropos of our impending Solemnity, Our Lady is a Heavenly Body.  Nevertheless, even if she is closer to the sun, she still remains inside our orbit as one of us.  She always reflects the “Light of the World”, but especially in times of darkness.   

We could go on, but you get the point.  In fact, the more we wonder about this one particular aspect of creation, the deeper we could make of the connections.  Clinging to the complentarity of nature and Scripture enables us to see this in its fullest meaning.  If nature is nothing but the random collision of atoms, then you won’t care about why Venus is the way it is.  If you think nature something completely doomed for destruction, then you won’t care what it has to say.  But if you take the authentically Catholic both/and approach then you will be led deeper into the awareness of how close God is to us.