Book contents
- After Science and Religion
- Reviews
- After Science and Religion
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Modern Historians on ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’
- Part II Beyond ‘Science and Religion’
- Part III Philosophical Problems with ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’
- Part IV Before Science and Religion
- Chapter 11 Lessons in the Distant Mirror of Medieval Physics
- Chapter 12 Physics as Spiritual Exercise
- Chapter 13 Making Art
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
Chapter 11 - Lessons in the Distant Mirror of Medieval Physics
from Part IV - Before Science and Religion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2022
- After Science and Religion
- Reviews
- After Science and Religion
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Modern Historians on ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’
- Part II Beyond ‘Science and Religion’
- Part III Philosophical Problems with ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’
- Part IV Before Science and Religion
- Chapter 11 Lessons in the Distant Mirror of Medieval Physics
- Chapter 12 Physics as Spiritual Exercise
- Chapter 13 Making Art
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines the importance of teleology (purposiveness) in the understanding of consciousness and nature. Goal-orientation is most evident in human conscious intention. However, this establishes a disjunction between conscious mind and wider nature; the latter, according to much modern science, is not purposive. How, then, does purposive mind arise in a non-purposive universe? It is argued that modern natural science rejects a particular variety of teleological explanation. More sophisticated varieties, particularly in Aquinas’s understanding of action and intention, can be recovered which do justice to our basic intuitions concerning the purposiveness of nature. It is argued, however, that modern natural philosophy rejects a number of metaphysical concepts which make teleological explanation intelligible. Amongst those concepts is ‘habit’. This chapter examines the Aristotelian natural philosophy of habit proposed by the nineteenth-century philosopher Félix Ravaisson. For Ravaisson, habit is a mediating category between matter and conscious intention which indicates that the goal-orientation of mind is, in an analogous sense, present throughout nature, pointing to the possible recovery of a teleological understanding of nature, gleaned from a broad Aristotelian Thomism, which views creation as an expression of divine intention whilst avoiding crude accounts of teleology in modern design arguments for God’s existence.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- After Science and ReligionFresh Perspectives from Philosophy and Theology, pp. 259 - 281Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
- 1
- Cited by