Science and Metaphysics as Related Ways of Knowing Reality continued
“ Aristotle considered (prime) matter to be unintelligible and non-being”
Fourth, developments in genetic engineering will pose a challenge both ethically and metaphysically in the way man deals with attempts to manipulate life (and change it) via cloning, hybrids, and the integration of human (organic) and machine technology (via nano-technology); issues of conscience, soul, purpose, intelligence, memory and morality will require the Church to articulate competently its understanding of the human person in order to provide an ethical voice.
John M. McDermott S.J. argues that matter and man exhibit a transcendence of universal formality and intelligible reasoning. This points to the need for a metaphysics that uncovers the fundamental realms of freedom and love. Fr McDermott is a faculty member of the Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit. Since 2003 he has served as a member of the International Theological Commission, and since 2008 as a consultant to the USCCB Committee on Doctrine.
In so far as contemporary developments in science can shed light upon the reality of this universe, they should be taken into account in theological discourse. Metaphysics and theology have to be grounded on, or connect with, the reality of this universe if they are to account for the world in which Christ became incarnate. However, the Church’s theological discourse cannot be so intimately bound to any one scientific theory, as “the final way” to explain something, that it becomes difficult to separate itself from such a theory, either because a theological doctrine itself can no longer be explained without it (which it can) or because a scientific theory has been superseded by a more coherent scientific theory (better able to explain reality) as is the nature of progress in science. There is a precedent for this in the Galileo controversy from the 1600s. So ingrained was the non-Christian Aristotelian framework of reality in the theological discourse of the Church at the time, that it proved difficult to conceive letting go of it and to use a different cosmology (Copernican) as a new paradigm for theological reflection on the same truths. This attachment to Aristotelian and Ptolemiac models proved unfortunate. Considerable fruit has come when the Church engages fully but carefully with the best possible explanations of reality available at the moment, knowing that such conceptions can and do change over time and that the unchanging truths of Christian faith are able to adapt without any loss. Modern science in no way threatens the orthodox understanding of Catholic Christianity, as attested by the work of countless theologians and popes, including Pope John Paul II in Fides at Ratio; rather, it provides a rich ground on which to continue to elaborate a profound theology in order to communicate the unchanging faith of the ages in news ways.
The question finds a facile answer: metaphysics comes after physics. Greek meta means “after”, and Aristotle’s early commentators aligned the Metaphysics after the Physics. But that ordering finds a deeper reason. Physics studies space, time, and motion. Greek physis denotes a nature, a principle of motion and rest. Motion is inherent to worldly natures because they are composed of matter and form. Form provides the intelligible principle which can be grasped in universal abstractions, while matter indicates the principle of individuality, what makes natures this or that particular instance of a species or genus. A polar tension exists between form and matter since neither can be reduced to the other but both essentially constitute every material reality. The tension inherent in this diversity in unity underlies many others. “Substance” is often used as the equivalent of “nature”, yet substance denotes what remains the same in accidental change, e.g., although a man changes in size, weight, position, age, etc., he remains substantially the same man. So from different perspectives the same reality is seen as a dynamic nature and a static substance. This holds true since the abstract form of the substance-nature remains always the same, yet in its concrete instantiations the form always seeks to realise itself more adequately. As by nature an acorn seeks to become a full-grown oak and a chick strives to become a chicken, so a human being is oriented by inherent natural dynamism to full self-realisation. As long as form and matter are joined motion seeks its completion in rest.
“ Zenonian paradoxes reappear to reopen Western thought to metaphysics and freedom.” To study motion Aristotle identified four causes. A cause answers the question “why”, giving the reason for something. “Why?” can be answered variously. “Why is something such as it is?” calls for a formal cause; e.g., “dogginess” makes a dog a dog. “Why this rather than that?” seeks a material cause. “Why is it moving?” can aim at discovering a final cause, the goal or “that for whose sake” something moves. So the chick desires to become
12 Faith I Science and Metaphysics as Related Ways of Knowing Reality