Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
45. Misunderstandings, Custom, and the Modern World's Mathematical Habit of Mind
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/045-misunderstandings-custom-and-the-modern-worlds-mathematical/

[0:00] after ethics, we can say that it's important also for the arts that help nature, right? Now this is the difference. When we say help nature, we mean

[0:20] help nature in what nature is doing, right? Okay. Even without the art, okay. Now, when the woman is is pregnant, after about nine months, usually, sometimes sooner or later, nature is going to start pushing the baby out, right? Okay. And the obstetrician is in helping the woman to deliver the baby or to bring the baby forth is helping nature to do what it's already trying to do.

[0:54] You see, but when the carpenter makes a a chair or a table out of the tree, it's not helping nature to do what it's already trying to do. See, because the tree is not trying to make a chair or a table, right? We're just kind of helping it so the chair gets out well, right? See, so this is the distinction between an art like the medical art that helps, right, nature in what it's already doing, and the part part of the carpenter which is not helping the tree to make a chair or a table, right?

[1:35] Okay. Now the art of logic is also like the medical art, and that's why Socrates could call himself a. midwife Intellectual midwife, huh? Yeah.

[1:58] You can say that all of the servile arts are helping arts. You've got to be careful what you mean. I mean, you can say that when the carpenter makes a chair, right, or makes a bed, he's helping nature in the sense that it gives me a place to sleep and a place to rest myself on, and so on, right? But we're taking a more strict sense. When we talk about the arts that help nature, we mean to be more explicit, huh?

[2:18] Or say it more fully. The arts that help nature are what it's already trying to do, right? And so, if I cut myself when I'm shaving in the morning, right, nature will maybe stop the bleeding, right, and seal it up, right? But sometimes it's a little bit slower or something, right? I know I get my red stains in my white shirt, right?

[2:38] So I take this stuff and you know, it's kind of stingy stuff, and and it stops the bleeding, right, huh? See? Or if I get a big cut, you know, they might sew me up, right? And that doesn't complete the job of healing, but it pulls the ends together and helps nature, right? To heal them and to heal them with less of a scar there, right? Okay.

[3:06] And so even without logic, men will try to what give birth to thoughts and to think things out, right? Okay. Now, if you see that nature is acting for an end, then the medical art or the art of logic, huh? They have to begin with the recognition of what that end is, and then how we can help nature achieve that end, right? So when Hippocrates or something like that had the Hippocratic Oath, right?

[3:38] Um, he explicitly forbade abortion for the doctor, right? Huh? Okay. Because that's not what nature's intending, right? Okay. But if you see that nature's acting for an end, then the way the medical art becomes something arbitrary, right? It has no parameters, you might say, from from nature, huh? The same way for logic, right? Huh? Logic, the rules of logic are not arbitrary, but they fit the natural procedure of reason.

[4:16] But you know, I have you know some modern logicians in my office to, I mean, you know, their text where they say that you know the rules of logic are like the rules of any game, and you can play according to the rules or not, you know, Hoyle. But basically, the rules are arbitrary, right? The rules of Monopoly or whatever it might be, right? Are arbitrarily invented, right, by man, huh?

[4:41] So the whole nature or so character, you might say, of these arts that help nature will be what? Turned, huh? Destroyed, right? If you say that nature doesn't act for an end, right? Okay. So it's not only ethics, but the medical art and the art of logic that depend upon the answer to this question, right? The very character, the very kind of art they are, right, depends upon recognizing that.

[5:13] Okay. Um. Then you could speak of the importance of this, obviously, for theology, right? Huh? Because the man who says that nature acts for an end is going to ask eventually, but doesn't that require a mind, right? And then he's going to ask, well, does nature have a mind? Or is it directed by some other mind? Huh? And if he concludes that nature doesn't have a mind, then he's going to conclude that it's a product of a mind, directed by another mind, and this is going to be leading the mind sort of to recognition of the divine mind eventually, huh?

[6:04] Okay. But notice all these things that this question affects, whether it be ethics and human life, or the medical art, or the art of logic, or theology. You can't reason from its importance to those things as to what the truth or falsity is of the question, right? But you can reason from them to the what enormous importance, right? You know, they tell the students. I mean, they may not be interested in understanding nature too much.

[6:36] So bad for them, but then they may be like that. But certainly can't avoid living human life, right? Or having some contact with the doctor, or having

[6:50] using their mind once in a while, and so on. So that this question is is certainly relevant to them, right? You know, Socrates in the Phaedo, right? He says we philosophers are always accused of talking about irrelevant things. But now he's getting into discussion of whether the human soul survives death, and this is on the day he's going to die, right? You can hardly say this is irrelevant.

[7:21] I mean, if you stop and think about a little bit more, that question is relevant to not just the day to die, but the way you live your whole life, depending upon when you think this is all there is, right? Or the soul goes on, right? So you may think that philosophy is irrelevant to you. You just take it because it's a general requirement or something, you know.

[7:40] You take a little bit of philosophy, you know, but here your whole life depends upon this. You see, this whole life is just up for grabs. I mean, could be anything. Okay.

[7:55] Now, that's the first thing you do, right? Now, the second thing we do is to point out certain misunderstandings of what it means to say that nature acts for an end. Certain common misunderstandings that lead some people to deny that nature acts for an end, right? But these are not really arguments against it. They're a result of what Misunderstanding? of? What is meant by this? Okay.

[8:39] And these misunderstandings can be connected with what we learned about the four kinds of causes and the three corollaries. And so, I usually just talk about three common misunderstandings that you run into sometimes.

[9:12] Now, one of the most, the gross ones, is the one that thinks that misunderstands the kind of cause an end is, right? Okay. So misunderstanding, I won't repeat the misunderstanding, but misunderstanding the kind of cause that is the end.

[9:39] And sometimes this is associated too with the equivocation of the word "mover," right, or "motive." Okay. And more particular words than "mover," like "attract," "draw," and so on, right? Okay. That these words like "mover" or "drawer"

[10:13] can be sometimes used for the what fourth kind of cause as well as the third kind of cause. Okay. So, if you say that I'm moving this eraser, right? Okay. So I'm moving the eraser. I'm a cause in the third sense of cause, right?

[10:46] Not matter, form, but mover, not end, right? But. Now, if the prince climbs the tower that imprisons Rapunzel, right? Then Rapunzel's beauty moved him to what? Climb the tower, right? Did Rapunzel's beauty move him? Into third sense of cause?

[11:18] No, no. Again, take another word. I'm pulling this glass towards me, right now. Okay. Drawing it towards me, huh? And you got some kind of performer down there at the Sun Room in Worcester, and he's pulling in the crowds, right? He's drawing in the crowds, right? Was he doing like a cowboy? He's been out there and he lassoes you, you know, as you're walking by, and he pulls you in, right?

[11:44] That would be the what? Third kind of cause, right? But he's a puller or a drawer or a big draw in the fourth sense of cause, right?

[11:58] So sometimes, you know, they give a kind of mystical understanding of the end. You know, somehow, you know, it's reaching out to you and pulling you in, right? Huh? Like in *Midsummer Night's Dream*, you know, where the girl is hopelessly in love with a man, she's pursuing him, as a lady shouldn't do, right? But she compares him to a magnet, right? He's responsible for all this. Well, a magnet is really a kind of mysterious way.

[12:26] It's really a mover, but in the third sense of cause, right? But this young man is a magnet in the sense of the, but speaking metaphorically, the fourth fourth kind of cause, right? So sometimes

[12:42] people understand them kind of a pseudo mystical way of the fourth kind of cause, as if we have some crazy idea that somehow it's reaching out to you, you know, or beauty is pulling you up the tower, you know. And that's that's a fictitious understanding, right, of the fourth kind of cause. Now, a second common misunderstanding is of the first corollary.

[13:20] Sometimes they think that we are proposing the end in place of these other kinds of causes that are more known. So they have a false dichotomy there, right? Huh?

[13:49] What is the cause of my going across campus towards the Dean right. See Am I moving because of nerve impulses and muscles contracting and so on. Why am moving across campus in this direction? Because of eating my lunch. Well, yeah. But if you had to choose between the two, you'd say what? The muscles are moving you, right? Because that third kind of cause is more known, right?

[14:24] Okay. So, and sometimes it's easier, right? You know, to see the end in some way, right? You see, then the mechanism of how the heart works, or the eyes work, or the lungs work, or something, right?

[14:47] And okay. And then the third misunderstanding, of course, is with the second corollary. Same thing. So I said, is intercourse the cause of the baby, or is the baby the cause of intercourse? Which is it?

[15:15] Again, it's a false dichotomy. It could be both, right? The one in the sense of end, right? And the other in the sense of what? That for the sake of which, huh?

[15:33] But again, if a person sees this dichotomy, he's going to choose the more known cause, right? I'm sure there are other other misunderstandings, but these here I like to give because they tie up with what we've learned already, right? Okay.

[16:08] But now, even more important than these misunderstandings and leading many to deny the nature acts for an end is something called what? Custom. Now we mentioned how in the apology of Socrates, there, right? He addresses both the men who have charged him, who have initiated the legal proceedings against him, and are trying to prove that he's a bad man in court. He not only wants to reply to them, but to his what?

[16:53] Anonymous accusers, his unnamed accusers, right? The people who in Athens saw him who have been saying bad things about him, right, for years, huh? And he also indicates he's more concerned about them than the men who are trying to prove in court that he's a bad man.

[17:14] And there's kind of a contrast there between the force of custom and the force of what? Argument, right? Those who have been saying bad things about Socrates have accustomed people to what? Think of Socrates as a bad man in some way. Those who are in the courtroom have to prove in the courtroom that he's a bad man, right? And the custom seems to be stronger than the arguments, huh?

[17:44] And so sometimes I stop on that because there's something more universal here, I think, to learn than just what's going on in the trial of Socrates. And that is which is stronger, for the most part, in our thinking, custom or argument.

[18:09] Yeah, yeah. And even I present that, you know, to a general class. There, students will tend to say custom, right? Okay. And there are many witnesses to this. One witness, I think, I mentioned before last time. Max Planck, right, the father of modern physics, right, was himself uneasy about his new theory, right, because it was so contrary to the things that he had been brought up in.

[18:40] But in talking about this difficulty of getting a new idea accepted, when it's contrary to the customary ideas of the world around you, he says, "We don't mean to convince the older physicists the new ideas. What happens is that they die off, and the younger, the guys starting out, are introduced to new ideas in the beginning of their career, right? And they accept them, and that's how they get adopted, right?

[19:11] Well, as I say to the students, you know, the scientists who are presumably trained to follow the evidence in some way, right, and be more rigorous than the common man, in their thinking, if even of them is true, right, that custom is stronger than argument, how much more so, right, for men in general. And sometimes, you know, I'll grab an innocent student there and say, you know, what's the cause of day and night?

[19:41] Right? Is it the sun going around the earth each day, or is the earth turning on its axis, and that's why it only appears that the sun is going around us each day? Well, a good modern he answers what the earth is turning on its axis, right? Okay. Now does he accept that because he has some proof of that being so, or because his mummy and his daddy and his grade school and his high school teacher and everything he kind of read was saying that, yeah, it's because of that, right?

[20:15] And then I say, now let's get down and examine this by reason, right? You know, I said now if you take a piece of earth, you know, and you hold it there and you let go of it, does it start going around in a circle like that? Huh? Is that the natural tendency, of earth Mm hmm Oh, if you mold it into kind of a ball, like the earth is supposed to be a ball more or less, huh?

[20:35] Does it just naturally start rotating? No. If I let go of it, it goes straight down in a straight line. Doesn't go around. Doesn't start rotating. See? Now, if I wanted to, I suppose I could take it and I could start to spin it here on the desk, right? You know, going to keep on spinning around year after year. Now it's going to spin around a little bit and fall apart more or less, right?

[20:59] You know, so everything we know about Earth, right? So it makes no sense to see that the Earth is just what going around all the time, and so regularly as day and night is, huh? You know, we can use as kind of standard for our clocks in daily life, right? You know, that's ridiculous what you maintain. You know, you know. Well, well, they're unable to defend what they think, right?

[21:24] But do they agree with me? No. No. My arguments. You get no arguments really on their side. I can, I can. You know, I'm convinced myself by my arguments. So custom is stronger, right? See. And um. Aristotle in the second book of wisdom, you know, talks about the influence of custom upon the way we think, right? And Thomas in the beginning of the Summa Contra Gentiles tells upon what we think, right?

[22:04] Okay. But the example I just gave was an example of the influence of custom upon what we think. What we've been told for years, or from the time we're young, right, seems to be naturally clear, right? Okay.

[22:25] My friend Warren Murray was in an English class years ago at the University of Wisconsin. There, and the English professor was making fun of the ancients for thinking that the what sun went around the earth instead of the earth around the sun, right? As if somehow it was obvious that the earth went around the sun, you know. Well, it's not obvious. You're just accustomed to hear that, right?

[22:47] So my friend, knowing some science, said it had some little fun, right? And he said, well, that's not true either. And according to Newtonian physics, strictly speaking, the two should be going around a what common center of gravity, yeah? You see? And it might be closer, you know, to one than the other, right? But still, strictly speaking, the two of them are going around a common center of gravity.

[23:13] A little bit like, you know, if a man's out there, he's got little kid, and he's, you know, doing like this around a circle like that, right? The man is actually what rotating, right, as well as the kid, right? And there's a center of gravity which is closer to the man because he's bigger than the kid, right? But they're actually kind of rotating around the common center of gravity, right?

[23:33] So maybe even according to Newtonian physics, right? No, according to what the ancients thought, right? According to Newtonian physics maybe it's not true to say well, we'd say either, right? You want to be really exact, right? But he's actually got a little bit, of, you know, it's not so obvious as you think, right? In fact, it may not even be true.

[23:55] So now you you can see this, you know, if you live in the academic world too, you know, or you read authors, you know, you go to different ages and people take for granted things in one age and not in another, right? And C. S. Lewis in one place has a interesting reason for reading the ancients, men of different ages than our own. He said, and he's not claiming necessarily that they're wiser, right?

[24:29] He's not claiming they don't make mistakes, right? But mistakes that they make are not the ones we make. So when we read them and we see them say the opposite of our mistakes, we might stop and think about it and examine our positions and see that, right? It's a interesting point, huh? And that's one way in which travel broadens, huh? If you only read authors in your own milieu, right, you're going to get the same thing over and over again, right?

[24:58] And some of it will be true, maybe, but some of it won't be true, right? Okay. And so people who, you know, live sometimes in a foreign country, they see that some things there are better than at home, but other things that were at home that they saw were better, right? You know.

[25:19] Remember what you were saying, you know, when you get married and so on, and your spouse, you know, had a different family life somewhat than yours, right? You may see something good in their family life that was maybe missing in your family life, but vice versa, right? They can make those comparisons, right? So in that sense, you weaken a bit. That's one of the weakening the force of custom a bit is to travel, right?

[25:41] But not just geographically, but maybe in time. Okay. Um. So things, but you what you notice at the same time is the force of custom in a certain similarity of thought that they take something for granted that seems to us absurd, right? And we take certain things for granted, you know. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. If I stood up and said that in Rome, slave Rome or slave Athens or some other slave society, I'm crazy, you know.

[26:13] You know, the first reaction would be, I mean, you know, if they had a scene in Athens, they'd lock me up, right? If you had the mind to say that. And. Uh.

[26:27] Okay. Um. But again, you know, Aristotle speaks of the influence to a custom upon the way we think, huh? And we and. In the second book of wisdom, there, you know, he talks about some men want everything to be said mathematically, and some want you to quote a poet and so on. But wherever they come from, right, huh? And so Descartes wants the clarity of mathematics everywhere, and the certainty of mathematics everywhere.

[26:56] And Novalis says the more poetic it is, the more true it is. But they come from entirely different what studies, right? So if you have experience with, you know, committees of professors who come from different disciplines, right, they. You know, what's customary in their customary thinking? They don't approach the same problem in the same way, but in the way they're accustomed to approach things in their discipline, right?

[27:22] You know. I remember seeing one video where the sociologist said, you know, he's trying to exemplify something ever, you know, like you're doing a word count. Thomas, he says, you know. My first reaction: was, What the hell would I be doing a word count in Thomas for? It's like a sociologist might do, but I've never been a word count in Thomas.

[27:51] Okay. Now, did we talk in here before about the customs of the modern world? Let me just do a brief overview, but it's one group of them that's important.

[28:12] I think there are three, at least three major sources of the modern world and its customs. Okay. Maybe other sources that are more what hidden. Okay.

[28:40] It's a famous remark of Monsignor Knox, was it? Huh? He says, "It's so stupid," he says, "the modern world to have ceased believing in the devil, when he's the only explanation for it." Okay.

[28:57] Now, the first major source of the modern world and its customs is the mercantile origin of the modern city. Mercantile origin of the modern city

[29:22] in the late Middle Ages. The modern city was founded in the late Middle Ages by merchants, right? Huh. Okay. And William McNeill, I mentioned before, there in the Rise of the West, which is perhaps the best world history we have, secular world history, contrasts

[29:56] the origin of the Greek city with the origin of the modern city, huh? And he says the origin of the Greek city was aristocratic. The aristocrats, the landed aristocracy, settled near the seat of government, right? And gradually the city grew up. So there's an aristocratic stamp, he says, to the ancient city. And even the most commercially active, he says, of ancient cities, they never completely lost this aristocratic stamp.

[30:26] Huh. And but the modern city was founded by merchants, right? And he goes into you know the whole ethos of the merchant class, and they're kind of converted pirates, actually, and have some aggressiveness in the West there, huh? That derived from that, huh? And then he points out, of course, how, as the word itself indicates, civilization is higher aspect in a way is tied to the what city.

[30:57] You know, those words are connected, right? civitas and civis, city, right? In civilization. So this is the way colored the whole civilization, the Greeks, and the whole civilization of the what moderns, right? So this is the first major source of the modern world and its customs, right? And I give it first because it's the first that comes to light, first in time. I'm not saying this is the most important, but it's the first one in time.

[31:30] And so there's a way in which our civilization is more commercial, right, than any other civilization's ever been. And it's striking, you know, how

[31:46] economics as a kind of independent discipline and So on is characteristic of the modern what world, right? Huh? In fact, they give Nobel prizes in economics, right? So it has a lot of prestige among even the so-called social sciences, right? They don't give anything about prizes in political science and sociology so much, but in economics, right? Are the reasons for that too? Maybe it's only mathematical, but then

[32:21] it even has some influence upon the philosophers, huh? If you study the history of ethics, you'll you'll run into the book by Adam Smith, right? The theory of moral sentiments, right? Okay. So Adam Smith, in a way, is a philosopher, huh? In the history of ethics. But Adam Smith's most famous work is what? The Wealth of Nations. Yeah, it's kind of you know the first great book in economics, you might say, in modern times, huh?

[32:53] It's kind of you know you think of Plato and Aristotle having as their major work a book on the Wealth of Nations. Of course, Adam Smith was what a Scotsman, right? And we read the economic history of Scotland in the 18th century. It's a remarkable example of a country starting off being very poor and learning some tricks from England, right? And then towards the end of the century, so far advancing that the English are learning from the Scots how to do some things.

[33:27] You know, so it's you know what they call economic takeoff, so to speak. I mean, it's a magnificent example. I mean, a very striking example of how suddenly a nation that was poor becomes, relatively speaking, kind of what well-to-do, right? And so his mind has been drawn, right, to this. Why do some nations remain poor, and other nations, you know, become somewhat wealthy and so on, right?

[33:53] Um, in the 19th century, of course, Marx regarded his most famous work as what Das Kapital, right? That's the one he dedicated to Charles Darwin and so on, right? And you know the early collection of Marx's paper called the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, huh? But in case you didn't know, everything is explained by the economic mode of production, right? So I mean, you find a kind of you know I don't think it's the most important influence, the most prominent one, but you can see that in Adam Smith or in Karl Marx and so on, the in the prominence of economics in modern times.

[34:42] The president gives what two standard addresses during the year? One is the State of the Union that we had last night, right? And this. Economic report too, right?

[34:52] But did our President Coolidge say, you know, the proper business of America is business? Of course, you see it very much, you know. You know, if you obviously newspapers and magazines, they're mainly what advertisers. That she wanted, right? But

[35:23] everybody says, for example, like television or something like that, even radio, it's an advertising medium, you know. And people just go crazy, you know, if they're watching, you know, a movie on a commercial station. You know, a movie maybe is going to take an hour and a half of the time. There's, you know, every ten, fifty minutes, something that's interesting. There's fifty minutes of commercials. I mean, you know, it's just absolutely crazy, right?

[35:52] I remember when TV was just first starting when I was young there, and used to have, you know, like a Sunday evening movie, you know, and everybody, you know, this is something new, you know, have a free movie in your house every Sunday. evening But the sponsor was GMK, you know, saves the day. They were kind of a dry cleaning place, you know. They're aiming at the female audience there.

[36:14] They can send anything off, and we'll clean it, you know, and send it back. Instead, watch the movie, you know. But it must have had like a half hour of commercials, you know. Just crazy. You compare that with the Greek what festivals that produced what Sophocles and you know Euripides and Aeschylus and so on, right? These kind of religious festivals, right, where they had you know competition among the playwrights, right, produced the best play, right?

[36:41] And the symposium of Plato there takes place, you know, at a dinner honoring the what winner of the prize for the greatest tragedy of that year, Agathon, right? Okay. And so, but you mentioned the elevation of the Greek tragedy when you read that, huh?

[37:05] See how different that was from a commercial thing, you know, with these movies that are made nowadays, you know, to make million dollars in the box office and so on, right? I say they're really not very good, most of them, you know. or the Ion, where Socrates talks to Ion as rhapsodist, you know, he just recites Homer by. And he's he's won all kinds of prizes but he recites Homer, you know.

[37:35] I mean, it's really amazing to see that the difference between the Socratic thing and the support of the arts, right? Okay, so that's that's the first major source of the modern world in its customs. Now the second major source, and this is the one that's going to be most important for us, is the mathematical union of natural and technical science.

[38:17] And this really got going in the 17th century, the 17th and then the 18th centuries. So this really came to prominence a little bit later than that, huh?

[38:33] I think I gave you Thomas's division there of order in comparison to reason. We talked about the definition of reason. There's the order which reason does not make, but only considers, as is the natural order, right? And then the order made by reason in its own acts, which is concern of logic, and then in the acts of the will, which is a concern of ethics, and then exterior matter, which is the concern of what he calls the mechanical arts, or the servile arts, as they're called sometimes, but the old word for them is the mechanical arts, huh?

[39:14] Well, there's something quite different, huh? Natural philosophy, which is about natural order, and the mechanical arts, which is about the order that is made in wood or steel or something else, right? Well, what took place in the 17th and 18th century was a union of natural science with the mechanical arts. Our recent is called technical science, right? Sometimes you say the union of science and technology, right?

[39:44] But the two came fused together. And so if you read the histories there of science and technology in the 16th, 17th, and 18th century, it would be the same history. The history of science and technology in the 16th, 17th century would be the title of the book. You can't really separate one because they become intertwined. New techniques enable them to perform experiments they couldn't perform before. In new theories, right, suggest new experiments and new techniques and so on.

[40:15] And so they become intertwined, huh? But this union or marriage of the two is made possible by mathematics, huh? Because mathematics abstracts from the differences we saw between the natural and the artificial. And the four mathematics is neither by nature nor by art, huh? The four legs of the chair are by what? Art. Four legs of the cat are by nature, right? But the number four, the abstract four, is that by nature or by art?

[40:52] It abstracts the difference, right? In a way, it's applicable to both. So the fact that the union was mathematical also facilitated the marriage of the two, right?

[41:07] Now Heisenberg, in discussing this, huh, in the Gifford lectures, he says. It turned our attitude towards the natural world from one of what, contemplation, desire to understand, to what can you do with the natural world, right? What can you make of it? To a pragmatic attitude, he said. And so, when you read the modern philosophers who are in this or influenced by it, they start to see the purpose of this as power, right?

[41:39] Now, the oldest part of this is is is the part of physics called what, mechanics, right? It's interesting the very words are. The word physics comes in the Greek word for nature, right? And mechanics goes back to the mechanical arts that Thomas was speaking about. So the oldest part of modern science, part Galileo and Kepler and Newton were perfected to some extent, was called physics and and the part of physics called mechanics.

[42:12] So you have kind of a sign even the words, right, of the union going on there between the natural and the mechanical. And of course Newton, who united Galileo and Kepler, huh, become so important and such a model for this knowledge that the physicists in the twentieth century, they refer to the physics of the sixteenth, excuse me, the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century. They call that either classical physics or Newtonian physics, right?

[42:50] And if you looked at Ernst Cassirer's book on the philosophy of enlightenment, everybody took Newton as the model of all thinking everywhere. We followed Newton. As John Locke said, I am just clearing the way for more Newtons. You know, we're following his more Newtons. And the poet says, "What all was darkness? God said that Newton would be, and all was light." So this had tremendous influence upon the modern philosophers, and much more so than this here, right?

[43:24] So men like Descartes, for example, or Kant, they were Newtonian physicists or something like that, right? They were physicists. Descartes, of course, developed one kind of mathematics, and Newton, of course, with Leibniz is a founder founder of calculus and so on. And

[43:51] Kant's critique of pure reason in a way is trying to understand the kind of knowledge I have here, but this becomes the whole of the knowledge of the natural world, huh? These people.

[44:09] That's the second major source. Now, I don't try to lose these, you know, one to the other, but you could say that the the first one here might, in a way, dispose of the second one, right? Because in a mercantile city, you might be interested in natural science not for its own sake, but with what you can use it to make things and sell, right? So this first one, I would say, I'm not saying it's a cause, but something kind of disposes for that, right?

[44:43] Okay. And anybody looks at the modern world from the Renaissance on as a whole, they all talk about something which they call the industrial revolution. Right? It's not revolution in the sense of a big revolution, but it's

[45:06] it's a change that they want to call. It's like a major change, right? The industrial revolution. And in a way, the industrial revolution Involves these two, doesn't it? Working together, yeah. brief question, I don't want to sidetrack too much. but. Do you think that did Newton merit that grandeur of title that was given to him? You know, God, and God said, let there be light, and to be let there be Newton.

[45:37] But he's a great, certainly a great scientist. Yeah, he's great. I wouldn't take Newtonian physics as the model for all human knowledge, right? Okay.

[45:48] Because Newton himself said, "I don't know why appeared to be to other men." He says, "But to me, I always seem to be a little boy down the seashore there, you know, playing with the shells, and now and then diverting myself with a prettier one." The whole vast ocean of truth lay out there in front of me, undiscovered. But no, it's interesting, huh? In his later years, Newton what became what?

[46:17] The mint, the monetary system, right? Chancellor of the checkered, or what do you call it? The Treasury Secretary, call in the United States here. Kind of funny, right? That you know, here's the aristocracy right So the industrial revolution, the way it involves both of these things, right? And so a lot a lot of the support of of of this here in our society comes from what? From business and then from government, right?

[46:56] But whether it be from business or from government, it's for practical reasons. So if you're a chemist working for Minnesota Mining, your ideas belong to the company. And the merchants, to some extent, are using the scientists. So there's a tie. I mean, ways of these two.

[47:20] Now the third major source of the modern world are the democratic revolutions. And then the social condition of equality, which is quite different from the

[47:46] hereditary inequality that you had in ancient societies. And of course, there are many democratic revolutions. The most striking one, of course, is the French Revolution. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Now the French Revolution takes place at the transition there. Into the 18th century, right? So this really gets going in the 19th century. The 19th century is much more democratic, even in England, right? Which had its democratic revolution earlier, you might say, back in the 17th centuries.

[48:26] But the 19th century is much more democratic in England than it was the 18th century. In some ways, the 20th century is even more democratic than the 19th. And

[48:41] the most important book for understanding democratic customs is "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville, right? And de Tocqueville came to America to study a pure case of democracy, because in France you had kind of the you know hangover a bit of the aristocratic order, right? And he wanted to see you know kind of a pure case of the democratic thing. But in the second volume, "Democracy in America," it's more general than the first volume.

[49:10] The first volume is more dealing with American institutions, starting with the local government, going all the way to the federal government. But the second volume is a beautiful contrast of democratic customs with what he calls aristocratic customs. And if you read the book, it's got four books to the second volume. And the first book talks about the influence of democratic customs on the life, the mind, in the broadest sense.

[49:41] And the second and the third one, its influence upon our morals and so on, and our manners and so on. And the fourth book is about the influence on government, right? Yeah. That's very interesting what he says about the influence of this upon the mind. It's everything from you know literature and history to science and so on. And

[50:10] you contrast the historic, the democratic historian with aristocratic historian. The democratic historian will emphasize mass movements, right? As if individuals, even those who came to the forefront, were just kind of what almost like a tool of the mass movement, right? Yeah. And if it hadn't been them, somebody else would have pushed forward, right? Yeah. Like aristocratic historian will see the role of great men in history as changing things, right?

[50:39] And you can see that kind of you know when you read you know the history there around let's say our friend Winston Churchill, you know, I mean it's really questionable whether England would have what not made a deal with Germany in the absence of Churchill, right? Oh. And this would have been you know who knows what would have happened as a result of that, right? Then.

[51:05] Um. So sometimes we downplay the importance of an individual like Churchill, although in other cases we can see that you know, I'm almost forced to recognize the importance of Churchill at that moment. But I was rereading Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar, and Cassius, you know, Casca, one of them, calls Brutus, you know, the soul of Rome, right? And a beautiful phrase. but it struck right away. How much more apt it would be to say, you know, that Churchill was the soul of Britain, right, at that time, you know, when when the things were so dark there, right, you know, there was.

[51:47] Invade to meeting and so on, but soul is best in England there. Now, if you look at this from the point of view of world history, as they say, taking MacNeill's world history, you look at the panorama of the modern world. They'll speak of the industrial revolution, the democratic revolution, right? That's it. I mean, what the major changes, right? But the industrial revolution, as they say, involves you know the connection of these two, and that this obviously is down here, right?

[52:20] Okay. When he's talking about the literature, he says something very interesting. That in aristocratic times, men look to the past, right, for inspiration for the imagination.

[52:41] In democratic times, they look to the future for inspiration for literature. Well, you know, you think about the greatest works of Greek fiction, huh? They are things like the Iliad, right? That's the greatest work in their Greek fiction, and the Iliad is set what way in the past, right? When, another age, right? When, when, when men were greater than they are now, right? And so on, huh?

[53:07] And even you know, Aeneid too is set in the past, right? This kind of mythical origin of Rome, right? Okay. But now in our time, you know, when I grew up, everybody was reading 1984, which in that time was in the future, right? And Brave New World was in the future, right? And all these you know science fiction things like Star Wars, they're all set in the what future, right?

[53:34] I don't know exactly why that is, but it's interesting observations that he makes, right? When he talks about the influence of democratic customs upon religion, he says that they naturally suggest pantheistic ideas. It's an interesting observation, you know. He says you can see this pantheism in German philosophy. You can see it in French literature, right? And I often refer to that text when we talk about Einstein's what mind, huh?

[54:05] Because it's pantheistic. His mind, as opposed to the greater mind of. Anaxagoras, which is altogether distinct from things, huh? But if you read, you know, the ingredients similar, I mean, we have the official documents of the church and the official, you know, corrections too, and so on. You know, it seems like all the way through the 19th century, you have them always correcting some German theologian who's a Catholic, but who's gotten into somewhat pantheistic ideas, right?

[54:36] Just like Karl Rahner did, right, a little bit, and his excommunicated compatriot there, even more so, right? But there's that tendency, right? And so they talk about the influence of history, literature, how it makes them interested in immediate applications of science, right, and so on. So these are the three major sources, huh? But now this one here, perhaps the most important, as far as this question is concerned, right? Because if you understand mathematics, if you look at things mathematically,

[55:25] in mathematics there's no substance, there's no sense qualities, and there's no purpose. And it strikes me, you know, my own experiences of the modern mind, the way substance seems to be persona non grata, or res non grata, if I can twist that phrase.

[55:53] You find Berkeley, you know, denies any material substance, and then Hume denies any substance at all, right? All the way up to Bertrand Russell there, you know, saying the accidents of Mister Smith, he says, have no more need of a substance to exist in than the earth has need of an elephant to rest upon. It's a very cleverly said, right? And and I notice even in the the church influence there, you know, like in the Nicene Creed, they don't want to say consubstantial; they want to avoid the word substantial.

[56:29] The same substance, they say, the same being, you know, or some more vague word, right? So it's a reaction against substance, right? But there's no substance in mathematics. Of course, Descartes, you know, has no substance; he just has extension, which is really quantity, the second category, and that's in place of substance.

[56:53] And if you read any of the modern philosophers, in a lot of modern scientists too, they all deny that there's any sense qualities. There's no redness out there, no greenness out there. That's just the mirage, you know, of our. There's no sense qualities. There's nothing hot or cold out there, really.

[57:15] Of course, when you describe the world mathematically, there are no sense qualities because there's no sense qualities in math. Yeah. Schrödinger though, points out an interesting thing, you know. He says, though, when you read instruments, you make use of the sense qualities. You know, black mark here, or blue column going up, or something, right? So we can't read instruments and do science without using sense qualities. But in our scientific picture of the world, there's no sense qualities.

[57:44] Kind of strange situation to be in, right? And then mathematics, there's no end or purpose. My brother Mark used to talk about that. Say, you know, we don't say that the geometrical sphere is smooth,

[58:08] so it can roll away out of danger, right? Or that the pyramid is pointed to protect itself. You know, that the porcupine has these things that protect from being bitten. You know. We never give any reason, right? Huh? But it's better for it to be this way, right? Huh? It's better that the triangle have its interior angles two right angles. No, it just has to be that way, but not better.

[58:30] Just that's just the way it is. So that's very characteristic. And the moderns tend to see the world as it's a world without sense qualities, without substance, and without purpose. That's the influence of the customs, yeah. So then, I guess this seems to be

[58:55] this whole worldview, or seems to be one of the main reasons why, because in Fides et Ratio our holy father is continually mentioning that the modern world is characterized by an anti-metaphysical stance. Yeah, but this is part of that. But it's more basic, you know. it's against the things we learn in actual philosophy, right? Sure. yeah. Okay. okay. So, Would that be correct? if I know what I was saying Yeah, but I think you could say, you know, it starts right here in the study of the natural world, right?

[59:26] Yeah. Now, I mean, I have a colleague, you know, who who was converted to the modern philosophy in a way, you know, converted into this business of denying the sense qualities, right? Huh? You see, he's so convinced by the arguments of the modern philosophers that the sense qualities don't exist, you know, that quote somebody, rather forget who it was, you know, this would be a sign of your rationality that you see the directness of sense qualities.

[59:56] Oh. That means you're still holding on to the reality of sense qualities. This is reason to call and question your rationality, my son. Yeah. So it's really gotten, excuse me, strong, right?

[1:00:16] So if you're accustomed to this kind of knowledge, right, then you're accustomed to seeing the world without any sense quality, and without any substance, and without any purpose. And if this is the only thing you're accustomed to, as far as the natural world is concerned, then it seems unscientific, right? irrational to talk about inter purpose, huh? Yeah. Now, apropos of that, I sometimes bring in Sir Arthur Eddington, huh?

[1:00:51] who is kind of interesting. Sir Arthur Eddington is a British mathematician, physicist, and so on. And he's the one who actually conducted the first team to confirm the general theory of relativity. Oh. I guess he's the one who called for Einstein and told him your theory has been confirmed. Einstein says I knew it would be. Yeah, because then. The result of it, you know, the official announcement of it, you know, and they had the thing packed with scientists from everywhere, you know, and all those many representatives.

[1:01:22] But anyway, he has one of his books—a very interesting image to about this thing. So the man goes down to the ocean, right, and he casts his net into the ocean, and he gets a bunch of fish, right? And he pulls it on shore and he examines the fish, and he finds that he has no fish shorter than that, right? He's caught. And year after year, he goes down and he casts his net into the ocean.

[1:01:52] He never picks up a fish smaller than that. And finally, he concludes that there's no fish in the ocean shorter than that. Along comes the ichthyologist, and he says, "Just a minute now. I could have told you before you started casting the net in there, right, and that you would not find ever in your net a fish smaller than that. Why not? Well, examine your net, see.

[1:02:22] Your net is not designed to catch a fish shorter than that, even if there's one out there. So I don't care how many times you throw your net into the ocean, never found a fish smaller than that. That's no proof there is no such fish, right? Is it? It's like a man saying, you know,

[1:02:42] I've never heard of color. Have you ever heard of color, huh? Therefore, there's no. I've been hearing things all my life, and I've never heard of color, so I don't think color exists out there. That's absolutely absurd, right? Because the ear is not designed to what? To catch a color, even if there's a color out there, right? See. So you might say that a mathematical net is not designed to catch an ender purpose, even if there's one out there, right?

[1:03:10] So the fact that ender purpose never showed up in my mathematical net is no reason to say that there's no such thing out there.

[1:03:25] Now, if that was an argument, you'd have to say also that there's no matter in the world around us. Now, I sometimes take the words of one of the great physicists in the 20th century on this regard, Erwin Schrödinger. Schrödinger is responsible for the Schrödinger equation in modern physics and so on. But he's the physicist who perfected the mathematics of wave mechanics, huh? And when he perfected the mathematics of wave mechanics and published it and so on, that same year Heisenberg came out with a mathematical scheme for quantum mechanics, huh?

[1:04:10] And the physical world, meaning the world of physicists, was amazed to see there are two mathematical formalisms that both what? Fitted the the facts; they both seemed to be true. And then, subsequently, Schrodinger wrote another paper where he showed, you know, the equivalence, right? Ultimately, his mathematics with Heisenberg's, right? But sometimes it's more convenient to use one rather than the what other, right? I mention all that just as background to say that if anybody understands the mathematical theory of matter, its mathematical aspect, would be Schrodinger, right?

[1:04:49] Because he's the man who perfected the mathematics of quantum of wave mechanics, which was used to talk about the atom, right? At the same time that Heisenberg and and Born perfected the mathematics of quantum mechanics, but he showed the equivalence of the two, right? But anyway, one of his papers, Schrodinger says, the modern atom consists of no stuff at all. There's. Absolutely no stuff there. It's a purely mathematical theory of matter.

[1:05:19] Contains no stuff. There's no matter there. And he compares it to the mathematical theory of matter that Plato gives in the Timaeus, right? Which is a geometrical one for earth, air, fire, and water. But it's all in terms of geometrical figures. There's no matter there. So

[1:05:44] if you say that because I haven't found an end, an end in my mathematical net, therefore there's no end in the natural world, you'd have to say also there's no matter there. Which is hard to say, right? And maintain, huh? Usually you don't go that far. But there was concern in Moscow, you know, when the Communist Party was still in control. There was some concern, you know, that science was not proving Marxism-Leninism because Marxism-Leninism is dialectical materialism, right?

[1:06:22] And matter seemed to be disappearing from modern science, right? So there's some question about the doctrinal purity of modern science, right? But it's not really an argument against there being matter, right? That doesn't appear in a mathematical net, huh?

[1:06:42] So likewise, huh? But you know, assuming that matter exists, and so on, you see, therefore that the mathematical net not catching matter is not a reason to say it isn't there, right? Well, then the same thing would be applied to end, right? But again, as I say, men who are accustomed to this kind of knowledge, and this is what dominates the modern world, right? And of course, with all the technological applications, you know, everything comes, you know, just really with electricity as a result of this, right?

[1:07:15] You know, I mean, our society now is, but can't survive without this, right? So this is really ingrained, right? And but that's all you're accustomed to. Well, then it's going to seem what unscientific, right? And that's going to influence people more than any argument against there being an end in the natural world, right? Because custom, for the most part, and even with the scientists, is stronger. I was quoting Max Planck, you know, but but Niels Bohr is supposed to have kept his what paper on the atom and applying the quantum to the atom locked in his desk for almost a year.

[1:07:56] He was afraid to publish it for for fear that he'd be what laughed at, huh? Right? And when Louis de Broglie, huh, came out with the idea of wave mechanics, huh? The reaction was they called it La Comedie Francaise, you know, the supposed to be national theater there in France, right? La Comedie Francaise. If this is a Frenchman, that's what the theory of wave mechanics is, La Comedie Francaise.

[1:08:21] Well, fortunately for Louis de Broglie, Einstein was still, you know, quite a bit of authority. He said, just a minute now, It might be something what Louis de Broglie says, And let's test it. And so they tested it in the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York, and exactly what Louis predicted took place, right? Of course, the first reaction was La Comedie Francaise, right? You're going to be laughed at because your ideas are what

[1:08:46] not customary, right? Now, if I walked into class with a toga on, right, which would be customary thing to wear in Greece, you see, or you know, I'd be laughed at, right?

[1:09:01] So, so the force. I guess I did arrest somebody in New York with a toga. So, I think this is more important than the arguments as far as why so many people might deny that nature acts for an end, and more important than the misunderstandings. But neither misunderstandings nor the custom are a reason for saying nature doesn't act for an end.