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garding the temporal relation between cause and effect than those
1
For the basic texts and a discussion of the problematic and its
'i
history, see J. S. Wilkie, The Problem of the Temporal Eelation of Cause
and Effect," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (1950), pp.
211-29.
ent and intermediate view, not hitherto noted, that was proposed
in the High Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas. It argues that
Aquinas made a significant advance beyond Aristotle in his anal
teaching that runs through his physical writings and that gives
rise to a peculiar methodological problem. This is the theme that
the scientiae naturales are concerned uniquely with changeable
being, or with
being in process, which process pertains to the
sensible or phenomenal order, and on this account is readily avail
able for empirical observation and analysis. The processes that
are thus by the natural
studied philosopher, however, unfortu
nately a
have
contingent aspect to them, in the sense that they are
not absolutely necessitated but could be otherwise than they are.
If this is the case, then the possibility of attaining true demonstra
tive of natural processes would seem to be comprom
knowledge
ised, and the scientiae naturales might have to forfeit their claim
to being sciences simpliciter in the sense of the Posterior Analytics.
Aquinas was quite aware of this seeming incompatibility of con
process and necessary demonstration, and nonetheless
tingent
maintained that both features serve to characterize the scientiae
naturales. In maintaining this, moreover, he was led to develop
2 is given in my article on
A brief sketch of these contributions
Aquinas in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 1. (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), pp. 196-200.
3
This theme is developed at some length throughout my two-volume
study, Causality and Scientific Explanation (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1972-74) ; see Vol. 1, pp. 71-80, 102, 104, 143, and Vol. 2,
pp. 247, 250, 293, and 354.
4
In II Physicorum, lect. 1, n. 1.
5
In III Physicorum, lect. 1, n. 1.
6
There has been no satisfactory full-scale study of the various dem
onstrations that are to be found in Aristotle's physical works; for a pre
liminary outline, indication of sources, etc., see my "Some Demonstrations
in the Science of Nature/' The Thomist Reader 1957 (Washington, D.C.:
The Thomist Press, 1957), pp. 90-118.
usually produced from olive seeds provided that these are properly
nurtured. From this information, however, one cannot be certain
in advance that any particular child will be born with two hands,
or that each individual olive seed will produce an olive plant. The
reason for this is that the processes whereby perfect organisms are
regularly and for the most part, and using this as the end or final
cause, will try to discover the antecedent causes that are neces
11
The details of this mechanism were not known to Aquinas but were
discovered shortly after his death by another Dominican who had studied
at Paris, Dietrich or Theodoric of Freiberg, whose contribution to optical
science is discussed in my article in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography,
Vol. 4 (1971), pp. 92-95. For a full analysis of Theodoric's optical meth
ods, see my The Scientific Methodology of Theodoric of Freiberg (Fribourg :
The University Press, 1959).
II
eclipse and the rainbow, concerned as they are with light rays,
obscure the point somewhat, since in the Middle Ages light propa
gation was generally regarded as instantaneous. From other ex
contiguous, any more than two points can be, nor can the inter
vening process be
contiguous with either event, any more than a
line can be contiguous to a point. Thus there is nothing that can
serve to hold events together and so assure that any coming-to-be
will actually follow upon a past event. Moreover, there always
seems to be the possibility of some third event intervening be
tween the two being considered, which could be the cause of the
later event's production and therefore would render the inference
invalid.
This line of argument has proved troublesome for many com
dropped into a mill pond, for the case of the single object, and with
the successive falls of a row of dominoes, for the case of the plu
of objects. In such instances, as in the example Aquinas
rality
supplies,
. . . the cause is not simultaneous with that of which it is the cause
[i.e., the effect], insofar as the first portion of the process is the cause
of the second, or the object first undergoing change induces a change
in the second.16
16
im.
IMd.
17 nn. 8 and 9.
Hid.,
attempts to meet the objection and thus still guarantee the possi
18
Ibid., n. 8.
19
Iiid., n. 9.
20
lect. 11, n. 5.
21Ibid.,
Cf. ibid., lect. 10, n. 9.
22
lect. 11, n. 4.
23Ibid.,
Ibid.
"Ibid.
ing place over a time interval, and the same is true of the taking
of the medicine and the final effecting of the cure, both of which
depend on the movement of medicine and the redistribution of
just as it does to the cases of the lunar eclipse and the production
of the rainbow. Some medicines, it is true, prove to be
ineffective,
and some people are not cured?a state of affairs completely anal
III
This much said, some differences between the Humean and the
Aristotelian views of causality may now be clarified in the light of
Aquinas' commentary. Hume, it would appear, was accurate in
his intuition that the exercise of efficient causality, as observable
at the phenomenal level and so of particular interest to the scien
tist, would involve sequential series of events wherein the cause
would generally be apprehended prior to the effect. Once he had
decided on an event-like analysis of cause and effect, moreover, he
was correct in maintaining that such an analysis can never yield
knowledge of necessary connections in nature. Aristotle's diffi
25
For example, Arthur Pap, Elements of Analytic Philosophy (New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1949), pp. 220-24.
26
Carl G. Hedman, "On When There Must Be a Time-Difference
Between Cause and Effect," Philosophy of Science (1972), p. 507.
27I&icL,pp.507, 510.
28 on p. 511.
Hedman gives a brief bibliography