Aquinas 101: Lesson Sixteen

Saint Thomas Aquinas by Carlo Crivelli, downloaded from Wikipedia

Lesson 16: Nature and Natures

The video by Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP, seems to be a good summary of nature and natures. Fr. White starts with the Greek focus on change in their study of the philosophy of nature. Heraclitus claims that everything is change, and there is nothing constant in the world. And importantly, he states that nature is merely conventional. On the opposite side is Parmenides who denies there is change, that is the change we see is illusory. Aristotle argued both that there is real change, and that there is continuity in things that are subject to change. This points to the essence or nature of a thing—that which endures amidst change. Fr. White gives the example of an adolescent human being, who was earlier a baby, and before that an embryo, and in the future would be an adult human, then older. Though out all those changes, the essence or human nature remains.

Screen shot of the video

After giving a definition of nature, Fr. White relates this to our understanding of the laws of nature ("because things have nature we can rely upon them to act in predictable and identifiable ways, and that's the basis of science as well as common sense") and to natural law (the law at work in nature which inclines unto flourishing and perfection). He also states that because things have a nature, thing act in predictable and identifiable ways.

The selected readings are from Aquinas' Commentary on the Physics and from Ralph McInerny's A First Glance at St. Thomas Aquinas: A Handbook for Peeping Thomists. From Aquinas we have the definition of nature given in the video:

Therefore, nature is nothing other than a principle of motion and rest in that in which it is primarily and per se and not per accidens.

The audio lecture, "Good, Evil, and Science" by Fr. James Brent, OP, expands upon Fr. White's video that natures lead to an understanding of laws of nature and natural law. Fr. Brent states that the purpose of his lecture was integrate current science with a mature and theologically informed faith. The lecture was given in a narrative form with three major topics:

1. The world of form and finality (based on Aristotle's philosophy of nature and the metaphysics which follow from that)
2. The world of power and control (the mechanistic, reductionistic materialism which displaced Aristotle's philosophy)
3. The hermeneutics of love and wisdom (a way to integrate current science with faith)
   

The lecture is part of a larger set on SoundCloud: Faith, Science and Nature Conference. There is also an optional lecture (which I did not listen to) "Sizeless Stretchable Souls: Substantial Form as Nature in Aquinas" by Fr. Stephen Brock.