The Philosophy of Science Institute Lectures ST Johns University Studies Full Chapter

The Philosophy of Science Institute
Lectures St.Johns University Studies

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-philosophy-of-science-institute-lectures-st-johns-u
niversity-studies/
PHILOSOPHICAL SERIES fc
st. John’s uNiveRsiry sTut>ies

ST. ALBERT THE GREAT
pbiLosopby of scieNce
The Philosophy of Science Institute Lectures
st. JobN’s uNiveRsiTy sTuOies
I'm or
ST. JOHN’S UNIVERSITY PRESS JAMAICA, NEW YORK

IMPRIMI POTEST:
Sylvester A. Taggart, C.M., S.T.L., S.S.B.

Visitator Provinciae Orientalis
NIHIL OBSTAT:
Michael J. Cantley, S.T.L.
Censor Deputatus
IMPRIMATUR:
►f< Bryan Josephus McEntegart, D.D., LL.D., L.H.D.

Episcopus Bruklyniensis
Bruklyni, die XXI Septembris 1959
The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declara¬

tions that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or
moral error. No implication is contained therein that
those who have granted the Nihil Obstat and Im¬
primatur agree with the contents, opinions or state¬
ments expressed.
plh cm
© 1960 by St. John’s University Press
FOReWORt)
To contribute to the common task which faces humanity today, St. John’s
University publishes the results of its Institute in the Philosophy of Science.
The fateful explosion at Hiroshima unleashed more than waves of radiation.
From it has come a new surge of public interest in natural science, the
source of such Promethean playthings. With the sobering realization that
our own survival depends desperately on moral control of these monstrous
forces, this interest has grown into a morbid fascination.
Natural science traces out the order of reality planned by God in His
Wisdom and fashioned by His Love. This we recognize and revere. For this
reason we wish to understand science more perfectly. Unfortunately there
are other reasons for understanding it. The future of humankind is de¬
pendent on our understanding and consequent control of natural science.
We are witnessing a race between knowledge and destruction.
The scientist (and the nation he serves), like the artist, is not absolutely free
to make anything which he wishes to make or which he can make. He is
governed by the same moral considerations that govern the behaviour of
any other man. Natural science is only one operation of a human being
and it must serve the moral ends of human nature and the natural law
engraved on it. Theological and philosophical principles must direct and
guide the use of natural science if it is not to be misused or even abused.
The theologian, the philosopher, and even the scientist must understand the
nature of natural science if they are to control it. Knowledge is still one of
the conditions of mastery.
Finally, as a phenomenon typical of our times, the prestige of natural

science is utilized to provide ammunition for the atheist and the unbeliever.
So-called scientific pronouncements are made on theological and philosophi¬
cal doctrines, as creation, the soul, the existence of God, the moral law and
even the nature of religion itself. Such is rarely the work of professional
scientists. They are not so naive. But some contemporary educators and
philosophers do attempt to pervert the legitimate methods of the natural
sciences in areas in which they have no competence. These questions
escape the techniques of the natural scientist. Natural science has provided,
all unwittingly, both the instruments for the annihilation of the race and
the materialistic philosophy that could contemplate such a use. It has forced
us into a situation wherein moral control is the only solution, and yet, it has
been used by the “scientific philosopher” to deny the validity of morality as
anything other than the social customs of an age.
In the spirit of a humble attempt to understand science and its place in the
hierarchy of knowledge and to control it in intelligent fashion, St. John’s
University presents this series of lectures on the philosophy of science. They
afford a profound analysis of the different natural sciences with applications
which are of contemporary value. This very fruitful union of philosophy
with the most important of the natural sciences, namely, biology, chemistry,
physics, and psychoanalytic psychology, is accomplished by brilliant scholars
who possess professional competence in each of the disciplines they treat.
Their work should inspire a thoughtful reassessment of the relations between
philosophy and natural science and provoke a stimulating discussion of the
problems involved.
Particular attention has been paid to the role of philosophy as a principle

of unification for the monumental mass of undigested facts which in large
measure characterizes the present state of the particular natural sciences.
The unity of the sciences, their relation to other knowledges, especially
theology and ethics, the nature of scientific theory and its philosophical
pretensions currently in vogue—all these crucial problems lie beyond the
methods of science and demand that philosophy answer them.
At present, mathematics serves this purpose but its object, pure quantity,
is only partially common to the natural sciences. The complexities of reality
and the richness of qualities transcend it. For mathematics, man is only a
weight and a dimension, a discrete or extended quantity. The unity it
affords science, though useful, is a speciously logical one of method rather
than of object.
The partial views of reality manifested by the various natural sciences can
be unified only by a philosophy that sees reality as a totality—a natural
whole within which the proper objects of the different sciences are perceived
as articulating parts.
Our sincere hope is that this effort of ours, added to the achievements of
the rest of the academic community, may help to bring men and nations to
a more profound understanding of the universe of nature that God has
fashioned in His Wisdom so that they may know and do His Will more
completely.
John A. Flynn, C.M.
President
Table of Contents
r REPORT OF THE INSTITUTE

* IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE • 1
by Reverend Carl W. Grindel, C.M., Ph.D.
St. John’s University
|| TOWARD A SYSTEMATIC
1 1 PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE • 5
by William E. Carlo, Ph.D.
St. John’s University
HI REASONS FOR THE

FACTS OF ORGANIC LIFE • 51
by Very Reverend William H. Kane, O.P., S.T.M.
Albertus Magnus Lyceum for Natural Science
THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER • 69
by Vincent E. Smith, Ph.D.

University of Notre Dame
^ CHEMICAL SUBSTANCE • 87
by Reverend Alan B. Wolter, O.F.M., Ph.D.
St. Bonaventure’s University
y_l THE UNCONSCIOUS • 131

by Rudolph Allers, M.D., Ph.D.
Georgetown University
Y7H PHILOSOPHICAL UNITY

VII AND SCIENTIFIC SPECIALIZATION •
by Very Reverend Msgr. William J. McDonald, Ph.D.

The Catholic University of America
Reverend Carl W. Grindel, C.M., Ph.D.
Chairman, Department of Philosophy, St. John’s University
Report of the Institute

in the Philosophy of Science
O ne need not be a scientist to be aware of the increasingly important

place that the natural sciences hold in our modern life. During the
past twenty-five years especially, more and more the secrets of
nature have been revealed by scientific research. The result has been that
science and the scientist have come to occupy a more dominant position
in society. In a material way especially, the discoveries of science have
contributed to a vast improvement in our daily lives. On the other hand,
these same discoveries have had a frightening effect upon the peoples of
the world, and even upon the scientists themselves; for the very same dis¬
coveries that could be used to make human life more human can also be¬
come a threat to its continued existence.
Until the eighteenth century science and philosophy were so closely
connected that for the most part no distinction was made between them—
science was part of philosophy. During the nineteenth century, however,
this connection gradually disappeared. If science had a philosophy, it was
a gross materialism. Gradually the feeling grew that science could take
the place of philosophy, that ultimate causes were to be found in physical
realities themselves. Science was becoming a philosophy and science and
the scientists were called on more and more to give ultimate answers, not
only in the field of physical nature, but also in the social sciences, in ethics
and even in religion. Science beoame a philosophy and a religion.
1
2 ST. JOHN’S STUDIES
In our own times this doctrine had gained so much ground that our
late Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, again and again endeavored to recall
natural science to its own proper field, to underline its relation with, and
dependence upon, sound philosophy and the lack of conflict between true
science and the faith. Addressing the students and professors of the Uni¬
versity of Rome, June 15, 1952, he said:
a word on the pretended conflict between faith and the natural sciences.
Their conciliation supposes two principles. The first is that the scientific
method is valuable only in the area where the sciences are truly com¬
petent, i.e., in the area of the senses; the second is that beyond physical
knowledge and physical realities, there are other realities, metaphysical
realities, e.g. causality, which do not depend upon the data of the senses,
but on universal ontological laws. Far from being inferior in certitude
to the laws of sensible nature, they are superior to them, for they are valid
for all being as such. But they conduct us with irresistible power to the
knowledge of God.
It is truly distressing that forgetfulness of metaphysical truths has
gone along with the surprising development of the sciences in the minds of
a part of the scientists.1
In the establishment of the Institute in the Philosophy of Science,

St. John’s University has been motivated especially by the repeated de¬
mands of Pope Pius XII that universities work to bring about a true syn¬
thesis of knowledge and, in particular, to offer the guidance of philosophy
to the natural scientist in his search for truth. Our objectives were pre¬
sented in the announcement of the Institute:
(1) to clarify for natural science in general and some of its subdivisions,
the field for the philosopher and the scientist and to show how each
needs the other;
(2) to give the scientist the light which he needs, proceeding from the
absolute to the relative, from the necessary to the contingent—the light
which is capable of revealing to him the truth which science cannot attain
by its own methods;
(3) to suggest methods of arriving at universal syntheses of knowledge
so that the natural sciences, in permanent contact with a critical realistic
philosophy, can arrive at an all-embracing view of the visible world which
would, to some extent, satisfy the quest and the ardent desire for truth.
The present studies are the result of the first session of the Institute.
It had been decided that in this first session we would endeavor to give a
broad general view of the relations between Philosophy and the Natural
1 Cf. Acta Apostolicae Sedis (1952) pp. 581-586. Quoted in Relations Humaines
et Societe Contemporaine, ed. by A. F. Utz and J. F. Groner, French trans. by Alain
Savignat, Friburg (Suisse), 1956.
REPORT OF THE INSTITUTE 3
Sciences and illustrate these relations by a consideration of particular

problems in each of four natural sciences. The discussion of the general
principles was entrusted to Dr. William E. Carlo of the graduate faculty
of Philosophy. Besides his broad preparation and experience in the field
of philosophy, Dr. Carlo has devoted considerable time to the problems
of the natural sciences and, in particular, to the problems of special interest
to the philosopher. To provide the illustrations, we called upon the spe¬
cialized knowledge of men outstanding in the Philosophy of Science.
Father William H. Kane, O.P., S.T.M., Director of the Albertus Magnus
Lyceum in the Natural Sciences and leader of what is often called the
River Forest school in Natural Philosophy gave insights into the mutual
problems of Philosophy and Biology. Dr. Vincent Smith of Notre Dame
University, widely known for his studies in Philosophical Physics, spoke
on The Constitution of Matter. Father Allan Wolter, O.F.M., Ph.D.,
of the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University, examined the
difficult problem of Chemical Substance. In the field of Psychiatry we
were given the benefit of the deep erudition and wide experience of Dr.
Rudolf Allers, formerly of Catholic University and now at Georgetown
University. Dr. Allers, a psychiatrist and a specialist in both Scientific
and Philosophical Psychology, at one time a pupil of Freud, chose as his
topic, The Unconscious. The first session of the Institute was brought to
a close by a Convocation at which the principal speaker was the Rector
of the Catholic University of America, Rt. Rev. Monsignor William J.
McDonald, Ph.D. Monsignor McDonald was uniquely qualified to syn¬
thesize the results of our discussions. A former professor of Philosophy,
it is his responsibility to see to it that the University will, in the words of
Pope Pius XII, “realize the synthesis of all the objects of knowledge in the
greatest measure possible, which is the task of the University.”2
The response to the first session of the Institute has shown us that
both philosophers and scientists are anxious to become more fully in¬
formed on their mutual problems. Those who attended were almost evenly
divided between professors and graduate students in science and philosophy.
It is our sincere hope that the Institute has proved of value to both. It is
the intention of the University to continue and expand the Institute.
Beginning in September 1959, Dr. Vincent E. Smith will assume the post
of Director of the Institute.
2 Allocution to Professors and Students of the Institut Catholique of Paris, Sept.

21, 1950. Cf. Acta Apostolicae Sedis (1950) pp. 735-738.
We take the occasion of the publication of these studies to express

the gratitude of the Philosophy Department to all those who have made
the Institute an actuality and a success. From the very beginning we have
had not only the approbation but also the always interested cooperation
of the President of the University, the Very Rev. John A. Flynn, C.M.,
S.T.D. To a very great extent, the establishment of the Institute has been
due to the Dean of the Graduate School and Executive Vice President of
the University, Rev. Joseph E. Hogan, C.M., Ph.D. He gave his advice,
his suggestions and the fullest assistance possible. Gratitude is due also to
Dr. Carlo who conducted the regular course sessions. He was unstinting
with his time and his enthusiasm in planning and presenting these lectures
in a field that has necessitated many extra hours of research and prepara¬
tion. Finally, we are most grateful to our guest lecturers, specialists in
the various fields, and to the Rector of the Catholic University. They
came to us, often from great distances and always at the sacrifice of that
most precious of our possessions, time. Without them, the Institute could
not have achieved its success. We thank all of them. We pray that their
efforts and ours may have brought and will continue to bring some slight
contribution, at least, in “arriving at an all-embracing view of the visible
world,” which will “satisfy the great and ardent desire for truth.”
William E. Carlo, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy, St. John’s University
Toward a Systematic Philosophy
T his is an era of intense intellectual activity. Countless human beings

are bringing all their mental energies to bear on the mysterious universe
that confronts them. Before their insistent inquiry and persuasive art
the universe is yielding up its secrets. So richly rewarding have been the
fruits of this investigation and of such mountainous proportions, that the
mind seeking nourishment might well perish of indigestion. We have learned
so much and in so brief a period that we have been unable to appreciate its
total significance. We have cut up an ordered and unified world into so
many little pieces, the better to examine each in scientific isolation, that we
no longer are capable of putting it together again. In a Humpty Dumpty
world, the modem thinker, like all the King’s men, finds it easier to analyze
than to synthesize. As a result, the tremendous multitude of details accumu¬
lated by modem scientific techniques is in large measure useless without a
synthesis in which it can be located and correlated. One would barely sus¬
pect that the different sciences are speaking of the same world, their lan¬
guages are so different. This mutual unintelligibility and incommunicability
must be dissolved if full use is to be made of our intellectual labor, if the
significant achievements of one body of knowledge is to be made available
for the profit of all the others.
5
THE SYSTEMATIC RELATIONS BETWEEN

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
In any treatment of the relations of philosophy and natural science

there are five major points of discussion:
I — Natural science supplants both theology and philosophy as
valid human knowledges. This is the theory of the “substitutional” role of
natural science in the history of man’s development.
II — Philosophy explains to science its own nature. No science
judges its own nature or its own first principles, but it receives them from
a higher science, ultimately metaphysics.
III — Philosophy criticizes the philosophical claims of scientific
theory. The atomic theory in physics and chemistry, the theory of relativity
in mathematics, and the theory of evolution in biology have only an acci¬
dental philosophical significance.
IV — Philosophy can provide a principle of unification for the
diverse sciences, one which is directive of research and serves as a valuable
aid in the development of the sciences.
V — Philosophy has its own proper work which lies beyond the
scope and techniques of the sciences. It is the human voice of theology, and
it examines basically immaterial realities such as being, and the soul with
its two fundamental powers, knowledge and love. (We shall not elaborate
this last point in our present discussion; however, it should always be kept
in mind, because of its tremendous importance).
Many philosophers spend too much time in the analysis of natural
science. Their purpose is apologetic and the results negative. Natural
science has little to give which is of philosophical value, and the philosopher
can be wasting energies that might be harnessed to properly philosophical
work.
Even though philosophy has been called the science of generalities,
we dislike speaking of generalities in generalities. It might, therefore, be
expedient to take the first theme, perhaps the most important for evaluating
the place of philosophy in the world of modem science, and develop it in
some concrete fashion. In view of the mixture of professional backgrounds
that any reading public represents, an historical approach to a philosophical
problem rather than one of the specialized sciences, will be of more
general profit. The more technical themes can be handled later.
The most common and most powerful contemporary argument
against scholastic philosophy is that since it was built upon Aristotelian
science it is no longer valid, inasmuch as Aristotelian science has long been
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 7
discarded. A new philosophy was necessary to explain the facts discovered

by the new science. This viewpoint is faulty for two reasons:
(1) The underlying assumption is incorrect. Philosophy does not
start with scientific facts (although it is mindful of them); it begins with
the knowledge of common sense. You can start with a tree, a dog and a
man, and from them reach directly the philosophical notion of form, the
principle of organization of matter.
(2) As a matter of historical fact, the mediaevals were conscious of
the shortcomings of the Aristotelian physics and were in the process of cor¬
recting it. St. Thomas, for instance, kept his science and his philosophy in
two different compartments, and was well aware of the provisional nature
of scientific theory, and of Aristotelian science as one way of “saving the
appearances” of things. Even a cursory reading of his In De Caelo makes
this point evident. This is the question we should like to discuss.
If all scientists saw in the atom the living cell and the galaxy, the
evidences of the Supreme Intelligence that lovingly fashioned them (which
is the proper vision of the scientist), the work of the philosopher and the
theologian would be immeasurably simplified. Unfortunately, such is not
the case. Instead of the confirmation and corroboration which could do so
much toward psychologically disposing men’s minds toward the truths that
theology and philosophy have to teach, all too often the facts, methods and
theories of modem science have been used to equip the arsenal of the
opponents of philosophy and theology. In fact, Science, with a capital S,
has been offered as an alternative view of the universe in direct opposition to
the teachings of theology. Such is not the true role of science, such is not
the belief of many competent scientists, but such is the intellectual perspec¬
tive that dominates contemporary university teaching and present-day popu¬
lar thinking.
I. THE SUBSTITUTIONAL THEORY OF SCIENCE
To the modem mind, the role which science plays in the history of
human intellectual progress is what may be termed the “substitutional” one.
According to this view there are three phases of intellectual development
applicable to both the individual and society. They are the theological or
supranatural phase, which treats of the behavior of things as dependent
directly upon supernatural agents; the philosophical phase, where essences
are merely observable constancies of phenomena and the result of natural
forces; and, thirdly, the scientific phase, where the uselessness of inquiry
into causes and essences having become obvious, the interest lies only in
observation and classification of phenomena in their relations and resem¬
blances—the discovery of the laws of phenomena. The most primitive or
theological way of expressing human ignorance is to ascribe to inanimate
things life and intelligence, Fetichism, Polytheism and ultimately Mono¬
theism. Philosophy substitutes fanciful essences natural to the phenomena
themselves. But Science is the true interpreter of reality and supplants
philosophy in its turn. Averroes in the Middle Ages, and Auguste Comte
in modern times, have been eloquent proponents of this “substitutional”
view of modern science. But it was never more alive than it is today. Sir
William Dampier keynotes his History of Science with a self-authored poem.
At first men try with magic charm
To fertilize the earth,
To keep their flocks and herds from harm
And bring new young to birth.
Then to capricious gods they turn
To save from fire or flood;
Their smoking sacrifices burn
On altars red with blood.
Next bold philosopher and sage
A settled plan decree,
And prove by thought or sacred page
What Nature ought to be.
But Nature smiles—a Sphinx-like smile—
Watching their little day
She waits in patience for a while—
Their plans dissolve away.
Then come those humbler men of heart
With no completed scheme,
Content to play a modest part,
To test, observe, and dream.
Till out of chaos come in sight
Clear fragments of a Whole;
Man, learning Nature’s way aright,
Obeying, can control.
The changing Pattern glows afar;
But yet its shifting Scenes
Reveal not what the Pieces are
Nor what the Puzzle means.
And Nature smiles—still unconfessed
The secret thought she thinks—
Inscrutable she guards unguessed
The Riddle of the Sphinx.1
1 Sir William Cecil Dampier, A History of Science—and its relations with phil¬
osophy and religion—(New York, 1949), p. vi.
One scientific educator writes:

Scientists have a special responsibility to help adults and adolescents to
find new conceptions and ideas to replace the traditional religious beliefs
about the nature of the universe, man’s place therein, and the meaning
and value of human life, which science has made untenable.2
Science has even been invoked as the arbiter of ethics:

And because this is true, scientists can and do pass ethical judgement on
human behaviour; those things which are based on the scientific attitude,
or encourage it, are good, those which stultify or deny it are to that
extent bad.3
The most frightening obstacles to the very existence of theology

and philosophy, however, have not come from the pure scientist, or the
science educator, but rather the scientist turned philosopher—a new type of
professional philosopher. On the ground of the new science there arose
a new philosophy, which began as a by-product of scientific research.
The mathematician, the physicist, or the biologist, who wanted to solve

the technical problems of his science, saw himself unable to find a solution
unless he first could answer certain and more general philosophical ques¬
tions. It was to his advantage that he could look for these philosophical
answers unburdened by preoccupation with a philosophical system. And
thus ... he found answers unheard of in the history of philosophy.4
The history of philosophy finds its continuators, not in the modern

classical or traditional philosophers—mere imitators of a decadent past—
but in the new philosophers who grew out of science. Thus the new philoso¬
pher is trained in the technique of the sciences, especially mathematics.
The philosopher of the traditional school has often refused to recognize

the analysis of science as a philosophy and continues to identify philosophy
with the invention of philosophical systems. He does not realize that philo¬
sophical systems have lost their significance and that their function has
been taken over by the philosophy of science.5
This notion of the “substitutional” nature of science is the fruit of

a peculiar historical and philosophical perspective. For centuries the nature
and origins of modern science have been obscured. It had no history. The
scientific method sprang fully formulated from the mind of Galileo. This
reporting of the history of science is part of a more general interpretation
of history, namely the “Dark Ages” conception. Between the glory of
2 B. C. Gruenberg, Science and the Public Mind (New York, 1953), p. 4.

3 c. H. Waddington, The Scientific Attitude (Cambridge, 1948), p. 3.
4 Hans Reichenbach, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (Berkeley, 1951), p. 118.
5 Ibid., p. 119.
classical times and the rebirth of the Renaissance, there was only supersti¬
tion, ignorance, political chaos and social misery. Translated into the history
of philosophy, the thesis states that Descartes, the Father of modern thought,
followed upon Greek philosophy as if there were nothing in between. One
of the characteristics of this interpretation is to lay all blame for such a
state at the doors of the Church.
Happily, the myth of the Dark Ages has long been exploded, as any
serious historical scholar can attest.6 Also, it has been recently recognized
that modern philosophy makes sense only if we acknowledge its continuity
with mediaeval philosophy. It has little point of rapprochement with Greek
thought. In a very real sense, Descartes is still a scholastic philosopher.
Finally, the myth of mediaeval science is currently being destroyed. The
absence of science in the Middle Ages has long been a favorite theme of
historians of science. Evaluations such as the following have been stylish.
During this era, the peculiar flowers of scholasticism blossomed all over
Europe. The keenest minds were engrossed in the dispute about the meta¬
physical reality of universal ideas. As to particulars, they were deemed
unworthy of detailed study. The story is told somewhere of a crowd
gathering in a mediaeval marketplace, hotly divided in an argument on the
question of the number of teeth in a horse’s mouth. The matter could not
be settled because no copy of Aristotle’s works was at hand. But when a
young friar suggested that the question be decided by counting the teeth
of one of the animals which were standing by waiting for their masters,
his remark was taken by some as a joke, by others as shameful impudence.
It is not surprising that this period was unproductive of contributions to
Physics, and that the one great discovery which was made should be
obscure and not connected with a definite name. I am referring to the use
of the compass needle.7
The verification of sense perception, the recourse to experience—so

the accusation goes—was not the basis for mediaeval thought, nor was it
6 For example: The hospital, like the university, was a mediaeval institution.
The foundation of large numbers of charitable hospitals for the relief of the poor
and treatment of the sick was a product of Christian civilization. The Emperor
Constantine is credited with the first hospital of this kind, and hospitals became
numerous in Byzantium. One hospital in the 11th century had 50 beds in separate
wards for different kinds of patients, with two doctors and a staff attached to each
ward. A. Crombie, Augustine to Galileo (London, 1952), pp. 209-210.
7 Dampier, op. cit., p. 176. “It is generally agreed that the Middle Ages preserved
for the use of later times the science of the ancients. Therein lies both the scientific
achievement and the scientific failure of the Medieval civilization .... What the
Middle Ages took over they did not very much enrich. Indeed so small was their
own contribution, that historians of science are apt to regard the Middle Ages as
something of a pause.” M. Postan, “Why was Science Backward In the Middle
Ages?”, The History of Science (Glencoe, Illinois, 1951), p. 25.
concerned exclusively with revelation or abstractions. This is a half-truth.

Scholastic thinkers were very much concerned with natural causes. As
early as the 12th century, inquiring minds were seeking to explain the
cryptic facts of Genesis by rational causes. The entire problem of the
introduction of Aristotle and his Arabian commentators to the West was
that of a valid rational science of nature, the autonomy of philosophical
disciplines. Along with this, and part and parcel of the same question, was
the organization of a complete system of scientific thought, the basis of
which were the works of Aristotle.
Early in the 12th century men asked how the facts recorded in the book
of Genesis could best be explained in terms of rational causes. With the
recovery of the full tradition of Greek and Arabic science in the 12th
and early 13th centuries, and particularly of the works of Aristotle and
Euclid, there was born, from the marriage of the empiricism of technics
with the rationalism of philosophy and mathematics, a new conscious
empirical science seeking to discover the rational structure of nature. At
the same time a more or less complete system of scientific thought was
provided by Aristotle’s works. The rest of the history of mediaeval science
consists of the working out of the consequences of this new approach to
nature.8
As early as the 12th century, Adelard of Bath points up the new

approach to nature in his Quaestiones Naturales:
Why do plants spring from the earth? What is the cause and how can it
be explained? When at first the surface of the earth is smooth and still,
what is it that is then moved, pushed up, grows and puts out branches?
If you collect dry dust and put it finely sieved in an earthenware bronze
pot, after a while when you see plants springing up, to what else do you
attribute this but to the marvelous effect of the wonderful divine will?9
Adelard answers that even though the divine will is a cause, this growth is
“not without a natural reason too.” In reply to the further question: Is
it not “better to attribute all the operations of the universe to God” since
natural explanations are not available for all of them?10 Adelard says:
I do not detract from God. Everything that is, is from Him and because
of Him. But nature is not confused and without system and so far as
human knowledge has progressed it should be given a hearing. Only when
it fails utterly should there be recourse to God.11
8 A. Crombie, loc. cit., p. 14.

9 Ibid., pp. 12-13.
19 ibid.
ii Ibid.
Adelard is clearly studying nature for its own sake and is concerned more
with the cogency of reasoning than with authority.12
Those who are now called authorities reached that position first by the
exercise of their reason.... Wherefore, if you want to hear anything
more from me, give and take reason.13
There is no clearer statement of the mediaeval attitude toward scholastic

authority. An authority is precisely that because of the cogency of his
thought.
Historically speaking, there are three phases in the development of
scientific theory: Induction, Experimentation and Mathematization. Aris¬
totle contributed induction when he laid the foundations for the science of
biology. The contribution to scientific method in the 17th century was
thought to be the notion of experiment and the construction of an adequate
mathematics of motion. Galileo afforded scientific method a generality
which it had never before possessed but which was still related strictly to
the experimental facts. We now know that both experiment and the mathe¬
matization of motion were products of the 12th and the 14th centuries
respectively, the work of Mediaeval Latin Christian thinkers. The elabora¬
tion of induction into experimental theory occurred in the 12th century.
Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln and Chancellor of Oxford, delineates
the theory of experiment:
This therefore is the way by which the abstracted universal is reached

from singulars through the help of the senses... . For when the senses
several times observe two singular occurrences, of which one is the cause
of the other or is related to it in some other way, and they do not see the
connection between them, as, for example, when someone frequently
notices that the eating of scammony happens to be accompanied by the
discharge of red bile, and does not see that it is the scammony that
attracts and withdraws the red bile; then from the constant observation of
these two observable things, he begins to form a third unobservable thing,
namely, that scammony is the cause that withdraws red bile. And from
this perception repeated again and again and stored up in the memory,
and from the sensory knowledge from which the perception is built up,
the functioning reason therefore begins to wonder and to consider whether
things really are as the sensible recollection says, and these two lead the
reason to the Experiment, namely, that he should administer scammony
!2 Ibid.
13 Ibid. “With this remark the medieval conception of nature began to cross
the great watershed that divides the period when man looked to nature to provide
illustrations for moralizing from that in which men began to study nature for its
own sake. The realization of such a conception became possible when Adelard de¬
manded ‘natural causes’ and declared that he could not discuss anything with some¬
one who was ‘led in a halter’ by past writers.” Ibid.
after all the other causes purging red bile have been isolated and excluded.
When he has administered scammony many times with the sure exclusion
of all other things that withdraw red bile, then there is formed in the
reason this universal, namely, that all scammony of its nature withdraws
red bile, and this is the way in which it comes from sensation to a uni¬
versal experimental principle.14
Another example of scientific sophistication is this description char¬

acterized by observational accuracy and precision of detail:
Aaron’s Beard has leaves which are thick in substance, nearly a span
broad and long, and it has two little beards to each leaf. The leaves are
divided down to the root. It has a tuberous root in the ground, from
which a cosmetic ointment is made, and it sometimes has blotched leaves.
It forms its flower in a capsule, contrived by a marvellous artifice and
having this yellowish capsule around it, in the centre of which is a sort of
finger, with two little “apples” below it, wonderfully contrived. The plant
which has blotched leaves is masculine and that without blotches on the
leaves is feminine.15
The theory of experiment had its origin in the 12th century. We are not
speaking of its practice. The initial applications of mathematics to motion
occurred later, especially in the 14th century, at Oxford. In this century
we see the transition from a finalistic interpretation of motion exerted by
the natural place of body, to an interpretation in terms of external forces.
William of Ockham, for example, reduced motion from a qualitative phe¬
nomenon demanding a form for its explanation, to a quantitative determina¬
tion, a varying spatial relationship with other bodies. Ockham is here
approaching the concept of inertia which revolutionized the physics of the
17th century.
The most fundamental contribution to scientific method made in
the 17th century was the construction of an adequate mathematics of
motion:
The special contribution that Galileo’s conception of science as a mathe¬

matical description of relations enabled him to make to methodology, was
to free it from the tendency to excessive empiricism which was the main
defect of the Aristotelian tradition, and to give it a power of generality
which was yet strictly related to experimental facts to a degree which
previous Neoplatonists had seldom achieved. This Galileo did in the first
place by not hesitating to use, in his mathematical theories, concepts of
which no examples had been or could be observed. He required only that
from such concepts it should be possible to deduce the observed facts. For
14 A. Crombie, Grosseteste and Experimental Science (Oxford, 1953), pp. 73-74.

15 Lynn Thorndike, The Herbal of Rufinus (Chicago, 1946), p. 54 quoted by A. R.
Hall, The Scientific Revolution, 1500-1800, p. 277.
example, there is no such thing as a perfectly functionless plane or an

isolated body moving in empty, infinite, Euclidean space, yet from these
concepts Galileo first constructed the seventeenth-century theory of
inertia.16
This included the formation of certain unempirical notions such as a per¬

fectly functionless plane and a body in isolation moving through empty,
infinite, Euclidean space. From these notions Galileo developed his theory
of inertia which was later made more precise by Newton’s laws of motion.
Newton did not change Galileo’s method, he improved and extended it in
the form of his three laws which became the basis of classical mechanics.
Newton was revalidating Galileo’s method of control, which regards a body
as inert and equivalent to the forces and factors maneuvering it from the
outside. This conclusion is written into each of the three laws. But these
notions, too, have a history.
John Buridan, in his investigation of the continued movement of
projectiles and the acceleration of freely-falling bodies, rejected the theory
of natural place and formulated his own theory of impetus. This impetus
is a motive power which would maintain the body at uniform velocity in¬
definitely if it were not for the action of external forces. In projectiles this
was naturally reduced by air resistance and natural gravity acting as an
accelerational force adding successive increments of impetus. Force was
something that altered motion and did not merely maintain it. This is the
very definition of force on which Newton built his mechanics. Impetus in
Buridan is analogous to momentum in Newton, excepting that motion is
always in straight lines. To explain the trajectory of projectiles, Albert of
Saxony used a compound impetus plus the frictional value of air resistance.
16 Cf. Galileo Galilei, Due Massimi Sistemi, ii (Opere, VII), pp. 48ff., 171ff. A
Crombie, loc. cit., p. 310. “The momentous change that Galileo, along with other pla-
tonizing mathematicians like Kepler, introduced into scientific ontology was to identify
the substance of the real world with the mathematical entities contained in the theories
used to describe the ‘appearances’. The important practical result of this identification
was to open the physical world to an unrestricted use of mathematics. Galileo had
removed the worst inconveniences of Aristotle’s notion that there was a science of
‘physics’ outside the range of mathematics, by declaring the substances and causes
postulated by that physics to be mere names. The success of his mathematical
method convinced him that he had shown how to read the language in which the
book of the universe was truly written. In other words, he believed that the world
of appearances was the products of an underlying mathematical structure and that
he could discover what that structure was. What logical inconvenieces this form of
‘mathematical realism’ could bring are shown by his unsuccessful attempts to prove
that the heliostatic theory was necessarily true. The most extreme seventeenth-
century form of this mathematical ontology was that advanced by Descartes.” A.
Crombie, Robert Grosseteste, p. 310.
He perceived that freely-falling bodies moved with a uniform acceleration

and that the work done is equal to the product of the weight multiplied by
the vertical distance.
In the pre-Galilean attempts to formulate a mathematical description
of motion, such thinkers as William of Ockham, John Buridan, Nicole
Oresme and Albert of Saxony did remarkable work in both dynamics and
statics, especially in the measurement and computation of velocities. It is
significant to note that Galileo was familiar with the work of these mediaeval
thinkers. Their books have been found in the catalogue of his personal
library.
In conclusion we can say that the “substitutional” theory of natural
science, as a matter of historical record, is incorrect. Theology, Philosophy
and Natural Science are not successive stages in the movement of the
human mind from ignorance to knowledge, but are rather three ways of
understanding a reality too rich in intelligibility for any one alone. They
are supplementary sciences, not conflicting ones. They have existed side by
side throughout history, and each has played its part in explaining the uni¬
verse.
II. PHILOSOPHY EXPLAINS TO SCIENCE ITS OWN NATURE
Having eliminated the “substitutional” notion of science as an his¬

torical explanation, our next step is to see if such a theory serves as a
causal explanation and to outline precisely what it is that philosophy can
contribute to the modem world of science.
No science judges its own nature or its own first principles but it
receives them from a higher science; as Aristotle says, optics takes its prin¬
ciples from the physics of light. The mathematician does not set his own
first principles, the whole is greater than any of its parts, things equal to
the same thing are equal to each other; nor does he ask what a number is,
what of reality does a number seize. He simply proceeds to use them. The
quantitative unity which is at the basis of number finds its ultimate explana¬
tion in the metaphysical unity of substance and ultimately of being. Thus
philosophy explains to science its own proper nature.
Science is a speculative human knowledge of causes, thus differing
from the knowledge of common sense which is concerned only with effects
and results. For example: Fire was once explained scientifically as the
result of a liquid flowing from a burning object, namely phlogiston. But
this loss of material was extremely difficult to reconcile with the increase in
weight of a burnt object. The extra weight produced by the charring of
wood and the rusting of metal is in precise mathematical proportion to that

of oxygen in its compounds. Thus the newer conception of fire as an oxida¬
tion, an increase in weight by the addition of oxygen, has succeeded the
old. Although science does not give us the ultimate causes of a thing, it
does tell us something about what a thing is. When we call fire an oxidation
we still do not know what fire is as it leaps and dances in the grate, but we
do know something about it. Translated into scholastic terminology we use
the expression “ultimate and proximate causes.” The classic Law of Ac¬
celeration is a good example. When a body is dropped from the Empire
State building we know how long it will take to get to the ground, the speed
at which it is traveling at each point in its descent and the rate of increase
per second per second. But the data is the same as long as the weights and
dimensions of the bodies considered are the same. It makes no difference
whether the body concerned is that of a man, a sack of ptotatoes or a
barrel of flour. The physicist is not concerned with what things are, but
only how they operate, only insofar as they are matter in motion.
We are not in complete agreement with thinkers such as Bridgman
who consider science as merely art, primarily a form of control of nature.
They point out, for example, that the engineer can make an electric light
without knowing what electricity is. However, Faraday’s experiments of the
reciprocal relations of electricity and magnetism do tell us something about
what electricity is, a minimum, it is true, and only in terms of proximate
causes, but they are real causes nonetheless. The point that the philosopher
and the theologian would like to emphasize is that none of the sciences
attempt to tell what man is, to give his definition. For the physicist, man is
an articulating system of stresses and strains; for the chemist, man is a corn-
plexus of elements and compounds; for the biologist, he is a mammal of the
order of primates, that is, he has a vertebra so constructed that he walks
upright, and a certain type of gland by which he suckles his young; for the
economist, he is a producer and consumer. None of these knowledges,
individually or together, arrive at a definition of man that explains him in
any adequate way. It is only the philosopher, who says that man is a rational
animal, who approaches what man really is.
III. PHILOSOPHY CRITICIZES THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLAIMS OF

SCIENTIFIC THEORY
Philosophy criticizes the philosophical claims of scientific theory.

As long as common sense ruled the human perception of reality it was
comparatively easy for metaphysics to rule, as it were, the intellectual roost.

Metaphysical principles were abstracted from the general experience of
common sense. Notions like being, existence, cause, effect, substance, unity,
truth, goodness, made sense and could be reduced to common sense experi¬
ence from which they arose.
But one of the first things that the scientific revolution was to do
was to discredit sensation and the common sense experience based upon it.
It could be used as a principle of verification, but it had to wait in the ante¬
chamber. It could never be admitted into the interior domain of science.
The raw stuff of human thought was now a reality distilled through scien¬
tific interpretation. Scientific theories and laws were the raw materials out
of which metaphysics had to fashion its fundamental doctrines. This is one
of the tasks that lies before the metaphysician in this day—to become as
familiar with the basic theories and concepts of the natural sciences as his
predecessors were with the facts of sense experience, and out of that to
draw inductions which are couched in the language of science and yet
translatable into traditional metaphysical conceptions and vocabulary. This
can be done. It is actually in the process of being accomplished. All that
remains for its achievement is time.
Once philosophy and theology had lost their privileged positions as
interpreters of the world about us, the scientist, faced with the perennial
philosophical questions, had to use the only materials he had—his scientific
techniques—to answer them. The atomic theory in mathematical-physics
and the theory of evolution in biology are two examples.
(1) Evolutionary Theory and Philosophy
The general theory of evolution, at least in the Walt Disney “Fan¬

tasia” version, is common knowledge. Out of the tumult of the forces of
nature—scorching temperatures, crushing pressures and hurricane motion,
out of the cataclysm of transient action, somehow arose the original germ
of life. After the tumult of wind and wave, and earth’s belching eruption,
a single cell goes floating peacefully in the calm waters to a pizzicato sound¬
track. Out of the passion of inanimate nature is born the germ of life.
Somehow this Grand-daddy of all jellyfish develops into a fish. The
fish in turn becomes an amphibian, leaves its watery home for a land
existence, and develops ultimately into some form of mammal. Then fol¬
lows the ape or primate and finally, the crowning glory of this process, man.
Strictly speaking, there is nothing in all this which cannot be recon¬
ciled with the basic truths of religion, as long as the direct creation of a
spiritual soul is safeguarded. For a spiritual soul cannot develop from a

material form. In fact, the great St. Augustine described a sort of evolution
with the spiritual soul infused at some point into the human body.
Even though the theory of evolution, if it were proven, could be
fitted into the framework of religious doctrine, it has been seized upon by
anti-religious thinkers as an alternative to the Christian doctrine of creation.
So employed, it has given impetus to modem materialism. It suggests that
the whole man, including the spiritual operations he possesses, evolves from
the forces of material nature, and that there is no need to posit such a thing
as a soul.
Originally, the theory of evolution received its strongest support from
Darwin and Wallace. They had many forerunners and the theory was cer¬
tainly in the air. But it was Darwin’s work in geographical distribution that
gave a scientific basis to the theory of evolution. The variety of finches on
the isolated Galapagos served to illustrate the principle he formulated as
Natural Selection.
However, what served to win popular support for Darwin against
tremendous opposition from such paleontologists as the brilliant Cuvier,
was the embryological work of von Baer later popularized by Haeckel and
formulated in the slogan Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny—the infant in
its development traces out the history of the species. No reputable biologist
today subscribes to this theory based on superficial similarities, but it served
at the time to fire the public imagination and gain for Darwin’s work popular
support. Despite current disfavor, there are still certain embryological facts
that demand an explanation—teeth in the baby whale, the temporary coat
of hair on both the human and whale embryo, vestigial organs, to mention
but a few.
Today, however, the strongest and most vocal supporter of the evo¬
lutionary theory is paleontology. In the fossil record, organic materials by a
process of substantial change have been transmuted into inorganic minerals,
retaining, however, the original characteristic forms of the animal skeletons
and plant tissues embedded in the rock.
It is a matter of fact that rocks in their function follow a certain
temporal sequence, the more recent strata overlaying the earlier in their
customary pattern. This time element seems to apply also to the fossil
remains preserved in the temporal levels of the rock formations. These
fossils differ in a graded sequence from the animal and plant forms we know
today. As we come down the time scale, more and more types seem to
have become extinct. In fact, in a few cases such as the horse, a recognizable
series of forms seems to be traceable to a very different ancestor.
“In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows

that most new species, genera and families appear in the record suddenly
and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transi¬
tional sequences. When paleontological collecting was still in its infancy
and no clear examples of transitional origin had been found, most paleon¬
tologists were anti-evolutionists. Darwin (1859) recognized the fact that
paleontology then seemed to provide evidence against rather than for evo¬
lution in general or the gradual origin of taxonomic categories in particu¬
lar. Now we do not have many examples of transitional sequences. Almost
all paleontologists recognize that the discovery of a complete transition
is in any case unlikely. Most of them find it logical, if not scientifically
required, to assume that the sudden appearance of a new systematic group
is not evidence for special creation or for saltation, but simply means that
a full transitional sequence more or less like those that are known did
occur and simply has not been found in this instance.17
Any idea that human prehistory can be reconstructed from an exami¬

nation of fossil remains is naive. There simply are not enough fossil bones.
The scarcity of fossil remains, when compared to the millions of animals,
makes of the fossil record a book with too many pages tom out by time and
the forces of nature.
The chances that remains of an organism will be buried, fossilized, pre¬

served in the rock to our day, then exposed on the surface of dry land
and found by a paleontologist before they disintegrate are extremely small,
practically infinitesimal. The discovery of a fossil of a particular species,
out of the thousands of millions that have inhabited the earth, seems
almost like a miracle even to the paleontologist who has spent a good
part of his life performing the miracle. Certainly paleontologists have
found samples of an extremely small fraction only of the earth’s extinct
species, and even for groups that are most readily preserved and found
as fossils, they can never expect to find more than a fraction.18
Much of the sound and furor surrounding evolutionary theory is

due to a misapprehension of sorts. Evolution initially had no pretensions
to the status of a Weltanschauung, nor did it seek to serve as a substitute
for the Christian doctrine of creation. The theory of evolution actually grew
out of a conflict between two distinct and opposing biological theories. It
was a family quarrel. The dominant biological theory was that of a fixed
and immediate creation of species. This, of course, has little or no reference
to the theological doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Nor is the concept of the
fixity of species a logical deduction from the philosophical doctrine of the
immutability of essence. The genus and species of Linnaeus do carry some
17 G. G. Simpson, The Major Features of Evolution (New York, 1955), p. 360.

18 Ibid., p. 359.
of the logical and conventional characteristics of the Aristotelian genera

and species.
In fact, Linnaeus himself as a biologist did claim for his arbitrary
morphological classification the cooperation of God, although well aware
of hybrid and mutational forms.
The species that come from God seem to me superior to those contrived
by gardeners. The former have existed ever since the beginning of the
world. But the latter are growths contrary to nature and can only claim
a short life. If they are neglected they disappear and vanish like fugitive
shadows. I ignore them.19
The observations underlying this statement were, of course, correct. Arti¬

ficially cultivated plants, as Linnaeus knew from his gardening experience,
soon lose their characteristic features if they are not duly tended, and
apparently regain their former wild estate.20
Under the hypothesis of separate creation, the distinctions between
true species, at least according to its opponents, must be absolute and the
members of the same species must all trace to the same originally created
individuals, while members of different species can have no common an¬
cestry whatever. Consequently, much of the difficulty in evaluating contem¬
porary evolutionary theory is the confusion involved in the very formulation
of the problem. Some sort of development in living things is admitted by
all. One form of this development is the presence in a group of communi¬
cation of genetic characteristics and the modification of the character of
the whole group by the selectivity of these genetic characteristics. In some
groups, the better adapted offspring will find mates more easily and thus
exert a greater influence than the more poorly adapted on the general char¬
acter of the entire group.
But apart from this type of development known to every gardener
and animal fancier, the theory of evolution implies a development from
group to group and, in its extreme formulation, of complex multicellular
organisms from simple unicellular organisms. But the evidence for the
latter is by no means validated by the canons of scientific experiment. These
two types of development have been confused in the history of evolutionary
theory since the days of Linnaean classification.
There are three basic ideas, often confused, which must be dis¬
tinguished and delineated here. Evolutionary affirmation of some sort of
19Linnaeus quoted by Wendt, In Search of Adam (Cambridge, 1956), p. 50.

20 Ibid., p. 50.
development was a reaction against the then contemporary doctrine of fixed

and immediate creation of species. But whether or not there is development
from one species to another becomes a question not of progressive change
from one group to another or one individual to another, but rather a ques¬
tion of essential differences.
The definition and characteristics of species are thus crucial ques¬
tions in arriving at conclusions on the validity of evolution.
The species of the biologist from Linnaeus to the present have little
in common with the philosophical species because they have no (philosoph¬
ically speaking) specific differences, only accidental differences. Linnaean
classification was based primarily on morphology; by other criteria, such as
the production of viable and fertile hybrids, many species are coalesced and
become sub-species. Even different genera, such as the pigeon and the
dove, produce fertile hybrids from their matings.
The evidence in favor of evolutionary theory has never been com¬
pletely satisfying. Strictly speaking, evolution has yet to be scientifically
proven.
The old conceptual framework of taxonomy was static—a museum pigeon¬
hole sort of convenience. But since animals propagate themselves by
generating other animals, the hypothesis can not be far from the mind
that those animals which resemble each other most are genetically closest
related, others less. This guess is corroborated, and corrected in details,
by further study of relationships between extant animals, and by the co¬
operative clarities elicited by other approaches. I may as well make the
important aside here for the first time: all of the approaches I shall men¬
tion are valid, all give information about evolution; but it is the quantita¬
tive and qualitative accumulation of all brands of evidence that builds
the “fact” of evolution. It is the convergence of probabilities and certi¬
tudes that causes the firm adherence of biologists to the master idea of
evolution, a principle which is inescapable in my opinion.21
The fact that no missing link has ever been discovered is perhaps the most
pronounced weakness in the evolutionary scheme of things. The theory of
evolution remains just that, a theory, for it has never been demonstrated.
Not one link between the species has been found. That is why these transi¬
tional forms have been referred to as “missing.” That is their normal
condition.
A very interesting argument has been recently proposed by a con¬
temporary historian of science. It contends that viability is one of the
marks of the permanent species as opposed to the transitional forms of
21 j. Franklin Ewing, “Precis on Evolution”, Thought, Vol. XXV, March 1950,

pp. 59-60.
those species. Therefore, missing links, because they are transitional forms,
are, of course, not viable. Thus to expect to find missing links is incorrect;
because if they existed, they would not be transitional forms but permanent
species and thus would not be the link to a more enduring form of living
being.
The implications of evolution contradict our daily experience. When
a fish comes out on dry land it dies. Evolution as commonly taught also
involves a contradiction of one of the first principles of the human mind,
the principle of causality. In our experience every cause is greater than its
effect. Dogs give birth to puppies and not human infants. In evolution as
so commonly taught, every effect is greater than its cause. By a gradual
process of perfection it culminates in the most perfect being of all, man.
The world as we know it does not support this view.
Actually, the real and factual basis of evolution is that in a world
which is not a hodgepodge, things resemble each other. Even the coelenter-
ate, a living intestinal canal, resembles the structure of the human trunk;
there are homologies or likenesses in the wings of a bird and the forelimbs
of the mammal. Now, since animals do generate themselves, the next step
is to say that since living species resemble each other they must have come
from each other. But resemblance does not demonstrate causality.
We can arrange the Indian teepee, the log cabin, the suburban
colonial and the modern apartment house in order of resemblance, from
simpler to more complex. But does that mean that one developed from the
other or was generated by it? If things exist in the same physical universe
and are subject to the same physical laws, there must be similarities among
them. The teepee needs a hole at the top for smoke and ventilation. It
must have walls for protection and a door or opening of some sort for
entrance and exit, since bodies are not compenetrable. A man cannot
walk through a wall. In like fashion, the apartment house has a chimney,
walls, roof, etc. These dwellings resemble each other because they are
subject to the same natural necessities. In like manner, animals live in the
same world and are subject to the same physical laws. If they move they
must move according to some variation of the lever or the wheel. They
must breathe the same atmosphere, which indicates some sort of lung
structure. As they increase in size they must nourish themselves with a
type of circulatory system. Homologies or resemblances between living
beings do not necessarily mean that one produces the other.
In the theory of evolution, natural science has not been able to
explain causal links satisfactorily, even to its most ardent disciples. It has
never been scientifically proven. Resemblance does not demand causality.
It is very easy for a speculative knowledge of things as they are to be trans¬

formed, gradually and unawares, into an artistic knowledge, a production
of things as the mind would like them to be. There is a bit of the Creator
in all of us, a legitimate heritage.
Evolution, whether scientific fact or theory, fits beautifully into the
dynamic developmental metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. His notion of
the developmental movement of the creature from its initial grant of esse
to its mature perfection and finally its ultimate end, implies some sort of
evolution. The appropriation of further esse or existents by an incomplete
esse or existent, in the process which St. Thomas calls esse tendere, is a
dynamic act, completing itself in a continuous movement towards perfect
actuality. An evolutionary development present at the very marrow of
reality can certainly have no quarrel with a progressive development of the
superficial integument of being, the living material world.
An imperfect existent appropriates to itself other existential quanta,
thereby expanding and becoming more perfect in nutrition, in knowledge—
both sensible and intellectual—and finally, in that crystallization of all the
higher operations of a spiritual being working in harmony, called the moral
act, the ultimate perfection of man in the natural order. In this process, we
should say that the real problem is not whether some development or evo¬
lution is possible, but to what extent it is so. There is no doubt of the
progressive development of the individual from its embryonic stage to the
mature perfection of the adult, but does evolution go deeper than the indi¬
vidual material differences which we would call biological species? Can
beings be transformed substantially? Is that primary limitation of esse,
which we call essence, a rigid or a more elastic one? Can a concrete esse,
in its developmental aggrandizement, break the bonds of essence by the
very transcendence of the perfection realized? This is something which
does not even seem to be the prerogative of the supernatural order, for
grace perfects nature, it does not destroy it, as Professor Jacques Maritain
has so often said.
(2) Embryology and The Soul

Descriptive and comparative embryology dates its beginnings from
the work of Karl von Baer in the early part of the nineteenth century. A
cataloguing of the structure and appearance of different embryos as they
passed from one stage to another, from egg to clear specific types, is made.
When the embryos are arranged in an order from simple to more complex
species, a certain sequential and progressive structural development may
be seen. Naturally, as we stated above, this thesis that Ontogeny recapitu-
lates Phylogeny helped to fire the imagination of evolutionary thinkers. In

the process, of course, this interest was reflected back upon embryology,
giving it an impetus, the momentum of which is felt down to the present.
The history of embryology shows in its basic emphasis a movement
from the examination of the embryo as a whole, with Aristotle, to a pre¬
occupation with progressively smaller parts—as a whole, in its layers, its
constituent cells, cellular components and microscopic constituents.
It can be argued that embryos were first studied as whole organisms

(Aristotle, Fabricius, Harvey, Malpighi, Wolff), then in terms of their
constituent layers (Wolff, Pander, von Baer, His, Haeckel, Spemann), next
in relationship to their constituent cells (Roux, Driesch, all the students
of cell lineage, Spemann, Harrison), and finally with reference to the
components of cells, through the 19th century largely nuclear (O. Hert-
wig, Boveri) though in some cases visible cytoplasmic inclusions were also
investigated (Boveri, E. G. Wilson, Conklin). It is hardly necessary to
point out that the 20th century continues the process by describing and
analyzing both the visible and invisible nuclear and cytoplasmic elements
of the cell in terms of their constituent molecules.22
(a) Germ Layer Theory. The germ layer theory provided a formal,
theoretical organizing concept for the construction of a scientific embry¬
ology. All embryological phenomena were to be interpreted in terms of
the primary germ layers, endoderm, mesoderm and ectoderm. From these
can be traced the development of the four distinct tissues differing in em¬
bryological origin, in arrangement and in function. Epithelium, sheaths and
surface tissues in tightly packed layers with little or no intercellular material,
has no typical embryological location. It arises from all three germ layers.
Connective tissue, bone, cartilage, blood, have their origin in mesoderm.
Muscle also arises from mesoderm. Nervous tissue has its source in em¬
bryonic ectoderm. Each tissue has a different embryonic origin, and con¬
sequently, there is a different source of the organs they constitute. Thus
the individual embryonic change can be explained by reducing it to its
original germ layer, and the total embryonic development can be scien¬
tifically organized and explained in terms of the reciprocal interactions of
these germ layers.
(b) Cell Theory. The referral of embryonic developmental proc¬
esses to the cell instead of to the germ layers, was a normal result of the
analytic process. The cell, as many embryologists have pointed out, is a
natural unit for the embryo. Not only is it a natural structural or anatomical
22 Jane M. Oppenheimer, “Embryological Concepts in the Twentieth Century,”

Survey of Biological Progress, Vol. Ill (1957), p. 7.
unity, but the twentieth century has found it to be also a natural functional
or physiological unit. The cell seems to work with a certain integrative
unity of its own. Its parts act as parts of a whole.
A cell to cell relation which explains embryonic changes seems to
have an explanatory advantage over germ layer relations, because aggrega¬
tion seems to be the result of the selective migration of individual cells.
The cell, therefore, is conceived as a dynamic independent entity. All
embryonic changes may thus be explained as reducible basically to cell
division. Microbiologists agree with cell theory in that they recognize cells
to be not merely single cells, but whole organisms in their own right.
(c) Theories of Total Organization. However, the living body is
not a chaos or an undisciplined mob. It is an organized whole, each part
of which has a specialized function that makes sense only in terms of its
contribution to the totality. Any definition of life must somehow include,
and to some extent explain, this organization.
The integrative powers of the embryo, at all of its levels, are, however,
so pervasive that they never permit themselves to be overlooked by those
who avail themselves of the privilege of looking at the embryo at all. The
result has been that when each of the practices just enumerated became
fashionable, the previous one was never completely outmoded; and when,
at each stage of its development, embryology has added a new dimension
to its studies, it has never wholly discarded the old ones. Spemann, for
instance, who analyzed the relations between layers in terms of cellular
interactions, never lost sight of the whole embryo. These effects have, as
a matter of clear cold fact, been cumulative throughout the centuries,
with the result that even in the 20th century the embryo is still being
actively investigated at all of its levels: as a whole, in terms of its layers,
of its cells, and of their microscopic and submicroscopic constituents.23
Several theories have been formulated to explain the embryo as a

whole, in its organizational totality. The earliest was, of course, Aristotle’s
theory of the soul which was, among other things, an embryological con¬
ception. In recent times, the axial gradient theory, the organizer theory
and the field theory of Harrison, have been constructed to explain just the
basic organization of the embryo, a role for which Aristotle had utilized
the Soul.
(d) Axial Gradient Theory. The axial gradient theory of Child
has exerted a certain influence on contemporary embryological thinking.
Its attractiveness lies partly in the fact that it is a purely quantitative ex¬
planation of embryological development. But the fact that there is a gradi
23 Ibid., pp.7-8.
ent, or gradation, along the axis of development, from the head and brain
to the caudal section in the speed of development, does not seem to be
more than a descriptive fact. There is a time in the newly formed foetus
when the head is one third the size of the body. With consequent develop¬
ment, the relative sizes are adjusted until finally the adult relations are
reached.
There is always a relation between the structure of the body, or
rather the spatial disposition of parts, and the speed of development. In the
starfish there are five processes, each connected with a central ring or system
of nodules in the central nervous system. But even this pentagon has an
order—in activity one process leads and the rest follow, then another leads
and the other four cooperate like the four powers did in Austria—sharing
a rotating leadeship. It works rather satisfactorily, and even in embryonic
development the same is true. One process begins to develop ahead of the
others. Then they catch up and another forges ahead. One always seems
to dominate. But in humans the theme is a gradient of speeds of develop¬
ment from front to back.
This, at least, gives a quantitative basis in the spatial disposition of
parts for a qualitative configuration of organs. But its precise weakness
seems to be that it is merely descriptive of the facts and not truly explanatory.
An explanation would be, perhaps, the apparent sensitivity to light
of the forepart of the foetus—resulting, ultimately, in front end development
and an optic system. But this leads into the further question of preforma¬
tion and epigenesis.
A great deal of work had gone into the effort to isolate embryonic
cells. Hans Driesch actually performed this delicate operation in 1891. He
isolated the cells of the sea-urchin in a flask of sea water without injurying
the individual cells. Later he nurtured each cell into a complete sea-urchin
larva. He was actually able to separate a sixteen-cell embryo, and from
each cell he incubated a complete sea urchin. Driesch found that interfer¬
ence with the operation, as long as no injury was done to the individual
cells, resulted in a whole animal. There seemed to be a teleological principle
in forming the embryo that would achieve its purpose, the complete organi¬
zation, despite experimental interference. He was of the opinion that the
operations of the living organism could be explained only in the hypothesis
that a directing principle, or entelechy, the Aristotelian word for soul, fore¬
saw its end in some way.
Driesch’s conclusion was that: here the physico-chemical explanation of

life reaches its limit, and only one interpretation is possible. In the em¬
bryo, and similarly in other vital phenomena, a factor is active which is
PHILOSOPHY OJ SCIENCE 27
fundamentally different from all physico-chemical forces, and which di¬

rects events in anticipation of the goal. This factor, which “carries the
goal within itself,” namely, the production of a typical organism in normal
as well as in experimentally disturbed development, was called “entelechy”
by Driesch, using an Aristotelian notion.24
(e) Organizer Theory. Spemann and his followers, using the

same simple techniques that Driesch found so effective, produced some
startling results.
Spemann constricted a salamander’s egg with a single loop of hair,
parallel to the silver crescent. Two embryos resulted. (The one with the
nucleus developed first and later the other.) Following the same line of
thought he tied off the egg parallel to the gray crescent and the result was
a complete embryo and a “mole,” or mass, of tissue. His conclusion was
that the gray crescent introduced a necessary organizing factor for de¬
velopment.
When he tied off the egg with a loop passing through the silver
crescent two complete salamanders resulted, thus demonstrating that the
cells of the gray crescent are necessary for organization and development.
Perhaps the most striking experiments of the organizer theory are
those of transplantation. If cells at an early embryonic stage are trans¬
planted, i.e., if an area of mesoderm which would normally result in muscle,
for instance, is transplanted to an area of ectoderm, for example prescrip¬
tive brain, the potential muscle actually becomes nerve tissue. This implies
that the organizer material has a control over the primary germ layers,
organizing them into the whole animal, despite experimental disturbance
and interference. The conclusion is again that a certain group of cells,
the “organizer,” provides a principle of organization for the whole embryo.
(f) Field Theory. The third and last theory of organizational
totality with which we are concerned is Harrison’s field theory. It is not
easy to grasp just what a “field” is, but certain quantitative characteristics
can be shown, especially in relation to the embryonic structure of the ear.
The embryonic ear is an area of ectoderm. Transplanting another embryo
provides interesting results. These pieces of ectoderm will form embryonic
ears. To sum up these results, the closer to the ear region a piece of ecto¬
derm is transplanted, the more complete will be the ear growth. The further
away, radially, it is transplanted, the more abnormal and defective will be
the new embryonic ear structure.
24 MascalJ, Science and Theology (Oxford, 1955), pp. 255-257.

The field thus varies in potency in a quantitative way. The field

center gives an ear in every case of transplant. At the periphery of the
radial area called the field, the production of anything like an embryonic
ear would be extremely rare, if, indeed, it occurred at all. The field then
seems to be much larger than the organ or structure that forms within it.
In conclusion, the field theory implies partial principles of organiza¬
tion spatially located and quantitatively measurable from the radial center
of the periphery.
(g) Theory of the Soul. What has been responsible, as much as
any other single factor, for the discrediting of the doctrine of the soul as
a scientific principle in modern times, is the substitution of the Platonic
notion of the soul for the Aristotelian. Despite the efforts of Thomas
Aquinas, it was the notion of the soul as a complete substance in itself,
separate from the body and not needing it for its existence and operation,
that became dominant in the history of ideas. If we were to consider the
soul as the mover of the machine that is the body, then we would be per¬
fectly correct in eliminating the notion of soul from biology. All that
biology needs to study is the body which has a self-sufficiency about it.
If we consider the dissolution of three representative life forms, a
man, a dog and a rose bush, we find that they may be reduced to the same
kind of synthesis in organic chemistry—carbon and its compounds—and
to exactly the same materials in inorganic compounds. If the material to
which these things may be reduced in their dissolution is the same, and if
the elements out of which they are constructed are similar, or the same
basic elements, then how do we account for the difference of a man, a
dog and a rose bush? The differences between things demand some basic
principle of difference. There must be something different in a man and
a dog, if the same meat and cheese when eaten are woven in the one
case into a hand, in the other, a paw. Matter alone cannot account for the
differences of things. There must be some principle of organization which
makes a man a man, a dog a dog, and a rose bush a rose bush. There must
be some principle of organization that takes the zygote or primary living
cell of a human being and molds it, shapes it, organizes it into a man, and
the same for the dog and the rose bush. This is what the scholastics meant
by form, that by which a thing is what it is, that by which a man is a man,
a dog a dog, and a rose bush a rose bush. And this is what we mean by
the soul of things. A soul is simply a certain kind of form, the form of a
living body, a form from which flows the immanent operations that char¬
acterize living beings: nutrition, growth, reproduction, sensation, locomo¬
tion, intellection and volition.
If this is what it means to be a soul, then the canard, “I never found

a soul under my scalpel”, becomes ridiculous! What does the heart come
from? What organizes lungs out of the bread and butter we eat? What
systematizes protoplasm into the awesome complexity of the human brain
tissue? Every time you shake hands with a man, you touch his soul. In his
five fingers with their protective nails, we see the stamp of the soul on the
body, the principle of organization that causes a thing to be what it is.
The Aristotelian notion of the soul fits into current theories in a
way that the Platonic and Cartesian conceptions do not. If the soul is con¬
ceived as a disembodied spirit hovering in ghostly fashion around the body
of which it is the animating principle, then its existence is rightly cast into
doubt by biological science. But if the soul is the very form of the body,
the very organization itself of the body, then it must play an intimate part
in any analysis of the intelligible patterns throughout biological theory.
Every theory then becomes a partial elucidation of the soul’s structure and
function, its causal efficacy and its effects.
Certainly, the axial gradient theory needs a directive energy to
account for the descriptive facts it sets forth. There is an order of im¬
portance, apparently, in the development of organs running from the front
to rear, from head to caudal area.
Likewise, what is the hidden mechanism that makes this protein
complex group of agents we call the organizer? What is the organizing
principle or directive energy, or perhaps it is a dynamic act, which explains
the teleological patterns formed through the organizer. The theory of the
organizer would seem only to locate more precisely one of the points of
contact or areas of operation of the dynamic energies of the principle of
organization, as badly needed as ever, to account for the facts of the or¬
ganizer theory.
The field theory attempts to locate even more precisely the loca¬
tion of the more determinate operations of the principle of organization.
Neither it nor any other biological or embryological theory can serve as a
substitute for the soul, whatever it may be called.
Embryological theories, despite the heat generated by controversy,
do not seem to be mutually exclusive. Theories of germ layers and those
of cells are not, as theories, as antagonistic as their scientific proponents.
The axial gradient and the organizer appear to work on different levels. The
organization of the whole manifests itself on various levels of organization.
The total pattern may be resolved into a myriad of sub-patterns which
enter into its constitution.
This organization, which philosophers term “form," appears on all

levels of reality and on all levels of science. Not only are macroscopic
entities distinguished by their organization; the same is true of microscopic
entities. It is not true to say, as has been said, that “a cell is nothing but
a bag of enzymes.” Structure means something even in terms of function.
There are several structural principles of complex organization in the cell
—systems of double membranes and cytoplasmic components. It is not a
rigid, mechanical, cast iron structure as seen in electron microscopy. It is
more flexible and fluid. It possesses the elasticity of all living organisms,
the fundamental elasticity and flexibility of all living phenomena as illus¬
trated by nutrition, growth and reproduction. The nuclear proteins, con¬
jugated proteins, are strictly localized in a predictable fashion as well as
substances other than proteins—nucleic acids, for instance. The mita-
chondria, the Golgi apparatus, chromatin and Nissl bodies are all com¬
ponents of a highly structuralized organization, and although at this stage
it is very difficult to correlate structure and function, there are sufficient
experimental evidences of a teleological character to provide a certain
respectability to such correlations.
The same appears to be true even below the level of electroscopv
in the infinitesimal depths of the atom, and even in the atomic nucleus. It
is interesting to speculate on the way in which what is supposed to be a
purely quantitative approach to physical reality gives us a reality of such
highly organized structure. Electrons, protons, neutrons and the whole
gamut of newly discovered particles indicate a complexity of organization
not one wit less intricate than that to be found on the level of the macro¬
scopic universe.
The atomic physicist and the electromicroscopist, like the celestial
physicist—the astronomer—see a complex intricate pattern in their uni¬
verses, hardly understanding what these tracings spell out. But there is a
message there which is being progressively decoded.
If we were to attempt an interpretation of the relations of con¬
temporary embryological theories to the Aristotelian doctrine of the soul,
we might says that these theories are syntheses, more or less explanatory,
of proximate formal causes, of accidents, or to put it more loosely, of
what the substantial form does to the matter in its progressive stages of
organization. Embryological theory can explain the mechanisms involved
in the total organization of the body, but it cannot explain away the soul,
dispense with it, or itself serve as a substitute for the soul. At every point
there is still necessary—even more so than in Aristotle’s day—an energizing
force, a principle of organization, which is directive of both structure and

function, in ancient terminology—the soul.
(3) Celestial Physics and Creation
The recent surge of interest among the philosophically-minded

scientists in the origin of the cosmic universe, provides another example
of the articulation of scientific theory and philosophical doctrine. Some
scientists and certain religious thinkers are fascinated by the prospect of
marshalling the argumentative strength and popular prestige of scientific
theory to confirm the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of creation.
Yet an examination of current theories in Astronomy and Biology raises
many doubts as to the validity of the idea of necessary conflict between the
concepts of Evolution and Creation. In Astronomy the advent of nuclear
physics has brought with it a reaffirmation of the possibility of creation.
One group of current theories, indeed, derives the known universe from an
initial explosion concentrated in time and space, an act of creation as clear
and simple as a command from the Lord, And in Biology a leading current
speculation, the notion of emergent evolution, is nothing but the concept
of creation thinly disguised as a mechanism. Let us ask to what extent
these ideas, now at least respectable if not universally accepted by the
more philosophical among scientists, indicate a convergence of scientific
and religious thinking on this issue.25
Let us summarize briefly the state of scientific theory of celestial

physics and re-examine its significance for the philosophical and theological
explanation of the doctrine of creation. In just the last century tremendous
strides have been taken in our understanding of the universe and its stellar
and solar constituents. A scientific explanation of the origin of our sun,
and with it as the model, the origin and formation of any star, is a very
recent innovation; and the heady wine of such discoveries have stimulated
cosmological thought to aspire to the intoxicating heights of an explana¬
tion of the whole universe of beings.
The naive (by present standards) view of the structure of the sun
a century ago was that which Herschel had already formulated in 1895.
The sun itself was conceived as a cool solid, most likely able to support
some forms of life. Its burning radiation came from a “self-luminous enve¬
lope or photosphere” which enclosed a “cooler planetary atmosphere.”
The tools which were to transform this naive scientific view into
the highly sophisticated and technical modem theory in just one hundred
years, were already being forged in the early part of the nineteenth century.
This period of rapid development saw the formulation of the theories of
25 V/. Etkin, “Science and Creation,” Judaism, Vol. 4, n. 2.

the atomic structure of matter, the conservation of energy and the laws of
electromagnetism. It was the application of these advances in terrestrial
physics to the explanation of solar and stellar constitution that brought
astro-physics scientifically of age. It was just about the middle of the last
century that an astrophysical phenomenon was for the first time formulated
in terms of the new ideas of the conservation and convertibility of energy
by J. R. Mayer and J. J. Waterston.
Naturally, any body as far distant from the observer as the celestial
bodies must be investigated indirectly, through its luminosity in this in¬
stance. Fraunhofer had already mapped out the line spectra of the sun
in 1814, and it was then a matter of establishing mass, radius and lumi¬
nosity correlations, first within one body and then in relation to other
stellar bodies. Beginning with a certain mass in isolation and using nothing
but the known laws of terrestrial physics, it was possible to set up the
empirical luminosity-class relation and the empirical mass-luminosity rela¬
tion. It is this empirical uniformity between mass, luminosity and spectral
classes that holds true for most stars and provides us with the main
sequence system of stars. However white dwarfs, giants, super-giants and
cepheid variables do not exemplify these relations.
Without attempting a technical physical description which would
have to be done mathematically, we can cite certain steps in the formation
of a star according to the laws of atomic physics on which many astro¬
physicists are agreed. In a very general way, the theory begins with the
expansion of an initial matter giving a perfect gas at a tremendously high
temperature and resulting in a spherically symmetrical body. Temperature
sensitivity at about twenty million degrees now provides the occasion for
the release of sub-atomic energy. Hydrogen nuclei, with the carbon-nitro¬
gen cycle as catalyst, become helium nuclei. Consequent on this process
there is an outward flux of radiation and the transmutation of other chemical
elements by “thermonuclear reactions.” This results eventually in a stable-
state “star” in which hydrogen, by all calculations, is still present, much
in excess of all other elements.
These seem to be the steps, in a very schematic and general way,
in the hypothetical development of any star and its properties, explained
in terms of the fundamental particles of laboratory physics. The theory
is certainly not worked out in detailed fashion, but most astrophysicists
would agree on the corroborative evidence of its general correctness.
There seems to be, in the minds of most of these scientific cosmo¬
logical speculators, a certain confusion between their scientific theories
and philosophical-theological speculations.
The problems of cosmogony, that is the theory of the origin of the world,
have perplexed the human mind ever since the dawn of history. Among
the ancients, the origin of the world was necessarily associated with a
creative act by some deity, who separated light from darkness, raised and
fixed the heavens high above the surface of the earth, and fashioned all
the other features that characterized the highly limited world picture of
early man.26
As a matter of fact, the “substitutional” theory of the nature of

modem science is as popular as ever, and serves as the general historical-
philosophical framework for locating recent discoveries.
As the centuries rolled by and men gradually accumulated knowledge

about the various phenomena taking place in the world that formed their
environment, the theories of cosmogony took a more scientific shape. The
names of Buffon, Kant, and Laplace characterize the scientific era when
the first attempts were made to understand the origin of the world ex¬
clusively as the result of natural causes. The theories of that time, which
were limited essentially to the origin of our solar system, later underwent
a process of multiple evolution.27
Modem cosmogonical theories can be located in two basic classes:
1. What we might call the big-bang theory of Canon Georges

Lemaitre (1930), as outlined in his pioneer work, The Primeval Atom,
which has influenced all later thinking. This includes the concept of the
Expanding Universe, as indicated by Hubble’s work on the Red Shift of
the Nebular Spectra in 1919, as well as the recent modifications of the
theory as the Universe in Equilibrium, both expanding and contracting,
of George Gamow, 1952.
2. On the other hand, we have the steady-state theory of the
Origin of the Universe, by Fred Hoyle of Cambridge University, based on
the Continuous Creation of Hydrogen Atoms.
Both theories begin with the premise that the red shift can only
be interpreted as evidence that the galaxies of the universe are moving
farther and farther apart at tremendous speeds, faster in the case of the
outlying galaxies.
(a) The Big-bang Theory. Canon Lemaitre claims that this theory
of the expanding universe can be explained on the basis of an initial ex¬
plosion of a “primeval atom,” and using the laws of physics alone he
26 George Gamow, The Creation of the Universe, p. 20.

27 Ibid., p. 3.
traces mathematically the evolution and progressive division and differ¬

entiation of the cosmic system from this primal catastrophe.28
George Gamow describes in popular fashion the mathematical
theory of Lemaitre. Beginning with a primal Ylem, or matter which had
been squeezed into a pulp, there is a consequent elastic expansion ulti¬
mately reaching certain limits and again contracting.29
(b) The Steady-state Theory. Hoyle claims in his steady-state
theory that there is a continuous creation of hydrogen atoms. His approach
is a mathematical one, developed in the framework of the theory of rela¬
tivity. The question he proposes is: if the galaxies are moving farther and
28 The purpose of any cosmogonic theory is to seek out ideally simple conditions
which could have initiated the world and from which, by the play of recognized
physical forces, that world, in all its complexity, may have resulted.
We believe that we have shown that the hypothesis of the primeval atom satisfies
the rules of the game. It does not appeal to any force which is not already known.
It accounts for the actual world in all its complexity. By a single hypothesis it ex¬
plains stars arranged in galaxies within an expanding universe as well as those local
exceptions, the clusters of nebulae. Finally, it accounts for that mighty phenomenon,
the ultra penetrating rays. They are truly cosmic, they testify to the primeval activity
of the cosmos. In their course through wonderfully empty space, during billions of
years, they have brought us evidence of the super-radioactive age, indeed they are
a sort of fossil rays which tell us what happened when the stars first appeared.
We shall certainly not pretend that this hypothesis of the primeval atom is yet
proved, and we would be very happy if it has not appeared to be either absurd or
unlikely. When the consequences which result from it, especially that which concerns
the law of the distribution of densities in the nebulae, are available in sufficient detail
it will doubtless be possible to declare oneself definitely for or against. Canon Georges
Lemaitre. The Primeval Atom (New York, 1950), pp. 162-163.
29 A picture of the creative process begins to emerge—somewhat hazy and frag¬
mentary, but in its general outlines quite definite. In the dim pre-galactic past we
perceive a glimpse of a metaphysical “St. Augustine’s era” when the universe, what¬
ever it was made of, was involved in a “gigantic collapse.” Of course, we have no
information about that era, which could have lasted from the minus infinity of time
to about three billion years ago, since all “archaeological records” pertaining to that
distant past must have been completely obliterated when the cosmic masses were
squeezed into a pulp. The masses of the universe must have emerged from the Big
Squeeze in a completely broken-up state, forming the primordial ylem of neutrons,
protons, and electrons. As the ylem cooled rapidly through expansion, these ele¬
mentary particles began to stick to one another, forming aggregates of different com¬
plexities which were the prototypes of the atomic nuclei of today. During this
early period of “nuclear cooking,” which lasted not more than an hour of time,
conditions throughout the universe closely approximated those existing in the center
of an exploding atomic bomb. Cosmic space was full of high-energy gamma radia¬
tion, the mass-density of which greatly exceeded the density of ordinary atomic
matter. The temperature throughout the universe was in the neighborhood of a
billion degrees, but the density of matter was comparable to the density of atmo¬
spheric air at high altitudes.
farther apart, why does not space become more empty? He answers that
newer galaxies are constantly being formed, their rate of formation just
compensating for the separating effect of the expansion. Thus a stable
situation is preserved. His theory, in his own interpretation, leads to the
conclusion that the universe had no beginning and no end, that space and
time are infinite, and that matter is being constantly created throughout
space.
If all the substances of the periodic chart are reducible to multiples
of hydrogen by atomic weight then Hoyle in accounting for a supply of
Following that highly productive first hour of the history of our universe,
nothing in particular happened for the next 30 million years. The gas, consisting of
the newly formed atoms, continued to expand and its temperature became lower and
lower. Radiant energy, which at the beginning played a predominant role in the
evolutionary process, gradually lost its importance and by the end of the thirty-
millionth year yielded its priority in favor of ordinary atomic matter. As soon as
matter took over, the force of Newtonian gravity, which represents one of the most
important characteristics of ‘‘ponderable” matter, came into play, breaking up the
hitherto homogeneous gas into gigantic clouds, the proto-galaxies. In that era the
temperature dropped to approximately that which we call “room temperature,” so
that space was still rather warm, although completely dark. While the original proto¬
galaxies were being driven farther and farther apart by continued expansion, material
in their interiors began to condense into a multitude of much smaller aggregations,
called proto-stars. Because of the comparatively small size of these proto-stars their
contraction progressed quite rapidly. Very soon the temperature in their interiors
reached the value at which nuclear reactions between hydrogen and various light
elements would take place, and space became bright again—illuminated by myriads
of stars. When the stars were formed by the condensation of the gaseous material
of the proto-galaxies, some of that material was left over in their vicinity and from it
sprang planetary systems. The planets were too small to create their own sources of
nuclear energy; they cooled off fast and developed solid rocky crusts. With the help
of the radiations from their respective suns, certain chemical compounds which were
present on the surfaces of these planets went through an evolutionary process, as
yet not well understood, by which organic materials of higher and higher complexity
were developed. Thus the naked rocky surfaces of the planets were presently cov¬
ered by the green carpets of woods and meadows. Animals appeared, first primi¬
tive and then more and more complicated, finally evolving into the human being
who is intelligent enough to ask and to answer questions concerning the events which
took place billions of years before he came into existence.
Probably one of the most striking conclusions from our inquiry into the history
of the universe is the fact that the main evolutionary events of physical development
occupied only such a tiny fraction of the total period. This, of course, only means
that organic evolution takes place at a much slower rate than the large-scale physical
processes in the universe.
Indeed, it took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million
years to make the stars and planets, but three billion years to make man! G. Gamow,
op. cit., Conclusion, pp. 137-139.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
D 28
103 July
2914 Jordan D W
B 5
July
3499 Johnson D 45 I
18
45 July
3510 Jennings H
G 18
July
3885 Jones Wm 55 C
24
July
4057 John Thomas 54 E
27
July
4093 Jones J 79 A
27
50 Aug
4540 Johnson J W
G 2
103 Aug
4590 Jameson Wm
H 3
101 Aug
4817 Johns Rob’t
I 5
Aug
5295 Johnson H Art 2 I
11
150 Aug
5516 Jacobs B G
F 13
100 Aug
5871 Jones Rob’t
A 16
101 Aug
6197 Jones T
I 19
Aug
6200 Jones W E 27 B
19
49 Aug
6317 Jones S
G 22
145 Aug
6760 Joslin J
I 25
Aug
6817 Jober J 77 B
25
6931 Jarmter C 7A Aug
26
53 Sept
7566 Johnson Chas
G 2
Sept
8318 Johnson J 45 I
10
101 Sept
8853 Jolly Jas
H 15
Sept
9303 Jones P 63 F
20
149 Sept
9351 Jordan J M
D 20
Sept
9378 Jacobs J S Cav 6F
20
Sept
9982 Jeffries C 4B
29
101 Sept
9999 Jones T
B 29
Oct
10735 Jabin Jas 55 E
11
Oct
10987 Jones A 27 D
16
184 Oct
11058 Johnson Wm
D 17
148 Oct
11430 Jordan Thos
- 24
115 Oct
11539 Jenks J C
H 27
118 Nov
12007 Johnson L
C 4
Dec
12331 Jack J P 7E
24
103 July
2889 Johnson A G, Cor
I 4
2 Kelly Chas H 71 H Mch
1
Mar
238 Kelly H S, S’t Cav 13 H
30
Mar
266 Kuntzelman J 63 E
31
May
1024 Kenny Wm 12 F
11
June
1824 Kyle Wm 5H
10
June
1875 Kelly Peter 73 -
12
June
2076 Knight Jno Cav 7K
17
June
2335 Kehoe Moses 8H
22
June
2639 Kenoan M A Cav 14 L
29
July
3048 King C 6C
8
July
3187 Kiech N, Cor 54 A
12
101 July
3265 Klink A
C 13
103 July
3471 Kemp E
A 17
103 July
3634 Keeston E
I 20
July
4162 Kagman J T 45 B
28
July
4293 Kuffman S D 45 E
30
Aug
4545 Kauf J Art 2B
2
148 Aug
4895 Kelley O F
B 6
5058 Kock H 21 H Aug
8
Aug
5145 Kawell Jno Cav 18 E
9
Aug
5154 Keyes Alex C, Cor Cav 16 H 64
9
149 Aug
5208 Kester L
F 10
Aug
5443 Kelley T Cav 13 H
12
Aug
5851 Kahn R 96 K
13
103 Aug
5718 Keister Jno M
A 15
Aug
5744 Keeley Wm Cav 13 A
15
Aug
6028 Kauffman B F 45 K
18
Aug
6084 Kemper J 73 D
18
Aug
6459 Kiger Wm Cav 3C
22
Aug
6497 Kenter A W 67 B
22
184 Aug
6514 Kniver S
F 22
Aug
6638 Krigle H 11 K
23
Aug
6965 Krader W O 55 H
27
Aug
7005 King M Cav 3A
27
Aug
7372 Keller A 9M
31
7553 Keller M 105 Sept
G 1
118 Sept
7781 Kyle Wm
F 7
184 Sept
8210 Kinsman F P
F 8
Kanford Jno C, S Sept
8734 C 5 -
m 14
Sept
8799 Kaufman J 45 E
17
Sept
9139 Kipp W Cav 12 D
18
145 Sept
9563 Kinmick T, Cor
K 23
Sept
9630 Kearney L 50 F
24
149 Oct
10335 Kerr B
B 4
101 Oct
10367 Kirby J A
E 5
184 Oct
10439 Kline Ross
F 6
152 Oct
10502 Kennedy J
A 8
Oct
10698 King M 11 K
11
101 Oct
10747 Kirkwood H
C 11
Oct
10926 Knieper C 89 F
14
Oct
11238 Kurtz J 55 K
21
Oct
11332 King J R 55 K
23
Oct
11384 Kelley E Cav 7F
24
11463 King R 6E Oct
26
116 Oct
11645 Kramer Geo, Cor
G 30
184 Feb
12695 Knox J, S’t 65
A 23
July
8676 Kerer H N 63 E 64
20
Mch
88 Liesen Lewis Cav 13 A
21
Mch
243 Lancaster E “ 14 F
30
April
297 Luck W “ 11 H
1
April
549 Lynch Adam “ 6L
14
May
1403 Levy Frank “ 3H
27
May
1429 Liesine Wm, Cor 13 E
28
June
1579 Lindine J Art 3A
3
106 June
1588 Little M
F 3
145 June
1621 Luhaus Melter
A 4
183 June
2250 Lackey Jas
D 21
June
2379 Leach J Cav 3D
23
July
3091 Larimer J 11 E
9
July
3734 Ladbeater Jas 7K
21
3305 Link P 98 H July
14
118 July
3306 Long A
H 14
July
3369 Lanigan N, S’t Cav 13 L
15
101 July
3403 Lewis Ed
I 16
49 July
3448 Leonard Geo
G 17
July
3489 Logan B 90 B
17
July
3545 Lee Jas Cav 13 B
18
101 July
4312 Long D F B
I 30
July
4434 Lambert W Cav 4K
31
Aug
4696 Larrison Wallace C 14 C
4
Aug
4818 Lewis A Cav 3D
5
101 Aug
4857 Laughlin J, S’t
E 6
Aug
4907 Lahman C 73 C
6
Aug
4929 Livingston J K 2B
6
Aug
5199 Long Augustus 55 H
10
Aug
5225 Loudin H N 14 H
10
116 Aug
5314 Lacock Hugh
E 11
Aug
6252 Lodiss H 90 A 64
20
6636 Leach Jas 49 E Aug
23
143 Aug
6783 Light S, Cor
H 25
Aug
7145 LaBelt J 21 F
29
Sept
7938 Lemon Jno E Cav 4 I
6
145 Sept
7950 Lockhard J
B 8
103 Sept
8405 Lepley Chas
E 10
Sept
8754 Layman F 49 B
10
Sept
8833 Laughlin J L 1H
15
Sept
8895 Lester W H Cav 7 I
16
Sept
8904 Lippoth J 5E
16
Sept
9085 Logne S 26 A
18
Sept
9291 Leary C 83 K
19
Sept
9647 Loden J Cav 4C
24
110 Sept
10066 Laytin P
D 30
21 Sept
10086 Lutz P M
G 30
116 Sept
10091 Lebos C
D 30
140 Oct
10273 Limar W
- 3
10298 Long W 67 Oct
G 4
Oct
10372 Long P, Cor Cav 11 C
5
119 Oct
10548 Lancaster C
B 8
Oct
10572 Lynch W J Cav 3 I
9
Oct
10580 Labor R 7F
10
143 Oct
10687 Luchford R
F 11
110 Oct
10873 Lang I
C 13
Oct
11604 Leuchlier J 5 -
16
Oct
11255 Lantz Wm 7C
21
Oct
11465 Lewis J Cav 4L
26
Nov
11728 Luther I “ 4L
1
Nov
11869 Lego Geo 12 A
6
53 Nov
11907 Ladd A
M 7
Nov
12192 Lape J 18 K
28
Dec
12210 Lewis D S 53 K
2
77 Jan
12489 Linsey D 65
G 19
139 Aug
5699 Ledwick F M 64
C 15
Aug
7084 Latchem David Cav 4K
28
7307 Lochery A “ 14 E Aug
30
Aug
5985 Logan W 97 A
17
101 Aug
6030 Loudon S
A 18
181 Aug
6053 Layton Samuel
A 18
Aug
6071 Lamb C 71 B
18
Aug
6082 Lane Amos Cav 6E
18
Aug
6152 Lehnich Jno Art 2F
19
April
753 Lenard M Cav 13 D
26
141 April
761 Lord G W
E 27
Loudon Samuel, May
871 2F
Cor 4
105 Mar
183 Maynard Jno
G 27
Mar
208 Missile Val 47 C
28
Mar
225 Miller Daniel Cav 13 H
29
April
361 Martin J F “ 14 K
2
April
461 McEntire W 51 F
9
April
538 Mine Josh, Cor 54 F
14
April
586 Marple S L 14 A
17
605 McKissick Jno 23 F April
18
April
667 Myers G Cav 1E
22
April
736 McKeever E L, S’t 71 F
25
April
773 McDonald R 23 C
28
April
780 McCarthy Jas Cav 18 E
28
May
969 McQueeny W 79 B
9
May
1006 Meyer Jno Cav 2E
10
May
1128 McKey J “ 1 I
15
May
1139 McMahon J 73 F
16
May
1147 McKnight J E 57 B
16
May
1151 McHale J Cav 14 D
16
May
1185 Moser Jno “ 13 B
18
May
1273 McCollen W, S’t “ 4L
22
May
1287 Milligan J 61 F
22
May
1308 McCartney M 73 B 64
23
May
1460 Murray Jno Cav 13 E
29
June
1586 Miles Lewis “ 4 I
3
13 June
1643 Myers J R, Cor “
M 5
1722 Marshall M M 78 E June
8
103 June
1748 Moyer Thos
E 9
118 June
1792 Miller M
A 10
June
1858 McHose J Cav 4A
12
June
1907 Miller Henry 8G
13
101 June
1982 Muchollans J
K 15
June
2056 Monny W H Cav 3A
16
101 June
2058 Matchell J J
K 16
101 June
2159 Monan J
C 19
June
2265 McCutchen J Cav 4C
21
June
2278 Milton Wm “ 19 H
21
June
2333 Myers F, S’t 27 H
22
76 June
2364 Myers Peter
G 23
June
2388 Morton T 79 I
24
June
2409 McCabe J Cav 3L
24
103 June
2411 McKay M J
B 24
June
2493 Merry Jas 67 E
26
2503 Martin A J, Cor Cav 4E June
26
June
2508 Morris J “ 18 A
26
June
2653 McManes —— 77 B
29
101 June
2684 Mipes J
B 30
77 June
2690 Morris G
G 30
July
2798 Marsh D 50 D
2
July
2831 McCane Chas 14 C
3
July
3017 McRath J 48 C
7
July
3065 Morris Calvin 53 D
9
McCalasky J E, July
3133 Cav 4K
S’t 10
July
3151 Mattiser B 57 F
11
149 July
3172 Madden Daniel
G 11
103 July
3250 Myers M
E 13
July
3374 Mink H Art 3A
16
155 July
3467 Meaker E N
H 17
101 July
3481 McKeon Jno
H 17
138 July
3488 Mihan J
D 17
July
3939 Maroney Jno Cav 1D
20
3690 McCarron J Cav 4A July
21
116 July
3766 Myers Jno
D 22
July
3971 Martin G 45 I
25
July
4016 McDermott J M 70 F
26
103 July
4123 McGee Jas
I 28
July
4197 Moore M G Art 1A
29
July
4341 Marquet M 6M
30
100 July
4407 McKever Jno
A 31
July
4414 McFarland Jas 55 E
31
101 Aug
4546 Moan Jas
K 2
Aug
4607 Martin Bryant 7F
3
Aug
4635 McKeral Jas 14 K
3
Mathews C W, 145 Aug
4710
Cor B 4
Aug
4734 Moore 71 I
4
Aug
4796 McDevitt J Art 3D
5
Aug
4824 Miller H Cav 14 I
5
150 Aug
4876 Mills Wm
G 6
4898 Muldany M 96 K Aug
6
103 Aug
5068 Martain Jno
E 8
103 Aug
5069 Measler Jas
E 8
McCaffrey Jno, h Aug
5139 Art 3A
s 9
Aug
5159 Martin C Cav 8A
9
103 Aug
5266 Marey H F
F 10
14 Aug
5291 Mohr J R
G 11
101 Aug
5415 McCarty Dennis
K 12
Aug
5433 McGee J 14 H
12
Aug
5595 Mickelson B Cav 16 B
14
Aug
5642 McClough L C 18 C
14
101 Aug
5704 Miller Jno 64
G 15
Aug
5723 McCann Jno Art 3A
15
143 Aug
5781 Miller S
B 15
Aug
5809 Montgomery R 62 A
16
Aug
5868 McQuillen A Art 6L
16
Aug
5893 McCuller S Cav 4B
16
Aug
5926 Mulchey J A 50 D
17
5988 Mann Jas, Cor 119 Aug
G 17
103 Aug
6014 McPherson D
F 17
103 Aug
6038 Moore C
G 18
Aug
6148 McCracker J 53 K
19
Aug
6294 McLaughlin Jas C 4A
20
Aug
6441 McWilliams H 82 I
22
103 Aug
5480 Martin Jno
D 22
Aug
6532 McGan J Cav 18 -
23
144 Aug
6664 McKee ——
C 24
Aug
6689 Manner M 73 K
24
143 Aug
6910 McGlann H
B 26
Aug
6925 McGuigan H C 7K
26
143 Aug
7026 Marks P
B 27
107 Aug
7061 Moore M J
- 28
Aug
7107 Moyer Wm H 55 H
28
Aug
7119 Miller Jno L 53 K
28
Aug
7127 McAffee Jas 72 F
28
7175 Moore Thos 69 D Aug
29
Aug
7263 Martin Jno 77 C
30
Aug
7265 Musser Jno 77 D
30
103 Aug
7305 Moser S
E 30
183 Aug
7333 Morris Jno
G 30
Aug
7407 Marchin Wm 50 E
31
Sept
7512 Millinger Jno H 7C
1
103 Sept
7602 Moorhead J S
D 2
Sept
7719 Myers H 9A
3
Sept
7875 Mayer W 8M
5
103 Sept
7925 Mays N J
H 5
Sept
8027 Murphy A Cav 13 I
6
Sept
8047 McKnight J Cav 18 I
6
101 Sept
8122 Miller J, Cor
C 8
145 Sept
8123 Mullings W
G 8
Sept
8128 Munager W Cav 13 L
8
Sept
8134 Mehaffey J M Cav 16 B
8
Sept
8153 McCantley W Art 2A
8
8158 McLane T 12 E Sept
8
119 Sept
8194 McKink J, Cor
D 8
101 Sept
8216 Mansfield J
G 8
118 Sept
8322 Myers A
I 10
103 Sept
8469 Magill H
I 11
146 Sept
8596 Morrison J
E 12
Sept
8627 McKinney D 90 C
13
118 Sept
8691 Moritze A
D 14
101 Sept
8802 McCullogh ——
E 15
Sept
9071 Maynard A Art 3 -
17
Sept
9090 McCall Wm Cav 22 B
18
138 Sept
9228 McCullough S
K 19
Sept
9270 Mayhan F Cav 20 -
19
149 Sept
9315 Marsh W
K 20
138 Sept
9339 Meyers J A
C 20
101 Sept
9526 McQuigley Jno
C 22
184 Sept
9583 Mead H J
B 23
9598 Martin J Cav 17 C Sept
23
Sept
9644 Morris J 54 I
24
Sept
9646 Morgan J E 2A
24
118 Sept
9651 McCook B
A 24
Sept
9761 McMurray Wm C 1 I
25
112 Sept
9871 Mason Jno
A 27
Aug
4578 McKerner S 73 E
2
Sept
10050 Mesin Jas, S’t 90 F
30
Sept
10060 Morgan C 45 A 64
30
101 Oct
10119 McClany J
C 1
Oct
10154 McElroy Wm Cav 13 L
1
Oct
10306 Meese J 48 A
4
Oct
10396 McGraw Jno Art 3A
6
Oct
10407 Miller H 79 K
6
Oct
10486 Miller Wash’gton C 18 C
7
118 Oct
10610 McKearney J W
K 10
Oct
10620 McClief Wm 7A
10
118 Oct
10641 Marker W H
D 10
10678 Martin J P 7 I Oct
11
Oct
10684 Miller Jas 7 I
11
138 Oct
10803 Mattis Aaron
- 12
Oct
10825 Moore C H Cav 13 C
13
108 Oct
10929 Martin Geo H
I 14
Oct
10981 Maxwell S Cav 14 B
15
Oct
10991 Moses W “ 16 H
16
118 Oct
10993 McKnight Jas
K 16
Oct
11081 Mitchell J O 55 H
18
101 Oct
11142 Mansfield Geo
I 19
Oct
11229 McClay J H Cav 11 D
20
Oct
11305 McBride —— “ 2H
22
184 Oct
11326 Marshall L
A 23
101 Oct
11387 Moore S
F 24
Oct
11459 Moore J Cav 13 B
25
100 Sept
11464 McNelse J H, Cor
E 26
Oct
11542 Miller F 54 K
27
11655 Midz J Cav 20 A Oct

The Philosophy of Science Institute Lectures ST Johns University Studies Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Philosophy of Science Institute Lectures ST Johns University Studies Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Philosophy of Science Institute

Lectures St.Johns University Studies

st. John’s uNiveRsiry sTut>ies

The Philosophy of Science Institute Lectures

st. JobN’s uNiveRsiTy sTuOies

ST. JOHN’S UNIVERSITY PRESS JAMAICA, NEW YORK

Sylvester A. Taggart, C.M., S.T.L., S.S.B.

Michael J. Cantley, S.T.L.

►f< Bryan Josephus McEntegart, D.D., LL.D., L.H.D.

Bruklyni, die XXI Septembris 1959

The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declara¬

Finally, as a phenomenon typical of our times, the prestige of natural

Particular attention has been paid to the role of philosophy as a principle

John A. Flynn, C.M.

r REPORT OF THE INSTITUTE

HI REASONS FOR THE

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER • 69

by Vincent E. Smith, Ph.D.

y_l THE UNCONSCIOUS • 131

Y7H PHILOSOPHICAL UNITY

by Very Reverend Msgr. William J. McDonald, Ph.D.

Report of the Institute

O ne need not be a scientist to be aware of the increasingly important

In the establishment of the Institute in the Philosophy of Science,

Sciences and illustrate these relations by a consideration of particular

2 Allocution to Professors and Students of the Institut Catholique of Paris, Sept.

We take the occasion of the publication of these studies to express

Professor of Philosophy, St. John’s University

Toward a Systematic Philosophy

T his is an era of intense intellectual activity. Countless human beings

THE SYSTEMATIC RELATIONS BETWEEN

In any treatment of the relations of philosophy and natural science

discarded. A new philosophy was necessary to explain the facts discovered

I. THE SUBSTITUTIONAL THEORY OF SCIENCE

One scientific educator writes:

Science has even been invoked as the arbiter of ethics:

The most frightening obstacles to the very existence of theology

The mathematician, the physicist, or the biologist, who wanted to solve

The history of philosophy finds its continuators, not in the modern

The philosopher of the traditional school has often refused to recognize

This notion of the “substitutional” nature of science is the fruit of

2 B. C. Gruenberg, Science and the Public Mind (New York, 1953), p. 4.

The verification of sense perception, the recourse to experience—so

concerned exclusively with revelation or abstractions. This is a half-truth.

As early as the 12th century, Adelard of Bath points up the new

8 A. Crombie, loc. cit., p. 14.

There is no clearer statement of the mediaeval attitude toward scholastic

This therefore is the way by which the abstracted universal is reached

Another example of scientific sophistication is this description char¬

The special contribution that Galileo’s conception of science as a mathe¬

14 A. Crombie, Grosseteste and Experimental Science (Oxford, 1953), pp. 73-74.

example, there is no such thing as a perfectly functionless plane or an

This included the formation of certain unempirical notions such as a per¬

He perceived that freely-falling bodies moved with a uniform acceleration

II. PHILOSOPHY EXPLAINS TO SCIENCE ITS OWN NATURE

Having eliminated the “substitutional” notion of science as an his¬

wood and the rusting of metal is in precise mathematical proportion to that

III. PHILOSOPHY CRITICIZES THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLAIMS OF

Philosophy criticizes the philosophical claims of scientific theory.

comparatively easy for metaphysics to rule, as it were, the intellectual roost.

(1) Evolutionary Theory and Philosophy

The general theory of evolution, at least in the Walt Disney “Fan¬

spiritual soul is safeguarded. For a spiritual soul cannot develop from a