Philosophy of Nature

(Cosmology)
Question
• What is the ultimate component of things?
(Of Nature)
• How come things change?
• What is the principle of change?

Cosmos = Universe
Logos = Reason
Philosophy of Nature
• Perfect knowledge of beings subject to change
Perfect: ULTIMATE / FIRST CAUSES
Change: Age, growth, movement, etc.

Local movement
Qualitative movement
Quantitavie movement

Things that change is called Mobile Beings

Objects
• Material Object: natural bodies that are sensible
(Mobile Beings)
• Formal Object
• Quod: first cause of
Mobile Being endowed with Motion
not body
Mobile beings as root of change
Motion is the proper passion of mobile being & not
of bodies
• Quo: immateriality
Philosophy of Nature
• Is a philosophical science that deals with the
ultimate/first causes of Mobile beings in the light
of natural reason
Movement
• Parmenides: Permanence
• Heraclitus: Change
• Plato: Two Worlds (Matter & Ideas/Forms)
• Aristotle & St. Thomas: Material World is REAL
Hylomorphism
Material Beings - Two Ultimate Principles:
Matter & Form
Movement or Change
• Act of a being in as much as it is in potency
• There is something moving:
Act of a being in as much as it is in potency
• There was a movement:
Transformation of an object from potency to act

Movement: not in 1 point but in 2 points

(Terminus a quo to Terminus ad quem)
in-between: potency to the point of arrival
“Imperfect act of an imperfect being”
Being
Change
• Accidental Change/Movement
• Change that do not change the substance
• Eg. Change of Location, Color, etc.
• Substantial Change
• Change that change the substance
• Eg. Burning a Paper: Paper to ash

• Subject – required for a movement (Eg. The PEN)

• INANIMATE BEINGS requires agents to move
Change
• 2 ultimate principles of subjects having attained
the complete perfection:
• Prime Matter
• Substantial Form
• 3 ultimate principles of subjects not having
attained perfection:
• Prime Matter
• Substantial Form
• Privation
Causes of Change
• 2 Extrinsic Cause
• Material – Block of Marble
• Formal – Shape of the Statue
• 2 Intrinsic Cause
• Efficient
• Principal – sculptor
• Instrumental – hammer
• Final - Statue
Substance & Accidents
• Substance – “own”
-invisible
• Accidents – “inhere”
-visible

Substantial Form &

Prime Matter
- movement of a being

Nature
- principle of movement
- essence
Quantity
• Quantity is a determination of a being
• To have parts along with other parts (a part is outside
other parts)
• Order in the parts
• Whole

Quantity is not substance

Quantity is to material substance which have
quantitative parts
Form is related to Units
Matter is related to Division
Quantity
• 2 Kinds of Quantity:
• Continuous
A quantity with one limit
• Discrete
Several Quantities that form a unit or do not form a
unit
Quantity
• Primary Formal Effect:
• Actual extension with respect to itself
• Secondary Formal Effect:
• Actual extension with respect to place
• Divisibility
• Measurability
• Impenetrability
Quantity
• Principle of Individuation
• Matter signed by quantity
• Principle of Specification
• Substantial Form
• Principle of Divisibility
• Prime Matter
Substantial Form
• Individual Substance:
• Undivided in itself, divided from others

• Individual Notes:
Name, figure, motion, place, etc.
Number
• Number follows quantity (oldness, longness,
heaviness, how many, etc.)
• Number is ratio of 2 or more quantities
• Number, a concept; What exists are distinct units

• Created Material; materiality + quantity :

Substance quantified, an individual substance

It leads to time (history) and space

Time
• Experience of instant or actual moment
• Experience of duration
• Number or measurement of movement according
to before and after
Objective Time
• Implies consciousness (Cosmic Time)
• Time is not a movement
and movement is not time
• Past, Present, Future
Time
• Uniting Part of Time
• Augustine: Present: The Breviary
• Heidegger: Future: Death
• Ricoeur: Past: Birth of Christ

• Reality of Time
• Time is linear not circular
(The Nile River Flood)
Space & Place
• Represents two aspects of the same reality
• Space: aspect of distance
• Place: aspect of concrete limits
Space
• Distance between to material quantified entities
• 2 spaces:
• External: between two bodies
• Internal: between two parts of the same body

Q W E R
Place
• That which circumscribes/surrounds the body
immediately
• Immaterial
Place
Quality
• Substance is ready to be modified by quality

• Primary Formal Effect

Modification
• Act (Secondary Act) that determines the
substance
• Directly sensible and has specific diversity of
intensity and is heterogeneous
4 Different Species of Quality
• Habit/Disposition
• Potency/Impotency
• Passion/Partible Quality
• Form/Figure
• Quantity per accidens of quality:
The influence of dimension creates a difference.
Eg. Color Spot
• Quantity per se of quality:
difference in quantity
Doctrine of Hylomorphism
• Movement: Hylo/Morphism Greek:
hylo and morphe
(matter – form)

• External principle - the sun, water

• Internal principle - what constitutes the reality - man
is constituted by or composed of body and soul.
• Prime Matter: The first subject of which a thing is made -
not accidental.
• Substantial Form: The shape the prime matter takes - this
is accidental.
• Principles in the process of generation/movement:
Elements involved in movement
• 1. The mobile subject - a subject that is moving or
changing
• 2. “Terminus a quo” of the movement - point of
departure
• 3. “Terminus ad quem” - point of arrival
• 4. The Movement itself - its intermediate process
between 2 points.
Principles of mans movement? - Primary matter,
substantial form and privation.
Characteristics of Prime matter
and substantial form.
• PM and SF are the essential parts of a natural composite substance
• Prime Matter is the first subject of which a thing is made – not in accidental
way or mode.
• PM is pure potency - it cannot exist without a determined SF - that’s why we
call it “pure potency.”
• PM has innate inclination to a GOOD which corresponds to it. This inclination
is to a SF.
• Primary (‘prime’ 1st) matter excludes form - form is act, not subject. PM is
pure potency - if you have form as act, must have act and potency.
• Impotency - matter cannot exist without act (form). To exist means to act -
prime matter has no act without form.
• Prime Matter is the substance, which is not an accident but a substrate of the
accidents. Substare – “be underneath.” Prime Matter carries and sustains
the accidents. Never a moment of prime matter being left alone - always with
substantial form. Prime Matter and substantial form are objects behind the
“matter”.
• Substantial form is the principle of specification
and principle of operation.
Determines a mobile being in this or that species.
SF is the first act, so first principle of operation.
Principle of unity in an organism, shows definite
specific aspects, constant behavior.
Form is an act from which a ‘structural program’
of matter is derived. Substantial form - Prime act
of substantial matter. act co-created with matter -
shape is just an accident. Form is just an act of
prime matter.
• What is difference between plant and man -
principle of specification.
Between the paper which burns and the ashes
that are created, prime matter remains.

• Both are essential parts of a substance and

cannot exist in reality without one another.
Substance is not an accident, but a substrate of
the accidents. Substance is “underneath” the
accident.
• Substance
• 1) Prime Matter
• 2) Substantial form - these are intrinsic principles

death is substantial change - soul leaves body.

Substance is that which is essential. Substance
equivalent to essence or nature.
Substrare - to be under. Substance is underneath,
accidents on top and carried.
• Accidents: secondary subjects

• There is a rock, the rock is sculptured to a statue.

This is accidental change.
• intelligence is accidental change.
• act co-created with matter - shape is just an
accident. accidents - color, quantity and change in
volume
10 Predicates
1 substance - 9 accidents (need substance to
adhere)
• Substrate - something that links accidents to
substance.
• Substance is not an accident, but a substrate.
• Only substance can subsist - can exist
independently. Substance equivalent to essence
or nature.
Time and space: definition,
formal and material foundation
• Space: Space implies a relation between 2 corporeal
bodies. This distance is real because the foundation is
taken from real objects. Not just imaginary - you can
measure it.
• Space has 3 dimensions - length, width and height, and
one dimension in time - a being exists within a certain
period of time.
• There can be no space without bodies or independent
from bodies.
• No problem with infinite division. The relation of distance
constitute the idea of space.
• For both time and space, we need them attached to relate
to movement - In order to cover a certain distance, you
need a certain time.
Time and space: definition,
formal and material foundation
• Time: Continuum is a succession - before and
after without ever existing simultaneously. Time
has parts whose limits coincide.
• Space and Time are examples of a continuum.
Infinitely divisible and have real, potential parts.
• Roger Bacon - nature tends to fill up any
semblance of vacuum. “Horror vacui” - nature
abhors the empty. Leibniz thought empty space
metaphysically impossible. Newton needed it to
explain mechanical movement of celestial bodies.
Time and space: definition,
formal and material foundation
• Place: A reality that immediately surrounds an
object. An area with determined, concrete limits.
• 2 ways of being in a Place –
Being reasonable as in man or water being in a
container.
• A place is mainly immaterial. If it were material it
would be a body covering other bodies.
Philosophical and Scientific
time
• The formal basis of time is the conscious subject
(person) who counts and measures it.
• The material basis of time is the movement which
exists outside the subject.
• Formal object of Time is Movement.
Philosophical and Scientific
time
• Is Time real?
The past and future are parts of time but they
don’t exist. As a consequence, time is not
something real. Only the present is real or in act.

• We perceive the passage of time when we

observe some movement in succession (External
- local movement, qualitative alteration. Internal -
the succession of our thoughts.)
Philosophical and Scientific
time
• Is Time real?
The past and future are parts of time but they
don’t exist. As a consequence, time is not
something real. Only the present is real or in act.

• We perceive the passage of time when we

observe some movement in succession (External
- local movement, qualitative alteration. Internal -
the succession of our thoughts.)
Philosophical and Scientific
time
• Time - measurement of movement and rest
according to before and after.
Eg. How much time to repair building - before and
after.
• Time is connected with movement, but movement
is not time.
Eg. A car can be faster or slower but time is
always the same.
• Aristotle said there would be no time if there was
no person to keep track of it.
Philosophical and Scientific
time
• Philosophical Time:
• Augustine unites time with the ‘present.’ Past becomes present
through memory, present made actual through attention and
• the future is present through expectation.
• Heidigger unites time with the ‘future’. Man is a being unto
death. Past is a story of man’s struggle to avoid death, the
present
• is a testimony of his effort to avoid death, and he is anxious
about how he can avoid death in the future. (strong socio-
political
• influence from WW II)
• Ricouer - time with the past. The present is the effect of past
experience, and the future will be an extension of this
recounting.
Philosophical and Scientific
time
• Scientific Time:
• Absolute time of Newton: There is a uniform time for
everybody in everyplace in the universe.
Simultaneous time.
• Relative time of Einstein: My time is not your time.
Time on Mars different from time on earth.
• Subjective time of Kant: Time is a mental structure
which stays in the mind even when one forgets about
time.
• Clock in Bonn, Germany is a cesium-beam clock and
custodian of Earth time. Earth doesn’t keep good
time.
Philosophical and Scientific
time
• From the 2nd law of thermodynamics, physicists
determine the direction of time as irreversibly
oriented towards ‘a maximum
• level of disorganization,’ a stage called maximum
chaos. Entropy.
• Biological Time shared with other living creatures.
Flowers open and close at certain times of day.
HB craves rest and are
• heading to the maximum level of chaos - we get
older each day.
Philosophical and Scientific
time
• Religious Time: For pagans, things repeat - birth,
death, rebirth. Catholic time not cyclical time.
Christ died once and for all.
• Time is linear for us.
The future of the universe:
Determinism and Indeterminism
• Determinism: Implied order, and in this order you
follow a certain law. Sodium and chloride will always
make salt.
• Nature determines behavior. Enlarge this to material
world is determined, or under this metaphysical view
of Determinism -
• sun always comes up. Behind this order, is a Primary
(First) Cause. The rest is just secondary cause.
• Some scientists say no absolute determinism
because of presence of man. In man you have
freedom/choice and body subject
• to biological and physical law.