Final Causality in Nature and Human Affairs.

Marshall, Terence E. ; GUNN, ALBERT E.

HASSING, Richard F., ed. Final Causality in Nature and Human Affairs. Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, vol. 30. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997. 282 pp. Cloth, $59.95--The range of this volume, and thus the task especially of its editor, is enormous: to confront the question of teleology from Plato through Aristotle, Maimonides, Aquinas's commentaries on the Physics, Copernicus, Machiavelli, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Spinoza, and Newton, to Kant, Hegel, and then to Einstein, and to recent theories of anthropic-principle cosmology or else versions of the many-worlds cosmology of chance and necessity, and then to Niels Bohr and quantum mechanics, and finally to the problem of current molecular-biological theories of evolution.

Having received his doctorate in theoretical physics from Cornell prior to turning to his studies of philosophy, the volume's editor, Richard Hassing, is one of the very rare persons capable today of attempting such an overview of natural science, metaphysics, and the study of human things. Such an undertaking is daunting; but the endeavor is both fundamental and necessary for contemporary philosophy, and a study of the essays in this collection is a richly rewarding source of reflection based on the key issue its authors so thoughtfully, sometimes brilliantly, confront.

That issue concerns the crisis posed, for the intelligibility of human experience, by the rejection of classical teleological explanations on the part of modern natural science (pp. 7, 10-22, 86, 230). Such a rejection entails forsaking a reasonable basis for the idea of the human good according to nature, and thus for the ideas of natural right or natural law as principles of practice (pp. 86, 107 and following, 239). Accordingly, confronting this issue requires, it seems, not only that one show, contrary to postmodern or Heideggerian philosophy, that the whole is intelligible, but also that in some sense the whole is good.

In addition to the questions raised from the replacement of classical natural philosophy by explanations of nature in terms of mathematical laws of physics, the volume's editor focuses especially, in the introductory chapter, on the significance of modern views of nature derived from Francis Bacon's Machiavellian aim to replace the classical perception of nature, in terms of the quest for eternal ends, by "transformism" or by "the proclaimed malleability of nature and human nature to human, not divine, power" (p. 32, emphasis in the original; see also p. 41 on Newton and p. 235).

The structure of the volume moves from Hassing's lengthy introductory essay, focusing first on Socrates' turn away from his Pre-Socratic reductionism and toward the question of the ideas and of the good (pp. 2-3; see Phaedo 98b8-99d1 and Republic 6, 505a2, 505ri11-el), then on Aristotle's Physics and the medieval commentaries thereon, and from there on Machiavelli's rejection of the classical understanding of man, and on Bacon's critique of the Idola mentis in the New Organon, followed by examinations of the early modern scientific project outlined in the writings of Descartes's Le Monde, Newton's Principia, and Laplace's Philosophical Essay on Probabilities. The ensuing chapters provide detailed examinations of specific issues deriving from the problems outlined in the introduction. As is well summarized on the book's jacket:

William Wallace examines Aristotle's definition of nature in relation to extrinsic efficient and final causes, and the adequacy of Aristotle's account of nature to questions of ultimate efficient and final causes. Allan Gotthelf considers the meaning of teleological explanation in Aristotle's biology and reviews contemporary interpretations thereof. Francis Slade discusses the differences between natural ends and human purposes, and the implications of that difference for ethics and politics. Ernest Fortin explores the relations between medieval natural law and modern natural right in the political theory of liberal democracy. Richard Velkley examines Kant's endeavor to supply, on modern grounds, the defects of the modern project of self-determination and mastery of nature; the resulting status of fundamental contingencies in the Kantian philosophy; and the crucial significance of the Critique of Judgment in Kant's distinctive attempt to account for the unity of the human being in terms of ultimate contingencies.

David White discusses Kant's understanding of organism, or natural purpose, in the Critique of Judgment, and how the concept of natural purpose regulates judgment. John Burbidge explores the logic of Hegel's teleology, "the cunning of reason," at work within end-less human history. John Leslie considers the argumentation for, predictive powers of, and fundamental alternatives to anthropic principles in contemporary cosmology. [And] George Gale discusses the historical background and epistemological status of anthropic-principle cosmologies.

On the basis of the issues raised by these preceding chapters, the volume's concluding essay by Richard Hassing, "Modern Natural Science and the Intelligibility of Human Experience," provides an account that should become an invaluable reference for all those seeking to explore the problematic relation of modern natural science to the interpretation of human things. Contrary to George Gale's earlier distinction between physics and philosophy or metaphysics, and his consigning the questions of teleology strictly to the latter (p. 210; compare p. 254), Hassing reexamines the views of Bacon, Newton, Descartes, and Laplace that physics is part of philosophy (pp. 18, 20, 26-32, 43-6, 223-4), and thereby reintegrates at least the question of teleology as figuring among those of natural philosophy.

Based on an exceptional grasp of the philosophical issues inhering in contemporary scientific research, and building on his previous work concerning the ambiguities of the law of inertia (pp. 225, 232), Hassing's extensive and probing essay here examines the arguments favoring ontological and methodological reductionism, and shows the inadequacy of the early grounding, by reductionists such as Laplace, of the project for a unified science under the parallelogram rule in classical mechanics. While the parallelogram rule for the composition of forces is applicable to celestial mechanics, fluid dynamics, and the kinetic theory of gases, as well as to problems of engineering mechanics (pp. 221, 229), a generalized application of this rule fails to explain all nature or natures in terms of homogeneous properties like mass and charge, position and velocity, or in terms of parts and particles (p. 224; see also p. 254).

In particular, "the strictly deterministic character of the Newtonian account (as well as classical electromagnetism) makes unintelligible all phenomena in which a system reconstitutes itself, or recovers a privileged state of the whole following an external disturbance ... [such as] healing, or the resistance of living organisms to disease and injury" (pp. 235-6; see also p. 254). The alternative of holism is initially explored in relation to Niels Bohr's elaboration of quantum theory out of the critique of classical physics (pp. 225, 235-6 and following; also p. 255). From the superiority of holistic to reductionist explanations for the self-reconstitutive stabilities of atomic systems and organic compounds (pp. 223, 236, and 242-5), Hassing turns to the questions of biologic, al explanation in terms of essential heterogeneity or teleology, and most specifically in relation to the species-neutrality of contemporary notions of evolutionary holism (pp. 230, 237, 239-40; also pp. 254-5).

In doing so, he focuses on three major theoretical developments since the 1940s which form the basis of this nonreductionist program: the thermodynamics of evolution or "self-organizing systems theory"; the mathematics of nonlinear equations, or "chaos theory" (made possible by the advent of high-speed computers); and the recent developments in molecular biology (the study of the genetic plans encoded in DNA or of the "molecular bases of replication, mutation, and metabolism in organisms" [pp. 242-5]). Yet in elucidating the incomplete character, indeed the inadequacy, of this evolutionary program, especially for explaining the detailed structure of biological information, for example, specific genomes, or for explaining what is life or the mind or the specifically human (pp. 228, 238-9, 244-6, 248-50, 253-4), Hassing's conclusion, contrary to the quest for a unified science, explicates instead, with exceptional clarity and precision, the reasons justifying the irreducible heterogeneity of natural science and phenomenological description (pp. 217, 226, 238-40, 246-52, 254-5).

For example, "insofar as they are objects of scientific explanation, the genetic code and specific genomes must be taken as products of chance; insofar as possessing natures, they are merely objects of `phenomenological description'" (p. 254, emphases in the original). Based in part on the study of self-reconstitutive stabilities (p. 256) and of emergent properties "that cannot be derived from simpler antecedent components" (p. 240)--such as the inability to derive from the universal laws of thermodynamics the nucleotide sequences that are carriers of encoded information in living cells; or the inability to derive from the law of universal gravitation common to all bodies the local motions specific to animals or the opinion-based motions specific to humans (p. 238, 242-50)--Hassing's concluding argument for "problematic compatibility" outlines the contours for a program to save the questions of heterogeneity, or indeed of the eide of classical or Socratic philosophy from illegitimate scientific encroachment, while respecting the results of the most recent natural scientific research (see pp. 10-22, 86, 217, 226, 2389, 244-5, 249, 254-5). Hassing thereby responds to the question he had raised in the first chapter, derived from Leo Strauss's Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), as to whether, even if classical practical philosophy can be sustained against modern epistemological critiques, it can also be sustained in the face of the results of modern scientific research.

The essay's, and the book's, final observations, referring to Irwin Straus's phenomenological psychology, further recall Hassing's initial reflections on the problem of thought as a cause of motion (pp. 12-13, in relation to pp. 216, 224, 226, 238, 251-2). They also recall the problem of scientific knowledge, of what is science or knowledge and the capacity of the scientist, within the horizon of modern scientific method, to account for his own doings as a scientist or as a human being. By so doing, the editor moves our thoughts to the threshold of a renewed and enriched perception of human things, that establishes their discrete character while yet avoiding the modern dualism, derived from Kant, which simply divorces humanistic studies from the study of nature (pp. 213, 226, 239, in relation to pp. 10-22).

In this respect, Hassing's conclusion moves the mind, beyond the Phaedo and the Republic, to think of the origin of the Socratic turn in Aristophanes' comedy, The Clouds, ridiculing the Pre-Socratic philosopher who, in his quest for knowing nature, precipitously reduces the human to an expression of homogeneous concentrations of energy, like charcoals, and who thus fails to know even himself or his own good, or his relation to others. It further brings to mind Plato's response to Aristophanes in the Symposium, on the good that is the object of desire and that completes (entelechein) the one who desires precisely because he perceives he is incomplete, including the lover of wisdom who desires the knowledge he knows he lacks.

Lest the measure of knowledge (episteme) or of logos be the unexamined endoxa of thoughtless men, the Symposium points to that sovereign but elusive good which completes the desire or the need to know. Yet as is shown in the Theaetetus, such a principle of reason, while itself reasonable, is beyond or antecedent to episteme (see pp. 2-3 and Republic 6, 505a2-509b10). In this sense, one can better grasp Hassing's Platonic conclusion that "no account of the human on its own terms can count as science" (pp. 230; see also pp. 228, 241, footnote 62 end). Such a conclusion recalls not only the problem of the Theaetetus, on what is episteme and what it can measure. It recalls finally the problem of the Statesman on what is that measure, differing from mathematical measurements, that is needed for knowing the human things (see pp. 251-2). It points to the relation of reason to practice, to practical reason, or to the relation of philosophy or science to the City, and of the problematic primacy of the former to the latter (see pp. 10-22). Such problems, beyond what can be grasped by scientific method, recall in turn Aristotle's Platonic view concerning the human things, in contrast to Popper on the social sciences, that the method of inquiry must be adapted to the nature of the phenomenon to be studied, and that the distinction between methodological and ontological reduction, without a prior analysis or interpretation, is thereby specious (see p. 228). Such an antecedent determination is only one illustration of the primacy of philosophical reflection to that of science, just as that primacy in the soul is also indispensable to that measure required for understanding final causality in both nature and human affairs. By raising such questions about the whole and its parts, this remarkable volume resuscitates that wonder which the modern reduction of philosophy to techne, and of man to thermodynamics, had sought to extinguish.

Terence E. Marshall, University of Paris X.