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 Aquinas & Modern Science
A New Synthesis of Faith and Reason
GERARD M. VERSCHUUREN

Aquinas and
Modern Science

A New Synthesis of
Faith and Reason

Foreword by
Joseph W. Koterski, S.J.
 First published in the USA and UK
by Angelico Press
© Gerard M. Verschuuren 2016

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any

means, without permission

For information, address:

Angelico Press
4709 Briar Knoll Dr.
Kettering, OH 45429
angelicopress.com

ISBN 978-1-62138-228-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-62138-229-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-62138-230-0 (ebook)

Cover Image: Jacopo del Casentino,

St. Thomas Aquinas, between circa 1325 and circa 1375,
tempera and gold on poplar wood
Cover Design: Michael Schrauzer
 CONTENTS

Foreword
Preface

1. Aquinas and His Time

2. Aquinas and Metaphysics
The Need for Metaphysics
Faith and Reason

3. Aquinas and Nature’s Principles

Esse, Essence, Existence, and Substance
Matter and Form
Fivefold Causality
Primary and Secondary Cause

4. Aquinas and Epistemology

Epistemology in Crisis
Epistemology Restored
A Foundation for Science

5. Aquinas and the Sciences

Aquinas the Scientist?
The Power of Reason

6. Aquinas and Cosmology

A Beginning of the Universe?
Before the Big Bang?
A Universe Without “Gaps”
7. Aquinas and Physics
Classical Physics
Quantum Physics

8. Aquinas and Genetics

DNA’s Causa Materialis
DNA’s Causa Efficiens
DNA’s Causa Formalis
DNA’s Causa Finalis
DNA’s Causa Exemplaris

9. Aquinas and Evolutionary Biology

The Causality of Evolution
Causa Efficiens of Evolution
Causa Materialis of Evolution
Causa Finalis of Evolution
Causa Formalis of Evolution
Causa Exemplaris of Evolution
Intelligent Design?
The Path of Evolution

10. Aquinas and Neuroscience

The Mental Is Not the Neural
What Then Is the Mental If Not the Neural?
Can the Soul Exist Without the Body?

11. Aquinas and Social Sciences

Sociology
Economics
Political Sciences

12. Conclusion
 Foreword

THE ETYMOLOGICAL ROOT of “school” is schole—Greek for leisure.

Now, in many respects the time of one’s formal schooling—especially
at the level of college or university—is not likely to be a place of
leisure. Even if one doesn’t have to work to pay for one’s schooling,
the experience is likely to be busy enough—tests, papers,
presentations, and academic activities of all sorts. What makes the
situation worse yet is that there is little unity to most experiences of
higher education. Unless one is at that rare sort of place where the
coursework has been carefully fitted together, the experience is likely
to seem busy in yet another sense—busy with many ideas from
diverse disciplines competing for one’s attention, and often one has
neither the time nor the venue for sorting it all out. It can prove
hard enough to keep one’s head above water.
The present volume by Gerard Verschuuren just might help.
Aquinas and Modern Science: A New Synthesis of Faith and Reason
is designed especially for helping to unify an undergraduate
education. It cannot claim to solve the problem of having to work to
pay for one’s education or the challenge presented by tests, papers,
presentations, and other academic activities. But what it could help
to provide is the leisure of mind that comes from taking a step back,
to see how things fit together. The discipline of philosophy, especially
in its classical thinkers, has a penchant for seeing the unity amid
diversity, for formulating the principles that are operative in the
practice of other disciplines, and for making explicit what often goes
unnoticed.
Yet it is not just any philosophy that Verschuuren uses for this
project. He takes up the thought of Thomas Aquinas, who undertook
the projection of the philosophical unification of the most fruitful
forms of knowing in his own day and who embodied in his own
thinking the trait that is most distinctive of a wise man: giving order
to things. The need for intellectual order remains acute in our day. If
anything, the task is more urgent, for the ramifications of academic
specialization have proceeded at a furious pace, and it is ever harder
to see how things fit together and how to formulate the principles
that are operative in the practices of the contemporary academy.
Using his detailed acquaintance with a considerable range of
today’s sciences, Verschuuren here provides a thoughtful account of
how the philosophical vision of Aquinas can help us to better see the
unity of reality and to appreciate the wide range of scientific
disciplines that study widely diverse aspects of reality. The book
includes well-informed discussions of such technical issues as the
indeterminacy problem in microphysics and the concept of
randomness in evolutionary biology. For each issue, Verschuuren
brings to bear the resources of the Thomistic philosophical method,
clearly explained. To reach such a book, the poor beleaguered
student will still have to find time away from working and from the
other forms of academic busyness. But what it promises is a leisure
worthy of a real education, the leisure of contemplation and of
appreciation of the unity deep within the diversity of things that
would otherwise seem too busy, too scattered, too diverse to be
understood.
JOSEPH W. KOTERSKI, SJ,
Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Fordham University, New York.
 Preface

WE LIVE IN a paradoxical time. Science enables us to know more

and more, but it seems to be about less and less. This leads to some
peculiar contradictions. Science allows us to reach into the outer
space, but we seem to understand less about our inner space.
Science enables us to create intricate machineries to direct our lives,
but we cannot control ourselves. Science shows us more and more
trees, but no longer do we seem to see the forest.
Is there a remedy for these contrasts? Yes, philosophy.
Unfortunately, Albert Einstein hit the nail right on the head when he
said, “The man of science is a poor philosopher.” Scientists tend to
stare at that square inch, nanometer, or micron that they are
working on and feel comfortable with, while forgetting that there is
so much more beyond their restricted scope. As the Nobel laureate
and biophysicist Francis Crick put it, “They work so hard that they
have hardly any time left for serious thinking.”
Why philosophy? Philosophy has the power to bring clarity
where confusion sets in. Philosophy has the capacity to create
coherence where fragmentation looms. Philosophy can open vistas
that no telescope or microscope can ever reach.
Why the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas? Because his philosophy
has survived more than seven centuries. Its impact has gone up and
down, but it always came out stronger than ever. It has been
classified under various names—Thomism, Scholasticism, neo-
Thomism—and has given rise to several schools, but its core has
always stayed the same. It has been a beacon of safety in times of
uncertainty, confusion, and tribulation. This should not create the
impression, though, that vigorous debate does not exist among
Thomists, but in this book I want to stay away from those
discussions.
What made Aquinas’s philosophy so successful? Probably the
best answer is its timelessness. He took the best from another
timeless philosopher, Aristotle. He did this so well that the world
would soon take on his ideas, concepts, and distinctions—albeit with
some, but not much, reluctance. Although he did not consider
himself a purebred philosopher, but rather a theologian, much of his
work bears upon philosophical topics, and in this sense it may be
characterized as philosophical. His philosophy gained much ground
in the Catholic Church in particular. In 1567, Aquinas was proclaimed
a Doctor of the Church. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII decreed that all
Catholic seminaries and universities must teach Thomistic
philosophy. In 1998, John Paul II issued an encyclical called Fides et
Ratio that reaffirmed the importance of Aquinas and his teachings.
But the Church’s preference for his philosophy is not exclusive but
rather exemplary, making his philosophy serve as a guiding model.
Also, this Catholic stance does not take away from the enormous
influence Aquinas has had on scholars outside the Catholic Church,
notably among Calvinists.
What could Aquinas ever contribute to our time, some seven
and a half centuries later? One of the main reasons is that there are
many similarities between his time and our time, between his world
and our world. His thirteenth-century world was as turbulent as ours
is. His world was confronted with an influx of new ideas coming from
the Muslim world; our world is constantly being inundated with new
ideas, coming particularly from scientists and atheists. His world saw
the sudden rise of universities; our world sees an explosion of
sciences and their sub-disciplines. His time was marked by dubious
philosophies; our time has been infiltrated by skepticism, secularism,
and relativism. His era was a time of tremendous change; ours is
also in permanent instability. His world had lost faith in reason; ours
has too. Aquinas understood both the fascination of his
contemporaries with new discoveries and new ideas and the very
mixed feelings that come with all of that. So he most likely
understands our time too.
 It is no wonder, then, that his philosophy has been lauded by
modern scientists and philosophers alike: scientists such as Albert
Einstein, David Bohm, Werner Heisenberg, and Walter Freeman, and
philosophers such as Elizabeth Anscombe (a student of Ludwig
Wittgenstein and a prominent figure in analytical Thomism), John
Searle, and Alasdair MacIntyre—to name just a few.
When I was teaching philosophy of biology at Boston College,
the chairman of my department at the time, Joseph Flanagan, S.J.,
instilled in me that biology can only fare well with the right
philosophy. I am sure he would have said something similar about
any other science. That is why philosophy—and especially the sound,
perennial philosophy of Thomas Aquinas—can be such a great asset
to modern science. Aquinas addresses questions most secular
institutions aren’t even asking, much less answering.
For all these reasons, I would like to invite you on a tour
through the richness of Aquinas’s philosophy in an encounter with
the sciences as we know them today. Let Aquinas be your teacher;
let him give you a clearer and more coherent view of what modern
science tells us. Aquinas’s principles continue to serve as an anchor
of intelligibility in a sea of confusing claims.
This book is meant to be a readable and wide-ranging
introduction to the thought of Aquinas. I want it to be an
introductory book for aspiring as well as accomplished scientists who
are new to philosophy. It would even qualify as a textbook. Thus, I
decided not to use citations or notes with references to my sources.
For the same reason, the book is not exhaustive, let alone complete.
Because its purpose is to open the mind of the reader to further
study of Aquinas, I added some rather substantial bibliographies at
the end of each chapter. They provide what the book leaves out. The
selection is obviously limited and inevitably also one-sided.
I would like to extend a special thank-you to William E. Carroll,
who expressed certain insights better than I ever could on my own.
I am greatly indebted to his writings. I also wish to express my
gratitude to those who inspired me during the writing of this book.
In particular, I want to mention the physicist Stephen M. Barr, the
philosopher Edward Feser, the Thomist John Knasas, the physicist
Anthony Rizzi, and the biologist Francisco Ayala—to name just a few.
Some of the sentences/phrases in this book are taken verbatim from
suggestions or comments made by these individuals, but obviously,
they are not responsible for the final outcome; if I erred, it is entirely
my doing. They and many others make me realize that originality
consists only in the ability to forget about your sources. If I was able
to see a bit further at times, it was, in the words of Isaac Newton,
“by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
 1
Aquinas and His Time
IT IS NO exaggeration to say that Thomas Aquinas was the greatest
philosopher of the Christian Middle Ages, and perhaps even beyond.
He put Aristotle’s teachings in a Christian framework—he baptized
Aristotle, so to speak—and changed Aristotelianism into what later
became known as Thomism. Aristotle’s writings were focused on the
nature of knowledge, the natural sciences, metaphysics, the soul,
and ethics, and they were packed with seemingly valid and
convincing information and insights. Overall, it was a complete vision
of the world developed without and before Christ—based on pure
reason.
Aquinas’s move of embracing Aristotle was very controversial at
the time. At first glance, Platonism seemed more proper for a
Christian approach, but Aquinas deemed it too otherworldly. History
proved him right. Medieval theologians liked to say that the wine of
Christian faith was at risk of being turned into the water of Plato,
rather than the water of Plato into the wine of faith. Something
similar could be said when it comes to science. Platonism would not
have fit well in a worldview that would be increasingly influenced by
scientific developments. But why Aristotle?
At the beginning of the thirteenth century, a wave of great
historical change was coming over Western Europe as the works of
the ancient Greek natural philosophers and mathematicians became
available in the Latin language for the first time. This development
caused great excitement among the Latin-speaking scholars in the
then-new universities of Europe. They avidly pursued research in
many of the natural sciences and essentially founded the historical
tradition of experimental science that continues today. One of these
geniuses was Aquinas. He wrestled with how Christian religion would
be effected by the most advanced science of his day—the works of
Aristotle and his Muslim commentators. Following in the tradition of
Avicenna, Averroës, and Maimonides, Aquinas developed a
philosophical system that remains one of the enduring
accomplishments of Western culture.
Nearly two thousand years after Aristotle died, only a few of his
works on logic had survived in Western Europe. But Jewish and
Muslim scholars had preserved much of his writing. Starting in the
twelfth century, these scholars brought Arabic and Hebrew
translations of Greek texts into the West, and it was their
subsequent translation into Latin that introduced Christian scholars
to the works of Aristotle and others, making them available in the
new universities that were forming. Learning had shifted from
monasteries and cathedral schools to the newly established
universities. Along with these translations came extensive
commentaries on Aristotle. Since Aquinas—and most other scholars
at the time—knew very little or no Greek, Aquinas asked his friend
Willem van Moerbeke to translate Aristotle’s Greek into Latin.
Why was the rediscovery and adoption of Aristotle’s works so
controversial? The Aristotelian explanation of the world based on
natural law and reason initially seemed to challenge the teachings of
Christianity. At first, the Roman Catholic Church tried to avoid his
works. But some Church scholars, such as Albert the Great at the
University of Paris, thought it was possible to combine human reason
and Christian faith (see chapter 5). Soon Thomas Aquinas, his
student, would devote his entire life to this task. Aquinas had
ingenious insight regarding the potential that Aristotle’s pagan
philosophy had for Christianity and for an age of cultural and
scientific innovations.
In Aquinas’s day, the Christian world faced the greatest threat
that it had seen in centuries. The threat to Christianity in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries was primarily the rising tide of Islamic
religion and philosophy. The greatest philosophical thinkers of the
Islamic world had combined Islamic religion with Aristotelian
philosophy to produce a system that they called “integral
Aristotelianism.” The product of this thought became widespread
during this time, and it greatly affected Christians. The key idea of
this approach was called by its Islamic philosophers “double truth.”
The concept of double truth meant that a notion could be true in
theology or religion and, at the same time, false in philosophy or
science. A person was expected to go through life holding both
truths—which were, in fact, contradictory. Aquinas could not accept
such contradiction.
Aquinas addressed the problem by distinguishing between
nature—known by everyone through general revelation—and grace—
known by some through special revelation. He distinguished
between those things that could be learned through the study of
nature and those things that could be learned through the study of
what comes to us by grace. He made a distinction between the two,
but did not separate them—somewhere he said that grace perfects
but does not destroy nature. In other words, we have in the Bible
one source of information, about reality, and in nature another
source of information, about reality. The Bible may provide
information that is not obtainable from nature, and, vice versa,
nature may reveal data that we do not know from the Bible. But
those two sources of information, according to Aquinas, can never
be in conflict with each other—as long as we understand them
correctly. This distinction has also become known as distinguishing
between the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. Its origin can
be found in these words of Augustine: “It is the divine page that you
must listen to; it is the book of the universe that you must observe.”

Aquinas lived from 1225 to 1274. He was described by G. K.

Chesterton as “a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet,
very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable.” His fellow
Dominican friars referred to him as “the dumb ox,” to which his
teacher Albert the Great responded that “the dumb ox will bellow so
loud that his bellowing will fill the world.” Those words were
prophetic. Although a man of profound humility and prayerful
contemplation, Aquinas was also a pioneering genius whose writings
constitute the apotheosis of medieval thought and the embryonic
beginnings of a huge innovation.
Aquinas was born at Roccasecca, a hilltop castle from which the
great Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino is almost visible, midway
between Rome and Naples. At the age of five, he began his studies
at Monte Cassino. When the monastery became a battle site,
Thomas was transferred by his family to the University of Naples. It
was here that he came into contact with the “new” Aristotle and with
the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, a recently founded
mendicant order. He became a Dominican despite the protests of his
family and eventually went north to study, perhaps first briefly at
Paris, then at Cologne with Albert the Great. It was Albert’s interest
in Aristotle that would strengthen Thomas’s own fascination with
Aristotelian thought.
Having returned to Paris, he completed his studies, and for three
years he occupied one of the Dominican chairs in the Faculty of
Theology. The next ten years were spent in various places in Italy, at
several Dominican houses and eventually in Rome. From there he
was called back to Paris to confront the controversy known as Latin
Averroism and as Integral or Heterodox Aristotelianism. After this
second three-year period, he was assigned to Naples. In 1274, on
his way to the Council of Lyon, he fell ill and died on March 7 in the
Cistercian abbey at Fossanova, some twelve miles from Roccasecca.
In the meantime, Aquinas had produced an enormous collection
of writings, all in Latin. The title of Aquinas’s most important work is
given as both Summa Theologiae and Summa Theologica. This
difference is probably in accordance with the spelling in the medieval
manuscripts of this work. Most present-day Aquinas scholars talk
about the Summa Theologiae. The other title is considered to be old-
fashioned, but it is not clear why. It does not seem that Aquinas
himself gave the title to the work. In any event, this book is probably
one of the most cited works in the history of Western thought. The
title suggests that it is about theology, not philosophy, but that might
be misleading. Although Aquinas develops all of his philosophy in
relation to God, his approach is mainly philosophical. In this book,
we will focus on Aquinas as a philosopher, which may distort his
fundamental theological reason for doing philosophy, but so be it.
In his books, Aquinas often uses a particular structure, rather
common at the time. He starts with a specific question (quaestio),
usually divided into separate articles. Each article contains
arguments for and against a certain position. In the response
(responsio), Aquinas explains his own position. Counterarguments
are then given and, in turn, argued against. With this format,
Aquinas models a core pedagogical technique used at the
universities of his time—so-called “questions debated” (quaestiones
disputatae). For this technique, students would take up sides of an
issue, articulated as a question, and offer arguments for each side.
The teacher would then evaluate the arguments and adjudicate. The
fact that Aquinas structures many of his texts around this technique
—especially his magnum opus, the Summa Theologiae—indicates
that he wants students reading his texts to acquire not only the
content of the view he himself supports but also the proper method
for thinking an issue through and then arriving at a conclusion. A
drawback when reading Aquinas is that we must consider whether
certain statements are from him or from adversaries. This may have
caused some confusion over the years as to what Aquinas really
says.
As a philosopher, Thomas is emphatically Aristotelian. His
interest in and perceptive understanding of Aristotle are present
from his earliest years; they did not first appear toward the end of
his life when he wrote some textual commentaries on Aristotle.
When referring to Aristotle as “the Philosopher,” Aquinas was not
merely speaking metaphorically. He adopted Aristotle’s analysis of
physical objects; his view of place, time, and motion; his proof of the
prime mover; and his cosmology (see chapter 3). He used Aristotle’s
account of sense perception and intellectual knowledge, but then
made his own version (see chapter 4). His moral philosophy is
largely based on what he learned from Aristotle (see chapter 11),
and in his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, he provides a
cogent and coherent account of what is going on in those difficult
pages.

Aquinas fitted Aristotle to the procrustean bed of Christian

doctrine—but not without controversy. Aquinas’s teaching came
under attack, largely by Franciscans, immediately after his death.
Dominicans responded. This had the effect of making Dominicans
Thomists and Franciscans non-Thomists—Bonaventurians, Scotists,
Ockhamists. The Jesuits were founded after the Reformation, and
they tended to be Thomists, though often with a Suarezian twist.
But the impact of Aquinas would hold out in the long run. When in
1879 Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Aeterni Patris—which called
for a revival of Scholastic and Thomistic thought, at a time when its
influence had begun to wane—the pontiff was not directing his
readers to one school as opposed to others. Rather, Aquinas was put
forward as the paladin of philosophy in its true sense, as one who
both transcends and opposes the vagaries of modern thought since
Descartes.
The response to Pope Leo’s call was global and sustained. New
journals and learned societies were founded, curricula were
reshaped to benefit from the thought of Aquinas—and this not only
in seminaries and pontifical universities, but in colleges and
universities throughout the world. More recent giants such as
Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson in France and Ralph McInerny at
Notre Dame University may be seen as symbolizing the best of this
Thomistic revival. Pope Pius X pointed out in 1907 that the defense
of truth against false ideas is to be made through the use of
Scholastic philosophy, rooted in Thomism. But when the Second
Vatican Council came to a close, it was widely held that the council
had dethroned Aquinas in favor of a smorgasbord of contemporary
philosophical systems. But Pope Paul VI, who was the pontiff during
most of the sessions of Vatican II, was very much influenced by the
Thomist Jacques Maritain. Then in 1998, Pope John Paul II issued an
encyclical entitled Fides et Ratio. In its reaffirmation of the
importance of Thomas Aquinas, it may be regarded as the charter
for the Thomism of the third millennium.
Because of all this, Aquinas holds a special place of honor in
Roman Catholicism, and his influence has continued into the
present. It is no surprise that among the writers mentioned in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Aquinas is quoted more than any
other writer with the exception of Augustine—some sixty-one times.
To be sure, one can be an orthodox Catholic or Christian without
following Aquinas’s philosophy—indeed, his influence is minimal in
Eastern Rite Catholic Churches and Orthodox Churches. And in the
Western Church, not everyone follows Aquinas. Franciscans, for
instance, generally prefer Bonaventure. Moreover, even those who
consider themselves Thomists have various disagreements with one
another and even with Aquinas himself.
Still, Aquinas’s influence in the Western Church is hard to
overestimate. Catholics refer to him as the Angelic Doctor. In many
ways, Aquinas is the high-water mark of what has come to be called
Scholasticism, or also classical theism. In fact, if you survey the
writings on the doctrine of God, even those by Protestant Scholastic
theologians after the Reformation, you will find that many depend
almost entirely on the method Aquinas had laid out more than three
centuries earlier. Today, many traditional Catholics, tired of the
deviant innovations that occurred in the wake of—but not necessarily
as a result of—Vatican II, look to Aquinas to provide a way forward.
It is a safe, coherent system that trumps the incoherent amalgam of
philosophies that we know nowadays.
However, a number of obstacles must be overcome if we are to
appreciate Aquinas today. In Protestant cultures, he remains
associated with an era that many believe to have been mired in
barbarism and superstition—despite the magnificence of the
medieval legacy, from the great cathedrals of Europe to the rise of
the universities. Moreover, the influence of modern “scientific”
atheism has led to the widespread belief that one must choose
between faith and reason, and that faith is fundamentally irrational
and opposed to science. This is an idea that Aquinas dedicated his
life to resisting (see chapter 2).
If we can set aside our prejudices and approach Aquinas afresh,
we may be surprised at how relevant his philosophy still is. The fact
remains that he was a man who changed the world. So what can
this person who lived more than seven centuries ago teach us that
we have forgotten? Let us find out.

To open the mind for further study:

Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian. Holy Teaching: Introducing

the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. Grand Rapids, MI:
Brazos Press, 2005.
Chesterton, G.K. Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Dumb Ox. Dover
Publications, 2009.
Copleston, Frederick. Aquinas: An Introduction to the Life and
Work of the Great Medieval Thinker. Penguin Books, 1991.
McInerny, Ralph. Aquinas. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2004.
 2
Aquinas and Metaphysics
“METAPHYSICS” has become a highly ambiguous term. It has many,
and very diverse, meanings. Some associate it with New Age
philosophy. Some, at the other end of the spectrum, equate it with
philosophy of science. And there are many other versions in
between. Aquinas himself would say that metaphysics is the study of
“being as being”—the relationship between the essence of
something (“ what it is”) and its existence (“ that it is”). Whereas the
modern sciences study things as changing, Aquinas would say that
metaphysics studies things as being.
These differences in opinion regarding the object of metaphysics
have a long history. Unfortunately, the general outcome of this
debate is that the word “metaphysics” has become a “dirty” word in
the minds of many. It is believed to relate to what cannot be seen or
felt or heard or in any way sensed. So this raises the question, What
could metaphysics study that is not studied by physics, mathematics,
or logic? The answer to this question is usually “nothing.” Nowadays,
most scientists, and even some philosophers, tend to stigmatize all
those who hold an opinion different from theirs as “metaphysicians.”
It has not always been that way, and we need to find out why it
need not be.

The Need for Metaphysics

It is very common to ask ourselves questions like these: Scientists
produce knowledge, but what is knowledge? Scientists construct
laws, but what are laws? Scientists study things—atoms, molecules,
cells, genes, neurons, money—but what are these things? When
scientists draw conclusions, they assume certain presuppositions
without asking any further questions. Philosophers and
metaphysicians, on the other hand, begin to question those
assumptions. At those very moments when scientists are satisfied,
philosophers and metaphysicians would begin to inquire further and
search more thoroughly.
It could easily be claimed that there is no physics without
metaphysics, or more generally, that there is no science without
metascience. The sciences cannot be studied by the sciences
themselves. In order to study the sciences, we need to stand back
and adopt a bird’s-eye view, so to speak—a so-called metalevel—
which is in essence the level of metaphysics. Its goal is to observe
the observer, to investigate the investigations, and to study the
studies. This endeavor is a science in itself—a science of science, if
you wish. Aquinas would most likely call this metaphysics.
The physicist Richard Feynman is often quoted as saying that
philosophy—more specifically the philosophy of science—“is about as
useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” His statement might be
taken as a final verdict on the usefulness of what we are trying to do
in this book. But Feynman’s comparison falls short and should not be
taken too seriously, considering that the worthlessness of
ornithology for birds cannot be blamed on the inadequacy of
ornithology but rather on the incapacity of birds to grasp ornithology.
I don’t think that is something Feynman intended to say about the
ability of scientists to learn from philosophy, even metaphysics.
Arguably, science can learn something from philosophy, for the
simple reason that there is no such thing as a strictly scientific level
of disagreement, as distinct from a philosophical one. They are
intricately intertwined. Perhaps Albert Einstein was right after all
when he stated, “It has often been said, and certainly not without
justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.”
Yet, some scientists may even consider the above kind of
reasoning a despicable form of metaphysics. Do they have a point?
No matter what their opinion about metaphysics is, the fact is that
no one can live without metaphysics. Those who reject metaphysics
are in fact committing their own version of metaphysics. Rejecting
metaphysics can only be done on metaphysical grounds, for any
rejection of metaphysics is based on a metaphysical viewpoint
regarding what the world “really” is like. Metaphysics may be a “dirty
word” to some, but all of us are surrounded and affected by it.
Opposition to all philosophy is itself an implicit philosophy. Those
who reject philosophy and metaphysics are actually using some form
of them.
What is the relationship, then, between science and
metaphysics? Is physics the basis of our metaphysics, or is our
metaphysics the basis of physics? Even a philosopher such as
Bertrand Russell saw very clearly that physics cannot be the basis of
metaphysics when he wrote, “It is not always realized how
exceedingly abstract is the information that theoretical physics has
to give. It lays down certain fundamental equations which enable it
to deal with the logical structure of events, while leaving it
completely unknown what is the intrinsic character of the events
that have the structure. . . . All that physics gives us is certain
equations giving abstract properties of their changes. But as to what
it is that changes, and what it changes from and to—as to this,
physics is silent.”
Now if physics gives us only the mathematical structure of
material reality, then not only does it not tell us everything there is
to know about material reality, but it implies that there must be
more to material reality than what physics tells us. First of all, this is
a truth one cannot deny without somewhat affirming it, for denials
don’t have material qualifications such as being heavy or large, but
instead immaterial qualifications of being true or false. Second,
physics is about the material world, but in addition it needs
immaterial entities such as logic and mathematics. Third, there can
be no such thing as structure by itself; there must be something
which has the structure. So, physics—and any other kind of science
—is by its very nature incomplete. It requires interpretation within a
larger metaphysical framework, and absolutely every appeal to
“what physics tells us” presupposes such a metaphysical framework,
implicitly if not explicitly. In other words, science does not determine
whether metaphysics is right, but instead metaphysics ultimately
determines what we can know and do know in science.

Nevertheless, there is a strong, persistent conviction among

scientists that there is nothing more to material reality than what
physics tells us. They believe that there is no worldview and no
metaphysics in what they claim—at best, their metaphysics can be
“reduced” to physics. They proclaim themselves “free” of any
worldview, any viewpoints, any philosophy, any values. The technical
term for this is scientism.
Scientism certainly was not a problem in Aquinas’s time—it just
did not exist yet. It is a rather recent invention—the indirect
outcome of new philosophical developments since Francis Bacon,
David Hume, and Immanuel Kant (see chapter 4). Supporters of
scientism claim that science provides the only valid way of finding
truth. They pretend that all our questions have a scientific answer
phrased in terms of particles, quantities, and equations. Their claim
is that there is no point of view other than the “scientific” point of
view. They believe there is no corner of the universe, no dimension
of reality, no feature of human existence beyond the reach of
science. In other words, they have a dogmatic, unshakable belief in
the omnicompetence of science. They portray scientists as a bunch
of white-coated people—emotion-free and assumption-free—who
battle collectively to wrest secrets from the stubborn universe.
A first reason for questioning the viewpoint of scientism is a very
simple objection: those who defend scientism seem to be unaware
of the fact that scientism itself does not follow its own rule—it is a
nonscientific claim. How could science ever prove, all by itself, that
science is the only way of finding truth? There is no experiment that
could do the trick. Science cannot pull itself up by its bootstraps—
any more than an electric generator can run on its own power. So
the truth of the statement “no statements are true unless they can
be proved scientifically” cannot itself be proved scientifically. It is not
a scientific discovery but at best a philosophical or metaphysical
stance or dogma. There is metaphysics again! There should be no
space for dogmas in science, although they often do occur in the
scientific community. This makes scientism a totalitarian ideology, for
it allows no room for anything but itself.
A second reason for rejecting scientism is that a successful
method like the one science provides does not automatically
disqualify all other methods. The philosopher Edward Feser
expresses this quite clearly: “But this no more shows that the
questions that fall through science’s methodological net are not
worthy of attention than the fact that you’ve only taken courses you
knew you would excel in shows that the other classes aren’t worth
taking.” Scientism poses a claim that can only be made from outside
the scientific realm, thus grossly overstepping the boundaries of
science. If it is true, it becomes false. It steps outside science to
claim that there is nothing outside science and that there is no other
point of view—which does not seem to be a very scientific move.
Paul Feyerabend, the late philosopher of science at the University of
California, Berkeley, came to the opposite conclusion when he said
that “science should be taught as one view among many and not as
the one and only road to truth and reality.” The late British analytical
philosopher Gilbert Ryle phrased this idea in his own terminology:
“The nuclear physicist, the theologian, the historian, the lyric poet
and the man in the street produce very different, yet compatible and
even complementary pictures of one and the same ‘world.’”
A third reason for questioning scientism is the following.
Scientific knowledge does not even qualify as a superior form of
knowledge; it may be more easily testable than other kinds, but it is
also very restricted and therefore requires additional forms of
knowledge. Mathematical knowledge, for instance, is the most
secure form of knowledge, but it is basically about nothing. Consider
this analogy: a metal detector is a perfect tool for locating metals,
but there is more to this world than metals. An instrument can
detect only what it is designed to detect. That is exactly where
scientism goes wrong: instead of letting reality determine which
techniques are appropriate for which parts of reality, scientism lets
its favorite technique dictate what is considered “real” in life—and it
is thus in denial of the fact that science has purchased success at
the cost of limiting its ambition. To best characterize this attitude, we
might borrow an image from the late psychologist Abraham Maslow:
If you have only a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail.
So we should be careful not to idolize our scientific hammer, because
not everything is a nail. Even if we were to agree that the scientific
method gives us better testable results than other sources of
knowledge, this would not entitle us to claim that only the scientific
method gives us genuine knowledge of the world around us.
A fourth argument is that science is about material things but
requires immaterial things such as logic and mathematics. If logic is
just a movement in the brain of a bewildered ape, good logic should
be as misleading as bad logic. Logic and mathematics are not
physical and therefore not testable by naturalistic science—and yet
they cannot be denied by science. In fact, science relies on logic and
mathematics to interpret the data that scientific observation and
experimentation provides. Logic and reason are perfect examples of
the immaterial phenomena that we all know exist but that
naturalistic science cannot measure. These immaterial things are real
and demonstrable, yet they are outside of scientific observation.
A fifth argument against scientism is that no science, not even
physics, is able to claim a superior form of knowledge. Some
scientists may argue, for example, that physics always has the last
word in observation, for the observers themselves are physical. But
why not say then that psychology always has the last word, because
these observers are interesting psychological objects as well. Neither
statement makes sense; observers are neither physical nor
psychological, but they can indeed be studied from a physical,
biological, psychological, or statistical viewpoint, which is an entirely
different matter. The findings of science are always fragmentary.
Limiting oneself to a particular viewpoint is in itself at best a
metaphysical decision. However, to quote Shakespeare, “There is
more between Heaven and Earth than dreamt of in your philosophy.”
 A sixth argument against scientism is that the very pioneers of
science in England were very much aware of the fact that there is
more to life than science. When the Royal Society of London was
founded in 1660, its members explicitly demarcated their area of
investigation and fully understood that they were going to leave
many other domains untouched. In its charter, King Charles II
assigned to the fellows of the Royal Society “the privilege of enjoying
intelligence and knowledge,” but with the following important
stipulation “provided in matters of things philosophical,
mathematical, and mechanical.” That’s how the domains of
knowledge were separated; it was this “partition” that led to a
division of labor between the sciences and other fields of human
interest. By accepting this separation, science bought its own
territory, but certainly at the expense of all-inclusiveness; the rest of
the “estate” was reserved for others to manage. On the one hand,
this separation gave to scientists all that could “methodically” be
solved by dissecting, counting, and measuring. On the other hand,
these scientists agreed to keep their hands off of all other domains—
education, legislation, justice, ethics, philosophy, religion, etc.
If the aforementioned arguments are valid, it is hard to believe,
let alone defend, that physics is the basis of metaphysics. It seems
more warranted to take the reversed position, namely, that
metaphysics is at the basis of physics, and of all the other sciences.
Only metaphysics can help us understand where science stands by
taking a metalevel view. Albert Einstein was right when he said, “The
more I study physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.” Science
cannot operate without metaphysics—that is, without certain
convictions or principles regarding what nature is like. Scientists
assume, for instance, that this universe is intelligible for us, and that
it is a universe of “law and order.” In addition, they all hold
metaphysical positions that determine what the basic elements in
this universe are supposed to be. Because of all this, even science is
a metaphysics-based enterprise. It is only in trusting that nature is
law-abiding and intelligible that scientists have reason to trust their
own scientific reasoning.
 Faith and Reason
Those who think there isn’t any space left for philosophy outside the
domain of science most likely also believe that science does not
leave any room for religion. Fortunately, metaphysics is able to
clarify not only the relationship between science and philosophy, but
also the relationship between science and religion. What does
Aquinas have to say about this?
Much of what is currently discussed under the science-and-
religion heading Aquinas would have seen as part of a larger
problem—that of the relationship between faith and reason. As we
saw earlier, in Aquinas’s time, there were advocates of the so-called
“double truth theory,” which held that the “truths” of philosophy and
science were in one category and the “truths” of faith and religion in
another. With this interpretation, one can hold mutually exclusive
positions as long as one believes that the opposing views were in
separate departments of the mind. Aquinas considered this view
untenable. He saw with utter clarity that since all truth comes from
God, there can never be, ultimately, any conflict between the
outcome of reason and the beliefs of faith, or between the data of
the sciences and the facts of revelation, or between philosophical
truths and theological truths.
Aquinas’s conception is quite radical. What we know through
reason can never be in conflict with what we know through faith,
and what we know through faith can never be in violation of what
we know through reasoning. Nevertheless, some people think that
when we begin to use reason, we have no choice but to abandon
faith; conversely, some think that if we have faith, we must leave
reason behind. Aquinas argues the opposite. We should be faithful in
our reasoning and reasonable in our faith—even when, or specifically
when, it comes to God. We cannot live by faith alone or by reason
alone, but only by a harmonious combination of faith and reason.
Sometimes we need understanding before we can believe; at other
times we need faith before we can understand. Aquinas
demonstrated that a natural harmony exists between faith and
reason. Hence, what seems to be reason that is incompatible with
faith is not reason, and what seems to be faith is not faith insofar as
it is opposed to true rationality. Thus, Aquinas created a new
synthesis, which would shape culture throughout the following
centuries. It could be called the “Grand And”—a match made in
heaven.
Aquinas sees reason and faith as two ways of knowing.
“Reason” covers what we can know by experience and logic alone.
From reason, he would say, we can know that there is a God; this
truth about God is accessible to anyone by experience and logic
alone, apart from any special revelation from God (see chapter 3).
“Faith,” on the other hand, covers what we can know thanks to God’s
special revelation to us—which comes through the Bible and Judeo-
Christian tradition. By faith, we can know, for instance, that God
came into the world through Jesus Christ and that God is triune
(Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). These truths about God cannot be
known by reason alone. Yet, faith builds on reason and must be
compatible with reason. Since faith and reason are two different
ways of arriving at truth—and since all truths are harmonious with
one another—faith is consistent with reason. If we understand faith
and reason correctly, according to Aquinas, there will be no conflict
between what faith tells us and what reason tells us.
Aquinas is very definite in defending the idea that faith cannot
be against reason. When something is against reason, God cannot
create it. Aquinas is so adamant on this issue because God is reason,
so He cannot act against His own nature by doing what is
contradictory. God is absolutely free, but His freedom is not arbitrary,
so He cannot go against what is true and right. We know this,
because our own power of reason is rooted in creation and thus
participates in God’s power of reason. As a consequence, God’s
omnipotence does not mean that God is able to do what is logically
contradictory. Aquinas gives many examples: God cannot create
square circles; God cannot make someone blind and not blind at the
same time; God cannot declare true what is false; God cannot undo
something that happened in the past; and the list goes on and on.
To use a silly example: God does not even have the power to make a
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