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Mini-Course in Philosophy The Cosmological Question |
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A Mini-Course in Cosmology The Cosmological Question is the question of the philosophy of the cosmos or bodily universe. It is, in a word, the question of bodies. It raises the following points for study: the nature of bodily substance, its ultimate constitution, its first origin, its development and goal. The answer to The Cosmological Question makes up that department of philosophy called cosmology. This science is part of natural philosophy. Cosmology is a science of material real being. Cosmology is philosophical physics. Cosmology does not make distinction of bodies as living and lifeless, but studies bodies as such. The question of life and living bodies, as distinct from lifeless bodies, is The Psychological Question. This mini-course is divided into the following three Sections:
Section 1: The Nature of the Bodily World Topics:
a) Bodies A body, for our purposes here, is a material substance which normally has extension in space by the three dimensions of length, width, and thickness. We accept at the outset the actual existence of the bodily world in which we live. All persons of common sense do. Within this bodily world we experience, we find a vast complexity of natural bodies, such as rocks, the moon, and atoms, and artificial bodies, that is, those bodies made through the inventive activity of human beings. Our study here is concerned only with natural bodies, physical bodies as they exist or can exist in the material world, and not with artificial bodies. There are four important characteristics that are intimately tied to the bodily world and the bodies that make it up:
Let's consider each of these characteristics in turn. Composition All bodies are compounded or composed. This means that large bodies are made of smaller bodies, and as we know now from empirical science, their ultimate physical division is a matter of molecules and atoms and subatomic parts and maybe more. It needs to be noted, however, that this splitting of bodies into smaller and smaller parts cannot go on forever, it is not an endless process, it cannot run on to infinity. There is an ultimate basis for material reality, there is a point where we reach another sort of composition called primal matter and substantial form, both of which will be explained later. The main point here is that bodies are necessarily composed. Composition is a necessary property of bodies. Changeability Anything put together can be conceivably taken apart. Anything composed can be decomposed. In a word, anything compounded or composed is subject to change. Now, as we have seen, bodies are compounded or composed; hence they are subject to change. Changeability is a property of bodies. Change is called substantial when one substance ceases to be and another emerges. Substantial change is an instantaneous thing, which, looked at in one way, is the ceasing of one substance, and, regarded in another way, is the emergence of a new substance. The ceasing of a substance is called corruption; the simultaneous emergence of a new substance is called generation. The generation of one substance is the corruption of another or others, and vice versa. An example of substantial change is found in the process of nutrition by which lifeless food becomes living flesh. Change is called accidental when a substance, remaining itself, undergoes a shift in accidentals, as when water which is cold becomes hot. The most notable types of accidental change are change of quantity and change of quality. Change of quantity is either increase or diminution, as, for example, the change in the weight of a child from seventy to eighty pounds, or the change made in the contents of the sugar-bowl by taking out a spoonful for your coffee. Change of quality, called alteration, is a change in almost any accident other than quantity; such, for instance, is the change from hot to cold, from young to old, from ignorant to learned. A change from "fat to thin" is at once a change of quantity and in quality. Our chief concern at this moment is to stress the truth that bodies are properly subject to change. Contingency A being which is so perfect that existence is of its very essence is called a necessary being; it is a thing that must exist and cannot be nonexistent. A non-necessary being is called contingent. The word "contingent" means "dependent," for a contingent thing depends on its causes to produce it and maintain it; it has in itself no absolute requirement for existing. A contingent being can exist, but it does not have to exist, and it would not exist if definite causes, which are prior to it, did not operate to give it existence. It is manifest that bodies are contingent. For we see them emerge, and we see them disappear. Each birth and death, each spring and autumn, each dawn and dusk, is a plain proof of the contingency of bodies. For a thing which can change has no necessity in its being. And what has no necessity in its being is contingent. Now, we have seen that bodies are changeable; it follows that they are contingent. Limitation A thing which is absolutely unlimited is called infinite. It is such a being as cannot be increased or decreased in any way; for an increase supposes a point or line or limit where the addition takes effect, and decrease is always a shrinking in or of lines. Now, it is manifest that bodies are capable of increase and diminishment, whether literally in point of quantity or analogously in point of quality. Hence, bodies are not infinite, but finite or limited. Bodies, too, are capable of undergoing substantial change, and substantial change (generation-corruption) is a process of loss and gain which, like increase and diminishment, is incompatible with infinity. Therefore, we conclude that bodies as such are limited. Limitation is a property of bodies. To sum up: a body is a material substance, normally extended by three dimensions, and marked by composition, changeability, contingency, and limitation.
b) Quantity Quantity is that property of bodily substance which extends it, spreads out its parts; first, with reference to the bodily substance itself; second, with reference to the place that the bodily substance normally occupies. Quantity therefore is extension. And, as the definition indicates, there are two types of extension.
A body must be extended in itself before it can be extended in space, that is before it can have place. And it is conceivable that a body should have the essential type of extension (that is, internal extension) without actually occupying space or being localized within external dimensions. We have no example of such a thing in the natural bodily world, but it is not inconceivable. Internal extension is a property of bodies, that is, it is a characteristic which belongs by natural necessity to bodies. External Extension is a secondary effect of quantity (or of internal extension). A body is not to be identified with its extension any more than a man is to be identified with his size. Just as the man has size, the body has extension; it is not true that the man is his size, nor is it true that a body is its extension. A body is a substance; quantity or extension is an accident, albeit a proper accident or property. A bodily substance is in itself independent of extension or quantity, although extension is a required condition for the normal existence of bodily substance in this material world. The effects of quantity in an existing natural body are these:
Quantity when unbroken is called continuous quantity, and a body of unbroken quantity is called a continuum, whether this be perfect or imperfect, that is, whether the continuum has absolute continuity without pores or interstices, or has, in fact, such "holes" which it surrounds as water surrounds islands. Quantity that is broken up in pieces (like a pound of sugar, or a heap of bits of broken glass) is called discrete quantity. Each item of a discrete quantity is a continuum. A discrete quantity is called contiguous if its parts or items touch one another (as in a spoonful of salt); it is called separate if the parts do not touch (as in a dozen eggs spread widely on a table). The basis of quantity in bodies is perfectly continuous matter, at least in its basic physical parts; and perfectly continuous matter can only exist in virtue of a unifying form or principle which determines the matter as an existing reality of an essential kind. Our bodily world is a great contiguous quantity (or contiguum) which is made of substances that are, in their essential existing elements, true continua. The extension of the whole bodily universe -- that is, its natural external extension -- fills up what we think of as a kind of capacity or container, the name of which is real space. The position of each body in space is called its place. Our mental image of space as a container of bodies is a mental image and no more; it is an ens rationis; it is logical being, not real being. For space is only thought of as a container. As a fact, space is the actual extension of existing bodies in the universe. In passing, it is to be noted that philosophy has no quarrel with science on the question of space or that of place. But some scientists, misunderstanding their own field, propound philosophies of space which are in conflict with sound reason. But with physics or mathematics as such, philosophy cannot come into contact or conflict. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity of space or the curvedness of space does not concern us. This is not properly a theory of space but of distance and measurement, that is, of partial space and its interpretation in terms of numbering. Since real space is the actual extension of existing bodies, and since bodies are limited, as we have learned, it follows that real space is limited. The universe may be expanding, it may be contracting, it may be doing neither. But whatever it is doing, at any given instant, it has its definite limits. The fact that man has no instruments to enable him to tell just where these limits lie, does not change the basic fact that the limits are there. Real space is finite. In addition to real space we may mention ideal space (or the idea of space) which is the mind's concept of all possible space. So also we may mention imaginary space which is the envisioning by fancy or imagination of the visible reaches of space stretching on and on into the void. Ideal and imaginary space are indefinite; real space is definitely limited. Bodies with quantity are subject to change. Change is movement or motion, for change is a transit, a going-over, a movement from one state of being to another. Now, movement or motion is a matter of now this -- then that; it is a matter of before and after. And motion or change, under the aspect of before-and-after, is the basis of real time. Time in itself is described as a continuous and numerable series of motions under the aspect of before-and-after. Man conceives of time as a measure, just as he conceives of space as a container. But just as space in its reality is the real extension of bodies, so time in its reality is the continuous numberable succession of bodily movements. Time as a measure is logical being, not real being. It serves man's uses to note some regular and reliable movement (of sun, of stars, of moon) and to use this as a standard of comparison with other and less regular motions. Thus we have solar time, sidereal time, lunar time. And man's inventiveness -- which is to say, his mind or intellect at grips with material problems -- has enabled him to devise mechanical instruments with regular movements that can be recorded, and to indicate these recordings as intervals of solar time, sidereal time, or lunar time. Thus we have chronometers, watches, clocks. Besides real time, we have ideal time which is the mind's concept of all possible numerable and continuous movement; and we have imaginary time which is the fanciful envisioning of real time indefinitely extended. Real time is necessarily finite, for it is finite motion in a finite world of finite bodies. Ideal time and imaginary time are indefinite or potentially infinite, but never actually infinite. Thoughtless people sometimes confuse ideal or imaginary time with eternity. But eternity is, strictly speaking, the opposite of time. It is an endless now; it has nothing of before and after which is of the essence of time. Eternity in its strict meaning belongs only to the Infinite Being, to God.
c) Activity of Bodies Activity is a doing, an operating, or at least a cooperating, a responding. All bodily substances are active if it were only in holding their parts together by cohesion, or in responding to the thing called gravitation, which is really the effect of the activity of body on body. Bodily activity is immanent or vital when its chief effect is in the agent, that is, in the thing which is active. Growing, for example, is first of all in the growing body. A tree's growth has an outer effect; the tree casts a larger shade as it grows taller and fuller; it may so grow as to block the view from a window; but the main effect of growing is in the growing tree. Such activity is therefore called immanent, that is, indwelling. Non-immanent activity is called transient, that is, passing over and having its effect outside the agent. The activity of the growing tree in blocking the window, or in throwing the shadow, is transient. Growth is immanent; these outer and alien consequences of growth are transient. Truly immanent activity is always "life-activity" or, as it is usually called, "vital" activity. Transient activity is called mechanical when it consists of local movement. Such is the activity of the rolling stone, the turning wheel, the expanding balloon, the rising steam, the drive of the tennis-racquet against the ball. Transient activity is called physical when it consists of change or motion in quality. Such is the activity of a light which continuously sends out its rays, the activity of a sounding body, the activity of an electrical charge. It will be noticed that physical activity is normally accompanied by mechanical activity, for some local movement is to be discerned in every qualitative change or movement; but physical activity as such doe not consist of these local movements. The man who says that heat is movement (meaning local or mechanical movement) is not thinking clearly or thinking well; he should say that head is produced by mechanical movement and is accompanied by mechanical movement; he has no right to assert that heat is mechanical movement. Transient activity is called chemical when it affects a body in its substantial being, and usually changes it into another substance or other substances. Such is the activity which resolves water into hydrogen and oxygen. Chemical activity is usually accompanied by both mechanical and physical activity. Bodily activity is something which the bodily substance does; it is not what the bodily substance is. Each body is equipped by its nature with certain powers for activity. No body is immediately active, but it is active mediately, that is through the medium or real powers which it possesses. These powers, in themselves, are accidentals of the bodily substance; they are among its qualities. A false cosmology called mechanistic materialism teaches that the world consists of matter and motion. But this theory is so much a simplification that it is a falsification.
Another false cosmology called energeticism explains the bodily world as a complexity of kinetic and potential energies which act according to the laws of conservation, intensity, and entropy. Now these "laws" may be at work in the world but they do not explain the world. Energy requires a source, a sustaining power, a transferring power. To speak of energies, and waves of power, and electrical charges, and so on, without reference to actual substantial bodies exercising such powers by true bodily activity, is like speaking of the tides while denying the existence of the ocean. The truth is that bodily activity exists as the product of bodily substance equipped with powers for exercising such activity.
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