The Philosophy of Nature

The theories and discoveries of contemporary science, from physics and cosmology to chemistry and biology, point to the need for a philosophy of nature. Science continues to raise questions that exceed the limits of its method. It notices, for instance, a holistic behavior in atoms, molecules and organisms that cannot be explained by a quantitative, reductionistic account of their parts. It finds purpose in biological structures that suggests the presence of a mode of causality beyond quantitative force. In fact, the questions of contemporary science invite a retrieval of aspects of causality that were ignored or rejected in the scientific revolution of Galileo and Newton. This book contributes to that work of retrieval by exploring the account of nature and causality in the philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, not as an historical curiosity, but as a possible resource in addressing the questions of contemporary science through a new philosophy of nature.