International Catholic University

Philosophy of Nature

William A. Wallace, O.P.

1^st Lecture: Fundamental Concepts

• 1. Historical Notes
• 2. How We Know Things
• 3. Intellectual Knowledge
• 4. Basic Types of Concepts -- Natural Concepts
• 5. Mathematical and Metaphysical Concepts
• 6. Science and Philosophy
• 7. Logical Concepts
• 8. The Predicables
• 9. The Categories
• 10. Scientific Reasoning
• 11. The Demonstrative Regress

2^nd Lecture: Nature -- The Inner Dimension

• 1. The Concept of Nature
• 2. The Causal Model
• 3. Matter as Nature
• 4. Form as Nature
• 5. Nature as Agent
• 6. Nature as End
• 7. Cognitive Agents
• 8. The Inner Dimension
• 9. The Individual Natural Body

3^rd Lecture: Nature's Powers and Natural Kinds

• 1. Powers of Human Nature
• 2. The Modeling of Nature
• 3. Elemental Bodies
• 4. Modeling an Inorganic Nature
• 5. Protomatter -- The Ultimate Substrate
• 6. Iconic Models
• 7. The Inorganic Form
• 8. Chemical Composition
• 9. Natural Radioactivity
• 10. Summary

4^th Lecture: Nature's Property -- Motion or Change

• 1. Plant Natures
• 2. Animal Natures
• 3. Motion or Change
• 4. Aristotle's First Definition of Motion
• 5. Some Examples of Motion
• 6. A Second Definition of Motion
• 7. Action and Reception
• 8. The Subjects of Action and Reception
• 9. The Distance Traversed

5^th Lecture: Nature's Measures -- Place and Time

• 1. The Concept of Place
• 2. Aristotle's Definition of Place
• 3. Place in the Universe, Old and New
• 4. The Concept of Space
• 5. Voids and Vacuums
• 6. The Concept of Time
• 7. The Continuum
• 8. The Existence of Time and Motion

6^th Lecture: Nature's First Unmoved Mover

• 1. Aquinas's Prima Via
• 2. The Motor Causality Principle
• 3. Validity in the Present Day
• 4. Three Instances of Local Motion
• 5. Efficient and Material Causality
• 6. Aquinas's Own Objection
• 7. Nature's First Unmoved Mover

Reading Assignments and Review Questions

Course Requirements

Students who are taking the course for academic credit will be expected to meet the following requirements:

1. Reading and studying the six lectures, and understanding the diagrams that accompany them. This is the primary requirement for the course, and will be the basis on which students will be examined at the end of the course.

2. Associated with these lectures are review questions that will enable the student to focus on the more important matters touched on in the lectures. Answering them as one proceeds through the course will be an excellent preparation for the final two-hour exam. Examiners who prepare this exam will draw on these questions in various combinations, while allowing some room for individual choices. (For example, the exam may be composed of six questions, from which the student need answer only four. Again, a question on a given topic may have several parts, only one of which need be answered by the student.)

3. Also associated with these lectures are additional reading assignments from the two textbooks being used in the course, The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis (Catholic Univ. Press, 1996) and The Elements of Philosophy: A Compendium for Philosophers and Theologians (Alba House, 1977). These go into matters treated in the course in fuller detail, and will be especially helpful for meeting the second basic requirement of the course: a documented research paper on some topic in the philosophy of nature or a related topic in the philosophy of science.

4. The research paper should be type-written and between twelve and twenty pages (double-spaced) in length. It should be documented in the sense that it should include footnotes or endnotes, or parenthetical references inserted into the text, and should have a bibliography at the end. Topics for the paper may be taken from any matters treated in the lectures or in the reading assignments that accompany them. The point of the paper is to enable the student to go a bit deeper into the subjects treated in the course, or to range beyond them into matters not treated explicitly in the course but still related to them.

5. The final grade for the course will be computed on the basis of 60% for the examination and 40% for the research paper.