Here is a thoughtful article with an unhelpful title.
If I was to post this article on social media, I would risk being assailed by those who straight away object to the title, without troubling to read. They would read this as a rejection of science. Feser's book Aristotle's Revenge recovers metaphysics as essential in the foundations of science. (I would also recommend the work of Roger Trigg in this respect). To avoid confusion with respect to this 'science-based' culture, we need to distinguish “scientism,” one of the primary fallacies of the age, from actual “science.” I am glad to have Ray Monk the philosopher and biographer of Wittgenstein as a FB friend. He writes well on Wittgenstein's rejection of 'scientism.'
I think Feser's work here is excellent. Whilst I have welcomed the return of Aristotle in recent years, I have long considered that contemporary neo-Aristotelianism to offer only a very narrow view of Aristotle, a quasi-scientific ethical naturalism that misses out Aristotle's cosmic dimension. Aristotle's God may not be the Judaeo-Christian God, being more of a remote Intellect winding up the universe then stepping back to let it unfold. But it is a God for all that. I argue for more than this God of Creation, the God of the physical universe, and argue for the God of Love and personal relationships, attending, and care. Edward Feser in his new book is right to argue, from a Christian perspective, that Aristotle brings us into contemplation of the divine.
Aristotle does two other things I most emphatically agree with and which are central to my philosophy – he makes essence and purpose central to the creative unfolding of the universe. These are things which the modern mechanistic conception of science threw out, delivering us into a world of purposeless materialism. We live within its hollowness, dispirited and destinationless. Here is the source of the “existential crisis” so many keep saying is upon us. I wonder how many would respond positively if I should tell them this so clearly and concisely?
“Scientists can get along without Aristotle’s metaphysics, says Feser, but science can’t; in fact science presupposes Aristotle. Mechanistic views of nature have tried to make nature nothing but particles interacting, but a full understanding of nature requires that we include Aristotelian purpose, or teleology, and essences as well. Ultimately, Feser suggests, this leads us toward evidence for a divine mind behind it all.”
I would query the title of Feser’s book, Aristotle’s Revenge. I don’t like the notion of revenge. It savours too much of indolent notions of ‘nature’s revenge.’ I would have gone for a much more Aristotelian notion: “Aristotle’s flourishing.” Happiness. Here are all the categories of the essentialist metaphysics I have affirmed since the 1990s: actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient causality and teleology, necessary relations and lines of development. Feser argues that not only are these concepts compatible with science, they are presupposed by science. It was the disenchanting science of the modern age that went wrong.
Back to Aristotle! Here is what people get wrong about calls to go back to Aristotle. They think such calls imply turning Aristotle into an authority, then take great delight in pointing out what Aristotle got wrong. He thought women were deficient men, for instance. Hilarious. What people don’t appreciate is that Aristotle was often asking the right questions, and that the best means of correcting any false conclusions were provided by Aristotle himself. We know draw a different conclusion to the above, but the way that this is done is by a method and a question that is definitely Aristotelian.