In 1931 eminent chemist Fritz Paneth maintained that the modern notion of “element” is closely related to (and as “metaphysical” as) the concept of element used by the ancients (e.g., Aristotle). On that basis, the element chlorine (properly so-called) is not the elementary substance dichlorine, but rather chlorine as it is in carbon tetrachloride. The fact that pure chemicals are called “substances” in English (and closely related words are so used in other European languages) derives from philosophical compromises made by (...) grammarians in the late Roman Empire (particularly Priscian [fl. ~520 CE]). When the main features of the constitution of isotopes became clear in the first half of the twentieth century, the formal (IUPAC) definition of a “chemical element” was changed. The features that are “essential” to being an element had previously been “transcendental” (“beyond the sphere of consciousness”) but, by the mid-twentieth century the defining characteristics of elements, as such, had come to be understood in detail. This amounts to a shift in a “horizon of invisibility” brought about by progress in chemistry and related sciences. Similarly, chemical insight is relevant to currently-open philosophical problems, such as the status of “the bundle theory” of the coherence of properties in concrete individuals. (shrink)

This paper explores the Aristotelian context of the real distinction between existence and essence thought to be posited in Thomas Aquinas’ early workDe Ente Et Essentia. In doing so, the paper situates its own position in the context of contemporary scholarship and in relation to the contemporary trend to downplay Aristotle’s influence in Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy. The paper argues that re-readingDe Ente Et Essentiain this way sheds new light on some of the crucial debates in contemporary Thomist scholarship, particularly with (...) respect to the analogous relation between potency and act: essence and existence, the distinction between conceptual and causal explanation, and the relationship between philosophy and theology in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with answering the question, what is the central argument of Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing that brings its opening ontological approach to the subject of first philosophy to its ultimate theological goal and conclusion? This dissertation contends that it is the function of the fundamental scientific first principles of metaphysics, and in particular the fundamental primary notion necessary, to provide the intelligible link that Avicenna employs to demonstrate the existence and true-nature of the divine necessary existence (...) in itself on the basis of his doctrine of being. This conclusion is pursued through a systematic and cumulative line of inquiry that begins in Part I with Avicenna’s logical–cum–epistemological doctrine of conceptualization and assent, the heuristic order of the basic scientific questions, and his theory of a demonstrative science. The thesis then moves from the wider concentric circles concerned with logical matters into a series of narrowing concentric circles pertaining to the scientific order of the MH. Part II presents a close analysis of the Metaphysics of the Healing’s novel reception and reorganization of Aristotelian metaphysics according to Avicenna’s theory of demonstrative science, which consists in a subject, scientific first principles, and objects of inquiry that includes the species, proper accidents, and the science’s ultimate goal which is the aitiological–cum–theological inquiry into the causes of being. Part III transitions into a still narrower set of concentric circles that provide a detailed explication of the formal and material aspects of the scientific first principles of the Metaphysics of the Healing. Finally, the main argument of the thesis reaches the central point and question of the dissertation in Part IV, which establishes the fundamentality of the primary notion the necessary in the ontology, aitiology, and theology of the Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing. Part IV concludes that the principal function of the fundamental primary notion the necessary is to provide the intelligible link that connects Avicenna’s doctrine of being with the divine necessary existence in itself. (shrink)