QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

deduced in a logical manner. While Plato, who stressed the role of reason in acquiring
knowledge, advocated strict rationalism, Aristotle has sometimes been viewed as an empiricist to
whom, in the final analysis, knowledge was based on sensory perception. The conflict between
rationalism and empiricism was, however, only radicalised at the beginning of the modern era,
when empiricism was developed into a consistent philosophical programme. 118 Aristotle did not
advocate modern experiential philosophy or Nominalism. Even though he did not believe in
Plato’s ideas, he thought of understanding as targeting the unchanging essence of things, their
permanent basic character. Things were organised into specific classes and our intellect
discovered these unchanging natural classes just as our senses discovered individual objects. 119
2.1.4. The Significance of Antique Thought for Modern Science
The natural philosophers of antiquity rejected earlier mythical and religious ways of explanation
and began a search for intellegible answers to the fundamental questions about the nature of
reality and its formation. The character of the Milesian attempt to make reality and its
phenomena understandable and controllable has been seen as pre-scientific, and their endeavour
has left its stamp on both science and modern-day culture.
Although Plato and Aristotle, the most prominent thinkers of antiquity, employed the teachings
of the pre-Socractics as their starting point, they paid more attention to human life and society in
their all-embracing philosophies. In addition to matter, they stressed the importance of form, and
fought against the Atomist’s teachings to the extent that they advocated mechanical materialism
and the rejection of teleology. Because of this humanistic bias, Plato's and Aristotle's thinking
and divisions in natural philosophy or physics should not be underestimated. 120 Their
fundamental criticism of the Atomists’ way of thinking has largely been forgotten as a result of
the advent of classical physics. Democritus' idea of “dead matter” has become the foundation of
our world-view, and the hypothesis of Plato and Aristotle that matter is something that can
receive form has been abandoned.
117
Niiniluoto 1983, 237. Scholastics in the Middle Ages called these causes “causa materialis”, “causa formalis”,
“causa efficiens” and “causa finalis”.
118
Niiniluoto 1980, 39, 42. Ketonen 1989, 57.
119
Aspelin 1995, 113.
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