QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

incorrect. Aquinas took the view that understanding the order and beauty of the world of creation
could not be in conflict with either the glory of God or his better comprehension. Nothing that
reason could discover could in fact be in fundamental disagreement with either theological
teachings or with religious faith, since both reason and belief were derived from the same source.
Even though spirit and nature were separate from one another, they were at the same time
intertwined aspects of a single homogeneous whole. The history of one affected the history of the
other. In this way, freely-acting and self-realising human beings in no way reduced God’s
infinite creativity and omnipotence, they actually promoted His will. 145
Thomas Aquinas shaped a comprehensive synthesis of the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato. In a
similar manner to Aristotle, he saw the soul as the form of the human being and the body as its
matter. Sensory experience and reason fed each other. Sensory experience was necessary to
awaken reason’s potential knowledge of the universals, since humans had no direct access to the
realm of transcendental ideas. Aquinas did not, however, wish to interpret individuals as
completely separate and distinct substance, nor did he wish to see the world of matter as
separated from God. He linked created beings to each other and to God by using Plato’s idea of
participation. Individuals participated in God’s existence, which was the foundation of all
being. 146 Through his synthesis, Aquinas made Aristotle legitimate, and made it possible for
Greek rationalism and naturalism to access the Christian culture which permeated the whole of
Europe in the Middle Ages. From 1150 to 1650, Aristotle can be regarded as the most important
philosopher influencing European thought. His Physics was widely read and discussed, and over
the centuries, his natural philosophical concepts concerning teleological explanations, the
elements and cosmology became an inviolable part of the Scholastics holistic conception of
nature, a conception which related to not only the material world but also to the role played by
human beings in the world and their relationship with God. 147
Mediaeval science was clearly structured from the bottom upwards. It was based on Aristotle’s
physics and metaphysics, and the top of the pyramid consisted of theology as the highest form of
intellectual knowledge. In contrast to opinions being voiced by historians of science even in the
1950s and 1960s, there is no good reason to regard mediaeval science as being undeveloped.
Claims that the Middle Ages made no significant contribution to the advancement of science
145 Tarnas 1998, 175-190.
146 Tarnas 1998, 182-188. Aquinas committed himself to the Herculean intellectual task of comprehensively uniting
the Greek and the Christian world views in his Summa Theologica. See Aquinas 1947.
147 Trusted 1991, 6-7. Tarnas 1998, 190.
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