ilya_prigogine_isabelle_stengers_alvin_tofflerbookfi-org

ORDER OUT OF CHAOS 40
ancient civilizations there is a separation between profane
space and sacred space, a division of the world into an ordi·
nary space that is subject to chance and degradation and a
sacred one that is meaningful, independent of contingency and
history. This was the very contrast Aristotle established between
the world of the stars and our sub lunar world. This contrast
is crucial to the way in which Aristotle evaluated the
possibility of a quantitative description of nature. Since the
motion of the celestial bodies is not change but a "divine"
state that is eternally the same, it ntay be described by means
of mathematical idealizations. Mathematical precision and
rigor are not relevant to the sub lunar world. Imprecise natural
processes can only be subjected to an approximate description.
In any case, for an Aristotelian it is more interesting to
know why a process occurs than to describe how it occurs, or
rather, these two aspects are indivisible. One of the main
sources of Aristotle's thinking was the observation of embryonic
growth, a highly organized process in which interlocking,
although apparently independent, events participate in a
process that seems to be part of some global plan. Like the developing
embryo, the whole of Aristotelian nature is organized
according to final causes. The purpose of all change, if it is in
keeping with the nature of things, is to realize in each being the
perfection of its intelligible essence. Thus this essence, which,
in the case of living creatures, is at one and the same time their
final, formal, and effective cause, is the key to the understanding
of nature. In this sense the "birth of modern science," the
clash between the Aristotelians and Galileo, is a clash between
two forms of rationality. IS
In Galileo 's view the question of "why," so dear to the Aristotelians,
was a very dangerous way of addressing nature, at
least for a scientist. The Aristotelians, on the other hand, considered
Galileo's attitude as a form of irrational fanaticism.
Thus, with the coming of the Newtonian system it was a
new universality that triumphed, and its emergence unified
what till then had appeared as divided.