Critique of Humanistic Psychotherapy

Daniel J. Castellano

(2001, rev. 2005, 2011)

1. Psychotherapy Defined
2. Humanistic Assumptions
3. What is Mental Health?

Therapeutic psychiatry has seen explosive growth in North America since the 1970s, as the
field steadily gains public acceptance as a legitimate, respectable science. Millions of people
from all socioeconomic backgrounds are willing to set aside the self-reliant skepticism of
earlier generations, and unashamedly seek professional counseling for an ever broader variety
of mental disorders, real and imagined. They trust clinical psychologists or psychiatrists to
provide treatment for depression, grief, anger, anxiety, stress, lack of self-esteem, drug
addiction, and countless other maladies that were once considered simply matters of emotion,
temperament or behavior not requiring a medical solution. Much of the growth in psychiatry’s
reputation is due to the improved efficacy and availability of mood-altering drugs, yet there
has also been strong growth in the use of “talk therapy” or counseling, which proposes a
psychological rather than neurochemical treatment of identified mental health disorders.

Ironically, the boom in psychiatry comes at a time when the theoretical foundations of
qualitative psychology have been picked apart. The solemn certainties of Freudianism and
other comprehensive theories of the psyche have lost their authority among most
psychologists, and now theoretical psychology is a morass of conflicting hypotheses with
relatively few commonly held principles. Although we understand the mechanisms of the
brain better than ever before, this neurological knowledge is of limited use to a therapeutic
counselor, who must interact with patients on a personal level, not a neurological level. While
counselors may casually offer vague neurological explanations such as “chemical imbalance,”
they do not conduct laboratory tests to validate such claims in their patients. Diagnoses are
instead based on psychological symptoms, since it is impossible to measure the brain
chemistry of living subjects.

In the absence of a strong theoretical foundation, most psychotherapists have de-

intellectualized their practice to various extents. They eschew the technical analytic jargon
that the Freudians so enjoyed, and instead employ a more conversational, patient-oriented
therapy. This soft science tactic is good for business, as the therapist is more approachable
and more customer-driven than the old school psychoanalyst. Instead of viewing the patient as
a broken thing to be analyzed and fixed according to the doctor’s theoretical preconceptions,
the modern psychotherapist is at the service of the patient, acting as a guide or coach to help
him get what he wants out of life. It is little surprise, then, that the periphery of the counseling
profession overlaps with the domain of self-help gurus and other charlatans promising
pseudoscientific solutions to life’s problems.

Despite the attempts of modern therapists to project a theoretically neutral, patient-oriented

approach to counseling, this “humanistic psychotherapy” contains some determinate
philosophical assumptions. These preconceptions are not validated by empirical science, but
are borrowed from older traditions in psychology such as the Freudian system of
psychoanalysis, as well as Western liberal cultural assumptions. By examining these
assumptions, we may come to appreciate that modern psychotherapy is not a culturally neutral
medical practice or science, but rather it counsels patients to abide by the culturally-specific
social expectations of Western therapists.

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1. Psychotherapy Defined
According to the National Institutes of Health, “Conventional psychotherapy is conducted
primarily by means of psychologic methods such as suggestion, persuasion, psychoanalysis,
and reeducation.”[1] Psychotherapy is a broad concept that includes psychoanalysis and any
other method of psychological treatment. Some of these other methods—suggestion,
persuasion, and reeducation—are little more than rhetorical techniques, potentially
manipulative and susceptible to abuse. Still, such techniques might become legitimate
“psychologic methods” if they are subordinate to an ethical, scientifically informed practice.
Although the techniques of persuasion and suggestion were familiar to psychoanalysts of the
older schools, there was at the same time an ethos that the analyst should be scientifically
detached from the patient. Freud and others warned repeatedly of the dangers of the
psychiatrist becoming a charismatic figure in the patient’s mind, yet modern therapeutic
approaches practically require the therapist to use personal charisma to some extent as a
healing tool. We will examine some of the general effects of this emotionally involved,
empathetic treatment.

By packaging cold, cerebral psychoanalysis behind the friendly face of psychotherapy,

therapists set their patients at ease so they do not feel they are being analyzed. At the same
time, the use of emotional engagement can compromise the methodological integrity of
traditional psychoanalysis. This incongruity is recognized by many therapists, who express
disdain for the older psychoanalytic methods, and make conscious attempts to distinguish
their practice from the Freudian or Jungian models. They may do this in superficial ways,
such as not using a couch, or in more substantial ways, such as avoiding Freudian-sounding
questions about childhood and sexuality. They project a sense of understanding the human
mind, without articulating the determinate theses of the older analytic schemes.

It is unclear how anyone can pretend to analyze a mind without having a reasonably well-
defined theory of the mind. If we are to believe that Freud, Jung, Adler and the like were all
fundamentally mistaken, then what is the present theoretical framework of psychology?
Current psychological literature does not fill this void with a definite answer; even college
textbooks exhibit an astounding lack of uniformity in opinion on basic principles.[2] Most
books will discuss psychological theories as historical background, but few will presume to
impose any particular theoretical system as an operative paradigm. In a well-developed
science, there is a generally accepted (though not infallible) system of established principles,
such as Newtonian mechanics in physics or Darwinian evolution in biology. This is why
science textbooks in a given subject usually discuss the same material. No such agreement on
principles can be found in psychology. There is no large body of generally accepted
theoretical knowledge in psychology analogous to what we find in the hard physical sciences.

The theoretical diversity among psychologists is paralleled by an even wider disparity of

practice among therapists, many of whom combine holistic medicine and other “alternative”
techniques with conventional psychotherapies. Most psychotherapists present themselves as
analogous to medical doctors rather than scientific investigators. Abandoning any conceit of
scientific “analysis,” therapists instead merely “diagnose” their patients. Still, a good medical
diagnosis requires a medical theory that explains the causes of the symptoms. We would be
very skeptical of a physician who subscribed to his own pet theory of medicine, yet most
psychiatric patients do not even ask their therapist to what school of psychology he belongs.

By downplaying the importance of theoretical psychology, therapists have created the

impression that they are a unified profession practicing the same science, when in fact their
practice depends greatly on their personal theoretical predilections. Since contemporary
psychotherapy has discarded the visible trappings of psychoanalysis, the patient is usually
unaware that he is being analyzed in the context of some theoretical principles that may or
may not have wide scientific acceptance. Medical diagnosis, if it is to be truly explanatory and
not merely descriptive, requires the application of some theoretical principles, held either
consciously or unconsciously by the doctor or therapist.

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2. Humanistic Assumptions
For this discussion, we will focus on “humanistic” psychotherapy, and its conscious
assumptions. The “humanistic” approach is by far the most popular class of therapeutic
methods, owing to its humane, unintimidating style. Even therapists who subscribe to other
theoretical models will employ humanistic techniques in order to better engage patients, by
assuring them that the therapist will not “judge” them, morally or scientifically. Humanistic
assumptions, we shall see, are averse to the notion of objective morals, instead allowing moral
imperatives to be defined by the patient. This approach, though flattering to the patient,
undermines any objective basis for defining mental health. Without objective morals, which
are normative principles defining what a person “ought” to do in a given class of
circumstances, there can be no definition of mental health except in a purely functional sense,
where a patient is deemed mentally “healthy” to the extent that his neurological systems
function normally and he is able to achieve a desired mental state.

In practice, a therapist cannot avoid surreptitiously projecting a set of moral principles (his
own or those of society) onto his patient, whether he means to or not. We can see how
supposedly value-neutral humanistic psychotherapy is informed by some very specific
cultural assumptions, by analyzing some of the principles of this method. Here is one
sympathetic description of the tenets of humanistic psychotherapy:

1. Humans are basically rational, socialised and forward moving (striving to be better).
2. Humans have the potential to attain self-actualisation.
3. Humans are constructive, trustworthy, and congruent when they are free of
defensiveness.
4. Humanistic (Person-centred) counselling creates an environment in which congruence
& the potential for self-actualisation can be realised.[3]

All of these principles contain culturally specific philosophical assumptions. While the idea
that man is essentially rational and social can be found in the ancient Greeks, the notion that
he is essentially forward-moving, seeking self-improvement, is of much more recent
provenance. It gained wide currency only in the eighteenth century, as part of the
Enlightenment notion of human progress or perfectibility. Since our society is the cultural heir
of the Enlightenment, we adopt this notion of progress uncritically, and neglect to note that it
has not been assumed by all cultures. Some religious or philosophical traditions have held that
man should return to his primordial state, or that life moves in cycles, or that stasis and
stability are best. Even in our society, there are many who lack any spirit of ambition. This
principle is not derived from science, but from a Western liberal “achiever” mentality, which
is naturally pronounced in career professionals like psychotherapists, who expect others to be
similarly motivated.

Another aspect of the first principle, also implied in the third, is its essentially positive view
of human nature. Put simply, people are basically good, and this shines through once we take
away defense mechanisms. While flattering, this is a philosophical assumption, one that was
not shared by the Freudians, nor by traditional Christians who believe in a tragically flawed
human nature, nor by the great Greek philosophers of antiquity, who noted the rarity of moral
virtue. Humanistic psychotherapy teaches us that virtue is common, and that the way to be
good is to be our true, uninhibited selves. Telling the vulgar what they want to hear has
proven to be excellent for business.

The second principle claims that everyone has the power to realize the ambition assumed in
the first. The term ‘self-actualization’ (and its equivalents, e.g., ‘self-empowerment’) contains
an implicit assumption that the will is of central importance. The will is the only thing that
may be considered self-actualized, since it is the only human faculty (if any) that is free.
Intellect, cognition, and memory depend on received input, and this is more obviously the
case for emotion, sensation, and physiological faculties. This leaves only the will as capable
of self-actualization, so emphasizing self-actualization effectively means focusing attention
on the will.

Humanistic psychotherapists frequently ask patients to articulate their wants and then find a
means to realize these desires, sometimes ignoring intellectual and moral criteria. There is an
implicit assumption that self-actualizing is fundamentally important, as though this were the
key to improving oneself.[4] In fact, most if not all of our experiences of personal betterment
come from extrinsic sources, such as being exposed to some new idea or experience. It is far
from obvious that greater “self-actualization”—or to speak plainly, doing what we want—will
generally help us have one of those character-building experiences.

There is really no way to “attain self-actualization” or improve it, since we already have free
will in its fullness. Only severe mental or neurological disorders can impede the free use of
reason by the will, and in these exceptional cases we might speak of a real need to improve
self-actualization. Even in these cases of severe retardation or brain trauma, the will might
still be free, yet a lack of cognitive abilities inhibits awareness of possible choices. On the
whole, then, psychotherapy’s promise of self-actualization is just giving people what they
already have, a common trope among self-help quacks.

When psychotherapists speak of improving self-actualization or self-empowerment, they are

not referring strictly to those few who have impaired use of free will, but they claim that even
normal people could use such improvement. How can this be, if the will is already free? This
objection is answered by conceiving external circumstances as constraints upon the will. Self-
actualization, in this understanding, is imposing one’s will or wish upon external reality.

There is an obvious moral danger in promoting strength of will as a sign of mental health.
Strength of will is morally neutral; it can be used either for great good or great evil. Yet the
desire to impose one’s will on reality is essentially prideful and egocentric. The problem is
particularly acute when internal circumstances, such as moral convictions, are viewed as
obstacles to self-actualization. Perhaps, the patient may be told, he needs to free himself from
his old moral shackles to get what he wants out of life. This, of course, is nothing but soft
Nietzscheanism.

There are many possible ways to encourage the development of self-actualization, both
constructive and destructive. The methods favored humanistic psychotherapy are summarized
in the third and fourth principles:

3. Humans are constructive, trustworthy, and congruent when they are free of
defensiveness.
4. Humanistic (Person-centred) counselling creates an environment in which congruence
& the potential for self-actualisation can be realised.

Person-centered counseling creates an environment free of defensiveness, thus conducive to

self-actualization. When a patient knows he will not be criticized or judged negatively,[5] he
feels free to express his will without inhibition. The therapist’s role is not to judge whether the
object of the patient’s will is morally good—though a moralist would consider this essential
to the health of the psyche (Gk: “soul”)—but to help the patient see himself as the prime
mover in his life, and act accordingly.

Of course, the therapist will not take this too far; for example, he would not nod approvingly
if the patient were contemplating murder. Yet he might not intervene for dubious matters that
are approved by his society, such as spousal desertion or abortion. By selecting when to
intervene and when not to do so, the therapist implicitly projects a set of values onto the
patient. The fact that he feels morally obligated to intervene in violent cases belies his defense
that failure to intervene does not imply moral approval. Person-centered counseling is in fact
not neutral, but affirmative of whatever the patient sets out to do.

Whereas Freudian psychology identified neurosis as a regression to childhood sexuality,

humanistic psychotherapy may actually promote a regression to childhood by creating an
environment favoring self-gratification. We should perhaps not be too surprised by this
reversal. Without a coherent, unified scientific theory, therapists have little choice but to draw
upon the values of their society as operating assumptions. It is almost certainly not mere
coincidence that the rise of humanistic psychotherapy coincided with the increasingly self-
indulgent materialism of the 1980s and beyond. Since psychotherapeutic treatment is usually
voluntary, therapists must employ methods that appeal to the masses if they are to succeed as
a profession. Consequently, there is considerable engagement between therapeutic precepts
and popular culture. The rise of moral egocentrism, the infantilization of entertainment, the
retention of adolescent attitudes on sexuality into adulthood, and the infatuations with
personal empowerment and emotional gratification that have become increasingly
characteristic of modern North American culture, all have their parallels in modern
psychotherapeutic methods. Humanistic psychotherapy tells patients what most people have
already been telling themselves.

The fourth principle mentions the concept of “congruence” which was defined by Virginia
Satir as a “condition of being emotionally honest” during the heyday of humanistic
psychology in the 1970s. It is transparently informed by the culture of middle class America,
which at the time adhered to the popular psychology of “getting in touch with your feelings.”
Using congruence as a standard of healthy relationships arbitrarily pathologizes people who
are emotionally reserved. This form of psychotherapy is favored only by certain personality
types (especially among women) and certain cultures. It is oblivious of other cultures, such as
those in Asia, where emotional reserve is considered essential to healthy social relationships.
As with the focus on self-actualization, a psychotherapy of congruence upholds personal
desires, perceptions, and feelings as determinants of healthy behavior, irrespective of
objective considerations.

More broadly, the assumption that “healthy” social relationships are essential to a mentally
healthy individual uncritically incorporates current social mores into the definition of mental
health. While mental health certainly requires that the patient’s worldview should conform
with external reality, it is also true that understanding reality does not necessarily mean
accepting things as they are. We should not require, as a criterion of health, that a person
must necessarily “fit in” or “be at peace” with his social environment. A mentally sound
person might find his society to be fundamentally flawed in its values or structure, and so
willingly suffer ostracism rather than assimilate its values. The humanistic model leaves little
place for such melancholy or choleric souls, for it defines social disengagement as “unhealthy,”
while egomaniacs might be found healthy if they are sufficiently sociable. This bias toward a
sanguine, sociable temperament also reflects the current culture, which is highly averse to
unpleasant confrontations in social discourse, as shown by its emphasis on sensitivity and
inoffensive language. Insisting on sociability as a standard of health effectively codifies
current societal values as truths, ignoring the possibility that society may be ill.

On the other hand, the humanist has no problem criticizing other societies that do not
sufficiently emphasize personal autonomy. As an example, when a Hindu expressed his
anxieties in the context of his belief in fate and reincarnation, his therapist encouraged him to
see himself as the proactive force in his life. The therapist claimed that he had treated the
Hindu while respecting his religion, when in fact he had undermined the fatalist philosophy
upon which most forms of Hinduism rest. Similarly, we cannot consider humanistic
psychotherapy to be respectful of Christianity, if it insists that humans by nature are
inherently morally worthy and self-sufficient.[6] Many other worldviews are contradicted by
the humanistic assumption that mankind is always progressing or improving. Regardless of
the relative merits of these various claims, it can hardly be sustained that humanistic
psychotherapy is culturally neutral.

The underlying philosophical worldview of humanistic psychotherapy, with its emphasis on

personal autonomy and the creation of meaning through work, resembles a secularized
Protestantism. This is no coincidence, for North American psychotherapists have merely
absorbed their humanistic assumptions from the society in which they are immersed. A strong
belief in the power of the individual will helps to rationalize the existing social and economic
power structure, since failure to achieve social or economic success is only the result of
defensiveness or fear toward realizing one’s potential, rather than the product of an
objectively unjust social order. Needless to say, this “can-do” philosophy is unrealistic, as it
ignores the individual’s total dependence upon the society in which he is enmeshed (on both
conscious and unconscious levels), not to mention his dependence on the natural world and its
Creator. The denial of such dependence results in individual egoism and more broadly, an
aesthetically anthropocentric philosophy that is incompatible with transcendental religion. It is
perhaps not accidental that atheism is more prevalent among psychologists and psychiatrists
than in any other scientific profession. The epistemic paradigm of modern psychology would
isolate man as if he depended on nothing outside himself, and measures all things by their
utility in fulfilling one’s wishes. The psychotherapist (literally a “curer of souls”) adopts a
priestly role, except he promotes an earth-bound or immanentist religion where man’s desire
is the measure of all things. Patients subjected to this ethos are not invited to judge belief
systems by objective criteria, but instead are urged to seek a religion or spirituality (if any)
that best meets one’s personal needs, where “needs” are really nothing more than “wants” or
desires.

When the only effective standard of truth is what one wants or desires, the result is an
illogical moral philosophy where truth is defined by individual experience rather than general
principles. Logically, a person might be certain of universals yet uncertain of particulars. For
example, I am certain that murder in general is morally wrong, yet I could be uncertain in a
particular case where someone is killed if morally culpable murder was committed. On the
other hand, it is illogical to be certain about someone’s guilt or innocence if we are uncertain
about the general principle. It would be absurd for me to claim, “I don’t know what murder is,
but I’m sure I did not commit it.” Precisely this sort of claim is made by the egocentric patient
who denies that any objective moral principle applies to his actions, yet at the same time
asserts that his particular actions are morally justified. The moral relativist wants to have
things both ways, saying, “Do not judge me,” (that is, by any criterion outside my will) and,
“What I do is good” (i.e., I wish to be judged positively). The philosophical assumptions of
humanistic psychotherapy, taken seriously, are destructive of any sound moral philosophy.
Whatever ethics the patient may retain is a credit to his social background, not to nihilistic
psychotherapy, which recognizes no objective good.

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3. What is Mental Health?

The psychotherapist enjoys a luxury that is denied to the physician: he is allowed to define
what constitutes “health.” This luxury essentially enables him to determine his own success
rate. We have seen that humanistic psychotherapy is based on precepts that ignore any notion
of objective moral good, so it is only to be expected that emotional pleasure, falsely called
“happiness,” is made the criterion of mental health. This is consistent with the therapeutic
philosophy and with the patient’s expectations, and it is much easier to provide than a truly
healthy soul. The patient-centered therapy of ego gratification, also known as “empowerment,”
naturally generates pleasing emotions. Of course, this is a gift such as the Wizard of Oz might
give, for empowerment is nothing more than the enthronement of the already free human will.
Psychotherapy has increased its success rate and its prestige by redefining success from
actually curing neurotic behaviors to simply making people emotionally happy.

Encouraging and self-enabling words are not enough for most patients to achieve even this
mediocre standard of happiness, hence the millions of prescriptions for increasingly effective
antidepressants that are the real key to the success of the psychiatric profession.
Psychotherapists enjoy a second luxury denied to medical doctors: they get to diagnose an
organ, the brain, without examining it. A patient is deeply depressed emotionally, so the
therapist prescribes antidepressants to correct a “chemical imbalance” without actually
measuring the serotonin levels in the brain. This represents the worst in medical practice:
treating the symptom rather than the cause, without considering that the same symptoms may
arise from different causes.

Antidepressants do not correct “chemical imbalances;” they create chemical imbalances. The
evidence linking depression to serotonin deficiency is remarkably weak.[7] In all but the most
extreme cases, such as serial killers, severe emotional depression is not correlated to a
decrease in serotonin levels. In the case of some serial killers, serotonin levels have been
found to be 30-40% below normal. Yet normal dosages of antidepressants, which stop
serotonin inhibition, increases serotonin levels hundreds of times. This is not correcting an
imbalance, but creating a severe imbalance.[8]

Serotonin is a basic neurotransmitter that serves hundreds of functions; obviously anyone

deficient in it would not be able to function well mentally. Lack of dopamine, blood, or
oxygen would also make someone depressed, because basic brain functions could not operate.
By recklessly increasing serotonin levels, too much neurotransmitter is secreted throughout
the brain, affecting hundreds of brain functions.

Antidepressants do not “cure depression” in the sense of correcting a neurological malady.

Serotonin is not specific to emotional depression, and depression has no neurological
correlate: there is no specific region of the brain that is a “depression center.”[9]
Antidepressants “cure depression” only in the sense that alcohol, marijuana, opiates, and
cocaine do the same: they abolish the sensation of depression by masking it with a
chemically-induced artificial “high.” Antidepressants are simply “happy pills”[10] that do not
cure any underlying medical phenomenon, but, like their illegal counterparts, can be
chemically addictive, requiring increasing dosages to achieve the same effect.

As the prestige of therapeutic psychiatry rises, there is now wider acceptance of what may be
called “the medicalization of behavior.” The public is given the impression that there is no
practical distinction between psychological disorders and neurological disorders. If you have
a psychological problem, there must be something wrong with your brain that needs to be
treated. This crude materialism ascribes every psychological or behavioral malady to some
hidden “chemical imbalance,” neural damage, or genetic predisposition. In reality, even the
most basic psychological “diseases,” such as depression and schizophrenia, have no widely
agreed upon symptoms to allow consistent diagnosis, nor are they consistently correlated with
definite neurological phenomena, as are genuine neurological disorders.[11]

An unfortunate consequence of the medicalization of behavior is that certain temperaments

are unfairly deemed “unhealthy,” particularly those that were classically known as
melancholic and choleric.[12] Depression and anger are now illnesses to be treated rather than
an important part of human existence. The religious ascetic’s willingness to suffer has little
place in the current therapeutic ethos. Though not all therapists go to the same extreme, the
tendency to diagnose sadness and anger as illnesses has become increasingly broad. Such a
hedonistic standard of health is viable only in a pampered society. It would be impossible to
apply this standard in countries filled with real suffering, without constantly prescribing heavy
medication. By branding choleric and melancholic temperaments as unhealthy, the therapist,
much like the society in which he lives, favors the development of sanguine personalities,
which are often docile, complacent, and willing to submit to the social status quo. Despite all
the rhetoric of self-empowerment, mentally “healthy” individuals are expected to devote their
energies to economic and social pursuits within the existing social structure.

If sanguinity is the only form of mental health,[13] then normalcy and moral mediocrity are
practically inevitable results. Emotional pleasure, unaccompanied by other feelings,
encourages complacency, docility, and effeminacy. Anger and melancholy, by contrast, have
played valuable productive roles in the course of human history. No nation would have ever
achieved its liberty if the fires of outrage did not prod men to arms. Similarly, some of the
world’s greatest artists, philosophers, and religious thinkers, while brooding over the tragedy
of life, discovered some of its deepest and most beautiful truths.

Psychotherapy can expect to be well received by a society filled with egocentric adults who
seek no happiness beyond emotional pleasure, such as we find in modern North America.
Statistically, people in the United States are much more willing than Europeans and other
people to be medicated for just about anything.[14] Still, many psychiatrists and therapists are
aware of the fragility of their social status, which is why they self-consciously take pains to
insist that their vaguely defined disorders are “real diseases.” Perhaps some of the older
practitioners remember the mid-twentieth century, when psychology was scorned by much of
the public as pseudoscience, even though psychoanalytic theories then enjoyed favor among
the New York literati.

Now, in the absence of a coherent theoretical doctrine, therapists do not preach scientism too
loudly, but instead present themselves as medical doctors and emphasize their professionalism.
The label “mental health professional” exemplifies a shift in emphasis from the more
scientific-sounding “psychoanalyst.” Professionalism appeals to North Americans who, more
than Europeans and others, are inclined to seek expert, professional advice on the ordinary
matters of life. Most people neglect to realize that “professional” merely means that one is
paid for his services, and that quacks, charlatans, and witch doctors have equal claim to the
title. As cynics may suspect, those who proclaim too loudly that their field is a legitimate
profession are the ones skating on the thinnest ice.

Ironically, psychotherapists, those strenuous advocates of personal autonomy, benefit

especially from the peculiar insecurity and lack of autonomy among North Americans that
prompts them to seek professional help in managing their daily life. Regular therapy is sought
even by people who have no serious mental disorder, or any noticeable disorder at all.
Although modern therapy speaks the language of empowerment, in fact the North American
population has become more docile and complacent toward the existing power structure than
overt repression could reasonably hope to achieve. Perhaps this is why the Soviets were the
first to require a psychiatric division in every hospital.

It will be noticed that I have painted a picture of North American humanistic psychotherapy
with very broad strokes. In fact many humanistic psychotherapists do conscientiously perform
their practice in conformance with sound moral values, and many of them are genuinely
sympathetic toward traditional moral systems such as Christianity. There are other branches
of psychiatry, closely related to neurology, that are grounded in real science and generate
valuable insights into the workings of the human mind. Yet how the mind works does not tell
us anything about how we should best deal with the stresses of living. Answering the latter
question requires us to make normative judgments about attitudes and behaviors. It is
dishonest for psychotherapists to pretend to scientific objectivity when they are in fact
promoting a particular social philosophy with dubious assumptions. When people are
genuinely troubled, they will grasp at whatever worldview the therapist offers, even if it
contradicts the values in which they were raised, sometimes resulting in moral ruin. Whether
they intend to or not, those who treat the psychologically vulnerable wield great power, so it
is imperative that the practice of psychotherapy be made socially accountable, and this may
begin with an open profession of its hidden philosophical and morally normative assumptions.

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See also: Psychology and the Soul | Behavioral Evolution

Notes
[1] NIH website, retrieved 2005.

[2] Psychology texts exhibit wide divergence when dealing with topics other than neurological phenomena,
especially when written by a strenuous advocate of a particular school, e.g. functionalism or humanism. Instead
of a generally accepted basic theoretical structure, we have a collection of experimental results whose broader
contextual meaning is disputed by various academics. For an especially well-balanced presentation, see James W.
Kalat’s Introduction to Psychology (9th ed., 2010), which does a good job of distinguishing what is empirically
known from academic opinions. Kalat wisely denies that psychology can teach us how to analyze a mind.

[3] Retrieved from a now defunct British website in 2005. This formulation is derived from the principles of Carl
Rogers (1902-1987), a founder of humanistic psychotherapy.

[4] Rogers defined self-actualization as a tendency toward fulfillment via the maintenance and enhancement of
the organism. It entails an openness to experience and a willingness to be in process.

[5] Quite the contrary, in Rogers' view, the patient ought to learn to have "unconditional positive regard" for
himself. Self-criticism under objective criteria is fundamentally incompatible with mental health so conceived.

[6] Such claims revive the ancient heresy of Pelagianism, which held that humans could abstain from all sin by
the natural power of the will.

[7] As scientists have written in the journal PLoS Medicine, "Not a single peer-reviewed article ... support[s]
claims of serotonin deficiency in any mental disorder," and, "there is no such thing as a scientifically correct
'balance' of serotonin." Sharon Begley, "Some Drugs Work to Treat Depression, But It Isn't Clear How", Wall
Street Journal, November 18, 2005, page B1.

[8] See discussion in: Joseph Glenmullen, MD. Prozac Backlash (2000).

[9] Glenmullen, p. 17.

[10] Eerily similar to the "Instant Smile" drink referenced in the Twilight Zone episode "Number 12 Looks Just
Like You" (1964). The mentality is the same: emotional displeasure is a "problem" that needs to be fixed.

[11] Naturally, a neurological disorder may result in psychological symptoms (e.g., disruption of amygdala
connectivity causing uncontrollable anxiety or fear). Such genuine neurological disorders are statistically rare,
however, compared with the diagnosed prevalence of psychological disorders. "Generalized anxiety disorder" is
much more commonly caused by a stressful environment than by a problem with brain function. In such cases,
we are just applying a medical-sounding term to a common problem (anxiety or fear) without knowing a definite
physical cause.

[12] The names of the Galenic temperaments show that even ancient doctors assumed a relationship between
mood and body chemistry. Unlike their modern counterparts, they did not consider any one temperament to be
more healthy than the others.

[13] Adler went so far as to explicitly declare that the sanguine temperament is the only healthy temperament.

[14] By 2007, Americans spent over $40 billion a year on psychotropic drugs. Counterintuitively, the incidence
of diagnosed mental illness in the U.S. has only been increasing rather than decreasing, despite widespread
medication. Since no one understands the cause of most mental illnesses, it is perhaps not too surprising that
many drugs actually exacerbate mental illness. See: Robert Whitaker. Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets,
Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (2010).
Basic Issues in Natural Philosophy
Reviewing Aristotle’s Physics in Light of Modern Science
Daniel J. Castellano (2014)[*]

Part I
Part I
1. Physics as Philosophy
2. The Basic Problem of Change
3. Natural Principles of Change
4. Abstract versus Natural Forms
5. Explanatory Factors in Physics
5.1 Material
5.2 Formal
5.3 Efficient
5.4 Final
6. Chance or Randomness
7. Necessity
Part II
8. Movement
9. Mover and Moved
10. The Infinite
10.1 Reality of the Infinite
10.2 The Infinite in Natural Philosophy
10.3 The Infinite as Something Separable from the Sensible World
10.4 The Infinite as an Actual Physical Being
10.5 Infinity as Potentiality of Process
Part III
11. Place and Space
11.1 Place as Substance or Inherent Property
11.2 Place as Matter or Form
11.3 Place as Extension or Limit
11.4 Criticism of Place as Limit
11.5 Problems with Aristotelian Place
11.6 Place and Space as Relational
11.7 Revised Account of Place, Space and Position
12. The Void
13. Time
13.1 Existential Problems of Past, Present and Future
13.2 Time Distinguished from Movement
13.3 Direction of Time
13.4 Plurality of the Present
13.5 The Problem of Simultaneity across Space
13.6 Time as Measure of Existence and the Mobile
13.7 Unity of Time
Part IV
14. Relativistic Spacetime
14.1 Special Relativity
14.2 General Relativity
14.3 Is Spacetime Substantive?
Part V
15. Types of Physical Movement
15.1 Change in General
15.2 Movement as a Type of Change
 15.3 Accidental and Essential, Direct and Indirect Movement
15.4 Movement as Change between Contraries
15.5 Factors in Movement
15.6 Ontological Categories Admitting Movement
15.7 Species and Unity of Movements
15.8 Regular and Irregular Motion
Part VI
16. Opposition to Movement
16.1 Contrary Movements
16.2 Rest Opposing Movement
16.3 Rest Opposing Generation and Destruction
16.4 Immobility
16.5 Relativity of Rest and Movement
17. Natural and Violent Motion
17.1 Acceleration and Deceleration as Violent Motion
17.2 Force and Acceleration under Relativity
17.3 Circular or Rotational Motion as Natural or Violent
17.4 Non-Violence of Movement in Quality and Quantity
18. Simple Motion

1. Physics as Philosophy
That the study of nature is essential to philosophy should be evident from the fact that the first
philosophers, starting with Thales of Miletus, were also the first physicists. Physics is
concerned with understanding and explaining the world we observe, so it is eminently
philosophical. For most of its history, theoretical physics was considered part of philosophy,
and was called “natural philosophy” as recently as the nineteenth century. Yet for most of the
modern era, we have conceived of “physical science” as something distinct from philosophy,
with the latter being more abstract and qualitative, while the former deals with quantification
of the empirical. Still, the scientist’s mania for objectivity does not erase his concern for
meaning, and if physics is something more than mere quantitative description, it retains
philosophical aspects even today.

Keeping in mind that distinctions among the sciences are at least partly a matter of arbitrary
choice, we may find useful this working definition of physics: the science that seeks
explanations of changes in the sensible world.

Seeking explanations is essential to science, as mere description does not deepen our
understanding. When we explain something, it must be in terms of some principle other than
itself, or else we are just indulging in circular reasoning. It will not do to say “The sky is blue
because it has blueness,” as the latter expression is just a verbal rearrangement of the former,
adding nothing substantive to our understanding.

Physics deals with changes, as the Greek term physis suggests change or motion. Thus even
Aristotelian physics is essentially non-static, being concerned primarily with accounting for
change.

We confine physics to the study of changes in the sensible world. Such changes inarguably
exist, if we give are to give any credence whatsoever to the senses. Physics presupposes that
at least some knowledge is attainable via the senses. Further, insofar as it is confined to
explaining changes in the sensible world, all inquiries must begin with some sensory
observation.
The distinction between physics and metaphysics may be drawn in at least two ways. First,
physics deals with changes in the sensible world, while metaphysics deals with the
suprasensible world. Second, metaphysics deals with first principles that may account not
only for the sensible world we observe, but also other possible physical worlds. Neither of
these distinctions is as sharp as they may seem. Explanations of sensible changes may
eventually lead us into a realm that cannot be sensed directly. The study of physics might
even lead us toward first principles, or at least impose constraints on what these first
principles may be like. We should not, then, insist on an absolute barrier between physics and
metaphysics, as one elides into the other. Still, we shall try to confine our discussion to what
is necessary to account for changes in the sensible world.

In this overview of basic issues in natural philosophy, I will mostly follow the order of
Aristotle’s Physics, without confining us to its content. This is because the Physics does a
good job of at least addressing the fundamental problems, even if later developments lead us
to different solutions. Importantly, we are informed by a different notion of science than that
of the Aristotelians. We do not insist on deductions from self-evident axioms, but instead
allow the results of observation and experiment to inform our suppositions. Unlike most
modern scientists, however, we do not dismiss philosophical problems as irrelevant to physics,
but consider them to be what makes physics most worthy of study.

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2. The Basic Problem of Change

The ancient Greek philosophers Zeno and Parmenides had raised some seemingly
unanswerable logical paradoxes regarding sensible change, so that they regarded change as an
illusion, while in reality everything remained what it already was. Heraclitus, by contrast,
adopted the view that nothing persists, so that the only reality is process or change itself. Both
opinions attempted to solve the problem of how something that “is X” can become that which
“is not X.” On the one hand, “being X” cannot come from “not being X,” for, as all natural
philosophers agree, nothing comes from nothing as such. Yet if “being X” came from “being
X,” then it was already X to begin with, and did not really change. So we must either dispense
with the reality of change or with the notion of substantive, persistent beings.

Aristotle brought two important elements to the discussion: (1) a firm belief in the sensible
world as a source of knowledge, and (2) a recognition that “being” admits of more than one
sense or mode. The first conviction is shown in his criticism that to be a follower of
Parmenides is to refuse to look at the world. After all, if we cannot know anything at all from
the senses, not even the reality of change, then there is no basis for inquiry into natural
philosophy. We cannot reason about physical explanations if there is no credible data to
explain.

Inquiries into what it means “to be X,” which we call ontology, made possible Aristotle’s
solution to the problem of change. In contrast with those who assumed that “to be” is univocal,
Aristotle considered that there may be multiple senses or modes or being. He even considered
the possibility, held by some contemporaries, that the notion of “being” might be dispensed
with, as a mere grammatical formality that adds nothing to our account of reality. It is far
from true, then, that he was naively led by linguistic considerations to treat “being” as a thing.
Confusion arises because Aristotle uses the term ousia (“be-ness”) to refer to something
substantial, what he calls a primary being or subject. This term may be translated “being” in
the sense of “something that is/exists,” as in “a human being,” or “a living being.” It does not
refer to the act of existing or being, assuming it is proper to speak of this as an act. Aristotle
did not articulate a clear distinction between being (essence) and existence, and we reserve
such discussion for metaphysics. Still, it is clear that his term ousia does not involve treating
being or existence as something distinct from the thing-that-is. Accordingly, he is not guilty
of reifying the existential verb.

Aristotle’s solution to the problem of change is to identify two aspects of a being, a persistent
aspect and an aspect that changes. He called the persistent aspect hyle (lit., “wood”), to signify
material in the most generic sense, and the changed aspect morphe (lit., “shape”), to signify
configuration in the most generic sense. Modern philosophers call this hylomorphism, which
may give the misleading impression that this is some idiosyncratic opinion of Aristotle. In fact,
anyone who holds that there are both persistent and changeable aspects of a being is
effectively a “hylomorphist,” even if he uses different terms. The terms used by Aristotle
were intended to be figurative, and he by no means confined himself to the limits of these
figures. Hyle need not be extensive corporeal matter, but could be any substantive, persistent
aspect of a being. Morphe need not be restricted to the spatial arrangement of corporeal matter,
but can encompass all qualitative, quantitative, and relational properties of a being.

When we say something “becomes” or “changes into” an X, we are effectively presupposing

three things. First, there is the hyle or persistent aspect of a being. Without anything persisting,
we could not truly say that anything is the subject of change. Rather, one cluster of properties
is replaced by another cluster of properties. Then we would be stuck with the problem of how
something can arise out of its negative. Either it already was X, in which case it did not
become X, or it arose from not-X qua privation of X, which would be as impossible as
coming out of non-being as such. This paradox is avoided only by recognizing that a form
(e.g., a quality or property) arises from its absence or privation (“non-X”) not by virtue of its
privation, which would be absurd, but by virtue of the potential for change in a being’s
persistent aspect (hyle). In other words, the basis of mutability is in the capacity of substantial
being to take different forms. By virtue of this capacity, the old form (privation) is changed
into the new form.

To modern eyes, this may seem to be a purely verbal account of change that explains nothing.
The apparent explanatory weakness arises from our expectation that physics should provide
definite accounts of determinate physical changes. This is a highly generic account of change,
so only the vaguest explanation is possible. Still, this genericness is also an asset, since it is
applicable to every sort of change in the sensible world. We should therefore look for
persistent and changed aspects of a being in every particular change.

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3. Natural Principles of Change

Since physics is the study of changes in the sensible world, it is only consistent that a “nature”
(physis) should be considered as a principle of such change. Aristotle does not naively assume
that any object named by humans corresponds to a natural object. We may distinguish natural
objects from artificial constructs by observing that the former contain a principle of sensible
change or stability. A bed, for example, is not a natural object, since it contains no innate
impulse to change qua bed. Whatever natural impetuses it may have are based on its qualities
as wood, or mass, or whatever other natural substance that may constitute it.

A principle of sensible change, called a “nature,” is that which is the source of such change.
When a substance contains such a source within itself, it is said to “have a nature.” This does
not mean that “a nature” is some concrete substance or sensible quality of an object, nor
should we assume that it occupies a determinate place. When we say that a substance’s source
of change is “within itself,” we are not identifying a spatial location, but merely state that the
source of change is intrinsic to the object’s constitution.

We observe that there are many objects that “have a nature,” i.e., are able to induce sensible
change by virtue of how they are constituted. This is obvious in biology, where living things
grow toward determinate forms and produce others of their own kind, though these processes
still allow for some accidental variation. The fact that a foal grows into a horse and not a
camel, and begets other horses rather than camels, is surely dependent on the intrinsic
constitution of the foal, at least in part. There may also be incidental factors in ontogeny and
reproduction that result in variations, but this does not abolish the relative regularity of results
which is certainly a product of some common constitution among foals. To deny that there are
objects with natural principles is to take one’s eyes away from nature, and to abandon any
hope of scientific explanation.

Natural principles are by no means confined to biology. Even supposedly inert materials
contain principles of nature. Heavy objects fall toward the center of the earth, while chemical
substances can react and produce qualitative changes only in certain ways, depending on their
determinate constitution. A “change” can be quantitative increase or decrease, qualitative
alteration, local motion, generation or corruption (i.e., gain or loss of some form). Further,
Aristotle allows that a “nature” might even be a principle of stability, or resistance to change.
The Newtonian principle of “inertia,” resistance to change in velocity, is an example of such a
nature.

A question arises as to whether “nature” comes from the material or formal aspect of a
substance. Some of the ancients, much like modern reductionists, proposed that the only
“natures” were those of the material elements, and that all other “natures” we seem to discern
are really just affections, states or dispositions of elemental natures. In other words, the
natural activities of a living organism are really reducible to the activities proper to its
material elements. The organism, as a natural agent, is nothing more than a complex state of
interacting molecules. We may go further and say that the “nature” of a chemical compound
is nothing more than the “natures” of fundamental particles, so that the compound is just a
configuration of such particles. While there is much evidence strongly suggesting the
reducibility of chemistry to physics and biology to chemistry, the mathematical complexity of
such systems has precluded a definitive proof of reductionism. In physical chemistry, only the
hydrogen atom’s wavefunction admits an analytical solution. In biochemistry, systems are far
too complex and subtle to prove that energy is perfectly conserved and that there are no
holistic aspects to organic motion.

The materialist reductionism described above is not truly material, but formal. The “nature” of
a fundamental particle is defined not in virtue of its matter (i.e., being some definite “this
thing”), but in virtue of its form (i.e., being some kind of thing, with some definite properties).
Without deciding the question of whether the macroscopic “natures” we discern are really just
configurations of microscopic natural activity, we may in either case recognize that “nature”
is in form, rather than matter. If modern scientists fail to recognize this, it is because what
they call “matter” (or “mass-energy,” or “wave-particles”) is really substance, encompassing
both its material and formal aspects. Recall that the matter-form distinction does not imply a
real separability of principles. In the sensible world, there is no matter without form or form
without matter. Still, the distinction in principles is necessary to account for the real
permanence and mutability that accompany every natural change.

A principle of change is a principle of “becoming some X,” where X is a form, confirming the
appropriateness of identifying nature with form. When we say something “becomes X,” X is
the final form or state, not the mere potential or starting point. A principle of change is more
completely realized in the final form X, which is why we should correlate this principle with
the form toward which a change tends, rather than its relatively amorphous beginning. Here
Aristotle has in mind biological development. The “nature” of an organism is more properly
defined by its mature form than by its seemingly amorphous seed. We may say that the more
mature form is somehow contained in the seed, namely, as a molecular program that can
generate the mature form.

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4. Abstract versus Natural Forms

A common criticism of the discussion of natural forms is that this confuses formal abstraction
with natural reality. Yet this criticism itself confuses Aristotelianism with Platonism. Aristotle
was highly aware of the distinction between formalism and nature, a distinction which seemed
to have escaped Plato in the Timaeus. A natural object does not have the same kind of reality
as a mathematical abstraction, yet at the same time mathematical forms are highly relevant to
determinations of natural reality. Any account of natural forms ought to clarify the
relationship between physics and formal thought systems such as mathematics.

Mathematicians, though they ponder attributes that can be held by physical objects, such as
shape, area, and volume, consider these properties in abstraction from any physical object.
The same is done by those metaphysicians, such as the Platonists, who think of Ideas as stand-
alone entities. They are mentally abstracting forms from matter, but committing the mistake
of thinking that such forms are really physically separable.

It may seem strange that we can successfully analyze forms as though they did not pertain to
any definite object, which can never be the case in physical reality. Mathematical forms are
related to each other in a logical or formal structure of hypothetical thought. Supposing
Proposition A to be true about some mathematical forms, then Proposition B would also be
true. The fact that there is some relational structure among mathematical forms, independent
of their existence in some determinate object, suggests that forms have some existence
independent of matter, as Plato thought. Yet for Aristotle, the reality of forms did not imply
an existence separate from matter. Form is separable from its matter only in thought, not in
natural reality. This was especially obvious to Aristotle since, in his time, mathematics was
abstracted from motion, i.e., static, and therefore removed from physical reality.

Today, we have a much more powerful mathematics, which can model motion by treating
time as a parameter along some curve. Since we can now discuss dynamics in mathematical
abstraction, the distinction between mathematics and physics is less obvious. It is clear that
mathematics may be invoked to analyze the dynamics of natural objects, yet the same
mathematics has broader application, and can be considered in abstraction of any determinate
physical system. Indeed, the mathematical formalism will hold just as well whether we
interpret the parameter as time or as simply another real-valued variable. Our interpretation of
differential calculus as representing motion is just one of many possible models; more
generally, it describes the correlative variation of two or more variable quantities. We can
interpret this as a “rate of change” only if we define one variable to represent time. Although
it has physical applicability, mathematics as such is concerned only with number, extension,
and the variation of these, abstracted from any physical object. Those sciences which use
mathematical objects are concerned with them, not qua mathematical objects, but as models
of physically real properties. Since the physical application is but a special case of the
generalized mathematics, the logic binding the mathematical structure will also bind the
structure of the physical system, insofar as the mathematical form truly characterizes the
physical system.

When a mathematical form characterizes some physical property or relation (or system of
such), it might be said that the mathematical form and the physical form are one and the same.
This does not mean, however, that the physical form is separable from its matter. The
distinction between mathematical form and physical form is mental. A form is mathematical
when we consider it in abstraction from any determinate object bearing it.

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5. Explanatory Factors in Physics

The essential objective in physics is to explain changes in the sensible world, by appeal to
more fundamental principles of change. To define the scope of physical inquiry, we must
have a sense of what it means to explain a phenomenon. Aristotle famously identified four
kinds of explanation, which have come to be known as the “four causes.” This nomenclature
is unfortunate, since most of these do not correspond to what we would understand by
causality. Still, the Latin causa does capture something of the Greek aition, which literally
means “blame.” When we explain something in terms of more fundamental principles, we are
answering the question “Why?” in one of its several possible senses. We are identifying those
factors which are “to blame” for a phenomenon, i.e., are responsible for its appearance.

Some might object that physics is not concerned with the “why,” but only the “how” or
“what.” If physics were truly restricted to the “what,” it would be purely descriptive, not
explanatory. At most we might describe certain properties as correlated to other properties,
yet even this entails an inquiry into some underlying formal relation, which is at least
implicitly explanatory. Scientists have proven many such formal relations, so it is senseless to
affirm that physics is restricted to the “what.” Still, it might more credibly be asserted that
physics is concerned with “how” rather than “why,” as the latter seems to imply purposive
intent in nature. Yet in the act of describing “how” a physical process occurs, we necessarily
introduce material, formal, and efficient causation as explanatory factors. That these are
within the scope of the question “Why?” can hardly be disputed, once it is admitted that this
does not directly require purposive intent. Indeed, we will see that even the controversial
“final cause” of Aristotle does not immediately require intentionality in nature.

Aristotle’s discussion of the four “explanatory factors” (following Richard Hope’s felicitous
translation of aitia) is famously “object-oriented,” but there is no reason why these factors
need to be limited to accounting for a substantial object. They might just as well be applied to
account for the appearance of a property, or to account for the process of change itself.

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5.1 Material

If we want to account for the presence of some substance, or some property, or some process,
we need to consider some underlying material aspect. We have already seen that matter is a
necessary presupposition of sensible substance, from which it follows that any property, being
existentially dependent on some substance, likewise depends on matter for its manifestation.
If we were to deny the need for matter, we must deny that there is anything persistent in the
reality of natural objects. The only viable alternative to our ontology is process ontology, such
as that of Heraclitus. Yet if all that exists is change itself, and not some thing that changes, it
is not clear what we are affirming to exist. Further, if there is no persistent aspect to reality, all
that exists is a succession of states, with nothing to bind them, as in a continuous generation
out of nothing, which is impossible according to the consensus of natural philosophers. Were
generation out of nothing as such(i.e., for no reason) possible, then absolutely anything could
occur at any time, which is utterly contrary to what we observe.

Most natural philosophers, ancient and modern, uncontroversially accept the need for some
material factor in physical explanations. In fact, the pre-Socratic Ionians all tried to explain
the world exclusively in terms of material factors, without reference to form. In hindsight, we
can see that their account of matter included some elemental forms, but we may still consider
their explanations materialistic in some sense. The underlying substance beneath a more
macroscopic form may be considered the “matter” of the macroscopic substance. For example,
bronze is the matter of a statue, though bronze itself, on a chemical level, has its own proper
form. Since the essential chemical characteristics of bronze are not altered in the process of
sculpting the statue, both the matter and form of bronze can be said to constitute the persistent
“matter” that is changed into a statue. In short, material explanations of change appeal to
some underlying persistent substratum beneath the sensible change.

Material explanations are obviously incomplete, since the underlying matter must itself have
form, unless we are speaking of so-called “prime matter,” abstracted from all properties.
Prime matter, being utterly homogeneous and persistent, cannot suffice to explain change,
especially qualitative alteration. So we must introduce form as an explanatory factor at some
point.

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5.2 Formal

A form consists of characteristic qualitative and relational aspects of a being, enabling us to

say what kind of a being it is. Identification of form can have physical explanatory power to
the extent that form defines how a being can initiate certain kinds of change. For example,
when we determine whether a certain being has the form of an “electron” or a “neutron,” we
can know whether it is capable of electromagnetic force interactions. Knowledge of the
characteristic properties of these forms helps explain determinate physical activities, so such
form deserves to be called an aition in physics.
Formal causes can be misused, however, as not all forms have physical explanatory power.
Failure to recognize this truth was a principal cause of the stagnation in theoretical physics
among Aristotelians. Once it is believed that you have explained a thing physically by giving
a formal definition, then physics is reduced to purely verbal analysis. In our examples of the
electron and neutron, by contrast, knowledge of natural characteristics is gained only after
painstaking observation and testing hypotheses. Only by repeated testing can we learn, to a
high degree of probability, which properties are essential and which are merely accidental (i.e.,
dependent on particular circumstances, and not intrinsic to the kind of thing being studied).

Since a form is typically characterized by a quality or set of qualities, the question of which
forms are natural came to be expressed as a distinction between primary and secondary
qualities. Primary qualities are real physical properties that explain sensible changes, while
secondary qualities are merely superficial, derivative appearances that have no physical power
of themselves, save that of the primary qualities that underlie them. For example, we might
consider “roughness” to be a secondary quality, as it is merely an epiphenomenon resulting
from the shape and spatial distribution of a substance’s constituent particles. Still, even
secondary qualities might be treated as natural forms, as the roughness or smoothness of a
surface can have real physical explanatory power, accounting for the strength or weakness of
the force of friction.

Some secondary qualities, however, have no physical explanatory power whatsoever.

Whether a piece of clothing is classified as a cardigan or a sweater tells us nothing about
physics. The distinguishing qualities of such garments are chosen arbitrarily for ease of
classification, but do not correspond to a distinction in natural principles of change. We may
impose such arbitrary distinctions even on natural objects. We might classify plants by how
many branches they have, but this would not identify natural species. When we categorize
natural objects into types, we must take care to show that these distinctions are correlated to
different abilities to effect physical change.

Form may consist of relations, rather than qualities inhering in a concrete object. In modern
physics and chemistry, we more commonly express form in terms of mathematical equations,
which signify formal relations among various physical properties. Thus form may be an
explanatory factor of properties abstracted from substances, and even of processes. This
means that the use of “formal cause” need not confine us to an object-oriented physics.

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5.3 Efficient

The third type of explanatory factor, traditionally called “efficient cause,” agrees with what
we ordinarily mean by a “cause,” as in “cause and effect.” This was true in Aristotle’s time no
less than our own. Still, this common notion is not so perspicuous when we examine it closely.
A cause is the primary source or origin of a physical change (or resistance to change). It is not
immediately clear why this description of our intuition should not just as well apply to the
material and formal “causes” discussed earlier. In fact, Aristotle allows that the formal and
efficient causes may in some cases coincide, but why should not the material be regarded as
the primary source of a change?

Recall that matter as such is the persistent aspect of a being, and the unchanged as such
cannot account for change. Thus matter cannot be an efficient cause of physical change.
Matter, however, never exists by itself, but as an aspect of some substance with definite form.
Thus matter might be considered to contribute to efficient causation incidentally, by making
possible the existence of the substance that effects change.

Efficient causation is something much broader than the intuition of substances affecting other
substances. The efficient cause of a change might not be a substance, but rather some other
change or process. This agrees with most modern physical analysis of causality, where we
speak of events causing events. We consider one process or activity to be the origin or source
of another process or activity. Transfers of momentum or energy are common examples of
such causation.

In physics, it is commonly believed that an efficient cause is necessary to account for every
natural phenomenon. When a scientist says, “There must be a rational explanation for this,”
he generally means that there must be some physical efficient cause underlying an
unexplained phenomenon. That efficient cause or origin of change may be a substance or
process; in any case, there is a sense that we cannot get something for nothing. Physical
change does not occur for no reason. While it is impossible to prove empirically that this will
always be the case, so far science has been able to progress admirably on the assumption that
every natural phenomenon has some underlying efficient cause.

The notion of efficient causation is relevant to our conceptualization of time, since an efficient
cause must be temporally prior to its effect, or perhaps simultaneous with it, but never
posterior to it. Thus the direction of efficient causation is aligned with our intuitive direction
of time. This has led to a convenient shorthand in relativistic models, where “events” are
represented as spatiotemporal points, which may be in causal relationship with each other
depending on their relative location with respect to each other’s “light cone.” This useful
representation should not be taken as proof that spatiotemporal points are themselves “events”
(i.e., processes) with causal efficacy. Rather, these points indicate possible “locations” of
events, which may or may not be efficacious, depending on their determinate physical
activities.

At first glance, it might seem that “efficient cause” is just another name for what we have
already called a “nature,” since both are described as an origin or source of sensible change.
In fact, these concepts are overlapping, but not coextensive. A substance is said to “have a
nature” only insofar as it contains a principle of change by virtue of its intrinsic constitution.
Yet there can be causation even when there is no such intrinsic principle acting directly. We
may distinguish between when an object changes or moves by virtue of its intrinsic
constitution and when it is changed or moved by some extrinsic force, as in the classical
distinction between “natural” and “violent” motion. An external force may result directly
from the intrinsic or “natural” impetus of some other substance, or it might be merely an
effect of some other external force. While it seems that all violent motion must ultimately be
referable to some natural origin, it is nonetheless clear that efficient causation can occur even
when there is no “nature” directly at play.

A “nature,” we have noted, may be defined by the form toward which it tends, so it is no
surprise that “nature” and “efficient cause” may coincide, insofar as a form may act as an
efficient cause. That is to say, the properties or intrinsic constitution of a substance may serve
as the origin or source of some change. Yet there may be efficient causation even without
direct reference to a substance’s form, as happens with violent motion. We may see a process,
expressed as force or energy, as itself an efficient cause, without reference to anything
substantial.

Still, it would seem that efficient causation ultimately depends on some kind of form, not only
because all violent change is ultimately referable to some natural origin, but also because even
extrinsic forces possess a kind of form. This form is expressed in terms of mathematical
relations such as so-called “laws” of conservation or force equations. Here the form is not (so
far as we know) the set of properties of some substance, but the structure of a relation
between two or more properties or activities, considered in abstraction from their determinate
subjects.

Demonstrating the presence of causation by observation can be problematic, so much so that

several empiricists, notably Hume and Russell, have argued that science could do without the
notion of causality. Instead, we may speak only of phenomena being more or less strongly
correlated. If we observe that phenomenon B always occurs after phenomenon A, we can use
A to predict the occurrence of B, but there is no way to prove that A is in any way the source
or origin of B. Succession in time is no proof of origin, since it could be that both A and B
originate from some unknown cause C, which generates A and B sequentially.

This critique of causality would be sound if physical analysis were restricted to mathematics.
There is indeed no way to demonstrate causality from purely quantitative relationships. In
Newtonian mechanics, where an initial state A strongly determines a final state B via a fixed
equation, it is no less true that B determines A, but no one says that the future causes the past.
Some physical relations, such as statistical mechanical phenomena, are not time-reversible,
but this does not prove that each successive state is caused by the prior. If anything, the
mathematics suggests that the formal relations described by equations “cause” or generate the
succession of states, though each state, once determined, affects the determination of a later
state. It is commonplace in science to admit that “correlation does not prove causality,” but
then what does?

It is one thing to deny that we can formally demonstrate that one thing is the efficient cause of
another, but it is another thing to say that there is no causality in nature. If there were no
causality, but just a succession of things that “happen to happen,” our physical explanations
would be reduced to mere description, no matter how quantitatively detailed they may be.
Further, it would follow that it is not at all necessary for any phenomenon to have a natural
origin or source. In this view, we routinely get something out of nothing all the time, but if
this were so, there would be nothing to prevent absolutely anything happening, without
respect to any formal mathematical law or structure. This is so far from what we observe that
we need not consider it.

While it is practically certain that there is causality in nature, as is the common consensus of
scientists, who indeed pursue science in order to understand causes, it is nonetheless
problematic to demonstrate that something is a cause in a determinate instance. If we are to
have any hope of showing physical causality, our analysis must admit something besides
mathematics.

Causation can be apprehended by observations of a different order than quantitative

description. This is often characterized as perception of a “mechanism” by which a
phenomenon occurs. Consider yourself walking on a sidewalk, and stepping on a hard,
cylindrical unopened pine cone. You feel your foot roll with the pine cone and lift into the air,
upon which you lose your balance and fall to the pavement. It would be extraordinarily obtuse
to deny that your fall was caused by stepping on the pine cone. Even though we have not
made any statistical analysis of repeated trials, you are convinced of causation because you
felt the resistance and rolling of the pine cone affect your step, and felt yourself lose balance
as your foot rose into the air. This continuum of force interaction, by virtue of its immediacy,
presents powerful evidence of causation as an origin of action. When we directly perceive one
action seamlessly growing out of another, there is no longer a question of mere correlation
between two discrete events, but instead we apprehend a continuous whole from start to finish.
If you were to fall several steps after stepping on the pine cone, by contrast, you may be less
certain as to whether the first event caused the latter. Other intervening factors may have
contributed, so that the sequence of events was mere coincidence. Immediacy and continuity
are necessary to convince us of causality.

This is amply borne out by how physicists have historically conceived of causality. Some of
the most convincingly causal phenomena are those of mechanics, where there is direct contact
between objects, transferring force, momentum, or energy from one to another. For this
reason, physicists were long reluctant to admit any action-at-a-distance, and have tried to
explain forces between distant objects in terms of direct contact with a local field. The
seamlessness of causality is even more apparent when we consider, instead of interacting
objects, the continuous change of a single object, as in local motion, growth, or alteration. If
we were to deny causality here, we would have to admit an innumerable succession of states
not caused by each other or sharing a common cause, though they are infinitesimally removed
from each other (in location, size or quality, in the examples given). This is no less absurd
than denying the reality of change, insisting that one thing pops into existence after another,
with no underlying persistent being. Clearly, it is infinitely more parsimonious to admit there
is a single underlying cause for the continuum of action. Whether we conceive of this as one
state causing the next, or as a single cause generating the continuum of states, the reality of
efficient cause is unavoidable.

Our analysis is consistent with the basic idea that efficient cause is a source or origin of action,
for in the continuum described, each action is an outgrowth of what preceded. It is no accident
that causality produces successive actions in time, since time itself is defined by the
succession of events. In fact, it is not altogether clear if the notions of causality and time are
separable.

When we are dealing with sensible change, efficient cause is an origin with respect to time,
which is the measure of sensible change. Still, it is conceivable that there could be a broader
notion of efficient cause, which is an “origin” of change in an atemporal sense. Such a cause
would be properly metaphysical, insofar as it is not immersed in the order of time that defines
sensible changes.

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5.4 Final

The so-called “final cause” or telos is by far the most controversial of Aristotle’s four
explanatory factors, since it seems to invert cause and effect and bring conscious
intentionality into nature. This perception results from abuses of the principle found among
the late Scholastics, as well as misinterpretations of Aristotle, resulting from his frequent use
of analogies between art and nature. In fact, the telos does not immediately imply
intentionality or deliberation in nature, nor is it meant to be a “cause” in the sense of a source
of change.

The notion of final cause entails that certain natural processes tend toward some definite end,
or at least along a definite trajectory, which is a path or endpoint “preferred” over others. This
“preference” is not to be understood as a conscious choice (except when a conscious being is
the agent), but it simply expresses that the process is so structured as to tend toward one
outcome (or set of outcomes) rather than another, and this is not by mere chance or
materialistic necessity.

Those who deny that there is any telos in natural processes must explain them in terms of
chance or necessity. For example, if rain falls and nourishes crops, or spoils them by falling
too frequently, it should not be said that rain fell in order to nourish the crops or to spoil them,
but that this was mere chance or coincidence. In other words, the causal mechanism of the
water cycle is incidental or accidental to the needs of the crops. Yet even here, there is not
pure chance or coincidence, since rain arises by a definite mechanism, as is proved in part by
the fact that it is regularly more frequent in certain seasons, which should not be the case with
a purely random phenomenon. Any natural process that regularly leads to a similar end (even
if outcomes are not strongly determined or identical) cannot be explained by chance alone.

The question remains whether natural processes are determined by materialistic necessity or
tendency toward some form. Ontogenesis provides a test case for these interpretations. The
embryological development of an animal proceeds through definite stages, in apparent
analogy to building a house. Just as each intermediate stage in house construction exists not
for its own sake, but as a means to the next stage, and ultimately the completed stage or telos,
so too do intermediate stages of embryological development have no function other than to
make possible the completion of the mature form, which alone is capable of acting as a fully
autonomous animal, finding its own food and reproducing.

This teleological interpretation need not exclude the presence of mechanistic causality in the
execution of the process, just as there is efficient causation in the building of a house, but
there is still a role for the telos in explaining the intermediate stages. Recall that the telos is an
explanatory factor, not a “cause” in the ordinary sense. We should not have given a full
physical explanation of ontogenesis if we just described the mechanism in each stage of
development, while ignoring that the process as a whole is tending toward a definite form. A
telos has explanatory power even in modern biology, as it is helpful to study embryonic
structures in light of the function they will have in a mature form. Lungs are useless to a
human fetus, yet they must develop early enough so that they will be ready to function after
birth. We cannot fully account for their presence in the fetus without reference to the mature
form.

Objections to teleology in nature are grounded in the belief that this directly implies conscious
planning or intent in natural processes, analogous to that of an architect designing a building.
No such implication is necessary; in fact, Aristotle uses the telos to account for phenomena in
organisms that emphatically do not act by conscious art or deliberation. Examples include a
spider spinning its web in order to catch prey and a plant growing leaves for the benefit of its
fruit. No philosopher contends that the spider or the plant are capable of deliberation in these
complex processes. Nonetheless, the processes cannot be explained without reference to their
end. If we said that a spider spins a web only because it happens to have spinnerets with this
capability, we would not be fully accounting for the web. The need to capture prey to eat is
highly relevant to this process, even if the fulfillment of this need is not mediated by
conscious planning. Likewise, the function of leaves in nourishing and shielding fruit cannot
be ignored in our physical account of leaves, even before the fruit actually forms. It is
precisely because such processes do not happen by art, but by nature, that we attribute a telos
to nature.

A telos can be a useful explanatory factor even within the current neo-Darwinian paradigm in
biology, which explains phylogeny in terms of natural selection of random variations. The
notion of adaptation implies an end; a creature always adapts “to” something; i.e., its
constitution is changed for the sake of maximizing its chances of survival and reproduction in
its current environment. There need not be any conscious intent in such variation; changes in
genetic code may be accidental to the end of survival, while only those changes that happen to
improve chances of survival and propagation will be more widely occurrent in the long run.
The telos is not a conscious goal, but the consummation of a process. When a population of
similar creatures is sufficiently well adapted to sustain its numbers, the relative absence of
threat diminishes the need for constitutional change, so we have a more or less stabilized type
that we identify as a species. The form of the species was not a preconceived goal, but the
consummation or completion of a process of adaptation, which might be renewed again as
new dangers arise.

A natural process toward some definite end or trajectory might be impeded by external forces,
no less than any other natural motion. We may say such a process is frustrated when an
extrinsic factor causes it to be terminated in some intermediate stage, or else redirected toward
some abnormal outcome. This occurs, for example, with monstrous births caused by exposure
to chemicals or radiation. Yet Aristotle, not being a strong determinist, allows that even the
natural process itself can “make a mistake,” occasionally producing the wrong outcome. This
interpretation is compatible with modern findings that many biological and chemical
processes are sufficiently complicated as to have a stochastic aspect, best modeled on the
assumption of randomness within constraints. In any case, failure to produce the “preferred”
outcome (i.e., the outcome toward which the process is structured) is accidental to the
teleological aspect of the process, and such alternative outcomes do not constitute alternative
teloi.

While a telos is not a conscious goal, it is still something more than a mere endpoint
(eschatos). The temporal end (eschatos) of an animal is its death, yet death is by no means the
consummation or completion of the animal, but its corruption and disintegration. Death is not
the telos of the animal, but its undoing. While it is alive, the animal’s biological processes are
structured to help it survive as best they can, until they can achieve this no longer. In many
species of insects and fish, an individual is designed to sacrifice itself at a certain stage of
development, once it has secured the generation of offspring. Even here, death is not a telos,
but a means to another end.

Teleology need not be confined to biology, if we admit that a telos need not be a definite
endpoint, but is instead a preferred trajectory or tendency that may continue indefinitely. In
physics, this may be represented by the direction of a force or momentum vector, for example.
Motion of an object characterized by such a vector may be explained as definitely aiming in
some direction, so that we may use this direction to explain the motion, rather than seeing it
solely as a succession of states causing each other. Admitting the reality of this definite
tendency or aim enables us to project and predict future motion along the preferred trajectory,
which will certainly occur unless something intervenes. Telos is a real explanatory factor,
adding to our understanding, even if it does not correspond to a distinct causal agent.

In reality, the telos may sometimes be identical with the form or with the efficient cause. The
example of ontogenesis suggests an identity with form, while a force vector represents both
the efficient cause and the future trajectory or telos.

Even with these clarifications, the arguments for natural teleology may prove unconvincing, if
we could show that all apparent finality in nature is adequately accounted by some
combination of chance and material necessity. To consider such a possibility, we must first
clarify what is meant by chance and necessity in nature.

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6. Chance or Randomness
The terms “randomness” and “chance” are often used in the context of physical explanations,
but it is not clear if such concepts really explain anything, or if they declare the absence of an
explanation. Further, it is unclear if there really is any such thing as an essentially random
physical process, or if events are random only accidentally, meaning they are not directly
linked to each other by causality, though each is driven by its own chain of efficient causes.
Natural randomness or chance may also be confused with “luck,” which is chance considered
in the context of outcomes we expect or prefer.

There is certainly such a thing as luck or chance at least in an accidental sense. To use
Aristotle’s example, if someone goes to a marketplace and happens to encounter someone he
wished to meet, such as a debtor, he would consider this to be lucky. This means merely that
he went to the marketplace for some purpose other than collecting repayment, this latter
benefit being accidental. It does not imply that he or his debtor went to the marketplace for no
reason.

Sometimes natural philosophers have appealed to luck or chance as an explanation of origins,

when they have exhausted the materialist causes they ascribe to terrestrial affairs. Thus the
heavens are said to have been created by random motions of matter, organizing itself into
definite forms. Yet it is strange, Aristotle observes, to try to reduce terrestrial affairs, where
we observe luck or chance, to material necessity, and at the same time to ascribe the
formation of the heavens, which behave with regularity, to chance. A modern analog of this
paradox is found among modern materialists, who try to reduce all biology, including
humanity, to deterministic necessity, yet invoke randomness or chance when explaining the
origin of species, or of celestial bodies, or of the cosmos and the natural order itself. Why
bother demanding physical explanations for complex phenomena if chance is at the bottom of
everything?

It would seem that such invocations of chance or randomness are designed to dismiss
objections to gaps in one’s physical theories, or to put a limit to scientific inquiry. If it were
really the case that chance is a fundamental principle of nature, it should be incumbent upon
scientists to produce a theory of natural randomness. Only quantum mechanics might
constitute or at least approximate such a theory. All other scientific theories that invoke
randomness merely borrow from classical mathematical probability theory, supposing an
underlying physical determinism.
Any theory of randomness ought to begin with a clear definition of the subject of inquiry.
Aristotle attempted to define “chance” and “luck” as follows. We attribute to “chance” those
events that happen to some end or result, but not with the end-result in view. “Luck” is a
special case of chance, when we are dealing with possible choices made by beings capable of
conscious choice. “Chance” phenomena can be driven by some efficient cause which results
in some end, but not for the sake of that end. In other words, the end result is not a natural
telos of the process that yielded it. This can be demonstrated by multiple iterations of the
process, which only occasionally yield that result. If the process contains no intrinsic tendency
toward the result in question, then we may say the outcome is due to chance.

This preliminary definition can be refined with the aid of modern probability theory, though
we already see that randomness and teleology are competing modes of explanation. We
attribute an outcome to chance insofar as we deny that there was any teleological link between
process and result. We need not deny efficient causation, for it could be that the outcome
results from two or more causal factors that are independent in their immediate origin.

Classical probability theory, developed in the ethos of seventeenth-century mechanism,

presupposes an underlying determinism. Randomness is only apparent, with respect to our
ignorance of determinate initial conditions. All physically possible states are assumed to be
equally likely, and the probability of an outcome is computed by taking the number of states
corresponding to that outcome as a fraction of the total number of possible states.

If we are dealing with physical possibility (as opposed to mere logical or conceptual
possibility), then “possibility” must mean that which can be done physically, i.e., by some
physical process. There are two ways in which the same physical process can produce
different results. First, the process may start from various initial conditions that affect
outcome. This is compatible with strong determinism, and in such cases apparent randomness
is due to our ignorance of initial conditions. Second, it could be that the process itself is not
strongly deterministic, so that it may produce different outcomes even from identical initial
conditions. Quantum mechanics seems to describe such processes, though some have argued
that there is an underlying determinism to these phenomena.

In the first case, where apparent randomness is due to ignorance of initial conditions, the
classical assumption of equal probability of all possible final states presumes that the
distribution of initial states is not biased toward one outcome over another. This can only be
the case if the process of preparing an initial state is indifferent to the outcome of the trial in
question, hence the assumption has been called the “principle of indifference.” In practice,
this usually means that the process of preparation is sufficiently complex as to defy prediction,
even in a deterministic system, due to the difficulty of computation or sensitivity to initial
conditions. Familiar processes of preparation include shuffling a deck of cards or shaking a
die, both of which, though presumably deterministic and causally linked to outcome, are
sufficiently complicated as to effectively “randomize” the initial state, so that we are no more
likely to prepare a state that favors some particular outcome.

The principle of indifference also entails that the process itself is indifferent to outcome. We
assume that the act of a released die tumbling through the air does not favor one outcome over
another. When this assumption is false, as in the case of a loaded or weighted die, we will
have an uneven distribution of final states.
We can test the principle of indifference empirically by conducting repeated trials and
computing the frequency of each final state. We might even choose to define probability in
terms of such frequency, which would allow us to treat systems where discrete states do not
have equal probability.

This talk of “indifference” or “favoring” outcomes seems to anthropomorphize nature, which

begs the question as to how we should interpret probability. Is it just a measure of our
ignorance, with equal probabilities grounded only in a “principle of insufficient reason”? Or is
it a measure of a real propensity or tendency for a process to produce one outcome rather than
another? A third interpretation would be that the only physical reality to probability is the
frequency of outcomes; what we call probability is just a useful computational tool. This
frequentist model takes probability outside the realm of pure mathematics, for we cannot
know the probability of anything without taking some real measurements.

Frequentist probability would define the probability of an outcome to be the limit of the ratio
of that outcome’s frequency to the number of trials as the number of trials becomes arbitrarily
large. There are some situations where we can know this limit with exact certitude, as in
drawing from a deck of cards. Given that we always cycle through the same deck of cards, the
probability of drawing the ace of spades is certainly 1/52 in the long run. Yet what about
rolling a die? What is there to guarantee, for example, that we will eventually roll a 4? We can
invoke the “law of large numbers” only if we rely on the axiomatizable probability theory of
mathematics. If probabilities are grounded in frequency, on the other hand, we have no such
guarantee, since we cannot assume the equal probability of states, but must observe it.

An apparent physical correlate of the law of large numbers is the ergodic principle, which
states that all physically accessible microstates become equiprobable over a sufficiently long
period of time. This is a theoretical assumption, not something proved, and it can only be
approximately verified in particular systems by observation.

In probability theory, we characterize events as “independent” if one event’s outcome does

not alter the probability of another event’s outcome. In this situation, we can find the
combined probability of two outcomes (one in each event) by simply multiplying the
probabilities. On the other hand, we have dependent or “conditional” probability when the
outcome of one event affects the probability of a subsequent event. If we have drawn the ace
of spades from a deck, then the probability of drawing the queen of hearts now becomes 1/51.

It could be that, in reality, all probability is conditional. After all, when we ask “What is the
probability of X?” as a physical problem, this is never done in a void, but with some
determinate physical assumptions or conditions. Thus the range of possibilities is limited or
conditioned by physical laws or states. If there were absolutely unconditional randomness,
with a total lack of constraint on outcome, we would deny the first tenet of natural philosophy,
namely that nothing comes out of nothing as such. Even the apparently natural randomness of
quantum mechanics operates within some definite (though perhaps not absolute) constraints.

If all probability is indeed conditional, then our characterization of events as “independent”

can only be an approximation. All physical events are causally related if one goes back far
enough (in the order of causality, though not necessarily in time), so when we say they are
“independent,” we just mean that their causal kinship is sufficiently remote that their
probabilities are now so weakly correlated as to be unmeasurable. This can happen swiftly
even in systems supposed to be deterministic, such as weather patterns, due to
hypersensitivity to initial conditions.

Probabilistic independence, nonetheless, is an axiom underlying the theory of quantum

mechanics. The probability space of a system is indirectly represented by a Hilbert space
spanned by vectors representing possible states. The squared inner product of vectors in this
space yields probabilities, so orthogonal vectors represent mutually exclusive states. A Hilbert
space is applicable to quantum mechanics because of the theory’s superposition principle,
which supposes the absence of interaction among eigenstates; i.e., their independence.
Without such supposition, you could not have the sum of the probabilities of eigenstates equal
unity.

For randomness to have an explanatory role in physics, it must be somehow related to

physical causality. If natural randomness were genuinely acausal, it would not be an
explanation, but the absence of explanation. We might more readily accept natural
randomness if it is mere indeterminacy of outcome within a causal mechanism; i.e., the same
cause may produce various outcomes as possible effects.

Non-deterministic systems may actually be more clearly expressive of causality than

deterministic systems. Strong determinism has a time symmetry where the future determines
the past no less certainly than the past determines the future. In statistical mechanics, by
contrast, we find temporal asymmetry, so that an initial state clearly leads to a future state by
some stochastic process which is irreversible. For example, a drop of ink in a tank of water
will eventually be dispersed evenly throughout the tank, but we will never see the reverse
process, though it is not absolutely impossible. The reason for this bias from heterogeneity to
homogeneity is that there are innumerably many more possible states resembling a
homogeneous state than there are for the ink to remain concentrated in a drop. Here we use
classical probability theory, appealing to the sheer number of possibilities.

Yet, in quantum mechanics, we have weighted probabilities even at the most fundamental
level, without counting numbers of microstates. These unequal probabilities may be modeled
by the orientation of a state vector with respect to eigenvectors, the latter corresponding to
observable states. Still, we have a temporal asymmetry, due to the “collapse of the
wavefunction” following a measurement (i.e., an interaction) and the time evolution of the
wavefunction between measurements.

The conceptual problem of quantum randomness is that it appears to be fundamentally acausal,

which is why so many physicists have fiercely resisted the Copenhagen interpretation.
Although the time-dependent Schrödinger equation is strongly deterministic, and probability
distributions are predictable, there is apparently no reason whatsoever why, in a given
measurement, the outcome is one value rather than another. So perplexing is this problem,
which seems to make a mockery of the need for physical explanation, that some have dared to
postulate that all possibilities are in fact realized, in uncountably many universes. This highly
unparsimonious “many-worlds” hypothesis would posit an infinity of universes to explain one,
which is hardly less illogical than acausality.

If, however, we admit the possibility of physical non-determinism as consistent with causality,
then there may be no reason to regard quantum randomness as acausal. After all, no quantum
state comes out of nowhere, but is within the range of possibilities (or potentialities) defined
by a wavefunction. The causal process is structured in such a way to admit various outcomes
with differing frequencies. We cannot say “why” this outcome rather than another possibility
was realized, but the outcome nonetheless has an intelligible cause. The fact that this cause
had the power to effect other outcomes does not make it less efficacious in producing the
observed outcome.

The admission of genuine randomness in nature, nonetheless, would entail confessing that
physics cannot be a complete explanation of reality. Yet we should never have expected it to
be, since from the outset we have confined its domain to the sensible world, and any physical
theory relies on certain “givens” that are not to be explained by anything else.

[Top]

7. Necessity
It is no less common to appeal to “necessity” as a mode of physical explanation, and indeed
this was the dominant mode during the heyday of strong determinism (17th-19th centuries). In
the Scholastic period, a different sort of “necessity” was invoked, that of formal rational
demonstration. When we speak of “necessity” in physics, we must be careful to indicate its
similarities and differences with more abstract notions.

Physical necessity, much like chance, can be an anti-teleological mode of explanation. When
a process apparently acts toward some end, we may deny this by saying that it acts out of
necessity. In other words, it is not with any end in view, but because it cannot act otherwise.
Earlier, we noted that the vectorial tendencies of bodies may be interpreted teleologically. A
necessitarian alternative is to view such tendency as a strongly determined quality of a body.

When we say something cannot act otherwise, we refer to physical impossibility. Thus
physical necessity ought to be distinguished from logical, metaphysical or mathematical
necessity. Something may be physically impossible while still being logically conceivable, i.e.
involving no logical contradiction, or metaphysically possible, i.e., possible under some
logically and metaphysically viable natural order other than that observed in our world.
Mathematical necessity is akin to logical necessity, except we add certain axioms about
number and extension to the axioms of logic. Physical necessity need not imply these other
kinds of necessity.

It may seem that the converse should hold, i.e., that anything logically, metaphysically or
mathematically necessary should also be physically necessary, since the former are stronger
conditions. Yet this ignores that physical necessity differs also in kind, not just in scope.
Logical, metaphysical or mathematical necessity should not be mistaken for physical causes
or explanations, even though it is true that physics cannot violate these higher criteria.
Aristotelian physics languished under this error of supposing that giving formal reasons was
equivalent to giving physical explanations.

Physical necessity means that an effect arises under strict compulsion resulting from some
natural principle, which at the same time prevents any alternative effect from being produced.
Strongly deterministic systems operate under physical necessity. The “necessity” derives from
the constitution of the natural principle, which is such that it invariably produces the same
effect in a given condition.
Note that necessity is not the same as having a probability of 1. When we say something is
necessary, we mean that there is some reason why this must always be so, not simply that it is
always the case that this is so (as in so-called material implications). In the case of physical
necessity, there is some physical reason or explanatory factor that accounts for the inevitable
outcome.

Necessity may be contrasted with contingency, with the latter meaning that something is only
occurrent under certain conditions. A contingent phenomenon depends on the occurrence of
something else. That occurrence in turn may be contingent or necessary. If it is necessary, we
have no need for recourse to further contingencies, for it is physically impossible for things to
have been otherwise.

Even strongly deterministic physics may rely on contingencies, since the necessity it describes
is contingent upon some determinate set of initial conditions. A strongly deterministic physics
would not be fully necessitarian unless it was also affirmed that the initial conditions, or some
infinite regress of conditions, were a matter of physical necessity. This would be akin to what
the ancients called Fate, and indeed the Greeks used the same word ananke, which means
compulsion, to describe fate or necessity.

There is another kind of necessity, called suppositional, where we impose constraints in view
of some supposed end. For example, when we some surgery is physically necessary, we do
not mean that it is strongly determined, but that it must occur on the supposition that the
patient’s life is to be saved. In other words, the process is needed in order to obtain a specified
result. This kind of necessity may impose constraints on the form an object may have. For
example, if a tool is to be used for cutting, it can only have certain kinds of shapes and
sufficiently durable material.

Suppositional necessity is compatible with teleology, though it does not require consciously
intended goals. “Given that X performs a certain function, its material and formal aspects
must fall within these parameters.” Such reasoning is helpful to physical investigation, and is
properly in the domain of physics, since we use our knowledge of nature to determine what
the constraints must be. We should not take such reasoning, however, as proof that the
eventual function or result is an efficient cause or intended goal of the physical form. This
mode of argument is found in modern discussions of the “anthropic principle” and other
attempts to explain apparent “fine-tuning” in nature. Most physicists who use these arguments
do not seem to fully appreciate that they are invoking a different kind of physical necessity
from that of efficient causality.

Aristotle was anti-necessitarian in the sense of opposing material necessity. The structure of
natural objects is not determined by elemental matter. Things do not organize themselves
simply by their material constituents falling into place, sorted by heaviness or size. Formal
principles must also be present in nature, and these direct processes toward definite ends.
They do this not with absolute necessity, for they can often err, but they have a power of
building. This conceptualization of natures as having powers of growth or construction, rather
than acting under pure compulsion, enabled Aristotle to free himself from the fatalism of most
Greek philosophy and religion. In a fatalistic world, nothing would really have the power to
do anything, but all would be mere puppets of a mysterious Fate. Non-fatalism affirms that
natural objects have real powers to effect change, and not just the appearance of such power.
This anti-fatalism helps explain why Aristotle opposed natural motion to violent motion. A
natural power as such is not under extrinsic compulsion, but is a source of activity in the
world. Necessitarianism would deny creativity and fecundity to nature, making it merely
pushed about inertly. Such a view was held by medieval Arab philosophers, who taught that
fire does not heat, but God creates heat whenever something is placed near fire. Early modern
strong determinism is just a secular version of this physics of impotence, replacing God with
mathematical laws. Newton and Descartes still ascribed these laws to God, making nature His
instrument rather than a collaborator in creation. Atheists later invoked these laws as grounds
for dispensing with the Deity, not realizing that they had also dispensed with nature as a
creative power, succumbing to a new fatalism. The nineteenth-century vision of an eternal,
steady-state universe, never adding or subtracting mass, energy or momentum, with all matter
following inexorable laws of motion, was nothing less than a denial of natural power.

Despite his opposition to fatalism and strong determinism, Aristotle ultimately introduced a
determinism of another sort, by pretending to decide physical questions from abstract
deductions. This apparent logical necessity stifled empirical inquiry for centuries, and
impeded the discovery of a physico-mathematical theory of dynamics. Medieval Christian
philosophers, however, modified Aristotle to allow for God’s perfect freedom in the act of
creation. This theological consideration led them to accept the radical metaphysical
contingency of the natural order, a fact neglected by modern scientists. Even physical
necessity would be a metaphysical contingency.

A revival of evangelical Christianity during the Renaissance emphasized freedom in creation

and the immanence of Divinity in the natural world. The path was open for an affirmation of
the creative power in nature, but this soon became submerged under the rationalistic
theologies of the Reformation and the mechanistic determinism of the Age of Reason.
Ironically, Christians now professed a sort of fatalism in physics (though still allowing for
prior divine freedom), and it would take the atheist Nietzsche to reaffirm the fecundity of
nature. Christians created the necessitarian physics of atheists, and an atheist discovered a
conceptualization of physics fit for Christians and anyone else who sees the power of creation
active in nature.