Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science

Aristotle’s Revenge talks about how scientists believe that Aristotle’s science has been largely made obsolete. Philosopher Edward Feser demonstrates that although Aristotle did make some scientific mistakes, his metaphysical assumptions about reality are the foundation of modern science.Aristotle believed in formal causes and final causes, which modern science largely rejects or ignores. But modern science needs formal causes and final causes as a foundation. Aristotle also believed in hylomorphism and a theory explaining change in terms of potentiality becoming actuality, and science needs those foundations also. Thomistic philosophy says that every efficient cause has a final cause, but modern science denies that.The author, Edward Feser, points out that most things in nature have substantial forms, where the properties and causal powers of the substantial form are not reducible to those of its parts. But man-made objects, such as a watch, have accidental forms, where the properties and causal powers of the object are the same as those of its parts.One item of note in this book is where Edward Feser points out that David Hume claimed that causation could not be proved, but his argument claiming that causation wasn’t knowable had logical steps, which were changes, so his argument claiming that causation couldn’t be known rested on an argument that involved change. Hume contradicted himself.There are important lessons to be learned from Aristotle’s metaphysics. Aristotle’s theory of time is called Presentism, which states that past entities, states and events are those that did exist; present entities, states and events are those that do exist; and future entities, states and events are those that will exist. Past entities, states and events are contained within the present as their effects reside in the present. The present points forward to a range of things which might yet be caused to exist. Future entities are contained within the present as potentials which might be actualized.Under Presentism, only the present is real. And that theory of time makes time travel impossible, since one can’t travel from the present (which exists) to a past or future which no longer exist (or don’t yet exist). With all the time travel going on in fiction and movies, this is useful knowledge.Aristotle’s conception of most things in nature having substantial forms means that the form controls the parts, and most things have a top-down structure. Modern science uses reductionism, in which science tries to break things into their components to build a bottom-up explanation of things. Aristotle’s substantial forms provide insight on wave-particle duality and the entanglement problem of quantum physics, since the prime matter which makes up substances is potentiality which becomes actuality by joining with matter (the union of form and matter being called hylomorphism). At the atomic level, prime matter is potential, capable of being matter or energy, and explains how light can be a particle and a wave, since potentiality contains both particle and wave aspects, only one of which becomes actualized. It’s interesting how Aristotle’s concept of substantial forms sheds some light on the mysteries of quantum physics.The above comments are just a few of the many excellent insights that philosopher Edward Feser provides in this fascinating and profound work on metaphysics and science. Edward Feser has avenged Aristotle and defended his honor, and readers should be grateful.

When I was little I really loved science. As I got older, people made it sound like you could either love science or love your faith, and I bought that lie. This book has reignited my passion for science. This is one of my favorite books of 2019 and through it I've discovered a favorite philosopher!

Prior to reading, I was already quite passionate in asserting that the modern scientific community had proclivities towards certain philosophical blind spots. I had no clue how extensive they were, and in fact how much I myself had readily assumed concerning the mechanistic worldview. Feser does an excellent job of surveying these assumptions through a variety of disciplinary lenses, and creates an eye-opening read that I would recommend to any of the curious.

I was looking forward to reading something novel and cogent. Unfortunately, this book, which is named after EA Burtt's influential (yet outdated by a century) classic, is nothing of the sort. It is merely a stitching together of arguments everyone knows from the philosophy of science with those from classic theology and recent intelligent design. The result of this inept craftsmanship is an ugly quilt. If you have already read philosophers of science like John Searle and Nancy Cartwright and intelligent designers like William Lane Craig and Bill Dembski and know the arguments for and against their work, then you won't find anything worth value here. In the spots where the author tried to make a contribution to thought by bringing scholasticism to bare on the history and philosophy of science, his idea are cringey and you can tell he doesn't have a firm grasp of things like the realist debate in the philosophy of physics. As far as I can tell, the author isn't a scientist or a historian or philosopher of science. Given this, I am unsure why he tried to do an entire takedown of fields in which he lacks expertise.

This is a serious philosophy book with a substantial amount of technical philosophy detail. That said, Prof. Feser does an excellent job showing why a contemporary Aristotelian approach to the philosophy of nature is not only coherent with modern science but actually provides great insight into its meaning and practice.

Takes a comprehensive look at the unspoken assumptions that are at play in modern thought, while making a strong case that Aristotle was perhaps right all along.

All good

Great book. This is a must read for anyone who takes science and the philosophy of science seriously.

This book achieves several things I have been seeking for a long time:1) Explanation of Aristotelian metaphysical terms that addresses contemporary criticism.2) A demonstration of how Aristotle's metaphysical ideas are implicit in modern science3) A book that deals with ideas from religious thinkers such Aquinas that stays within the mainstream realm of Metaphysical not TheologyThis isn't an introductory text. This is a serious and detailed discussions full of rebuttals of other opposing ideas. Even though the subject matter is complex, the book is well and "as plainly as is possible" writtenAmazon algorithms suggested this book to me 2 years before I actually bought it. As an interested amateur I wasn't ready for it and needed to allot more reading around the subject area before I was ready to give this book the time it required. Philosophy professors and serious students however should be able to get to grips with this far quicker.This book is deep and does answer a huge number and range of questions. Ultimately, I believe this text is going to instrumental in my future endeavors and I finally feel I am getting some answers to some serious questions.Kudos , gratitude and thanks to Prof Feser

This is a work of philosophy. It is sophisticated enough to withstand professional scrutiny, but is nevertheless readable by a layman. It is the opposite of a turgid tome filled with technical jargon. The aim of the work is to show that an Aristotliann-Thomist philosophy of nature is not only still relevant in the light of modern physics, chemistry, and biology, but is only one that is coherent. The mechanistic systems that are intended to support atheism all fall apart into incoherence when analyzed in depth.

Edward Feser's "Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science"" is an absolute must-read for anyone seriously interested in the philosophy of science. Step-by-step Feser demonstrates how Aristotle's *metaphysical* concepts such a actuality and potentiality, form and matter, can be seen lurking under the surface as implicit pre-suppositions in modern scientific thought. He includes biology, evolution, quantum physics and neuroscience. Beginners in philosophy would be well-advised to read Mortimer Adler's "Aristotle for Everybody" before starting with Feser. Keeping in mind the nature of his topics, Feser precisely and clearly explains how Arisotelian metaphysical concepts shape modern scientific theories. For example, he demonstrates the enormous explanatory power of Aristotle's concepts of potential and actuality. and the consequences for understanding biology, evolution, physics and neuroscience. Feser engages with major contemporary thinkers in these fields.This book is a keeper - it will become more relevant to the philosophy of science with each passing year.

Everything as expected, good service

Great overview of contemporary science in light of classical metaphysics.