51
The Forgotten Ground
(Blanchette, 1992). These two cannot be entirely separated. This is because it is assumed in ancient
thought that the coming into existence of reality is both purposeful and essentially good. For Plato,
the good precedes being and illuminates the truth of things. It is also what all things naturally seek
in coming into being in the fullness of their potential. There is a teleological order to the universe
as a totality, while each particular thing seeks its completeness within the total order and according
to its own nature. As Collingwood observes in The Idea of Nature:
The world of nature is thus for Aristotle a world of self-moving things, as it is for the Ionians and for
Plato. It is a living world: a world not characterised by inertia, like the world of the seventeenth-century
matter, but by spontaneous movement. Nature as such is process, growth, change. This process is a
development, i.e. the changing takes successive forms α, β, γ, … in which each is the potentiality of its
successor.
Collingwood (1960: 82)
Understanding nature in this manner, as self-moving, means that its effcient and fnal causes lie
within itself:
And Aristotle arrives at this conception of an immaterial effcient cause by refection on the fact of
development: for development implies nisus, that is, a movement or process not merely oriented towards
the realization in bodily form of something not yet realized, but actually motivated by the tendency
towards such realization. The seed only grows at all because it is working at becoming a plant; hence
the form of the plant is the cause not only of its growing in that way but of its growing at all, and is
therefore the effcient cause as well as the fnal cause of its growth.
(ibid: 84)
This nisus or inclination of living things towards their natural ends is often assumed in practical
experience, even if not theoretically. For example, we may see from experience that every living thing strives towards perfect health and maturity. Medicine remains founded on this principle,
even if it is not theoretically acknowledged. It is unfortunate that this teleological understanding
of nature was discarded in the seventeenth century in the attempts of the new sciences to escape
scholastic Aristotelianism, owing to the rejection of the authority of the Church and the ancient
philosophers and the rise of nominalism, 2 as, for example, we see in Bacon’s The New Atlantis. This
also meant the overthrow of any hierarchical or sacred conception of the order of nature. Human
mastery over ‘nature’s secrets’ became the new aim of knowledge. Later, as a more mechanistic
view of nature took hold, any notion of ‘purpose’ or ‘fnal causality’ was entirely eliminated from
scientifc theory (Lear, 2011). The motion or activity of things was explained by the mechanical
effects of one thing upon another, or through outside forces moving them, so that nothing possessed
its own cause or moved from its own nature. 3 The notion of ‘purpose’ or ‘natural ends’ was relegated
to human subjectivity. And with the elimination of teleology, any ethical conception of the natural
order of things becomes impossible. The so-called ‘impartial’ study of nature rendered nature itself
impartial. The mechanistic theory projects itself upon the observed on the assumption it is disclosing the order of things.
THE ETHICAL RELATION WITH NATURE
However, even if nature is conceived as neither teleological nor tending to some good, the ethical
relation of the human species with nature cannot so easily be set aside, least of all with climate
change demanding both a rational and an ethical response. Just as human consciousness grasps
2 For a detailed study of this shift in thinking, see Michael Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (2009).
3 For a detailed discussion of how the ancient notion of teleology was discarded in the Enlightenment, see Stephen G.
Salkever, Finding the Mean (1990: 21−36).
The Forgotten Ground
(Blanchette, 1992). These two cannot be entirely separated. This is because it is assumed in ancient
thought that the coming into existence of reality is both purposeful and essentially good. For Plato,
the good precedes being and illuminates the truth of things. It is also what all things naturally seek
in coming into being in the fullness of their potential. There is a teleological order to the universe
as a totality, while each particular thing seeks its completeness within the total order and according
to its own nature. As Collingwood observes in The Idea of Nature:
The world of nature is thus for Aristotle a world of self-moving things, as it is for the Ionians and for
Plato. It is a living world: a world not characterised by inertia, like the world of the seventeenth-century
matter, but by spontaneous movement. Nature as such is process, growth, change. This process is a
development, i.e. the changing takes successive forms α, β, γ, … in which each is the potentiality of its
successor.
Collingwood (1960: 82)
Understanding nature in this manner, as self-moving, means that its effcient and fnal causes lie
within itself:
And Aristotle arrives at this conception of an immaterial effcient cause by refection on the fact of
development: for development implies nisus, that is, a movement or process not merely oriented towards
the realization in bodily form of something not yet realized, but actually motivated by the tendency
towards such realization. The seed only grows at all because it is working at becoming a plant; hence
the form of the plant is the cause not only of its growing in that way but of its growing at all, and is
therefore the effcient cause as well as the fnal cause of its growth.
(ibid: 84)
This nisus or inclination of living things towards their natural ends is often assumed in practical
experience, even if not theoretically. For example, we may see from experience that every living thing strives towards perfect health and maturity. Medicine remains founded on this principle,
even if it is not theoretically acknowledged. It is unfortunate that this teleological understanding
of nature was discarded in the seventeenth century in the attempts of the new sciences to escape
scholastic Aristotelianism, owing to the rejection of the authority of the Church and the ancient
philosophers and the rise of nominalism, 2 as, for example, we see in Bacon’s The New Atlantis. This
also meant the overthrow of any hierarchical or sacred conception of the order of nature. Human
mastery over ‘nature’s secrets’ became the new aim of knowledge. Later, as a more mechanistic
view of nature took hold, any notion of ‘purpose’ or ‘fnal causality’ was entirely eliminated from
scientifc theory (Lear, 2011). The motion or activity of things was explained by the mechanical
effects of one thing upon another, or through outside forces moving them, so that nothing possessed
its own cause or moved from its own nature. 3 The notion of ‘purpose’ or ‘natural ends’ was relegated
to human subjectivity. And with the elimination of teleology, any ethical conception of the natural
order of things becomes impossible. The so-called ‘impartial’ study of nature rendered nature itself
impartial. The mechanistic theory projects itself upon the observed on the assumption it is disclosing the order of things.
THE ETHICAL RELATION WITH NATURE
However, even if nature is conceived as neither teleological nor tending to some good, the ethical
relation of the human species with nature cannot so easily be set aside, least of all with climate
change demanding both a rational and an ethical response. Just as human consciousness grasps
2 For a detailed study of this shift in thinking, see Michael Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (2009).
3 For a detailed discussion of how the ancient notion of teleology was discarded in the Enlightenment, see Stephen G.
Salkever, Finding the Mean (1990: 21−36).