La evolución homogénea del dogma católico

36. TWO GREAT KINDS OF SCIENCES.—With that scale of degrees, so clear and so perfectly delimited, it is now easy to determine to which degree the progress or evolution of each of the sciences belongs.

Of the three kinds of reasoning that constitute the three degrees of the scale, the first gives rise to no science properly so called. Being improper or nominal reasoning, it still belongs to simple intelligence or intuition and not to reason or science.

On the other hand, the other two degrees, because they are proper reasoning and proper virtuality and proper and rigorous conclusion, give rise to two kinds of sciences, which are: a) the metaphysical and mathematical sciences; b) the physical and moral sciences.

These two genres of science are essentially diverse in three things: a) in certainty; b) in procedure; c) in homogeneity.

37. DIFFERENCE IN CERTAINTY.—The certainty of the metaphysical or mathematical sciences is an absolute, unconditional, objectively infallible certainty, which not even God Himself can make fail. If a true metaphysical conclusion were to fail in a single case, all the foundations of human reason would fail at their base, because the very essence of things would fail, the formal object of our reason and of every intelligence. Moreover, God Himself would fail, since the essences of things are not founded on the free divine will, but on the very essence of God.

Therefore, if a metaphysical or mathematical conclusion ever seems to fail, it is simply because it is not a true metaphysical or mathematical conclusion, or because the reasoning was not properly done. A truly metaphysical or mathematical conclusion, well deduced, and yet false, are contradictory things.

Very different, essentially different, is the certainty of the physical sciences or conclusions. In physical conclusions, certainty is not absolute, but conditional or relative: it is not founded on the essence of things, but on the regularity of the laws that govern the universe: it does not depend on the essence of God, but on His free will. Therefore, every physical conclusion carries implicitly or tacitly the condition provided that the laws of nature do not fail; and since these laws can fail and do fail as often as it pleases God, they carry implicitly the condition provided that God has not miraculously intervened.

Thus, while metaphysical conclusions are absolutely necessary in all orders, places, and times, in the supernatural order as well as in the natural order, physical conclusions are necessary only in the natural order, but they can fail, and frequently do fail, in the supernatural order.

The metaphysical conclusions that every contingent being is a created being, or that every spiritual being is immortal, or that everything absolutely immutable is eternal, are as necessary in the revealed order as in the natural order, with no imaginable case in which they can fail. In contrast, the physical conclusion that every man has human personality fails in Jesus Christ. The physical conclusion that the woman who is a mother is not a virgin fails in the Blessed Virgin Mary. The physical conclusion that every accident has actual inherence in its subject fails in the Eucharist. The physical conclusion that every fire actually burns failed in the Babylonian furnace. And this, which happens to every physical conclusion whenever it pleases God, can happen to every conclusion of the so-called moral sciences whenever it pleases human free will.

38. DIFFERENCE AS TO PROCEDURE.—This difference as to certainty arises precisely from the difference as to procedure, that is, from the difference of the minors which such sciences employ in their reasonings.

In the metaphysical and mathematical sciences, the minor premises are always essential or conceptual minor premises, whose predicate is implicit in the essence or analysis of the subject. The metaphysical minor premises are always either of the essence of being insofar as being (general metaphysics), or of the essence of such...

being (particular metaphysics), but always of the essence. In the same way, the lesser mathematics are always of the essence of quantity in general (pure mathematics), or of the essence of such a species of quantity (applied mathematics), but always of the essence. Thus, consisting of act and potency or requiring a cause is of the essence of contingent being; being immortal is of the essence of spiritual being; having its radii equal is of the essence of the circumference.

In contrast, in the physical or moral sciences, minor premises are not essential but accidental: their predicate is never essentially implied in the subject, but is always something outside the essence of the subject. Having human personality is not of the essence of man; not being a virgin is not of the essence of motherhood; having actual inherence is not of the essence of accident; actually burning is not of the essence of fire; loving or not loving one's children is not of the essence of the mother.

39. DIFFERENCE AS TO HOMOGENEITY.—From the difference as to process arises the other difference as to the homogeneity of its conclusions or of its progress. In the metaphysical or mathematical sciences, progress is homogeneous or of analytical evolution. In the physical or moral sciences, progress is heterogeneous or of extrinsic addition.

In effect, since the minor premises—whether metaphysical or mathematical—are of the essence or of the intellect of the major premises, the conclusions do not go outside the objectivity of the starting point, but are purely different aspects that were already included or implicit in it. The whole of metaphysics, in all its conclusions, provided they are true and rigorous conclusions, is nothing but an analytical and homogeneous development of the starting point of metaphysics, which is the intuitive apprehension of the idea of being as being. With that sole apprehension, and always employing minor premises already implicit in that starting point, the metaphysician develops his entire science; and if from the beginning he had sufficient intellectual strength to penetrate well all that is implicit in the starting point, he would have no need whatsoever for those minor premises. At the very starting point he would see intuitively, as the angels see it, all those conclusions which, owing to the weakness of our reason, we now see only through many minor premises, successively, by reasoning. These minor premises, therefore, have no purpose of adding something that was not already implicit in the starting point, but merely of helping our weak reason to see, bit by bit or through successive aspects, the same thing that was already implicit there from the beginning. The narrow photographic apparatus of our reason needs to take multiple photographs of the object from different points of view, because it cannot encompass in a single photograph or in a single act of vision all the richness and fecundity of faces or aspects of the starting point.

The opposite occurs in the poor physical or moral sciences, sciences of a non-essential, but accidental constitution; not analytic, but synthetic. The lesser physical sciences are not truly implied in the objectivity or essence of the greater ones; they are outside, and not inside, the point of departure. In the essence of man, human personality is not truly implied; in the essence of the accident, its actual inherence in the subject is not implied; in the essence of fire, that it actually burns is not implied; in the essence of stone, that it falls or fails to fall is not implied. And since one cannot see in a thing what is not truly implied in it, God himself cannot see with absolute certainty in the essence alone of a thing any physical or moral conclusion, any actual property or contingent effect.

For this reason, and said parenthetically, Saint Thomas and his school require in God an act of will, a free decree added to His intellect in order to be able to see contingent futures, that is, everything that is not of the essence of things. By the science of simple intelligence, and without the need of any decree of His will, God sees with absolute certainty everything that is essential: all metaphysical or mathematical conclusions. If He had no other science than that of simple intelligence, He could never know with absolute certainty a single physical or moral conclusion.

40. APPLICATION OF THE SCALE.—Therefore, the progress or evolution achieved through lesser metaphysical or mathematical means belongs to the second degree of the scale, that is, to the virtual implicit.

It does not belong to the first degree, called formal implicit or immediate implicit, because into that first degree there enters only nominal or improper reasoning, whereas the metaphysical and mathematical sciences, when their conclusions are conceptually distinct from their principles, require rigorous conceptual reasoning for our intellect, and therefore they are not only true and proper sciences for us, but the most proper and rigorous of the sciences. Nor does it belong to the third degree, called virtual non-implicit or purely connective, because, although proper and rigorous reasoning is involved, it is analytic or inclusive reasoning, not synthetic or of mere connection.

On the other hand, the progress or evolution made through physical minors belongs to the third degree of the scale, called virtual non-implicit. Not to the first, because its reasoning is not merely nominal. Nor to the second, because its reasoning is not one of analysis or inclusion within the concepts or aspects of the same thing, but pure connection or transition from one thing to another really distinct.

All this had been condensed by Saint Thomas in very few words. Objecting to himself that in every true science there must be proper reasoning or a transition from one thing to another, he answers: “In all “sciences” the mode of “reason” is preserved in this regard, that one proceeds “from one thing to another according to reason,” but not that one proceeds “from one thing to another thing”: this is proper to natural science.”¹

**41. COROLLARY.—**The phrase, then, of minors of reason, so frequently used in the question of dogmatic progress, is ambiguous, because the word reason can signify two things: a) the faculty, which we call reason, and whose proper act is reasoning; b) the reasons or minors that this faculty employs when reasoning in the various sciences.

Although the power reason is unique, and therefore the same in every kind of science, its reasons or minor premises can be multiple and essentially diverse. They can be minor premises of metaphysical reason and they can be minor premises of physical reason. The former are minor premises already implicit in the major premises or starting points of reasoning, and they are nothing but instruments that our reason needs to explain or develop—not to add to or modify—the objectivity of the major premise. The latter are not implicit in the major premises, and therefore they add to, and do not merely explain, the objectivity of the starting point.