What makes people irrational thinkers?

[Belacqua]

Whenever he describes matter as 'inert' or 'lifeless', he shows just how little he really understands about the physicalist position. Matter interacts with other matter. In fact, that is often how material things are *defined*: in terms of their interaction.

From Hart's book:

In Platonic tradition, the soul was not conceived of merely as a pure intellect presiding over the automaton of the body. The soul was seen as the body’s life, spiritual and organic at once, com- prising the appetites and passions no less than rational intellect, while the body was seen as a material reflection of a rational and ideal order. Matter was not simply the inert and opaque matter of mechanistic thought but rather a mirror of eternal splendors and verities, truly (if defectively) predisposed to the light of spirit.

Is Hart here advocating the tradition he describes, or merely describing it? All of the verbs are in past tense. Is it possible that he is describing an important historical tradition which countered a view of matter which he himself no longer holds?

He's describing a view held by "mechanistic thought," but do we know that he believes mechanistic thought is still the view of modern physics?

God is not, in any of the great theistic traditions, merely some rational agent, external to the order of the physical universe, who imposes some kind of design upon an otherwise inert and mindless material order. He is not some discrete being somewhere out there, floating in the great beyond, who fashions nature in accordance with rational laws upon which he is dependent. 

Here he is saying what God is not. He's not saying what matter is. 

Moore cordially detested the modern, essentially deistic picture of reality—derived from the most unfortunate philosophical and religious developments of the previous three centuries—which portrayed God as merely some supreme being presiding over a cosmos that he had constructed from inert elements outside himself.

Here he is describing a position that he also rejects.

Today the sciences are not bound to the mechanical philosophy as far as theoretical and practical methods are concerned; they never were, really, at least not beyond a certain point. Even so, the mechanical philosophy’s great metaphysical master narrative—its governing picture of nature as an aggregate of mechanistic functions and systems, accidentally arranged out of inherently lifeless and purposeless elements—remains the frame within which we now organize our expectations of science and, consequently, of reality.

Are you arguing that elements are alive? Are you arguing that elements have an inherent purpose? 

These are the only relevant results when I do a word search for "inert" and "lifeless." 

Do you really think that these four examples show that Hart rejects modern physics and considers matter to be something that doesn't interact with other matter?