Is the Argument from Degrees contradictory to the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics?

[Belacqua]

I'm simply confused about the question. Perhaps I am missing something. 

The whole thing is confusing, especially to modern people who don't think the way Thomas Aquinas did. Your questions are very reasonable, I think.

You said, "there has to be a thing that has that same property to a maximal possible degree."  Are you, or was Aquinus, attempting to make the assertion that God was a thing?  Is there any evidence for this?

Thomas of course thought that God is real. But not as a tangible thing with a physical body, a location, a size, etc. 

There is no evidence for God if you define "evidence" as a scientist does. Thomas follows Plato and, especially, Aristotle, in thinking that God is not something that can be known empirically, quantified, etc. 

He does think that we can demonstrate the necessity of a Prime Mover and Perfect Being through logic. So his famous Five Ways begin with obvious facts about the world (e.g. "stuff changes") and attempt to show that for this to be true, there has to be an infinite perfect non-tangible thing that makes it possible. 

 Or are you actually trying to talk about temperature in an atheist forum?  Wouldn't this be better addressed in a science forum?

Thomas uses temperature as an example of something which needs to be caused, in the way he's talking about here. But in fact he's not much interested in temperature -- this is just an example that's easier to grasp. 

What he's really interested in are degrees of the Good, of Being, and of Truth. You can see that these are a little harder to conceptualize than temperature, being more abstract. 

Science can't test for Goodness. You can't look through an electron microscope and detect that one bit of stuff has more Goodness than another. These are judgments about quality, and science works really really well because it doesn't deal with that. (If you define quality by yourself first, according to your goals, then science can test for that. Like if you say that good steel has a certain strength, then you can test for strength. But deciding that strong steel is better than weak steel is a judgment call.) 

Perhaps if you actually quoted Thomasa's argument in full? Why was he arguing about temperature?

Here is the original argument, as translated on Wikipedia:

The fourth proof arises from the degrees that are found in things. For there is found a greater and a less degree of goodness, truth, nobility, and the like. But more or less are terms spoken of various things as they approach in diverse ways toward something that is the greatest, just as in the case of hotter (more hot) that approaches nearer the greatest heat. There exists therefore something that is the truest, best, and most noble, and in consequence, the greatest being. For what are the greatest truths are the greatest beings, as is said in the Metaphysics Bk. II. 2. What moreover is the greatest in its way, in another way is the cause of all things of its own kind (or genus); thus fire, which is the greatest heat, is the cause of all heat, as is said in the same book (cf. Plato and Aristotle). Therefore there exists something that is the cause of the existence of all things and of the goodness and of every perfection whatsoever—and this we call God.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_f...heologica.

Also on that page is a pretty good explication:

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Summary of argument

The premise of the fourth proof is that “being and its transcendental and analogous properties (unity, truth, goodness, beauty) are susceptible of greater and less.”[5] Thus it is said that some things are more true, more good, etc.

After this premise follows the principle that “More or less are predicated of different things according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum of and which is the cause of the others.”[5] Following is a justification of this principle.

Multiple different things are found to share a unity, or a common relation to truth and goodness. However, the similarity found in these things cannot itself be explained by the fact that there is a multiplicity of them. 

Multitude is “logically and ontologically posterior to unity,” meaning that for a multitude of beings to participate in unity, they must somehow be contained under one being separate from these beings, since they cannot themselves cause the unity between them.[6] The fact that goodness, truth, and being can be predicated in varying degrees of a multitude of beings cannot be attributed simply to the fact that there are many such beings.

Second, the principle concerns finite beings. Of these the absolute perfections of being, truth, and goodness are predicated in an imperfect manner.[6] It cannot be said, for example, that a stone possesses the fullness of being, truth, or goodness. Therefore, being, truth, and goodness are said to be possessed in finite beings in a "composition of perfection and of a limited capacity for perfection."[6] Therefore, it can be said that the tree and the man possess different degrees of goodness, for example, according to each's limited capacity for perfection. So, a finite amount of goodness is found in each according to its capacity. (But goodness itself is not limited, and, as a concept, goodness has no imperfection.) If there is a composition of perfection and the limited capacity for it in some being, there must be a cause for this composition.[6][7] In other words, predicating something as more or less implies that this thing is limited in its being. It does not exhaust the fullness of being, and therefore has its being per accidens: its act of being is not essential.[8] Therefore, any being which is predicated as being less or more is a limited being and has its act of being distinct from itself. It participates in being. Hence, there is a composition in such beings of perfection (being, truth, goodness) and the being’s nature (capacity for perfection). There must be a cause for this composition.

Because “union that is effected according to either composition or similitude” cannot explain itself, there must be a “unity of a higher order.”[6] Therefore, there must exist some being which, because it exhausts what is to be, gives being to all limited things which participate in being. Goodness, being, and truth in finite beings must have a cause that is both efficient and exemplary.[6] St. Thomas adds that “the maximum of any genus is the cause of all that in that genus,” to indicate that the greatest in truth, goodness, and being is both the exemplar and efficient cause of all other things which display varying degrees of perfection, and so is “the cause of all beings.”[9][6]

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To me, this is probably the most confusing of Thomas's arguments because it's so far away from the way modern people think. For him, as for most of the ancients, the Good, Truth, and Being are things that can be talked about as abstract existences. We moderns tend to think of them as accidental qualities of more concrete things. 

A key point to keep in mind: for Thomas, God is complete actualization, with no potential. In other words, he thinks that while you and I can keep getting better if we really try -- slowly approaching the Good -- God is entirely Good now, with no more to improve. That's the definition of God. In the argument at hand, Thomas is saying that this complete Goodness is essential for us to continue our own efforts toward being good.