(October 21, 2021 at 1:46 pm)Jehanne Wrote:(October 21, 2021 at 1:17 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: You are of course invited to participate on the serious thread, Thomism: Then and Now. Given your likely modern approach to causality such an objection seems valid but in truth its kind of a non-sequitur since the Prime Mover and similar demonstrations rest on Aristotelean metaphysical understanding of cause.
What would Aristotle say about the spontaneous transitions of electrons in bounded atomic or molecular orbits?
Maybe he'd say that was due to "formal" causes. The particular shape (or more precisely "form") of the electron causes specific interactions with specific things. Of course, Aristotle's observations were far too rudimentary to have picked up on quantum subtleties. It took scientists a couple centuries to apprehend these things even after Newton.