Three kinds of science

Aristotle laid much of the foundation for modern science but failed to take the final steps.  He articulated the logic, the four causes, sensory realism, and the importance of observation.  But he didn’t have the Bible when he tried to start with final causes and used philosophical speculation instead.

Bacon and the early modern scientists partly corrected this by focusing on material and efficient causes and leaving the others to the philosophers.  This has worked well for inanimate nature but is deficient for animate and historical nature.  Late modern scientists keep trying to force a mechanistic approach onto all sciences and trying to ignore the need for formal and final causes.

The intelligent design movement is incorporating formal causes into the science of animate nature.  They need to go further and bring final causes into historical nature, too.  They will be unable to understand human nature or the origin of nature without knowledge of final causes.

Creationists begin with the Bible, which provides knowledge of final and some formal causes in God’s purpose and design.  They also incorporate knowledge of other causes from mechanistic science.  They are working on a complete science, one that properly considers all four causes.  In a sense this is an integration of the Bible and Aristotle.

January 2013