Matter & mathematics : an essentialist account of laws of nature / Andrew Younan ; foreword by Michael J. Dodds, OP.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Younan, Andrew, 1979- author.

Contributor:

Dodds, Michael J., writer of foreword.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Physical laws.

Nature.

Essentialism (Philosophy).

Natural law.

Physical Description:

xiii, 228 pages ; 23 cm

Other Title:

Matter and mathematics

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : The Catholic University of America Press, [2023]

Summary:

"This book is an attempt to understand the natural world, its consistency, and the ontology of what we call laws of nature, with a special focus on their mathematical expression. It does this by arguing in favor of the Essentialist interpretation over that of the Humean and Anti-Humean accounts. It re-examines and critiques Descartes' notion of laws of nature following from God's activity in the world as mover of extended bodies, as well as Hume's arguments against causality and induction. It then presents an Aristotelian-Thomistic account of laws of nature based on mathematical abstraction, necessity, and teleology, finally offering a definition for laws of nature within this framework"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

Essentialism, nominalism, and Platonism

Mathematical laws of nature and essentialism

The peripatetic axiom versus A Priori knowledge

Apologia

Descartes, modern science, and scholasticism: Introduction

Descartes' method versus scholastic abstraction

Body as extension alone versus body as matter and form

Laws of nature and occasionalism versus a creator God of active substances

Newton and Descartes

Conclusion: Descartes' pyramids

Causation and the problem of induction: The problem of induction

Critique of Humean skepticism

The Aristotelian picture

Quantum mechanics, act, and potency: Potency and quantum mechanics

Wave functions as mathematical expressions of potentiality

The act of measurement and the actualization of the particle

Mathematical abstraction: Metaphysics XIII.3: Mathematicals as true abstractions

Metaphysics I.9 and XIV.5: How forms, including mathematicals, cannot be causes

Metaphysics XIV.6: Coincidences and analogies

Necessity and teleology: Senses of necessity

Physics II.9

Matter: Necessary or contingent? Or: Necessity: Material or immaterial?

Conclusion: Mathematical necessity

Defining the laws of nature: Mathematical constraint and formal causality

Abstraction and necessity

Defining the laws of nature

Conclusion: Is "law" talk useful?

Conclusion: Payoffs

Implications

Appendix: Laws and the lawgiver.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780813236124

0813236126

OCLC:

1329424609

Publisher Number:

99993077901