Philosophy

In my previous post Synthesis-versus-Analysis I dealt with the distinction between “true whole” and “false whole”. Now let’s see how that had relations with Aquinas and his refutation of biological macroevolution. About the origin of man and the relations between his soul and body, Aquinas was clear: Reply to objection 3: Some have claimed that the [first] man’s body was formed antecedently in time, and that later on God infused a soul into the already formed body. But it is contrary to the nature of the perfection of the first production of beings that God would make either the body without the soul or the soul without the body; for each of them is a part of human nature. It Read More ›

I dedicate this post to our Denyse O’Leary (UD News desk), who suggested me to deal a bit with this topic. — A “whole” (or “all” or “total”) can be a “true whole” or a “false whole”. A “true whole” (or “unit”) is anterior and independent from the consideration of parts, is not obtained from their sum, it doesn’t presuppose them. A “false whole” (or “set”) is the mere sum of parts, is logically posterior to them, and is a fictitious “one” only because we consider it so. While a simple set is artificially composed bottom-up by its parts, a real unit overarches top-down any part. The above distinction is strictly related to the difference between analysis and synthesis, and Read More ›