The Tripartite Cosmos

Continuing our series of posts on Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monumental monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle). 
For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

Dr Smith approaches the sixth part of his magnificent monograph with a chapter entitled ''The Emergence of the Tripartite Cosmos.'' Recalling the notion of a ''clockwork universe'' bequeathed by Galileo and Descartes, he explains that this very clockwork causality has been invalidated by the advent of quantum theory. The quantum world, however, cannot be comprehended without reference to the sense-perceptible or corporeal world. Strictly speaking, the quantum world does not in fact exist but consists rather of particles that are ''potentiae''. Physics is primarily concerned not with what things are but how they move. Physics is not concerned with Descartes' res extensae at all. Quantumn physics may have rejected Cartesian presuppositions, but the physicists have not. Hence the quantum reality problem proves for them insoluble.

The solution lies in ackowledging vertical causality, inferred (in part) by the very act of measurement  in physics which requires an instantaneous (supra-temporal) transition from the corporeal to the physical domain.

What is missing in that so-called quantum world, as we have noted, is the morphe or yang-side of the coin: and that is precisely what vertical causality supplies or brings into play in the act of measurement, and in so doing, “actualizes” the quantum world “in part.”

Smith proceeds to consider how this vertical causality impacts the biological sciences. The current consensus among most biologists views a living plant or animal as simply a ''super-complicated'' structure or machine, conceived in purely physical terms. This proves to be yet another scientistic myth, to which the public at large is vulnerable by virtue of the vast body of minutiae established bona fide concerning living organisms. What in fact differentiates the animate from the inanimate is the vertical causation emanating from a living organism’s substantial form.

The chapter ends with a brief consideration of ''free will''. A human soul or anima is distinguished from that of a plan or animal because it is a rational soul. The difference cannot be attributed to different horizontal causes because the difference is one of kind, not of degree. More generally, there exist gaps between species and genera which no amount of horizontal causation can bridge. The biosphere exemplifies design and hierarchy.  Scientists wedded to horizontal causality cannot accept this and they are obliged to adhere to some version of an evolutionary hypothesis, despite its being untenable.

In his penultimate chapter, draws together a number of strands from previous chapter under the title: ''The Primacy of Vertical Causality''.