Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science

by Edward Feser

Actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient causality and teleology are among the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Aristotle's Revenge argues that these concepts are not only compatible with modern science, but are implicitly presupposed by modern science.

Among the many topics covered are:

- The metaphysical presuppositions of scientific method
- The status of scientific realism
- The metaphysics of space and time
- The metaphysics of quantum mechanics
- Reductionism in chemistry and biology
- The metaphysics of evolution
- Neuroscientific reductionism

The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophy of science, so as to bring contemporary philosophy and science into dialogue with the Aristotelian tradition.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Metaphysics, Theology, Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity

515 pages, Paperback

Published January 30, 2019

About the author

Edward Feser is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara, an M.A. in religion from the Claremont Graduate School, and a B.A. in philosophy and religious studies from the California State University at Fullerton.

Called by National Review “one of the best contemporary writers on philosophy,” Feser is the author of On Nozick, Philosophy of Mind, Locke, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, and Aquinas, and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hayek and Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics. He is also the author of many academic articles. His primary academic research interests are in the philosophy of mind, moral and political philosophy, and the philosophy of religion.

Feser also writes on politics and culture, from a conservative point of view; and on religion, from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective. In this connection, his work has appeared in such publications as The American, The American Conservative, City Journal, The Claremont Review of Books, Crisis, First Things, Liberty, National Review, New Oxford Review, Public Discourse, Reason, and TCS Daily.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and six children.

Reviews

[Joseph Yue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whoever first uttered the proverb 'revenge is a dish best served cold' probably did not have exactly this kind of revenge in mind, but revenge it nevertheless is, and a centuries-cold one. Ever since Aristotle was stabbed 23 times in the Curia of Science by Descartes, Hobbs, Berkeley, and Spinoza, a perfidious bunch who ate bread at his table, this giant of wisdom, without even complaining 'et tu Brute', had been thrown into the Tiber and largely forgotten about. What those conspirators did not notice was that one cannot simply kill a person and yet live a life where he is still somehow present. They greet him on the street, send him Christmas cards, and reserve a seat for him on the table, and, most uncannily, his portion of food is always consumed. It is just his name is never mentioned again. More than 500 years later, finally some people such as Ed Feser, as if waking up from a bad dream, pronounced the forbidden words: Aristotle is never dead, those Brutes (pun intended) have just been ignoring his existence! Suddenly, a ray of bright light shines in, and everything starts making sense again: Aristotle is the reason that the Senate of Science exists at all - in fact, he IS the Senate, and it WAS a treason, proven unsuccessful only some five centuries later.

The above paragraph is a dramatical summarisation of the content of this book, Feser just writes the same story with considerably more details and in a much less refined and elegant language as if it is a transcript of his lecture recordings, the latter being my only critique of this otherwise impeccable study featuring one of the greatest rediscoveries in human intellectual history.

[Ioseph Bonifacius (Ioannes)]

Paul Athanasius Robinson I am going to get this book, I wonder if you have already read it.

[Daniel]

I honestly cannot rate this book as I understood very little of its contents. Oh well, it is always good to know that there is a lot that you do not know.

[Marcelongo · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡PERO QUÉ LIBRAZO! Me tardé como 6 meses en terminarlo, a veces lo dejaba por algunas semanas y otras avanzaba muy rápido, pero siempre que lo abría podía esperar una lectura realmente iluminadora y hasta placentera.

Ya había leído otro libro de Feser donde hacía una introducción al pensamiento de Aquino (por lo tanto, también a Aristóteles), y este libro, aunque hubo algunas partes que tendré que releer para profundizar más, me encantó y demostró que la metafísica aristotélica sigue vigente e incluso es fundamental para interpretar la ciencia moderna; hace que me den muchísimas ganas de leer a Aristóteles y filósofos actuales que puedan reinterpretar su pensamiento a la ciencia actual.

Como estudiante de física, ayuda mucho conocer cómo se dan por hecho bastantes conclusiones filosóficas, que no tienen fundamento, basadas en una mala interpretación de hechos científicos; uno lo ve en declaraciones sensacionalistas como: "la ciencia ha demostrado...", ya sea que no existe el tiempo, que no existe la libertad, o que el principio de no contradicción ha sido refutado por la mecánica cuántica, etc.

Ojalá que el libro pueda ser traducido al español (y en general, el trabajo de Feser) para que éste tipo de discusiones no se queden sólo en la academia anglosajóna.

En efecto, es la venganza de Aristóteles 🚬

[History Guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aristotle's Revenge represents the culmination, thus far, of Edward Feser's long campaign to reintroduce the ideas of Aristotle to modern readers. In previous works, Feser has asserted the abandonment of Aristotle's metaphysics by Enlightenment thinkers such as Hume, Descartes, and others was not only illegitimate, but constitutes the single greatest mistake in the history of Western intellectual thought. As a result, we moderns are now stuck with a worldview of regressive mechanistic materialism that reduces all the complexity and wonder of life to the mechanical processes of lifeless clumps of particulate matter. Philosophically, proponents of mechanical materialism question the very existence of what makes us human, things like free will, consciousness, purpose, etc.

Such are the consequences of abandoning Aristotle. Only by reestablishing our connection to thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, says Feser, can we lift ourself out of this morass of nihilism and philosophical confusion. Reader beware, this is not a case of earnest pleading, but a statement of fact. Feser is not begging, but asserting in rigorous scholarly fashion that without Aristotle science and philosophy remain woefully incomplete. Moreover, he argues the abandonment of Aristotle was never actually accomplished, despite best efforts. Rather, the principles of Aristotle's metaphysics are indispensable and lie at the core of modern science and philosophy. Aristotle's Revenge is thus Feser's attempt to demonstrate not only the relevance and utility of Aristotelean thought, but its essentialness.

The book is a walk through a veritable maze of sophisticated philosophical discourse and demonstration, all written in a manner that is somewhat accessible to non-professional philosophers. This maze is divided into distinct philosophical regions, complete with their own topography and ecosystem. Nevertheless, like all mazes, a pathway does exist that traverses and connects these disparate domains, but any would-be travelers must exercise determination and patience to proceed. Feser's general approach is to give a description of the correct path, but then take the reader on every wrong route to demonstrate its wrongness before proceeding along the correct path. As such, he takes the reader down many twists and turns, and even if I can’t remember how we arrived at the end, it’s one helluva ride.

Near as I can tell, he makes a convincing case. Certain bits of the journey have stuck with me and have exposed me to ideas I certainly want to ponder further. These bits have truly profound implications, which is why this journey is absolutely worth taking. And ponder I shall. Through wide-ranging exposition, Feser repeatedly illustrates the matter that comprises our very being isn’t merely some dreary fact of reality barely worth even noticing. Nope! Rather, Feser impresses upon the reader that matter itself, properly understood, is a marvelous and wondrous thing. Matter is alive, is imbued with certain causal powers, potentials, and purpose, all of which points to an even greater and more profound mystery lurking just beneath the surface. And because humans are also composed of this matter, such a view of material reality has profound implications for who we are as humans, our meaning and our purpose.

[Ruben Lake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this to be a nice sequel to Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics. although not as intuitively understandable and easy to conceptualise, Feser remains steadfast in grounding his ideas in applicable examples. 4 stars and not 5 due to the length, as I feel he gets a bit too much in his own mind, which makes it easy for the reader to hook off if not attracted to this sort of back and forth internal scholastic dialogue.

[Daniel Arter · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is difficult to understand if you aren’t well-versed in Aristotelian thought and modern philosophy of science.

If I understand it properly, the primary thesis is that modern science cannot disregard Aristotelian metaphysics because science presupposes elements of Aristotle’s metaphysics.

Worth the read, but be prepared to read it slowly.

[Romica Ciocan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book

You may accuse the author of being too much on Aristotle, yet, every open mind would find he is right that Aristotelian metaphysics is foundational even for modern science.

[Nobody · Rating 5 out of 5]

انتقام ناعم ملون ببعض المجاملات... لو كان أقسى قليلا!

[Oakley C. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is simply the least surprising, least interesting, and most obvious philosophical work I have ever encountered.

[Gary Christiansen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book appears to be enjoyable for a different sort of person, but it's enjoyable or interesting bits have been few and far between for myself.

[Jack Barth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid challenge to modern presuppositions in philosophy of science. Serves as a valuable defense of Aristotle.

[Ben Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

best book on philosophy of nature ever and a must read for anyone working in modern science.