276 MELVIN A. GLUTZ 



Obviously, the order intrinsic to natural philosophy demands 

 full clarity on the distinctions and relations obtaining between 

 it and empirical science. 



Internal order of natural philosophy 



Once we have ordered natural philosophy in the sense of 

 distinguishing it from other sciences, we may turn our inves- 

 tigation to its own intrinsic order. In this we have the assis- 

 tance of St. Thomas in the various prooemia to his commen- 

 taries on the works of Aristotle. 



First, we must make a necessary distinction between the 

 order of demonstration and the order of definition. A number of 

 books on natural philosophy so divide their matter as to treat 

 first of the properties of natural being: motion, quantity, time, 

 and place; then as a culmination of that part of natural phi- 

 losophy widely called " cosmology," comes a study of the 

 nature of material bodies, a determination of the first principles, 

 matter and form. The study of the properties is presented, 

 explicitly or implicitly, as part of the inductive search for the 

 definition of bodies through their first principles. 



Such a process, however, does not do justice to the logical 

 doctrine of demonstration. It is propter quid demonstration 

 that yields strictly scientific knowledge. The theoretical dis- 

 cussions among scholastics on the principles of division of 

 sciences presuppose the Aristotelian and classical Thomistic 

 concept of science. Scientific knowledge, in this precise and 

 technical sense of the word, is not merely a collection of facts 

 nor inductive searches ending in definitions. It consists of 

 demonstrating attributes, whether properties or causes, through 

 the use of middle terms that are both definitions of the subject 

 and proper causes of the attributes. There would be no reason 



requirements of modern science with a light which closely agrees with the results 

 of experimentation. ... It is easy to catch a glimpse of the great usefulness which 

 so profound a philosophy can have in aiding science to clarify the problems of 

 nature " (" The Perennial Philosophy and Modem Science," Address of Pope Pius 

 XIl to the Intenational Thomistic Congress, September 14, 1955). The Pope Speaks, 

 II (1955), 220-221. 



