THE RHYTHMIC UNIVERSE 379 



point of view is aptly summarized in the celebrated statement 

 of Aristotle, " Man is begotten by man and by the sun as well " 

 {Physics, II, 194 b 10) ." 



There is a further point of contact in which the observed 

 results of natural rhythms and the conclusions of the 'phi- 

 losophia perennis would seem to be in accord: the recognition 

 of a basic order in the universe. One is not compelled, what- 

 ever the urgent extrapolations of the materialist, to accept the 

 order observable in a single organism as the result of random 

 combinations over a period of billions of years. There is even 

 less cogency in the assertion of random events as the cause of 

 order when that order involves not the internal mechanism of 

 a single organisms, but a whole cosmic network in which the 

 individual is seen as a single note pulsating in rhythm with a 

 very real " harmony of the spheres." One might accept the 

 possibility that a simple melody could result from the random 

 spattering of ink on lined paper. Equivalently, by the assertion 

 of randomness, one is asked to accept a completely orchestrated 

 score of the Jupiter as the result of the same process.-" 



The detection and measurement by the experimenters cited 

 of what might be called " cosmic rhythms " is an affirmation 



^' " It is necessary according to the Philosopher to lay down some active mobile 

 principle which by its presence and absence would cause variability as to generation 

 and corruption in the lower bodies — and such a principle is supplied by the heavenly 

 bodies. And therefore whatever, in these lower bodies, generates and moves towards 

 specific form acts as an instrument of the heavenly bodies, as in the statement 

 that man is generated by man and by the sun as well." Sum. TheoL, I, q. 115, a. 3 

 ad 2. 



^** In the dry terms of formal logic, the argument for the chance origin of life from 

 the inorganic by random events involves two cases of petitio principii and one of 

 the fallacy of consequence. The question is begged first in the assumption that life 

 could come from non-life, prescinding from time and any instrumentality. This 

 remains to be proved experimentally. It is begged again in the assumption that this 

 origin is from chance, and from chance alone. But, by definition, a chance event 

 need never happen. 



The fallacy of consequence (If p, then q; but q, therefore p) is involved in the 

 argument: If a random event were possible and did take place, then we would have 

 living organisms today; but we have living organisms today: therefore. . . . Such 

 an inference would be vaild only if it were the only possible inference, but this is 

 clearly not the case. 



