Concept
Secondary causation
Overview
Secondary causation is the philosophical proposition that all material and corporeal objects, having been created by God with their own intrinsic potentialities, are subsequently empowered to evolve independently in accordance with natural law. Traditional Christians would slightly modify this injunction to allow for the occasional miracle as well as the exercise of free will. Deists who deny any divine interference after creation would only accept free will exceptions. That the physical universe is consequentially well-ordered, consistent, and knowable, subject to human observation and reason, was a primary theme of Scholasticism and further molded into the philosophy of the western tradition by Augustine of Hippo and later by Thomas Aquinas.
Secondary causation has been suggested as a necessary precursor for scientific inquiry into an established order of natural laws which are not entirely predicated on the changeable whims of a supernatural being. Nor does this create a conflict between science and religion for, given a creator deity, it is not inconsistent with the paradigm of a clockwork universe. It does not remove logical contradictions concerning the unfettered expression of man's free will which would otherwise require not just God's acquiescence but rather his direct intervention to implement.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
(2) Whether the matter of all corporeal things is the same? (3) Whether the empyrean heaven was created contemporaneously with formless matter? (4) Whether time was created simultaneously with it? _______________________ FIRST ARTICLE [I, Q. 66, Art. 1] Objection 1: It would seem that formlessness of matter preceded in time its formation. For it is said (Gen. 1:2): "The earth was void and empty," or "invisible and…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
States what Secondary causation is; the author is tied to Secondary causation in the knowledge graph.
I call (in the abstract) causation the will of God; and I can prove that He acts for the good of His creatures. He also acts by laws which we can study and comprehend. Acting by law, and under what is called final causes, comprehends, I think, your whole principle.
Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin
States what Secondary causation is.
It is on the universality of this law that the possibility rests of establishing a canon of Induction. A general proposition inductively obtained is only then proved to be true, when the instances on which it rests are such that if they have been correctly observed, the falsity of the generalization would be inconsistent with the constancy of causation; with the universality of the fact that the phaenomena of nature…
John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism
Close in meaning to Secondary causation; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Book of Genesis
- Western philosophy
- Albertus Magnus
- Kabbalah
- Mu'tazilism
- Shneur Zalman of Liadi
- Augustine of Hippo
- Thomas Aquinas
- Revelation
- Soul
- Hebrew Bible
- Western Europe
- Occasionalism
- Adam
- Scholasticism
- Averroes
- Free will
- Israelites
- Creator deity
- University of Paris
- Deism
- Sefirot
Place in the tradition
Part of Naturalism (philosophy).