Cosmology — Conclusions
The conclusions of Glenn's Cosmology set out as numbered theses, following the order of the tract, with intra-scholastic disputes and dated positions marked.
Tract: Cosmology (Natural Philosophy) · Paul J. Glenn · 1939 · 16 articles in three Books School: Thomist Depends on: Metaphysics — substance and accident, act and potency, the four causes. Supports: Philosophical Psychology — the constitution of bodies, on which the doctrine of the soul as substantial form rests. Natural Theology — contingency, finality, and the possibility of miracles.
What this tract is for
Cosmology is the philosophical science of ens mobile — bodily being precisely as naturally changeable. It is not physics: it asks what a body is and what change is, questions the empirical sciences presuppose without examining. It is distinguished from mathematics, which studies abstract quantity, and from metaphysics, which studies being as such.
Its central task is the third Chapter of Book I: to decide among four competing philosophies of what bodies are made of.
The architecture
- Book I — Bodies. First the marks and quantity and activity of bodies as observed; then the four rival accounts of their constitution — monism, atomism, dynamism, hylomorphism — the first three eliminated and the fourth established.
- Book II — The origin of bodies. Creation, the age of the world, then movement and the world’s formation.
- Book III — The tendency of bodies. Final causality and the ultimate end of creation; then nature, her laws, and the possibility of miracles as departures from them.
The order is diagnostic, not merely expository. Book I establishes prime matter and substantial form; Book II asks how such composites began; Book III asks where they are going. Miracles come last because a miracle can only be defined against a settled account of nature’s order, and that account is not available until Th. 36.
Book I — Bodies
The character of bodies
1. Natural bodies always and everywhere manifest four marks: composition, mutability, contingency, and limitation. All bodies are composed or put together; all are subject to change, both substantial and accidental; all are essentially dependent on causes for their production and maintenance; all are necessarily finite. → B1 C1 A1 — The Marks of Bodily Being
2. The world is not divine. The four marks are incompatible with divinity, and Glenn treats the point as a direct corollary rather than a separate argument. → B1 C1 A1
3. Cosmological optimism is fallacious and cosmological pessimism is impossible. Rejecting both extremes, Glenn concludes that the world is relatively, but not absolutely, perfect — not the best conceivable world, but a world well suited to its ends. → B1 C1 A1
4. Quantity is not to be identified with bodily substance, but is a requisite condition for the existence of bodily substance, and is formally constituted by the substance itself. The essence of quantity is internal extension. → B1 C1 A2 — The Quantity of Bodies
5. Quantity has four properties: external extension, impenetrability, divisibility, and mensurability. Internal and external quantity are distinguished; the discussion covers place and the different ways a reality may be located, together with space and time. → B1 C1 A2
6. Bodily activity is really distinct from the substance of the body that exercises it, and is not to be identified with the bodily powers by means of which it is exercised. → B1 C1 A3 — The Activity of Bodies
7. Bodily activity is of three really distinct types, and the attempt to reduce them all to mechanical activity is futile and ends in falsity. Activity classifies as immanent and transient; transient activity of bodies as mechanical, physical and chemical. Glenn rejects the errors of occasionalism, mechanicism, and energeticism. → B1 C1 A3
The constitution of bodies
8. Monism is inadequate. Glenn sets out what monists hold about the bodily world and finds the account insufficient to the material object of cosmology. → B1 C2 A1 — Monism
9. Atomism must be distinguished from the scientific atomic theory. The atomic theory as a scientific hypothesis is one thing; atomism as a philosophy of bodies is another, and only the second is under judgment here. This distinction is the article’s most useful contribution and the one most often collapsed. → B1 C2 A2 — Atomism
10. Both types of atomism — pure or mechanistic, and dynamistic — are inadmissible, because they leave the philosophical problem of the bodily world not merely unsolved but unattacked. Glenn finds in both inadequacies of explanation and self-contradiction of doctrine. → B1 C2 A2
11. Dynamism is deficient and unacceptable. It explains the world of bodies in terms of non-extended, non-quantified points of force or power acting and reacting among themselves across a void; it conflicts with the findings of sense and of reason. → B1 C2 A3 — Dynamism
12. Hylomorphism is the one true philosophy of bodies. Every natural body is constituted by two substantial co-principles, prime matter and substantial form. Established both by the elimination of the three rivals and positively on its own account. → B1 C2 A4 — Hylomorphism
13. The doctrine carries a cluster of connected conclusions, each defined in the course of the article: the principle of individuation and the principle of specification; complete and incomplete substances; material and non-material substantial forms; the unity of substantial forms and the potential multiplicity of inferior forms; the nature of substantial change; the distinction between a compound and a mixture; the manner in which the forms of elements endure in a compound; the mode of the uniting of matter and form; and the production of bodily substance. → B1 C2 A4
Book II — The Origin of Bodies
14. Creation is the absolute production of a thing in its entirety out of nothing. It is an action proper to God alone, and an instantaneous action. → B2 C1 A1 — Creation
15. Creation from eternity is probably an absolute impossibility. Glenn’s verdict is carefully worded — the difficulties involved in the concept of eternal matter are such as to make creatio ab aeterno appear impossible, and he says it is probable, “to put the point mildly,” that it is absolutely impossible. ⚠ See disputed points: this is not the common Thomist position. → B2 C1 A2 — The Age of the World
16. Creation in time is acceptable to reason as a fact, though there is no compelling proof of it. No demonstration direct and inescapable as a mathematical one is available, but many persuasive arguments strongly recommend it: the mind finds no requirement for eternal matter in its deepest explanation of the bodily world; the concept of eternal matter faces tremendous difficulties; creation in time appears more in line with the divine perfections; and the unvarying tradition of all peoples expresses a constant conviction that the world had a beginning. Catholics hold by Faith, in perfect agreement with sound philosophy, that the world was in fact created in time. → B2 C1 A2
17. There is no means of expressing the actual age of the world, or of our earth, in terms of a definite number of years. ⚠ A claim of its date — see dated positions. → B2 C1 A2
18. Movement in the strict sense means change — a transit from one state or condition to another — and is proper to bodily being, since spirits cannot change substantially and God is subject to no change at all. Change requires three things: the terminus a quo, the terminus ad quem, and the transitus between them. → B2 C2 A1 — Movement in the World
19. Cosmogony is the science of world-development after the creation of an original mass of primordial matter. Glenn sets out the meaning and value of a scientific hypothesis together with its limitations, and examines two typical cosmogonic hypotheses — Laplace’s and Haeckel’s. → B2 C2 A2 — The Formation of the World
20. Inorganic evolution — the gradual development of world-form from primordial matter by natural forces — appears to be the best available explanation of the physical universe. The term evolution here excludes the whole order of living things and means only the development of the lifeless world. Glenn’s judgment: the hypothesis has reasons supporting its probability and is in no wise in conflict with philosophy, science, or Revelation. Whether God set the world in form instantly by decree or placed it in embryo and gave it the powers to reach full form, it remains a fact that the world was created by God. → B2 C2 A2
21. Haeckel’s account is wholly excluded as unscientific and irrational — the view that mere chance stirred the primal created matter and caused it to develop into an ordered universe. → B2 C2 A2
Book III — The Tendency of Bodies
22. There is an inescapable final or teleological tendency in natural bodies. Glenn defines cause, lists and explains the more important types, and dwells in detail on the meaning and function of the final cause. → B3 C1 A1 — Final Causality
23. Ends classify as proximate and remote; remote ends as intermediate and ultimate; ultimate ends as relatively and absolutely ultimate. An end is always a good. → B3 C1 A2 — The Ultimate End of Creation
24. The absolutely ultimate end must be the supreme or absolute good — the Summum Bonum, God Himself — and all natural bodily beings seek Him as their absolutely ultimate End. → B3 C1 A2
25. Creatures tend to God to glorify Him, and the Last End of creation is the extrinsic, objective and formal glory of God — the reason and purpose of the efficient action of the First Cause. (Note the three qualifiers: they are doing precise work, and dropping any of them changes the doctrine.) → B3 C1 A2
26. Nature is defined in an individual or particular sense and in a general or universal sense. Glenn reaches the definition through a long survey of related uses of the term. → B3 C2 A1 — Nature
27. The natural is distinguished from and contrasted with the preternatural, the supernatural, the artificial, and the compulsory. This fourfold contrast is what makes Th. 34–36 possible — a miracle is located by it. → B3 C2 A1
28. The term law is transferred from its normal field of application in the moral order to the physical order. Glenn is explicit that in cosmology he does not mean law in its original sense — an ordinance of reason promulgated for the common good by those in charge of a society — and the transfer is analogical. → B3 C2 A2 — The Laws of Nature
29. Laws classify as the Eternal Law, the natural law, and the laws of nature — the last being physical and cosmic — each with its own necessity. → B3 C2 A2
30. The laws of nature are contingent with reference to God and necessary with reference to proximate causes. This single distinction is what reconciles the regularity of nature with the possibility of miracle, and it is the hinge of the whole of Book III. → B3 C2 A2
31. The order of nature is distinguished from the course of nature. → B3 C2 A2
32. Miracles are classified in two ways: as miracles of substantial fact, of subject, and of mode; and as miracles above nature, beyond nature, and contrary to nature. → B3 C2 A3 — Miracles
33. Miracles are intrinsically possible, involving no essential self-contradiction. → B3 C2 A3
34. Miracles are extrinsically possible — not only to the absolute power of God but to His ordinated power as well. The second clause is the substantive one: a miracle is not God overriding His own settled order but acting within the ordination He established. → B3 C2 A3
35. Miracles can be known — both on the score of their historical truth as facts, and on the score of their philosophical truth as truly miraculous facts. (This thesis is what Apologetics builds its motives of credibility on.) → B3 C2 A3
Disputed points and dated positions
| Thesis | Glenn’s position | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Creation from eternity (Th. 15) | Probably an absolute impossibility | ⚠ Not the common Thomist position. Aquinas held that an eternally created world involves no formal contradiction, and that its beginning in time is known by faith rather than demonstrated. Glenn takes the stronger line and should not be read as reporting the school’s settled view. |
| Age of the world (Th. 17) | No means of expressing it in a definite number of years | Written in 1939, before radiometric dating matured. The philosophical point — that the world’s age is not derivable from philosophy — stands; the implied claim that no method exists does not. |
| Inorganic evolution (Th. 20) | Best available explanation; no conflict with philosophy, science or Revelation | Glenn is notably more permissive here than on organic evolution elsewhere. The distinction is deliberate: this article expressly excludes the whole order of living things. |
Key terms
ens mobile · changeable being, the formal object of cosmology — materia prima / forma substantialis · the two co-principles of every body — internal / external extension · the essence of quantity / its first property — terminus a quo / ad quem / transitus · the three requisites of change — cosmogony · the science of world-development after creation — inorganic evolution · development of the lifeless world, excluding living things — creatio ab aeterno · creation from eternity — absolute / ordinated power · what God can do simply / within the order He has established — order of nature / course of nature · the arrangement / the running of it
Reading it properly
B1 C2 A4 (hylomorphism) is the tract, and at nearly eleven thousand words it is also the longest constructive article in the series. Everything before it clears the ground and everything after it applies the result. Read the three rejected systems first, briefly — the case for hylomorphism is partly a case by elimination, and it loses its force if you skip the eliminations.
If you want the single most useful paragraph, it is Th. 30: the laws of nature are contingent with respect to God and necessary with respect to proximate causes. That distinction is what lets Glenn hold both the regularity that science requires and the possibility of miracle that Apologetics requires, without weakening either.