Lesson Seven in Introduction to Thomistic Philosophy, with Fr Thomas Joseph White, OP, DPhil (Oxon), STL, Rector of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome.
“All chairs are quite different.” - HG Wells
“If they were so different you could not call them all chairs.” - GK Chesterton
The Pre-Socratics tried to explain everything as elemental fire or water or spirit. Many contemporary scientists try to explain everything as ordered bundles of chemicals, molecules, and atoms. The problem here is that these building blocks themselves are diverse. How do we account for that? The attempt to reduce everything to material bits is ill-fated. Reality is not simply built up from the bottom; it is also influenced from the top down. While the essence of a thing tells you what it is, the existence of a thing tells you that it is.
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