Infinite Causal Regression

Abstract

Arguments concerning the possibility of an infinite regress of causes have always played a crucial role in metaphysics and in natural theology. And of course this issue was once important in the sciences as well, namely in Aristotelianism. Indeed, the most influential reasons which have been adduced by philosophers and theologians against infinite causal regressions—as, for example, St. Thomas’ well-known Five Ways-arose directly and explicitly out of Aristotelian scientific considerations; they are meta-physical proofs, that is, proofs which are supposed to follow on theorizations in physical science. The gist of them is that, if there were an infinite regress of causes, then no adequate scientific explanation would be possible, and observed phenomena would thus be unintelligible—which consequence is absurd. In this paper I shall attempt to delineate the medieval elaboration of this argument, as given by such men as Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus.

The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained.

Wittgenstein, Trdctatus, 6.371–6.372