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Keywords = Aristotelian causal categories

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21 pages, 409 KB  
Article
The Cosmic Hierarchy of Richard J. Pendergast, SJ: A Thomistic Evaluation
by Joseph R. Laracy
Religions 2025, 16(11), 1334; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16111334 - 22 Oct 2025
Viewed by 862
Abstract
This article offers a Thomistic evaluation of Richard J. Pendergast, SJ’s The Cosmic Hierarchy: The Universe and Its Many Irreducible Levels, situating his integrative cosmology within the ongoing dialog between Christian theology and the natural sciences. Pendergast’s attempt to synthesize Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, [...] Read more.
This article offers a Thomistic evaluation of Richard J. Pendergast, SJ’s The Cosmic Hierarchy: The Universe and Its Many Irreducible Levels, situating his integrative cosmology within the ongoing dialog between Christian theology and the natural sciences. Pendergast’s attempt to synthesize Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, process philosophy, and modern physics exemplifies both the promise and the perils of constructing a unified worldview that embraces the theology of creation, teleology, and metaphysical realism. This analysis commends his defense of the intelligibility of nature and the legitimacy of final causality. It also identifies areas where his speculative adoption of process categories departs from Thomistic principles and raises theological difficulties. Engaging questions of creation theology, metaphysics, and epistemology, the paper demonstrates how a Thomistic framework provides critical criteria for assessing integrative cosmologies informed by contemporary science. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Science and Christian Theology: Past, Present, and Future)
17 pages, 55 KB  
Letter
The Spontaneous Origin of New Levels in a Scalar Hierarchy
by Stanley N. Salthe
Entropy 2004, 6(3), 327-343; https://doi.org/10.3390/e6030327 - 19 Jun 2004
Cited by 31 | Viewed by 6313
Abstract
Given a background of universal thermodynamic disequilibrium, I suggest that the interpolation of new levels in a material scale hierarchy is favored when the entropy production of a local region would be increased by such structural complexification. This would involve the separation by [...] Read more.
Given a background of universal thermodynamic disequilibrium, I suggest that the interpolation of new levels in a material scale hierarchy is favored when the entropy production of a local region would be increased by such structural complexification. This would involve the separation by order of magnitude of the average dynamical rate of the new level compared to those of the resulting contiguous levels from which it became disentangled, thereby facilitating laminar flows. Here the Second Law of thermodynamics is understood as a final cause, which can be expressed in this creative way when the surrounding superstructure has a form allowing it to mediate this change (by, e.g., focusing kinetics, etc.), and given, as well, sufficiently differentiated local energy gradients to materially support the increased local dissipation. Full article
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