Pondering Potential

In the last post I mention the concept of “pure act.” When I first encountered that idea—which refers to the nature of God—I imagined a kind of pure whirling motion at infinite speed, producing infinite light. That’s what my mind produced. The problem is that young people are exposed to such ideas in a kind of foreshortened sort of way. Even when you’re told that act here isn't some kind of flailing around but actuality, thus realized potential, the human mind, even grasping the ideas (or mine at least), isn’t really satisfied. When this pairing—potentiality and actuality—is explained, you realize that all they’re really saying is that “God has all possible perfections and isn’t waiting for them to manifest.” The mad whirling then stops and only the infinite bright light remains. Perfection doesn’t produce anything graspable.

This pairing, potentiality and actuality, is at the base of Aristotle’s concept of change. An existing something can only change because it has the capability for change—but that change is not yet realized. The word Aristotle used was dunamis, literally meaning, simply, capability. That word sounds strange until we spell it dynamis. Then suddenly we realize that we use the word ourselves in various ways—dynamic, dynamism, indeed also as dynamite. Aristotle used an ordinary Greek word for capability; potential comes from its Latin equivalent. His innovation came in characterizing something existing as having both entelechy (actualized potential) and energy (capability not yet realized). Here he gave an ordinary Greek word, meaning “at work,” a specialized technical meaning. We have entelechy right now—so does my coffee cup. We also still have dynamis in which a latent force, energy, is present.

Now the interesting aspect of potential—and why God does not have potential—is that something “not yet” or “asleep” or “as yet unrealized” can be seen both positively or negatively. Positively it is future perfection, if we’re lucky; negatively it is a privation. We’re still lacking its actual manifestation. But God lacks nothing at all. God is perfection. Therefore, alas, God has no potential.

In the twentieth century, we’ve actually proved the frightening energies latent in but a small amount of matter when it is actually released. Energeia is certainly present there, in potentiam. But do spare us, great wise men, any new demonstrations of Aristotle’s concepts in daily actuality; I’d hate to see another major city somewhere frozen in unreachable entelecheia deprived of its complement of energy.

The energy within the atom—the strong force that holds the nucleus together—is an interesting example of an actual and simultaneously potential energy in matter. Aristotle’s definitions nicely fit a region of reality he tended to dismiss. Atomic theories? Aristotle shook his head. The fascinating aspects of this kind of energy is that, so far as we can determine, it need not be renewed at regular intervals—as must the energy that keeps us going. What energy really is and where it arises—those are issues one ponders out here on the border. The dictionaries, whether of philosophy or physics, tend to produce a fog of circular referencing where you meet the word as its own definition after the fourth or fifth look-up.