Energy as First Cause?

To answer this question, let us turn once again to Heisenberg, who speaks of the complete mutability of matter. He writes:

All the elementary particles can, at sufficiently high energies, be transmuted into other particles, or they can simply be created from kinetic energy and can be annihilated into energy, for instance into radiation. Therefore we have here actually the final proof for the unity of matter. All the elementary particles are made of the same substance, which we may call energy or universal matter; they are just different forms in which matter can appear.

If we compare this situation with the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, we can say that the matter of Aristotle, which is mere "potentia", should be compared to our concept of energy, which gets into "actuality" by means of the form, when the elementary particle is created. [1]

If we accept this comparison of Aristotle's "potentia" or prime matter with Heisenberg's energy, then it follows that energy is a material or potential cause, not a formal cause. Nothing moves itself from potency to act. For example, consider something that exists only potentially, not actually. It cannot bring itself into actuality, for it would have to be prior to itself. But that is impossible. It is impossible for something that is not, to be at the same time and in the same respect in order to bring itself into being. This is absurd.

What is in potentiality to actuality cannot reduce itself to actuality, but is rather reduced to act by something already in act.[2] A being cannot give to itself what it does not possess. If energy is pure potentiality, then energy accounts for the mutability of material substances. The electron is mutable, and therefore the electron or the proton or any other elementary particle is not the ultimate substrate. Rather, pure potentiality (which cannot exist on its own-for it would not be actually anything) is the ultimate substrate, which always exists in composition with actuality. If we are going to use the term energy, we must not-if Heisenberg's comparison is valid-think of it as "an actual something". What is actual is potentially something else, but actually something. In other words, what is actual is a composite of potency and act. And if energy is potentiality, it is not reduced to actuality through itself; for potency cannot reduce itself to act. To do so, to act in some way, would presuppose that it is actually something, and thus not pure potentiality-hence, not comparable to Aristotle's "potentia" or prime matter.

And so it follows that energy does not account for the electron or the proton or any elementary particle, and much less does it account for the rich heterogeneity we see in nature.

The cause cannot be less than the effect, for that would imply getting something from nothing-and from nothing comes nothing. But potency is less than actuality, and so potency does not cause actuality. Rather, act is the formal cause of things. Act is not the result of potency or energy. Act is distinct from potentiality, and since act is the essential quality of a thing, determining the thing to be what it is, endowing matter with its fundamental intelligibility, act or formal causality is outside the scope and methodology of empiriological physics. Form is prior to quantity and is not, as such, measurable. Hence, empiriological physics cannot, of its very nature, explain the polymorphic character of the world we live in.

²See Thomas Aquinas. On Being and Essence, c. 4, 7. Tr. Armand Maurer, (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies) 56.