ABSTRACT
Life on this planet has involved a series of fundamental transitions which entities replace ‘in’ with new capacities and operations arose from a causal base lacking those capacities and operations. But these transitions appear to violate the metaphysical principle that a cause cannot confer on an effect that which it does not itself have, as this would be tantamount to creation ex nihilo. If the evolutionary transitions cannot be reconciled with the principle of proportionality, then one is forced to deny that the transitions ever happened, or to assert that each fundamental transition in that history involved a “gift from above”, that is, an intervention in which the First Cause raised a secondary cause above its natural capacity. This chapter argues that this dilemma is not forced. A naturalistic interpretation of the evolutionary transitions can be shown to be consistent with a naturalistic interpretation of the principle of proportionality. This is achieved by distinguishing Neoplatonic from Aristotelian “perfections” in both the orders of dependence and eminence, and the adoption of a further principle, viz., the principle of the conservation of perfection.
