ABSTRACT
Strict causalism may account for novelty in number and in quantity alone; by declaring that actuals are either the mere manifestation or the quantitative development of possibles, causalism definitely excludes qualitative novelty. A theory of change as the unfolding, growth, and manifestation of preexisting potentialities under the influence of external causes, was held by Aristotle and worked out in detail by Moslem and Christian schoolmen. Theory of change excludes higher novelty, and consequently progress. Progress is indeed explicitly denied by another scholastic maxim, namely, “The cause is higher than its effect”. Since the strict doctrine of causality rendered radical novelty impossible, the emergence of newness had to be either denied or assigned to that which was absolutely autonomous, free, and spontaneous. The qualitative immutability asserted by causalism means that one cannot expect to obtain, from a given set of causes, whatever effect one’s fancy invents, but only those effects that the given conditions can possibly bring out.
