The bridge between ancient Greek philosophy and modern philosophy falls upon medieval philosophy, especially upon Thomas Aquinas (but there were others such as St. Augustine). Aquinas was an medieval philosopher who attempted to reconcile religious dogma with observations of social inequities and law. Aquinas is best known for Summa Theologica (1265-73). "Social order, for Aquinas, was part of the order of the universe." (Fink, p. 16)

Aquinas felt that "in the field of natural philosophy, human beings could achieve some insight into the workings of inanimate nature although, according to Aquinas, Aristotle had already gone about as far in this direction as it was possible to go." (Fink, p. 17)

Yet Aquinas suggested that natural law implies an objective morality. "Natural law had both moral and economic implications. Morally it meant that the final criterion for the rightness and goodness of an action was that it accorded with the law of God." (Fink, p. 18)

Aquinas was apparently motivated to author Summa Theologica by concerns that his society was diverging greatly from the ideal. "The society in which Aquinas lived was not the harmonious hierarchy implied by his social philosophy; in fact when he argued that usury was a sin or that is was wrong to sell things more for than their just price, he was arguing against what he knew to be the current practices—practices which he saw as threatening the stability of the whole system." (Fink, p. 18) Incidentally, this divergence demonstrates the difficulty of being a moral, normative philosopher in a positivist world.

In the centuries following the renaissance, science and technology began to make a slow but steady advance, culminating in the discoveries of Galileo, Newton and many others. "Events of the most diverse types seemed to be describable in mathematical terms and to be explicable as effects of earlier events acting as causes (mechanical explanation) rather than in terms of an ideal state towards which they were all striving (teleological explanation). This crucial scientific movement was greatly stimulated by the practical use of the results of the new science in navigation, surveying, artillery and other technical fields." (Fink, p. 29) Such discoveries stimulated thinking on the part of those concerned with social philosophy.

An important step towards the development of social science was taken by Thomas Hobbes, who was in exile in Paris as a Royalist during most of the first English Revolution. Although Hobbes "made use of some theological arguments, his account did not depend on any religious assumptions at all (Leviathan, 1651)," for example when discussing absolutism. (Fink, p. 31)

By taking the mysticism out of social analysis, Hobbes could argue that humans "would be subject only to natural laws in the sense of the new natural sciences, laws such as the law of gravitation and the mechanical law that a moving body will continue its movement unless prevented by external interference." Anticipating work by Charles Darwin (The Origin of Species) and more modern work by Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene), Hobbes felt that "In a state of nature, everyone would therefore do whatever they thought would secure their own survival, irrespective of whether this would harm others, or be contrary to some divine law. This, for Hobbes, was the fundamental natural right." (Fink, p. 31). Hobbes's right of survival implies a struggle to compete for scarce resources. Conversely, Locke advocates the assumption that the state of nature was a state of plenty (e.g. unlimited land in America in Locke's time). (Fink, p. 41). The is an important issue, for the assumption of scarcity of resources is the fundamental assumption of classical economics.

There were those who pondered connections between physical and social phenomena, often to them being the connection between God and nature. Mysticism continued to persist in social analysis, and was applied to the natural sciences, with nature being but an extension of God. "The key to Spinoza’s philosophy is his monism: that is to say, the idea that there is only one substance, the infinite divine substance which is identical with Nature: Deus sive Natura, ‘God or Nature’. (Clark, p. 147) The connection between that physical and the social remained important. "The hand placed in the fire (which feels heat and pain together) recurs constantly as a philosophical example among the British empiricists." (Clark, p. 134)

1. S. Clark, "Ancient Philosophy", Oxford History of Western Philosophy, A. Kenny, ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994.

2. H. Fink, Social Philosophy, Methuen and Company, Ltd., London, 1981.