E.A.Burtt:New Fundamental Conception of Nature

"We have observed that the heart of the new scientific
metaphysics is to be found in the ascription of ultimate
reality and causal efficacy to the world of mathematics,
which world is identified with the realm of material
bodies moving in space and time.
..three essential points are to be distinguished in the
transformation which issued in the victory of this
metaphysical view ; there is a change in the prevailing
conception:

(1) of reality,
(2) of causality, and
(3) of the human mind.


First, the real world in which man lives is no longer
regarded as a world of substances possessed of as many
ultimate qualities as can be experienced in them, but has
become a world of atoms (now electrons), equipped with
none but mathematical characteristics and moving
according to laws fully statable in mathematical form.

Second, explanations in terms of forms and final causes
of events, both in this world and in the less independent
realm of mind, have been definitely set aside in favour of
explanations in terms of their simplest elements, the
latter related temporally as efficient causes, and being
mechanically treatable motions of bodies wherever it
is possible so to regard them.

In connexion with this aspect of the change, God ceased
to be regarded as a Supreme Final Cause, and, where
still believed in, became the First Efficient Cause of
the world.