The Unmoved Mover

One of my favorite Jesuits, James Martin, wrote in one his books (I think it was his autobiography) about his undergraduate experience learning Arisotle's Metaphysics. Sister Louise French taught the class at Loyola Chicago for all the novices, and he recounted the story of how he learned about the unmoved mover.

He told of how, one day in class, they were all told to make a circle. They subsequently were told to extend their arms out to each of their neighbors. Sister French then dictated this one rule: if you are tapped, then you must tap the next person. So if someone were to tap my right hand, I would have to tap the next person with my left. It is no surprise that with this one rule, nothing happened. This is how she explained Aristotle's unmoved mover. This mover is necessarily outside of the constraints of other objects in the world. So for this experiment of Sister French to work, there would necessarily need to be something outside of the circle to begin the causal chain.

When it came time to have his cumulative exam, not just of the course but of his entire undergraduate education in philosophy and theology, one his questions asked to explain Aristotle's doctrine of the unmoved mover. He blurted out, "The untapped tapper!" All of his examiners looked puzzled, except for Sister French who replied, "Good," and promptly proceeded to the next question.

Sister French has since passed on, and James Martin was so gracious to her that her wrote in memory of her for America Magazine. But this scene is forever embedded in my mind, both for its relevance to philosophy and relevance to my desire at the time to soak up anything he wrote.