# The "Unmoved Mover" The Unmoved Mover argument originated from Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, who was born around 385 BC. In order for there to be motion, there has to be something that causes that motion. Aristotle did not believe in an infinite regress of causes. If there's not infinite chain of causes, there has to be a first cause or mover, which is not caused or moved. ## Types of Causes **Linear**: The cause can disappear, but the effect remains. For example, if we blow out a candle, we don't have to continue to blow out air for the candle to be blown out. Or, another example would be stubbing your toe. You don't have to keep stubbing your toe in order for the pain to subsist. **Hierarchical**: The cause and effect move together. Take, for example, a lightbulb. When we flip the switch in our house, the lightbulb turns on. The source of that lightbulb's energy goes deeper than the switch, however. That switch is wired into a breaker box. The breaker box receives it's power from some power lines, let's say, which gets its power from a substation. And the chain goes on. Another example could be lifting weights. When we lift a weight with our arm, let's say, what allows are arm to move? Our muscles. What causes our muscles to move? Our nerves are telling our muscles to do this. What causes our nerve endings to fire? Our brain is telling our nerves to do this. Without the cause, the effect cannot take place. This is the cause type that Aristotle uses to come up with his unmoved mover argument, and which St. Thomas Aquinas builds on later. ## St. Thomas Aquinas St. Thomas Aquinas builds upon Aristotle's unmoved mover argument like so: 1. Change is apparent; things move from "potential" to "actual." 2. A chain of change cannot be infinitely long, or else nothing would've happened in the first place. 3. Therefore, some unchanged, and unchanging thing actualizes all other changes, which we call God. Let's break that down. St. Thomas says that change is evident all around us. We can see that in things moving from a potential to an actual state. A potential change is something that does not yet exist, but if something "actualizes" it, or causes it, to change, it will move from the potential to actual state. Going back to the lightbulb example: while off, it's in the potential state of being turned on. It will only turn on when the light switch actualizes that change. Like Aristotle, St. Thomas does not believe in an infinite regress of causes. There would need to be some "actualizer" that is outside of the effect. In the case of the universe, this would mean that the cause would need to be outside of time, outside of space, outside of matter, and would "actualize" those things to come into existence. That is, we know that God exists because God is the first mover (the first cause) of existence itself.