Aristotle's Physics: Proemium and the Confused Before the Distinct (Three Kinds of Examples)

Orientation #

The recording begins mid-sentence, in the middle of his explanation of why the book is called “Natural Hearing”. He refers back to earlier classes on the logical vs. editorial division of a work, on division (universal whole vs. composed whole), on the proemium of the Metaphysics, and on naming before defining in logic. He says nothing about next time; the class breaks off as he says “let’s go back to the reasoning here in the second paragraph.” Verified source: the class works from the handout “First Book of Natural Hearing, Reading One” (Aquinas, Physics I, lectio 1). The next class continues with “more known to us” vs. “more known simply” and contrasts Aristotle with Descartes.

The class, in order #

1. Why “Natural Hearing”: listening to nature as a student listens (“listening to nature like a student listens”) #

Point: the title means both hearing about nature and giving ear to nature, and the second is the primary way to learn from her.

• Kant’s proportion for modern experimental physics: we learn from nature not as a student from his teacher but as a judge from a witness. He grants some truth to it: the scientist never performs all possible experiments; he asks nature a definite question and hears only her answer, as the witness keeps his mouth shut until questioned.
• His correction: in this book we listen to nature as a student listens to his teacher, hearing all he has to say. Kant wants only the second way; “we ought to listen to it first as a student listens to his teacher”; later we may have to listen as the judge or lawyer does.
• Hearing is the sense of instruction from another; Heraclitus (a “central thinker in human thought”): wisdom is to speak the truth and act according to nature, “giving ear thereto.” That is what Aristotle does here.
• A further reason for the title, to be seen later: what the book says is fairly close to what we naturally understand.
• Eight books; the course will read only certain parts.

2. Readings, and logical vs. editorial division (“the difference between the logical division”) #

Point: the division into readings follows Thomas’s lectiones (“lecture” or “reading”; he prefers “reading”); this reading corresponds to Thomas’s first lectio.

• Editorial division vs. logical division: Matthew’s Gospel is editorially 28 chapters and verses, a convenience for referring; but Thomas divides it logically into three parts (Christ as man came into the world, proceeded through it, left it), since Matthew emphasises the humanity of Christ. The logical division is what helps you understand the book.

3. Proemium and tractatus: the prologue and the play (“prepares the way for the what play”) #

Point: almost every work of Aristotle divides first into proemium and tractatus, proportional to Romeo and Juliet’s prologue and play.

• Romeo and Juliet: the prologue is a Shakespearean sonnet; first quatrain sets the stage (Verona, two families shedding blood), second announces a tragedy (misadventured piteous overthrows — pity), third names the other tragic emotion, fear (the fearful passage of their death-marked love), the couplet asks for patient ears. Small compared to the play, but prepares you for the kind of play. Not every play has one; Henry VIII’s (“I come no more to make you laugh”) is even clearer.
• Proemium (Greek; he suggests “paving the way”): usually the beginning of the first book, not even all of it. Its most essential element is the skopos, the aim; then sometimes why it is desirable and how one proceeds. Cf. the proemium of the Metaphysics on wisdom (prev. class, his back-reference).
• Tractatus: Latin, “drawn out”; the main body.
• Dei Verbum: the Latin text labels its opening a proemium (“a masterful proemium”); his English translation calls it “introduction”. Objection: an introduction is a leading in, already going into the matter (a whole college course can be an “introduction”); a proemium only states very briefly what you aim at and perhaps how you will proceed. The translator does not know the difference.
• Plato already saw the need: the Timaeus (not so much a dialogue; Timaeus speaks on the origin of the universe) has a magnificent proemium, which Socrates applauds; its Greek is very close in wording to the proemium of the Nicomachean Ethics.
• Analogy: the overture of a symphony or opera (Don Giovanni’s differs from Così fan tutte’s, setting the mood), but most like a prologue in a play.
• Aristotle’s proemium here does two things: (1) the aim (first paragraph); (2) the order in which to consider what we aim at (all the rest).

4. The aim: beginnings, causes, elements (“beginning is more general than the word cause”) #

Point: we aim at knowing natural things in the light of their causes, i.e. knowing what and why they are as they are.

• He reads the first paragraph: since understanding and knowing why in all sciences that have beginnings or causes or elements come from knowing these (the “we” is the Greek philosophers, not editorial), in the science of nature one should first try to determine about the beginnings.
• Thomas takes “understanding” (Greek eidenai) as knowing what; knowing what and knowing why are both through knowing causes (he refers to Posterior Analytics II).
• Three words instead of one. Thomas notes Aristotle gives their meanings at the start of the fifth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V], then asks how they are used here.
  • Strict use: beginning is more general than cause (every cause is a beginning, not every beginning a cause: a point begins a line but does not cause it; the beginning of the day is not the cause of the day). Theological importance: one should not say the Father is the cause of the Son (the Son would be a creature), but the Son proceeds from the Father, so the Father is a beginning; one reading of John’s “In the beginning was the Word.” Philosophers often use beginning and cause interchangeably because causes are the beginnings they seek, wondering what and why.
  • Element is more particular than cause: of the four kinds of causes (matter out of which; form, the shape, ratio, order; mover or maker; end or purpose), element names only matter.
  • Two possible uses here: (a) three common Greek words, loosely synonymous, hinting that there are many kinds of cause (as the Metaphysics used “art or science” without distinction, referring to the Ethics for the distinction); (b) Thomas’s adaptation: element to matter, beginning especially to mover/maker (“God is the beginning and the end of all things”), cause to form and end. Not every science uses all four; natural philosophy does.
  • “As far as its elements” hints that natural philosophy goes down into matter — twice: from the eight books of Natural Hearing to the book on the universe [ed.: De caelo] and to generation and corruption; and again from the three books on the soul down to the body in detail. The reverse of wisdom, which goes toward the immaterial.
• “First try to determine about the beginnings”: not that we know the causes first, but that they are first in our intention, what we aim at.

5. The order: the central if-then syllogism (“if the confused is before the distinct”) #

Point: the main claim of the rest of the reading is that natural things and their causes should be considered in general before in particular, and everything else backs the one reason for it.

1. If the confused is before the distinct in our knowledge, then the general is before the particular in our knowledge.
2. But the confused is in fact before the distinct in our knowledge.
3. Therefore the general is before the particular in our knowledge.

• “Confused” here means indistinct, not mixed up or mistaken. Thinking a dog is a cat is a mistake; thinking a dog is an animal is not a mistake, but does not distinguish dog from cat — indistinct. “Separate those two senses.”
• Premise 1 rests on a proportion: general is to particular as confused is to distinct (knowing you as something, animal, human, male comes to know you more distinctly; cat as animal is less distinct than four-footed animal, than four-footed with paws). Confused/distinct is more general than general/particular; general/particular is one kind of confused/distinct. Like 4:6::2:3 — if 2 is before 3, 4 is before 6, though 4 and 6 are not 2 and 3. Aristotle does not try to manifest this premise much; it is seen once the terms are understood. Alternatively, one can argue from general/particular being one form of confused/distinct.
• Premise 2 is what the rest is devoted to.

6. The plan of the rest: reason why, then three kinds of example (“three kinds of example to show that”) #

Point: the second paragraph gives the reason why we know the confused before the distinct (“very difficult”, “very profound”; people write doctoral theses on this page); the last three paragraphs give three kinds of example showing that we do, under each of which an infinity of examples can be found. He takes the easier part, the examples, first and promises to return to the reason.

7. First kind: the sensible composed whole (“sensible composed whole”) #

Point: a whole put together from its parts (as opposed to a universal whole, which is not put together from its parts but said of them), known by the senses, is first known without distinguishing its parts; they are picked out one by one over time. He starts here because knowledge starts with the senses.

• Taste and smell: enjoying a salad dressing and asking “what do you use in there?” shows you tasted the whole without knowing its parts. His connoisseur friend in a Paris restaurant with a secret wine sauce: repeated tastings and attempts at home to pick out the ingredients — even a fine palate takes time. His own marchand de vin sauce with mother and sister-in-law: many ingredients, and it takes time to pick them up. California wine law: a varietal label fixes the grape percentage, but a generic (“Burgundy”, “Claret”) is each house’s own mixture; his brother Mark, tasting one, named the grapes and was invited to the back room to judge blends — yet Mark could not do that when he first went to California. (Mark also detected a re-bottled wine at a dinner meant to deceive everyone.)
• Hearing: a symphony pleases at once, but the ear does not pick out the instruments. Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra plays the Purcell theme whole, breaks it down by sections, recombines it — giving more distinct knowledge. His ear is drawn to the voice in a Mozart aria and must be trained to hear the accompaniment; only recently did he learn that “Non più di fiori” (La clemenza di Tito) uses the basset horn. A friend told him the end of the Jupiter Symphony’s fourth movement combines five melodies — he had heard it many times without knowing. Don Giovanni’s ballroom scene combines two kinds of dance without conflict.
• Sight: you see a whole painting at once in a museum but not the details. His dollar canal print seemed to follow him around the room. As a freshman he was given 50 minutes to describe a painting of the Virgin; he studied it for 20 minutes writing nothing, noticed how the painter’s treatment of the lips revealed her character, and got an A — the others’ mistake was writing before looking.

8. Second kind: the understandable composed whole (“name something to the knowledge we have when we can define it”) #

Point: the definition, which only reason knows (senses do not define), is a whole composed of parts; we can name and recognise a thing long before we can spell out its definition. Less known to us than the first kind, but similar in being put together from parts.

• Aristotle’s example, the circle: a child says the clock is circular but cannot define it as a plane figure contained by one line every point of which is equidistant from an interior point called the centre. His children came home from grade school with a sheet of circle, triangle, square, oblong and could identify each; asked “what is a circle?” they said “that’s a circle” (no “quadrilateral, equilateral, right-angled” for the square).
• Sonnets: one can read 150 without being able to define one (a likeness of thought and feeling in 14 lines of iambic pentameter, three alternately rhyming quatrains completed by a couplet).
• A child asked “what is a nose?” points. Parents use a word correctly but scratch their heads when asked to define it. In the love and friendship course, “what is love?” — “a feeling”; so are anger and fear. “What is a chair?” — “something to sit on”; but a bench or sofa is not a chair, and not everything made to sit on is a chair.
• As said in logic (prev. classes), we name before we define, and when we ask for the definition we use the name, so we have some understanding, but not the distinct understanding the definition seeks.

9. Third kind: the more universal sensible (“something in a way more general”) #

Point: something in the senses like the general before the particular; Thomas calls it the more universal or general sensible, taken either in place/distance or in time (Aristotle’s example is in time). This kind is most like what he ultimately wants, so it comes last.

• In place: with Columbus, someone cries “Land!” and it is a whale, a cloud, or floating vegetation — what you see at first is not distinct. A ship on the horizon: friendly or pirate? then the flag goes up. “There’s something on the horizon; it’s a ship; it’s a pirate ship; it’s Captain Kidd’s ship” — very like going from general to particular. In westerns: something on the cliff; it’s moving; it’s a dog; it’s Joe’s dog.
• Aristotle’s example in time, clearer in the Greek household with many men and women attending the children: children call all men father and all women mother, later separating each. His supermarket story at St Mary’s College: a child in the cart called him “Daddy”; a lost child in a crowd temporarily takes you for his father — confused, and in that case mistaken.
• Twins: Judy and Mary Jane Van Valkenberg — first-grade classmates could tell them apart, the next year’s teacher could not, so they switched seats. Complimenting the wrong sister on a performance. Look-alike sisters switching first dates; presumably by the time of marriage the men can tell. The two French sisters running the grocery: his mother could tell them apart, he could not. Parish twin boys: his wife stood them up and studied them; parents have no difficulty. Two twin students in different semesters: he knows it is one of the two but not which. What is one seeing? Something more general — “a Van Valkenberg girl” — not Judy in particular.
• Mark in Quebec: the small boy shown a picture of Audrey Hepburn said “Mama” — confused, very much like the reason knowing the general.
• The old saying that people of another race “all look the same”: to those who do not know a race, they look alike, though as distinct to each other as we are; Father Francis can tell Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese apart, he cannot (the adopted child at church, whose mother is not Oriental).

10. Two ways from the first example; the universal whole (“the general is a kind of whole”) #

Point: the sensible whole being more known than its parts serves Aristotle in two ways.

• (a) It exemplifies the general proposition that the confused is before the distinct — the reason for general before particular.
• (b) In the second sentence he compares directly: the general is a kind of whole, taking in many things as parts, so if we know the whole before the parts, we know the general before the particulars.
• Words: “particular” is taken from “part”; Greek katholou (whence “catholic”) from kata + holos, according to the whole. Universal whole: said of its parts but not put together from them; composed whole: put together from its parts but not said of them.

11. Wrap-up, Superman, and a student’s puzzle (“It’s a bird. It’s a plane.”) #

• Exam warning: identify the three kinds and give examples under each.
• Monsignor Dionne points out the order: sensible whole first because knowledge begins with sense; then the understandable whole, less known to us; the more general sensible last because it is most like the conclusion aimed at.
• “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s Superman”: the hesitation shows they see something going through the sky without yet knowing distinctly what — the general sensible in place.
• Student: isn’t it really something in the imagination being developed, not the senses (thinking of the twins)? Answer: no, he must use his eyes, study the faces, notice small marks; he sees the family resemblance, not the distinction. Student: it’s not that your eye didn’t see the freckle, you just didn’t notice it — he assents by example (the two twin students).
• Aside: a college story — “Are you you or your brother?”
• He turns to the reasoning of the second paragraph; the recording ends there.

His words #

• “Natural Hearing” — his title for the work [ed.: Physics]; hearing about nature and giving ear to nature.
• reading — his rendering of Thomas’s lectio (“lecture or reading”).
• logical division vs. editorial division — the division that helps you understand vs. a convenience for reference.
• proemium — Greek; “paving the way”; contains the skopos (aim); distinct from “introduction” (leading in).
• tractatus — Latin, “drawn out”; the main body.
• fifth book of wisdom — [ed.: Metaphysics V].
• beginning, cause, element — beginning more general than cause; element more particular (matter only).
• understanding — Greek eidenai, taken by Thomas as knowing what.
• confused — indistinct, not mistaken.
• composed whole vs. universal whole — put together from its parts vs. said of its parts.
• sensible composed whole / understandable composed whole / more universal (general) sensible — the three kinds of example.
• katholou — “according to the whole”; the Greek for general.
• particular — from “part”.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Physics I, first paragraph of Reading One (handout “First Book of Natural Hearing, Reading One”, p. 1); with Thomas’s commentary, lectio 1 (verified source).
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, prologue (recited).
• Heraclitus, fragment on wisdom (quoted).
• Handout “Note for Book One, Reading Ten”, p. 12 — listed by the verified sources as read for 5 minutes; not identifiable in the transcript.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics V opening (beginning, cause, element) (inferred); Metaphysics proemium on wisdom and “art or science”.
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics II (knowing what and why through causes).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (proemium; art vs. science).
• Aristotle’s later natural works: the book on the universe, generation and corruption, the three books on the soul.
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on Matthew (threefold division).
• Plato, Timaeus (proemium).
• Vatican II, Dei Verbum (proemium).
• Shakespeare, Henry VIII (prologue).
• John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word.”
• Kant (physics as judge questioning witness).
• Britten, Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra; Mozart, Jupiter Symphony, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, La clemenza di Tito.

His questions #

• How would you divide Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? The prologue and the play.
• If I think a dog is an animal, am I mistaken? Do I distinguish a dog from a cat? No, and no: confused means indistinct, not mistaken.
• If you lay down the two premises, what follows necessarily? The general is before the particular in our knowledge.
• Isn’t the general to the particular as the confused is to the distinct? Yes; general/particular is one kind of confused/distinct.
• What does asking “what do you use in your salad dressing?” show about your knowledge of it? You tasted the whole without distinguishing its parts.
• When you first hear a symphony, does your ear pick out the instruments? No; you hear the whole indistinctly.
• What was the teacher seeing when she saw Judy or Mary Jane? Something more general — a Van Valkenberg girl — not either in particular.
• When they say “it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s Superman,” what are they seeing at first? Something going through the sky, not yet distinctly what it is.
• Student: isn’t the growth in telling twins apart something in the imagination rather than the senses? No; you must use your eyes and study the faces to notice the differences.