First Matter, the Five Attributes of God, and the Four Kinds of Cause (Reading Five)

Orientation #

He picks up at “the last paragraph here now, page seven” of the handout on Physics I, having just distinguished matter from form (the critique of Anaxagoras) and matter from lack of form. He hands out Reading 5 (Physics II, on cause) and says “we’ll look at this reading five next time.” The previous class treated privation and badness and the fallacy of confusing a subject with its lack; the next works through Reading 5 on the four kinds of cause.

The class, in order #

1. Matter passes away in one way, not in another (“the consideration of matter belongs most of all”) #

Point: the consideration of matter belongs most of all to the natural philosopher; the consideration of form belongs somewhat to him but “even more so to the wise man.” He reads: matter passes away and comes to be in one way, but in another does not.

1. As regards what is in it — the lack — it passes away through itself; “it is a lack in that in it that passes away.”
2. According to ability [ed.: potency], not through itself: it is necessary for it to be ingenerable and incorruptible.
3. Reason: if it came to be, something would first have to underlie it; but if this is the first matter, nothing underlies it. This returns to the thought met in Anaximander but present in all the early Greeks: whatever the first matter is remains throughout all change, under different forms, and is that to which things come back, so in a way it is eternal and “doesn’t grow old.” Aside: modern science reflects this in its most basic laws being conservation laws (energy, momentum) — the amount always remains the same under different forms.

2. Thales, Anaximander and four of the five attributes of God (“four of the five attributes of God”) #

Point: the early Greeks’ account of the first beginning already yields four of the five things Thomas leads the substance of God back to.

• Thales: (a) looks for one beginning of all things; (b) takes something that to our senses appears simple and homogeneous — water rather than orange juice “with the pulp.”
• Anaximander: the beginning is unlimited (infinite); and, as Aristotle is pointing out now, in a way unchanging — incorruptible, everything comes from it and is broken down to it.
• Aristotle in “the third book” [ed.: Physics III (inferred)]: all the Greeks who spoke of the beginning thought it unlimited in some way. “So it’s very interesting that these are four of the five attributes of God, though they have different meaning” said of God and said of matter. The fifth, supplied by the class: perfect.

3. Thomas’s order: existence, substance, operation (“the existence of God, the substance of God, the operation of God”) #

Point: in both Summas Thomas considers first that God exists, then the substance of God (what he is), then what he does (his operations); revealed theology adds a fourth part, the Trinity.

• Though these may be one thing in reality, in our knowledge they are separate considerations, and each presupposes the prior: you don’t ask what God is unless you know he exists; what he is before what he does; his understanding and will before the Trinity “so far as we can.”
• Aristotle too, in the twelfth book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics XII], takes the substance of God before his operation.
• Everything Thomas says of the substance of God is led back to five: good → perfection; eternal → unchanging; everywhere → unlimited. “So here you have the number five rather than the number three.”
• Why the Greeks got four but not the fifth: thinking the first cause is matter, they don’t see it as perfect; once the first cause is seen as a cause more like form or mover or end, the fifth arises.
• He doubts he could demonstrate that these five are the five, but coming from the Greek philosophers it “seems very natural.”
• Vatican I, first chapter on God: everything said there of God leads back to one of the five (or belongs to the next part, his understanding). Kind of “double” compared to Thomas’s text, but with an authority Thomas does not have.
• The two Summas differ in order: Contra Gentiles — unchanging, simple, perfect, one, unlimited; Summa Theologiae — simple, perfect, unlimited, [ed.: then one and unchanging; ASR garbled]. He once gave a paper on why the orders differ and what each brings out; neither order is simply “the correct one,” though it seems necessary to treat simple before perfect.

4. Student question: must the changing be understood by the unchanging? (“has to remain, right, in order to fall”) #

Point: yes; something must remain the same for there to be change at all.

• Ball hit in the infield and caught in the outfield: it must be the same ball, else the game — and motion — is impossible.
• A stone falling to the ground has to remain in order to fall.
• Aristotle in the biological works: a mouse in a pile of grain cannot move because the grain keeps giving way; you depend on something that doesn’t move in order to walk — “you can’t walk in the water unless you’re God.”
• So the mind is inclined to think the first cause must in some way be unchanging. Matter is not in every way unchanging (it is always under a different form) but persists through all change; “God is much more unchanging than that.”

5. End of Book I: form is the work of first philosophy (“the work of first philosophy”) #

Point: he reads the closing lines — whether the beginning as form is one or many, and what sort, is for first philosophy (Aristotle’s usual name for wisdom) to determine with certitude; natural, corruptible forms will be treated later. “Let it be determined thus by us that there are beginnings and what they are and how many in number”; Aristotle then begins again “starting with another beginning.”

6. Reading 5 handed out: four kinds and four senses of “cause” (“four senses of the word cause”) #

Point: Physics II gives a very universal text on cause, distinguishing four kinds; Plato anticipates it a bit (the Philebus, “the figure” in the recording is unclear) but less clearly. The strange thing: the four kinds are also four senses of the word, “not entirely univocal” — yet not purely equivocal.

• Contrast: Euclid distinguishes kinds of quadrilateral — square, oblong, rhombus, rhomboid, trapezium (the first four being parallelograms) — but not five meanings of “quadrilateral”; each is a quadrilateral in exactly the same sense.
• A definition can still be given: a cause is what is responsible for the being or the becoming of another; that other is the effect, which depends on the cause for its existence or coming into existence.
• Wooden chair: is wood responsible for the chair in the same way the carpenter is? At first one names only the carpenter; but the chair could not have come to be without wood. Is sitting responsible? It does nothing to bring the chair into existence, yet for the sake of sitting the carpenter made it and gave it its shape. The ways differ so much one is tempted to say one is responsible and not the other — hence people try to collapse the four meanings into one or keep only one.

7. Other cases where kinds and senses correspond: “part” and “thing” (“four kinds of part, but also four meanings”) #

Point: Aristotle’s four meanings of “part” in the Metaphysics are also four kinds of part, called so in different senses but not by chance.

1. Quantitative parts: C, A, T are the parts of “cat.”
2. Matter and form as parts: “act” has the same letters; so the order of the letters is also a part of the word — a different sense of part, yet if a part is that out of which something is composed, the order too is a part.
3. Parts of the definition: quadrilateral, equilateral, right-angled are parts of the definition of square. Different sense again: “the square is equilateral” can be said, but not “the word cat is C.” Still there is likeness; not by chance both are called parts.
4. The particular as part of the general: dog a part of animal — animal is neither composed of nor defined by dog, cat, horse; yet “particular” is derived from part, so some likeness. Counter-cases (kinds, not meanings): odd/even and prime/composite numbers; virtue and vice as habits; dog and cat as animals. “Thing”: ten kinds loosely, four strictly — substance, quantity, quality, relation — and also four senses of “thing”: is health a thing the way the body is, or the shape of the clay the way the clay is? Not purely equivocal, because quantity is the size of substance, quality a disposition of substance, relation substance towards something; the meanings are connected. He flags: the distinction of kinds and the distinction of senses are not the same kind of distinction, but “sometimes correspond.”

8. Two distinctions that coincide: substance/accident and matter/form (“the body and its health”) #

Point: one and the same case can fall under two different kinds of distinction.

• Body vs. health: what justifies the distinction is change — the body can be sick. Some call this substance (exists not in another) vs. accident (exists only in another); but also the body is able to be healthy or sick, so health is an accidental form and the body matter.
• Clay vs. spherical shape (sphere, cube, cylinder): substance vs. accident, and also form vs. matter.
• Boundary case: within substance itself, form and matter (substantial form) — body and soul is form/matter but not substance/accident. So two different kinds of distinction are needed, which “coincide in this case” materially.
• Applied: Aristotle’s division of causes is a distinction of four kinds of cause and of four senses of the word — “both.”

9. Why more beginnings now: from nature to cause in general (“nature is a cause within”) #

Point: up to now Aristotle sought what is intrinsic — nature, the beginning and cause of motion and rest in that in which it is, found in every change — hence matter and form, the two basic meanings of nature; now he looks at cause completely universally.

• The text is useful for every part of philosophy: any knowledge that looks for why looks for one or more of these kinds; some science may seek only one, some all four.
• Afterwards Aristotle asks which of these causes are found in the natural world; likewise one can ask which are found in geometry, or in which sense God is a cause.
• Natural philosophy is the knowledge of becoming, wisdom the knowledge of being; so cause (responsible for being or becoming) is relevant to both, and the same four are distinguished in the fifth book of Wisdom and the second book of Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].

10. Student questions: senses without kinds; “kind”; nose and its shape (“is your nose the shape of your nose two things”) #

• Distinction of senses that is not of kinds: a word equivocal by chance — “bat” (baseball bat, flying rodent) is two meanings, not two kinds of something; “cause” has more unity, a common notion “not said equally.”
• “Kind” can mean species or genus; the four kinds of thing are four genera, and each seems a thing but not in exactly the same way.
• A man and a dog are two things; a man and a shape? — hesitation. Your nose and your ear are two things; your nose and its shape? One first says no, but if the shape is not nothing it is something. Cyrano de Bergerac; the Englishman’s story of a nose so long everyone wanted to feel whether it was real — “picking your nose all the time”; the girl wants to dance with a man at least as tall. Being taller or shorter “is something.” So “thing” is not used completely univocally: substance is the primary meaning, the others are something of this basic thing, “but they are something, not nothing.”

11. Preview of Reading 5 (“what is he doing in the last paragraph”) #

Aristotle will define each of the four kinds and give examples; the class will then ask whether there is an order in which he distinguishes them. After the four come three “corollaries” (bottom of p. 1, first two paragraphs of p. 2) — the first two clearly follow on the distinction. Homework question: in the last paragraph he returns to the four causes — is he summarizing or doing something new? (He is doing something new; read carefully.)

His words #

• ability — matter “according to ability” is ingenerable and incorruptible [ed.: potency]
• lack — what is in matter that passes away through itself [ed.: privation]
• the wise man / first philosophy / Wisdom — to whom the consideration of form belongs; “twelfth book of Wisdom”, “fifth book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics]
• Natural Hearing — “physics as they call it” [ed.: Physics]
• substance of God — what God is, considered after his existence, before his operation
• cause — what is responsible for the being or becoming of another
• effect — the other, which depends on the cause for existence or coming into existence
• univocal / purely equivocal / equivocal by chance vs. by reason — “cause” is not entirely univocal, not purely equivocal
• kind — used for species or for genus
• corollaries — his name for the three paragraphs after the four causes in Reading 5

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Physics I, end of the book (handout p. 7, last paragraph; Aquinas lectio 15): matter ingenerable and incorruptible; form the work of first philosophy. Mentioned
• Aristotle, Physics II, Reading 5 (four causes), handed out
• Aristotle, Physics III, on the unlimited (inferred)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII (substance of God before operation); Metaphysics V (four causes); Metaphysics, four meanings of “part”
• Aristotle, biological works (mouse in the grain)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles, on the substance of God
• Vatican I, first chapter on God
• Plato (anticipation of the four causes; dialogue name unclear in recording)
• Euclid, kinds of quadrilateral (inferred: Elements I, defs.)
• Cyrano de Bergerac

His questions #

• What is the fifth thing Thomas leads the substance of God back to? Perfect.
• Is it necessary to understand the changing by the unchanging? Yes: the ball, the stone, the mouse in the grain — something must remain for change to happen.
• Are Euclid’s five kinds of quadrilateral five meanings of “quadrilateral”? No; each is a quadrilateral in exactly the same sense.
• Are wood, the carpenter and sitting responsible for the chair in the same way? No; yet each is in some way responsible.
• Is the order of the letters a part of the word “cat”? Yes, but in a different sense of part.
• Is dog a part of animal? In some way, though animal is neither composed of nor defined by dog.
• Is the body’s health a thing in the same sense as the body? Not the same sense, but not nothing; four kinds of thing are also four senses.
• What justifies distinguishing the body from its health? Change: the body can be sick.
• Is the distinction of four causes one of kinds or of senses? Both.
• In the last paragraph of Reading 5, is Aristotle summarizing or doing something new? Something new — left for next time.