The Eight Senses of 'In', Equivocation and the Axioms

Orientation #

He continues the ordering of the eight senses of “in” begun earlier (“now we saw that proportion earlier… when Aristotle goes through the four kinds of causes”), and closes by announcing that time is next: “We’ve got to start that now” (prev. lecture: senses of “in” previewed). Verified sources place this passage at the handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom”, p. 11, and DHB Vol. III, p. 460. The previous class defined motion and previewed the eight senses of “in”; the next takes up the puzzles about the existence of time.

The class, in order #

1. Sixth sense: whole in the parts (“the whole is to part something like form is to matter”) #

The whole is “in” its parts by proportion to the preceding senses: parts are in a way like matter, whole like form, so whole-in-parts is proportional to form-in-matter. He recalls the same proportion from Aristotle’s treatment of the four causes: after the three corollaries Aristotle returns to the four causes and says all parts are in a way like matter.

2. Seventh sense: in the active ability of an agent (“I’ve got you in my power”) #

In senses 4–6 something is in the (passive) ability of another; the seventh is being in the active ability, the power, of the mover or maker.

• “We’re in God’s hands” (said before battle) = in the power of God; “it’s out of my hands” = I have no control over it.
• “Falling in love”, asked about in his love-and-friendship class: he takes it as the seventh sense — I have fallen into the power of love, love controls my movements; Proteus at the opening of Two Gentlemen of Verona, whose friend admits he is acting like a fool.

3. Eighth sense: in the end, in the good (“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be”) #

One is “in” the good one loves; the heart is where its treasure is.

• Our Lord’s words: do not gather earthly wealth where thieves break in and moth and rust corrupt, but in heaven; “where your treasure is, there your heart will be” — the “where” is the eighth sense.
• “I left my heart in San Francisco”; its opposite, “my heart’s not in it” (correcting exams: “when I retire, Rosie, I won’t miss this”) = you don’t love it.
• Augustine: the soul is more ubi amat quam ubi animat, more where it loves than where it animates; the Latin style (amat/animat) is lost in translation. So the saint’s soul loving God seems more in God than in the body; St Paul taken to the third heaven “whether in the body or not, he does not know”. Augustine touches both senses (in the body vs. in the good) and uses ubi, the word for “where”.

4. Why distinguish the senses: equivocation and falling back on earlier senses (“we often tend to fall back upon an earlier sense”) #

Mixing the senses of so universal a word is the fallacy of equivocation; the characteristic error is to fall back on an earlier sense because it is more known to us.

• Himself: “the clay didn’t change, but its shape changed” falls back on an earlier sense.
• Anaxagoras: “everything that comes out of matter must be in matter, otherwise something out of nothing” (out being the opposite of in). He does not understand how everything is in matter (in ability) and imagines it as in a place or as part in a whole. Weizsäcker (Heisenberg’s student, who took up Kant’s theory of the solar system and explained why the sun does not burn up): “when we imagine something, we make it actual in our imagination” — false imagination. Empedocles and Anaxagoras took only change of place as real, so they are “cut off before they get up here”; hence more than one fallacy, equivocation among them.
• Consequence for Anaxagoras: he must fit an infinity of things in matter, so makes them infinitely small; Aristotle answers that there are limits of size in the actual world — grass does not grow as tall as trees, no man is as small as a molecule of water.
• 20th-century parallel: any elementary particle can yield the rest, so (Heisenberg, unified-field-theory lectures) “every elementary particle is composed of all the rest” — note “composed”: the composed whole, whereas things are in matter more as in a universal whole. Speaking on his own Heisenberg goes back to Aristotle’s first matter as in ability.
• Locke on the general idea of triangle: trying to imagine the three lines forces them equal or unequal, so he says the idea is “all and none of these”; really it is all in ability, none in act, but he cannot see the distinction, and so says the general idea is hard to get, attacking the view that the general is one in the particular. Berkeley likewise sees no distinction but sees the absurdity of “all and none”, so denies general ideas.
• Modern logicians substitute “class” for the universal because they cannot understand the universal whole; Albert the Great teaches that the first thing considered in logic is the universal, what is common to many, said of many — “the very first thing to be understood they don’t understand”.
• Distinction, composed whole vs. universal whole: “mankind” (the human race, a collection) vs. “man”; his philosophy-of-nature class (not said of any one of you; together you compose it) vs. student (each of you is a student by yourself). Biologists’ “animal kingdom” leans toward the collection. Boundary: I am in my family or in the kingdom in the composed-whole sense; I am in man as opposed to beast in the universal sense.

5. “Thinking out” and “reasoning out” follow the senses of “in” (“is there more than one meaning of thinking out?”) #

Philosophy is reasoned-out knowledge; “thinking out” has as many senses as “in”, each opposed to one sense (out being the opposite of in). His examples from logic:

• thinking out the parts of a statement (noun and verb) — the part/whole sense;
• thinking out the definition of statement (speech signifying the true or the false) — a different thinking out (the definition sense);
• thinking out the species, affirmation and negation — species in genus;
• thinking out the order, as Thomas thought out the order of the eight senses — like form in matter, since order is to things as form to matter;
• thinking out a statement from its parts (odd/even: no odd number is even; whole/part: a whole is more than a part) — a further sense;
• reasoning out is one kind: the seventh sense, the conclusion being in the power of the premises; so too thinking out properties (every statement has an opposite). We tend to think out in that order too: definition before species, these before conclusions. Monléon approved the distinction but said it cannot be said in French — an example of English being superior for philosophy, because concrete.
• Thinking out the meanings of a word: he leads it to the first sense (in a place), though “strange”: a word is like a box with no necessary connection between sound and meaning — and this is the fundamental thing to do.
• Thinking out means to an end: perhaps the eighth sense; he is not sure.
• Student: before the statue is made “the shape of Moses is in the rock”, afterwards “Moses is in the rock” — is that a different sense? He: some difference, but not sure it is a distinction within the sense; the matter is originally in ability, and even actualized, matter is to form as ability to act.
• Student: “you’re in my heart”? He: Aristotle and Thomas distinguish only the central senses; other senses are led back to one of them by proximity and are not the same sense. The one Thomas adds in the commentary is the one relevant to natural philosophy now: in time.

6. Led-back senses: in time, in good health, in my heart (“led back to what sense?”) #

“In time” is led back to “in place” (not the same meaning) because place and time are both extrinsic measures, and the thing is said to be in that extrinsic measure in both cases.

• Parallel with “beginning”: the first meaning is the edge of the desk; the beginning of the chalk’s motion over the desk, and of the time it takes, correspond to it and are led back to it. Driving home at five: the before and after of the road corresponds to the before and after in motion and in time; town A before town B, so the motion from A to B before that from B to C, and the times likewise — very similar but different senses, all led back to one.
• “In good shape / in good health”: a student proposes the fifth sense (form in matter); he: it is essentially the reverse — the central sense is form in matter (health in the body, body the subject), here we say body in health, matter in form, which is not a central sense. Another student: like in a genus or category, or like the eighth (a purpose pursued)? He: it is most like part in whole, since parts are to whole as matter to form — “a distant cousin”, a strange sense, so not given as central.
• “You’re in my heart”: more like form in matter than like the eighth sense.

7. Understanding the words one uses (“is a man wise if he understands the words he uses?”) #

Aristotle is the first to think out the central meanings of words equivocal by reason and their order.

1. Understanding the words one uses is not what wisdom is: so a man is not wise because he understands them.
2. But a man who does not understand the words he uses is not wise. Applied to Heidegger (raised by metaphysics students): nowhere does he say “being” is equivocal by reason, distinguish its senses, or order them; his famous book is Being and Time and he tells you what neither is — “little potshots… for what they’re worth”. Locke likewise does not understand the words he uses.

8. The words of the axioms: “nothing is in itself” (“if A is in B and B is in C”) #

Words equivocal by reason are used everywhere, are found in the axioms, and are used most in wisdom; distinguishing their senses kills three birds with one stone. A distinct understanding of an axiom requires distinguishing the senses of its words.

• “Substance exists in itself” is to be understood negatively: not in another. Thomas in the Summa contra Gentiles: res cui conveniat esse non in alio.
• Sophism against “nothing is in itself”: if I am in the box and the box in the room, I am in the room; so if A is in B and B in C, A is in C; the species is in the genus and the genus in the species; therefore the species is in itself. The axiom means “in any one sense”; the sophism mixes two.
• Sophism against “a whole is more than one of its parts” (his classroom exercise): everyone grants the axiom; man is an animal — not just an animal (his mother: “animal with reason… that’s better”), so animal is a part of what man is; but animal includes dog, cat, horse, elephant; therefore a part contains more than the whole. Resolution: “man is a part of animal” takes animal as universal whole (said of more than one part); “animal is part of man” takes the definition of man as composed whole, which contains more than the genus.
• What the sophist does: an objection to an axiom, as simple as equivocating on its words, makes the statements most known to us and on which all others rest seem false, “and everything comes tumbling down”. He thinks this is why Aristotle brings the axiom “nothing is in itself” in here: it cannot be understood or defended without the senses of “in”.

9. “Has” corresponds to “in” (“Time has you”) #

Aristotle in “the fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V] (and in the Categories) gives senses of “has”, pointing out that there are as many as of “in”, in reverse — as there are as many senses of “out” as of “in”, so eight senses of “out” need no separate distinguishing; compare the reading from the Categories where the senses of “after” follow the five senses of “before”.

• Species has genus, genus has species, whole has parts, place has you, matter has form; both combined: “a whole has parts in it”.
• C. S. Lewis: “What do you mean you’ve got time? Time has you” — true, since you are more in time than time in you; Shakespeare’s “time’s servants”; the students’ restlessness tells you class is over without the clock.
• Thomas on scripture: “the Father is in me and I in the Father” — he asks what sense of “in”, allows a sense Aristotle did not see for lack of faith, and sometimes finds a distant likeness to this or that sense; “let’s not worry about that right now”.

10. Place first for “in”, time first for “before” (“we don’t understand what time is”) #

The first, central meaning of “in” is in place, not in time; but the first meaning of “before” was taken from time, and before in place and in motion are led back to it (not reduced as the same). The reason will appear once time is understood — which is next (“we’ll obey the time”). Aside: he has Mass at five.

His words #

• whole in parts: sixth sense; parts like matter, whole like form
• active ability: power of the agent, mover, maker; the seventh sense [ed.: active potency]
• passive ability [ed.: passive potency]: what senses 4–6 rest on
• in the end / in the good: eighth sense; where the treasure is, the heart is
• ubi amat quam ubi animat: the soul is more where it loves than where it animates (Augustine)
• fallacy of equivocation: mixing up different senses of the same word
• composed whole vs. universal whole: class/kingdom/mankind vs. student/man; the universal is said of each, not composed of them
• class: the moderns’ substitute for the universal
• thinking out / reasoning out: senses opposed to the senses of “in”; reasoning out = the seventh
• led back: other senses reduced to a central sense by proximity, not made the same
• extrinsic measure: what place and time share, grounding “in time” on “in place”
• equivocal by reason: words with many connected meanings and an order among them
• axioms: statements known by themselves by all men
• res cui conveniat esse non in alio: thing to which it belongs to be, not in another (Thomas’s definition of substance)
• “the fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V]

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Physics, the eight senses of “in” (senses 6–8 treated) — handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom” p. 11 (verified source)
• Augustine, “ubi amat quam ubi animat” (quoted, no locus)
• Gospel, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be” (quoted; Matthew 6 inferred)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, definition of substance (quoted, no locus)

Mentioned

• Aristotle on the four causes and three corollaries (Physics, no locus given)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (“fifth book of wisdom”) on “has”; Aristotle, Categories on “has” and on before/after (the reading he gave them)
• Aristotle on Anaxagoras and the limits of size (Physics, no locus)
• Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona (Proteus)
• St Paul, third heaven, “whether in the body or not”
• Heisenberg, unified field theory lectures; Weizsäcker on the solar system
• Locke and Berkeley on the general idea of triangle
• Albert the Great, beginning of logic
• Heidegger, Being and Time
• C. S. Lewis, “Time has you”
• Thomas on John, “the Father is in me and I in the Father”

His questions #

• Which of the seven senses is “falling in love”? The seventh: fallen into the power of love.
• What is the eighth sense? In the good, in the end — “I left my heart in San Francisco”.
• If you mix up these senses, what fallacy do you have? Equivocation.
• What is the difference between a student and a class? Student is universal, said of each; class is a composed whole, not said of any one.
• What sense of thinking out is reasoning out? The seventh: the conclusion is in the power of the premises.
• Why is “in time” led back to “in place”? Both are extrinsic measures; a thing is said to be in that measure in both cases.
• What sense of “in” would you lead “in good health” back to? Not the fifth but its reverse, matter in form; most like part in whole, a distant cousin.
• Is a man wise if he understands the words he uses? No; but if he does not understand them he is not wise.
• Have I really disproven the axiom that a whole is more than one of its parts? No; two senses of part (universal whole vs. composed whole) were mixed.
• Why is the first sense of “in” from place but the first sense of “before” from time? Left open: to be seen once time is understood.