The Now, the Thing in Motion, and the Causes of Before and After

Orientation #

He is continuing the reading on the now begun last time (prev. lecture: the puzzle whether the now is always the same or always different, and the now/moving-point analogy). At the end he says next time he will say “a few more things” about time (what it is to be in time, which motion is the standard, whether time exists without the numbering soul) and then take up eternity. The next class treats those questions and introduces Boethius on eternity.

The class, in order #

1. The now as the thing carried along: same in substance, other in account (“the thing in motion, huh? For it is a point”) #

Point: Aristotle says the now is like the thing carried along, a point or a stone, which is the same as to what it is but “other in account”, i.e. in position.

• He notes the strict sense: as the sixth book will show, a point cannot really move; “point” here is the image of a point moving in a line.
• Aristotle compares this to the sophists, who take Coriscus in the Lyceum and Coriscus in the marketplace as other. He says the distinction is real, but not as to what the thing is.
• Knock on the door: you don’t know who is knocking, the door opens, it is your mother. You know your mother as your mother, but not as the one knocking at the door: same thing, other under an account.
• Baseball hit in the infield and caught in the outfield: the same ball (it does not become a football), but it was not caught as it was in the infield nor hit as it was in the outfield. Other as to where, not as to what.
• The text’s proportion: the now follows the thing carried along as time the motion. By the thing carried we know the before and after in motion; insofar as the before and after is numberable, it is the now. So the now is the same as something (the before and after in motion) but its being is other.

2. Are we numbering nows or times? (“Are you numbering nows or are you numbering times?”) #

Student’s question, answered by the more-known case: measuring a continuous line by marking inches, one to thirteen. What was counted? Inches, by their lengths, not points; but each inch is recognized as other than the next by the points marked off.

3. “This is most of all known”: we know time through the now (“the top of page seven”) #

Point: as we know motion through the thing in motion, so we know time through the now.

1. Do I know the baseball through its motion or the motion through the baseball? The latter: because the ball is other and other in where it is, that is how I know the motion.
2. Proportionally, because the now is other and other, and therefore numberable, time is known.

• Man who falls asleep: he takes the now when he dozes off and the now when he comes to as one now, and so is not aware of any passage of time. Unless he sees two nows, no time.
• Reason in the text: the thing carried along is a “this something” (Greek tode ti, Latin hoc aliquid), an individual substance, but the motion is not: motion is “something of another”, like an accident, which is of a substance.
• Student: what is “most of all known”, the thing in motion or the now? He: the thing in motion, and proportionally the now. Student: but the now, unlike the moving thing, is not a “this something”. He: no, it is proportional to it; “No other way to understand it” than by that proportion.

4. Now : time :: point : line, and :: moved : motion; the now makes time (“the now is to time as the point is to”) #

Point: two comparisons, the second more fundamental.

• Now to time as point to line. A point is not a line (not an “infinitely short line, as moderns might say”), not a part of a line; it is a limit and a division of a line. Likewise the now is not time, not a part of time, but its limit and division, dividing past and future.
• Now to time as thing in motion to motion. The moved is not motion nor a part of it; yet the continuity and unity of a motion depend on there being one thing in motion. So the moved in a way makes the motion, but only insofar as it is always other as to where it is (the hit ball). Likewise the now in a way makes time by always being other.
• Boethius (anticipating eternity): the now that flows makes time; the now that stands still makes eternity.
• Student: the moved is other as to where; the now is other as to what? He: proportionally, as to when, before and after; it is “making the before and after”. Student: then time seems presupposed in order to distinguish nows. He: “which are you putting first?” The thing in motion and motion are more fundamental; the now is what it is because of the moved, and the before and after in time corresponds to the before and after in motion.

5. Is the before and after in magnitude a cause? Exemplar causality (“I remember discussing one time with Monsignor Dionne”) #

Point: the proportion magnitude : motion : time is not mere likeness; one is in some way a cause of the other, and the kind seems to be extrinsic formal cause, the model.

1. Driving Shrewsbury to Framingham to Boston: because Framingham is on the road before Boston, the motion Shrewsbury–Framingham is before the motion Framingham–Boston, and the time (nine to nine-thirty) is before the time (nine-thirty to ten). The reverse “doesn’t seem right”.
2. So it is some cause. Which of matter, form, mover, end? Only form fits.
3. Aristotle distinguishes the form (intrinsic) from the model (extrinsic; Greek eidos and paradeigma, Latin forma and exemplar, so he recalls). Here it “seems extrinsic”. (He says Dionne “wasn’t prepared to go” there but also would not deny it.)

• Same issue in the first reading of the Physics: the “road” from what is more known to us to what is more known by nature; going forward in knowing is like motion along the road from effect to cause, so the road is an exemplar of the knowing.
• Theological parallels: “image and likeness of God” says not only that we are like God but that He is a cause of us as exemplar; “be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (end of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew) makes the Father’s perfection a model cause of ours.
• His footnote after the four causes: in how many senses is God a cause? “Two and a half”: not matter at all; “Alpha and Omega” gives maker/mover and end; “let us make man to our image” gives extrinsic form.
• Imitation in general: the one imitated is a cause as example, not as mover or commander; you can imitate the dead, or someone who does not know you are imitating. Painter’s copy labelled “after so-and-so” at the Worcester Art Museum: the original is an exemplar cause. Student: tracing is like this too, a different sense of exemplar than the artist’s. He: no other kind of cause fits; motion imitates the before and after in magnitude, time that in motion.

6. Replying to the objection: the now never ceases to be, yet is other (“really now is now”) #

Point: Aristotle’s solution to the puzzle rests on a real but non-substantial distinction.

• Student: on these proportions the now never ceases to be; “this now is not that now” is one way of speaking, but really now is now. He agrees: it never ceases to be now, always the same, but always other, understood by proportion to the body in motion (the ball does not cease to be).
• Student: sounds like an unreal distinction. He returns to the sophistic manifestation: brother Marcus behind the door; wife phones, “guess who’s at the house”, “I don’t know” though it is my brother: I know him as a man, not as dropping in unexpectedly. “There really is a distinction there.”
• The dilemma he is answering: if the now as to what it is ceases to be, when does it cease? insoluble. But if it is in no way other, everything is simultaneous (the French Revolution now) and there is no time. So there must be an overlooked distinction, hard to see, seen more easily in the moved.
• Student: “just as motion is something of the thing in motion, time is something of the now?” He: be careful not to extend the likeness further than it should go.
• Boethius again: same now, but the standing now is in no way other; the ball at rest is in no way other, the hit ball always is, though the same ball.
• Student who had been puzzled “for two weeks” (“relating motion to time is motion”): he answers that the proportion can be alternated, as mathematics teaches (2:3 :: 4:6) and as was done with the Shakespeare argument earlier (the locus is garbled in the recording): chief good of man : man :: chief good of beast : beast, alternated to chief good of man : chief good of beast :: man : beast; if man’s good is no more than the beast’s, man is no more than the beast. The now is proportional to the moved, time to the motion.

7. Reading the text: two numbers; time continuous and divided by the now (“if time be not, the now will not be”) #

He reads and glosses:

• If time is not, the now is not, and conversely, as the moved and motion go together. The number of the moved and the number of the motion are together: the number of the moved is the nows, the number of the motion is time. (Aside: the now of eternity is compared not to a number but to one, not numbered.) Time is number of motion; the now is as the moved, as the unit of number.
• Time is continuous by the now and divided by the now, following the moved: motion is continuous and one by the moved (were it not the same ball in outfield as infield, two motions), and “in account” the moved distinguishes before and after by being other as to where.
• This follows the point: the point continues and divides the line, being the end of one part and beginning of the next; but to use it thus one takes one point as two, and it “stands” (a rest).
• Since the now is always other because the moved is in motion, time is number not as of the same point (beginning and end) but as of the extremities of a line, before and after, not as parts; the middle point used as two would require a rest.
• The now is no part of time, nor a division of motion, as the point is of the line (fuller treatment in the sixth book); but two lines are parts of one. As a limit the now is not time but “happens to it”; as it numbers, it is a number. Limits are only of what they limit, but the number “ten” of these horses is also elsewhere. His count: this closes the reading, but he had planned further points for next time.

8. Next time; would time exist without the numbering soul? (“Would time exist without the numbering soul”) #

Points he lists for next week (then eternity): what it means to be in time or measured by time (why God’s life is not); which motion is the standard (left to experimental science); and the original difficulty whether time exists. Aristotle will answer it would barely exist without the numbering soul, with a distinction: ten trees in the forest exist together, so there is a number of them before we count; but there are not ten days out there, since one day is before another, so ten days need the numbering soul.

• De Anima: man is the animal with the sense of time; in passion he lives in the here and now like a beast. Shakespeare’s definition of reason: looking before and after; the first use of reason is looking before and after in time.
• Stock example: freshmen get sick drinking more than seniors; even on the utilitarians’ calculus of pleasure and pain, an hour’s extra drinking for ten hours of misery is bad arithmetic, an unelevated but real beginning of reason.
• Babies on the changing table: at first they cry through the change; after some weeks they quiet once laid down, because the change is the prelude to the milk: looking before and after.
• The dental coward who delays treatment and ends in worse pain: the calculus of pain also requires looking before and after. Hence the connection between time and numbering, and a difference from other animals.

9. Examples and definitions (“giving examples of a thing and defining it”) #

Point: examples come naturally before a definition and are needed again after it.

• Meno, Euthyphro, Theaetetus each give examples (of virtue, piety, science) where Socrates asked for a definition; the little boy asked what a nose is points to noses. Examples are closest to sense, where knowledge begins.
• The road from examples to definition: compare the examples, keep what is common, leave aside differences.
• After the definition, examples illustrate it, since reason does not think without an image. Motion as “the act of what is able to be, insofar as it is able to be” is understood by a man walking into a room: in the hall he is able to be in the room; coming through the doorway that ability is being actualized, he is already partly in.

10. Etymologies: tropos, modus, way; happiness (“the words we use to translate things have a different etymology”) #

Point: translated words carry different suggestions, each with something to learn.

• Tropos (Greek) for the way of proceeding also means turn; Latin modus (Thomas quoting Augustine: modus is what measure prefixes) carries measure, then broadens; English “way” is close to “road”, also “way of doing”.
• Happiness (from hap, luck), felicitas (from felix, fruitful: the natural result of good actions), eudaimonia (well-demoned, dependent on a higher being); Aristotle sees truth in all three, though the Nicomachean Ethics stresses what we do. Latin also has bona fortuna; the Poetics uses eutychia, good luck, for the fortune of tragic characters; Othello and Romeo, “fortune’s fool”.
• Nous, intellectus (Thomas: intus legere), “understanding” (to stand under); sapientia as sapida scientia, savory knowledge (Thomas), which Shakespeare touches in Romeo and Juliet.
• Application: the modus procedendi must fit the matter, so is measured by it; modus fits, tropos rather suggests turn: different subjects need a different turn of mind. Washington Irving’s “Mountjoy”: a young man with a poetic turn of mind who mistakes his teacher’s poetry for wisdom.

His words #

• “other in account”: not as to what a thing is but as to where/when it is (position).
• “this something”: tode ti, hoc aliquid, an individual substance; motion is “something of another”, like an accident.
• “the now follows the thing carried along as time the motion”: the governing proportion.
• “limit and division”: the now’s relation to time, as the point’s to the line.
• “the now makes time”: as the moved makes motion, by being always other.
• “form” vs “model”: intrinsic vs extrinsic formal cause [ed.: exemplar cause]; he recalls eidos and paradeigma, forma and exemplar.
• “two and a half”: the number of senses in which God is a cause.
• “alternate the proportion”: a:b :: c:d to a:c :: b:d.
• “the now is as the unit of number”: time as number of motion, the now as its unit.
• “numbering soul”: the soul that numbers, without which time “barely” exists.
• “act of what is able to be, insofar as it is able to be”: his rendering of the definition of motion [ed.: act of the potential qua potential].
• modus = “what measure prefixes” (Augustine via Thomas); sapientia = sapida scientia, savory knowledge; intellectus = intus legere.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Physics IV, the reading on the now (handout page 7; eighteenth reading, prev. lecture): the now as the carried thing, “most of all known”, the two numbers, continuity and division by the now, the now as limit.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics VI (a point cannot strictly move; now and point treated more fully).
• Aristotle, Physics I, first reading (road from more known to us to more known by nature).
• Boethius, the flowing now and the standing now (no locus given).
• Matthew, end of the Sermon on the Mount, “be ye perfect”; “I am the Alpha and the Omega”; “let us make man to our image and likeness”.
• Plato, Meno, Euthyphro, Theaetetus.
• Aristotle, De Anima (man has the sense of time); Nicomachean Ethics; Poetics (eutychia).
• Shakespeare: definition of reason (looking before and after); Othello, Romeo and Juliet (“fortune’s fool”; savory knowledge).
• Washington Irving, “Mountjoy”.

His questions #

• Is the ball hit in the infield the same as the ball caught in the outfield? Yes as to what it is, no as to where it is; it was not caught as it was in the infield.
• Are you numbering nows or times? Inches, not points: we count times, distinguished by nows.
• Do I know the baseball through its motion, or the motion through the baseball? The motion through the baseball, because it is other and other in place; so time through the now.
• How is the point related to the line, and the now to time? Neither the thing nor a part of it, but its limit and division.
• Is the before and after in magnitude a cause of the before and after in motion, and that of time? It seems so, some kind of formal cause, and extrinsic: the model or exemplar.
• In how many of the four kinds of cause is God a cause? Two and a half: mover, end, and extrinsic form, not matter.
• Is the distinction between the same now and the other now a real distinction? Yes, as knowing your brother but not as the one behind the door; otherwise either an insoluble corruption of the now or no time at all.
• Can we say time is something of the now as motion is of the moved? Be careful; do not extend the likeness further than it should go (left open).
• Would time exist without the numbering soul? Barely: ten trees exist together uncounted, but ten days do not, since one is before another (to be developed next time).
• Why do freshmen get sick drinking more than seniors? Seniors have begun to look before and after in time, the first use of reason.