No Motion or Rest in the Now, the Divisibility of What Moves, and Boredom and Loneliness

Orientation #

He opens by restating what “this reading” must show (no motion in the now; the mobile is divisible) and that the now had first to be shown indivisible, which the earlier part of the reading did. He says Thomas’s “very subtle problems” about the last paragraph, and possibly the physicists’ instantaneous velocity, will be taken up “next time”; after Book VI he intends to read the first two arguments for the existence of God in the Summa Contra Gentiles rather than Books VII–VIII themselves. The previous class began this reading by showing the now indivisible and situating it in natural philosophy’s subject.

The class, in order #

1. Two things to show; nothing is moved in the now (“nothing is moved in the now is clear”) #

Point: the reading shows (a) no motion in the now, (b) the thing that moves is divisible; (a) needed the now’s indivisibility first, and he adds that there is no rest in the now either. Argument, reading the text:

1. If something were moved in the now, a faster and slower could move in it.
2. Let the faster cover AB in the now; the slower covers less, AC.
3. The faster covers AC in less than the whole now (otherwise it would not be faster).
4. So the now would be divided — impossible, since the now is indivisible. Conclusion: nothing is moved in the now. He calls this “very easy to see.”

2. What “rest” means here: privation, not negation (“using the word rest here as the opposite”) #

Point: Thomas notes three arguments that nothing rests in the now; but “rest” here is the privation of motion, not its contradictory or contrary.

• Rest strictly: what is able to move, when and how it is able, but is not moving. Asked which opposite — contradictory, privation, contrary — a student answers privation; he agrees.
• Boundary case: God “rested on the seventh day,” God the unmoved mover “at rest” — not in this sense, since rest here is a lack. Compare: God is not deaf, yet has no hearing.
• Aside: a fragment of Xenophanes [ASR “Xenophon”], “the whole of God sees, the whole of God hears” — he finds it marvellous that Xenophanes saw there is no composition in God, though “couldn’t quite get it right”; he cannot explain Aristotle’s dismissal of him; he collects such fragments as “natural theology fragments.”

3. First argument, and the digression on negation vs. privation (“nothing is apt to be moved in the now”) #

Point: since rest is being apt to move and not moving, and nothing is apt to move in the now, nothing rests in the now — “the first argument, and the main argument.” Then a warning not to be “hung up on the word”:

• “Unlimited”/infinite, one of the five attributes of God’s substance in Thomas: of God it is a negation (his perfection not limited to any genus), of a line a privation (a line is apt to have an endpoint). Thomas always explains this.
• Some words clearly signify privation: chalk “doesn’t see” (mere negation, by the axiom of being and non-being) but is not “blind”; my hand doesn’t see and is not blind, since a hand is not apt to see; Oedipus with his eyes put out is blind — and the poet plays with the senses (“didn’t see the truth until he was blind”).
• Aristotle: limit is one of the forms of the beautiful (he places it in “the fourteenth or fifteenth book” of the Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics]); God is not “unlimited” as opposed to that — Aristotle is thinking of creatures.
• Limit as perfection: Holmes on the Norwood Builder, who “lacked the supreme gift of the artist, knowing when to stop”; said of Mozart (by Barth and others) and of Titian. Soap operas and serials like Jack Armstrong never end — a privation, since a story is apt to end and should; a game left unresolved is incomplete.
• Aristotle: “does not see” has two meanings — negating the act of seeing or negating the ability. Socially, “he doesn’t see” said of a blind man means the ability; “I don’t see you” (daydreaming, looking away) means the act. So “doesn’t see” is less clear than “blind,” and “unlimited” and “rest” are likewise ambiguous.
• Application: is God in motion or at rest? Neither, if rest is a privation — just as chalk neither sees nor is blind. Aristotle is not concerned with God’s rest here but with the mobile’s resting; no motion in the now is not a lack, so neither is its absence of rest.

4. Second argument: the same now is the limit of both times (“if there’s the same now in both times”) #

Point: if there is one now in two times, and a thing could be moved through the whole of one and rest through the whole of the other, then, since what moves through the whole moves in every part of it (and likewise for rest), the same thing would rest and be moved in the now. He compares it to the earlier argument that the past would be in the future and the future in the past, because the now is the same extremity of both times.

5. Third argument: rest requires a before (“has itself and its parts in the same way now as before”) #

Point: rest is defined as having oneself and one’s parts the same way now as before; change is seen when a thing is different now from before; both need a before and after, whose first meaning is time; in the now there is no before, so no rest. Conclusion of the text: what is moved is moved in time, what rests rests in time. He calls this preparation for the divisibility of motion — all motion is in time, all time is divisible — and at the same time a lesson in “how little reality motion has.”

6. Digression: motion seems the real thing (“that’s where the action is”) #

Point: people take motion for reality; Aristotle in Metaphysics IX says no one says of the unreal that it moves — only what is real moves.

• Worcester student hitching downtown: “that’s where the action is” — i.e. the motion.
• A philosopher whose wife interrupts him only when he stops reading to think: thinking appears as doing nothing, as it does to the practical man.
• The moderns: everything historical; existentialists — man has no nature, only a history; Hegel — philosophy is the history of philosophy; so only what moves seems real.
• Research money comes easier for travelling than for sitting and thinking; conferences exhaust and fragment; staying home with a book gives continuity. A news magazine beats the daily paper for continuity, the paper beats TV — “a lot of motion there.”

7. Student question: is the mover in a place in the now? (“Would I be imperfectly in that place”) #

Point: a student asks whether the thing moving is in its place in the now differently (imperfectly, as imperfect act) from the thing at rest, e.g. himself passing the chair at the now when he is at it. His answer, as he leaves it: you are really in motion only in time and really at rest only in time; the closest one can say is that the now belongs to the time in which one was moving — “that’s as close as you can get.” There does seem to be a difference, “but how you want to state that, I am not sure.” A photograph shows the still and the moving thing alike in their places. Those who compose the continuum of infinitely many indivisibles would have the moved thing “at rest” in each — but that is a negation of motion, not rest strictly. God cannot be at rest in this sense: the divine nature has no time at all. He stresses: to understand the imperfection of motion, see that there is no motion in the now, the past is no longer, the future not yet — “motion hardly is”; this will matter later, when Thomas argues in the Summa Contra Gentiles (first two arguments for the existence of God [ASR “essence”], a summary of Books VII–VIII) from the definition of motion to its dependence on a mover, and from these things too.

8. Student question: the genus of the now (“if the genus of motion is act”) #

Point: asked what the now’s genus is if motion’s is act, he answers that the now is defined as a limit, or negatively. Euclid: the point has no parts (negative), has position (positive), and is spoken of as the limit of the line. So the now is the limit of the past in one direction and of the future in the other. This parallels how we speak of God: by negation (unchanging, unlimited) or by relation (beginning and end of all things) — known relative to things because they have a relation to him, not he to them.

9. Everything changing is divisible (“Everything changing necessarily is divisible”) #

Point: the last paragraph, read though its difficulties are left for next time.

1. Every change is from something to something.
2. When the thing is in that to which it has changed, it is no longer changing.
3. When it and all its parts are still in that from which it changes, it has not yet changed (what has itself and its parts the same way has not changed).
4. It cannot be wholly in both or in neither. Conclusion: part of the changing thing is in the one, part in the other; hence divisible. Text’s note: the first change is from white into gray, not into black.

• Clearest in change of place: line divided into equal parts AB, BC; a rectangular body equal to AB — wholly in AB, not yet moving; wholly in BC, motion over; so it moves only while partly in each. His “more real” example: a train wholly on one stretch of track, then on the next, moving only while part is on each. This is the way one starts to show the mobile is a body.
• Alteration: a body wholly white has not begun to alter, wholly gray (or black, a student adds) it has finished; changing while partly white, partly the new colour — “not as clear” than with place. Growth: from five to six feet, one is neither, but in between.
• Thomas: the argument holds most fully of change of place; this book treats change as continuous, and change of place is the most perfectly continuous, above all the circuit of the heavens with no break. Thomas will argue motion’s divisibility both from its being in time and from the mobile’s divisibility — “some very subtle problems” for next time.
• “A barely existing thing it is” — the argument casts light back on the definition of motion.

10. Motion, time and matter barely exist (“would there be time without the numbering soul”) #

Point: Aristotle’s question at the end of the treatise on time. The number of chairs in a room, or stones in a forest, exists without anyone counting; but ten hours do not exist together without the soul numbering them — time does not fully exist without us, because in itself it barely is (no motion in the now, past gone, future not yet).

• Augustine, Confessions: no one asks me what time is, I know; asked, I don’t — like Plato’s [ASR “Bittanian”] dialogues, “I knew until I talked to you, Socrates.” A student says that is where he stopped reading the Confessions. Augustine on matter: “a nothing that is a something, a something that is a nothing” — not exactly correct, but potency is hard to understand because it is not actually anything.
• Modern physics: “instantaneous velocity,” used to unify straight and circular motion (the tangent at a point); with quantum theory they began to wonder whether it was a fiction, since there is no motion in the indivisible, and velocity implies motion. A student: it can be taken as a limit — what the body would have if it left the circle at that point — not a contradiction; he agrees, but strictly no motion is there. Quantum theory led back to Zeno’s problems; de Broglie discusses this and Einstein’s preface to a book; the inability to pinpoint a body and its dynamic properties at once is “a sense of really no motion in the indivisible.” Physicists come back to the general from the particular, “and we can meet them coming back.”

11. After-class talk: lives, temperaments, and what is better (“does that mean it’s better for every individual”) #

Point (after Laval reminiscences — hitchhiking during bus strikes; a priest who talked philosophy in the car until his passenger [name unclear in recording] forbade it): ethics asks which of two things is better, and the contemplative life is better than the practical; but not for every individual.

• Gregory the Great (Thomas always quotes him): men of active temperament forced into contemplation are harmed; men of contemplative temperament forced into action look crazy. His brother Richard’s wife needing to do things; a colleague who needed a more active life.
• St Paul’s body politic: the eye is better than the ear or finger, but ten eyes and no fingers is worse; hand nobler than foot, but four hands and no feet is worse. So “everyone a philosopher” is no objection to the philosophical life: a city needs farmers, mechanics, cooks, violinists; everyone a farmer would be bad too.
• Hegel’s ranking of the arts (poetry, music, painting, sculpture): still better that Mozart did music, Euclid geometry not metaphysics, someone invented champagne. Considered simply as a man, one thing is better; descending to a particular man or city, diversity is needed and people are “cut out” for niches. He would have gone into politics, or been a mildly good businessman; a student: “you could make a great sophist.”

12. Boredom and loneliness (“the punishment of hell is mainly boredom and loneliness”) #

Point: where you sin, there you are punished — abuse of the mind is punished by boredom, abuse of friendship (charity is a kind of friendship, as Thomas says; loneliness is sadness at the absence of a friend) by loneliness; both drive this life too.

• Correcting exams makes even TV and obituaries fascinating. A Greek professor’s father: “I hope it’s not that old sex business” — “no, you just get so lonely”; bad marriages made from loneliness in the army. Boredom drove him to read good things; he could not give himself full time to economics or history — history is relaxation from philosophy’s universality (Machiavelli’s History of Florence, Book V, and its connection with MacArthur’s Inchon landing, with which he baited his politics colleagues).
• “If you’re bored with Thomas, it’s either you don’t understand him or you don’t know how to read him” — too fast, wrong order; a Heidegger colleague is boring because Heidegger has nothing to say.
• Hell as all envy: Sartre’s No Exit, “L’enfer c’est les autres”; Dante’s frozen bottom; the communion of saints where all rejoice in each other’s good. Thomas on wisdom in the Summa, quoting scripture: more perfect, sublime, joyful, no tedium. Visits to the Blessed Sacrament — most people bored, saints never; Pascal on not sitting quietly in a room; Alphonsus Liguori’s meditations; St Dominic going first to the church in every town.

His words #

• rest — the privation of motion: what is apt to move, when and how it is apt, and does not.
• contradictory / privation / contrary — the three opposites among which rest is placed as privation.
• unlimited — of God a negation (perfection not confined to a genus), of a line a privation [ed.: infinite].
• axiom of beings and unbeings — grounds the answer “the chalk doesn’t see.”
• “does not see” — two meanings (Aristotle): negating the act, negating the ability.
• Wisdom — his name for Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
• before and after — required by both change and rest; first meaning is time.
• now — the limit of the past and of the future; also said negatively, as the point (Euclid: no parts, has position, limit of the line).
• imperfect act — student’s phrase for motion, asked whether it applies in the now.
• the numbering soul — Aristotle’s question whether time exists without it.
• instantaneous velocity — physicists’ term, taken as a limit, “a fiction, maybe a useful fiction.”
• loneliness — sadness caused by the absence of a friend; charity a kind of friendship (Thomas).

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Physics VI, this reading: nothing moved in the now (faster/slower); three arguments no rest in the now; everything changing is divisible (white/gray).
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Physics VI, on the same (three arguments; place most fully; divisibility from time and from the mobile).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (motion taken as real); Metaphysics “fourteenth or fifteenth book” (limit a form of the beautiful); end of the treatise on time (Physics IV, inferred).
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, first two arguments for God’s existence; Thomas “in the Summa” on the excellence of wisdom, quoting scripture (locus not stated).
• Xenophanes fragment; Euclid (point has no parts); Augustine, Confessions (time; matter); Plato’s dialogues (Socratic aporia).
• Gregory the Great on temperaments; St Paul on the body; Hegel on the arts and on history; Sartre, No Exit; Dante; Pascal; Alphonsus Liguori’s meditations; St Dominic.
• Conan Doyle, The Norwood Builder; Machiavelli, History of Florence V; de Broglie on Zeno and quantum theory; Sophocles’ Oedipus.

His questions #

• Rest is opposite to motion — as contradictory, privation, or contrary? Privation: what is apt to move and does not.
• Does this piece of chalk see? Is it blind? It doesn’t see (negation); it is not blind (privation needs aptitude).
• Is God in motion or at rest? Neither, rest being a privation; God has no time at all.
• Is the moving thing in its place in the now differently from the resting thing? There seems a difference; at most, that now belongs to a time of motion; how to state it — left open.
• If the genus of motion is act, what is the genus of the now? A limit (of past and future), or a negation, like the point.
• When a body moves from AB to BC, where is it while moving? Partly in AB, partly in BC — hence divisible.
• Growing from five to six feet, am I five or six? Neither; in between.
• Would there be time without the numbering soul? Not fully — ten hours don’t exist together unless numbered; time barely is.
• Is there any motion at the point of “instantaneous velocity”? Strictly no; it can be taken as a limit, not a contradiction.
• Is the contemplative life better for every individual? No — better simply, but temperament and the city’s need for diversity decide for the particular man.