Physics Book VI: The Division of Motion, the Three Roads, and First and Last Philosophy

Orientation #

He begins by placing readings six, seven and eight together: six on the division of motion, seven and eight on its order (whether there is a first; before and after). He says “we’ll try to start here at least on reading seven” and ends without reaching its text. Some points recall earlier work (“from what has gone before”; “we touched upon that earlier”) without further specification. Verified source: Aquinas’s commentary on Physics VI, lectio 6, is the text read; printed handout DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 286. The next class works through the argument that what has first changed must already be in its terminus.

The class, in order #

1. Six, seven, eight: division, then order (“division, distinction, as almost synonymous”) #

The point: reading six divides motion; seven asks whether there is a first in motion; eight treats order (before and after) more explicitly, and the three hang together as distinction and order do.

• “First” means what is before everything else, so asking about a first falls under asking about before and after.
• Beginning vs. cause: the philosopher is chiefly interested in the cause, one sense of “beginning,” so Aristotle uses the two almost as synonyms, though beginning has further meanings.
• Distinction vs. division, likewise nearly synonymous in Thomas, but precisely: every division is a distinction, not every distinction a division; division is a distinction of the parts of some whole.
  • Boundary case, the Trinity: a real distinction between Father, Son and Holy Spirit (not merely in our mind, as between God’s goodness and infinity), yet Thomas would never admit a division, since that implies parts, and a part is always something imperfect. Aristotle in natural philosophy: “perfect” and “whole” mean almost the same thing (Thomas notes Aristotle takes up these words in the fifth book of wisdom). Division would contradict the divine simplicity.
• So chapter six is about a distinction, and the order treated afterwards presupposes it.

2. Motion divisible in two ways (“motion is divisible in two ways”) #

The point: Aristotle announces division by time and division according to the motions of the parts of the mobile, but manifests only the second, because the first is already clear “from what has gone before.”

• The argument as read (letters explained): AB and BC are the parts of the whole AC; DE and EF are their respective motions; DF the motion of the whole.
  1. The whole is moved because each of its parts is moved by one of those motions, and nothing is moved by the motion of another: AB is not moved by BC’s motion, nor by the whole DF. So the motion of the whole is composed of the motions of the parts.
  2. Where the whole is of the whole, the parts are of the parts: DF cannot be the motion of one part, nor of anything else, since motion of one thing is not motion of another and “there is not one motion of many quite different things.”
  3. Suppose another motion GH of the whole; divided into the motions of the parts, these equal DE and EF (“one motion of one thing”), so GH equals DF. Any remainder IH would be a motion of nothing: neither of the whole, nor of the parts, nor of anything else, “for a continuous motion is of continuous things.” Same if it falls short. So the motions are the same and equal.
• Thomas speaks as if giving three reasons; Berquist “doesn’t see them as altogether distinct.”
• Anticipation: if the motion of the whole depends on the motions of the parts, and the parts are divisible forever, then their motions depend on further parts; Aristotle will reason from things like this in the seventh book to nothing moving itself.
• Example: Glenn Griffiths jumping from an airplane, his downward motion composed of the motions of head, arms, legs, trunk; the arm’s motion of hand, forearm, upper arm.
• Division by time, read briefly: every motion is in time and all time is divisible, so all motion is divided according to time.

3. Five things divided together (“time and motion and being moved”) #

The point: the same divisions belong to time, motion, being moved, the moved, and that in which there is motion, though the last not alike in all: place by itself, quality “by happening” (per accidens).

• Distance is continuous and divisible forever, so motion over it, being moved over it, and the time taken divide with it. Growth likewise, since size is a continuous quantity.
• Boundary case, becoming hot: hot is not a continuous quantity like a line or surface; but becoming hot in time gets hotter as time goes on, and time is divisible forever, so in that way it is divisible.
• Substantial change, dying: in one way in time, in another not. As a change from being to not-being, with nothing between, it takes no time; by reason of the alterations preparing it (the body’s deterioration, the spread of cancer) it is in time and “it takes some time for me to die.”
• A student asks about distinguishing motion from being moved. Answer: the moved is the body itself; the body is not its being moved, and being moved is not said exactly as motion is. Parallel: “Is my health my being healthy? Is my wisdom my being wise?” The two are connected but not the same, and both must be divided.
• Example carried through: Worcester to Westborough to Framingham to Boston: the motion, the road travelled, and the time all divide into the same three parts, “and they’re being divided together.” Growth: marking heights on a wall with dates, so time is divided as the magnitude of the size is.

4. Digression: the three roads (“three ways of proceeding”) #

The point: division and order underlie Aristotle’s and Thomas’s thinking in “three roads” (three ways of proceeding), a distinction not explicit in Aristotle but seen by Monsignor Dionne, “to his great credit”; Thomas already makes it.

• Via translates Greek hodos; “I am the way, the truth and the life” is ego sum via, veritas; English “odometer” [ed.: he asks where the English word comes from; the recording is unclear] has the h.
• Aristotle speaks of the natural road, “inborn” (innatus), from what is more known to us to what is more known simply; in the Prior Analytics of the road followed in syllogism, studied in logic.
• The natural road is for the most part from effect to cause, since we know the effect before the cause; “going forward” is taken from walking forward along a road, so road and way of proceeding correspond.
• The three: the natural road; the road of reason as reason; the third road, “the private road” [ed.: as heard], belonging to the wise man, who distinguishes the roads in our knowledge and shows their order.
• The first road enters into the second and the second into the third: e.g. defining by genus and difference (second road) has its reason in the natural road, that we know things confusedly and generally before distinctly.
• Personal note: understanding the sixth book of Natural Hearing enabled him to see better the connection between the way of going forward and the road, which goes back to the beginning of the Physics.

5. Time, motion, being moved; the mobile is most fundamental (“follows especially from the one changing”) #

The point: he reads the text showing time and motion divide together, then being moved, and stresses that divisibility (and being limited or unlimited) is found first in the thing moved.

• Text: time A, motion B; if moved the whole in the whole time, half in the half, and always thus; conversely if motion is divisible, time is. Example: an hour Shrewsbury to Boston, so half an hour gives part of the journey; less than an hour to Framingham.
• Being moved likewise (“Let it be moved to C according to half the motion”); there is no part of the motion Worcester to Boston in which the car is not being moved, nor vice versa.
• “One being divided, all will be divided”; and, as later, limited or unlimited is found alike in all (“we touched upon that earlier”).
• Which is most fundamental? The thing in motion: motion is like an accident of it; a baseball hit out of the park is what is there throughout, one part of the motion past, another to come; “the ball… seems to be what’s responsible for the unity of it.” Time is more a property of motion than motion of time.
• Why a point cannot move: coming through a doorway, part of him is inside and part outside, which needs a divisible body; a point would have to be altogether out or altogether in, so no divisible motion or time for it. Geometry’s “point moving to make a line” is the imagination, not motion strictly speaking. So if the mobile were indivisible, there would be no divisible motion or time.

6. Toward reading seven: senses of “first” (“first is defined by what before and after”) #

The point: “first” and “last” have as many meanings as “before” and “after” (the senses Aristotle gives in the Categories), which explains “first philosophy.”

• Aristotle calls wisdom “first philosophy” (“metaphysics” comes after him, from Andronicus of Rhodes); Berquist calls it “the fourteen books of wisdom.”
• Descartes also says “first philosophy,” but meaning what must be learned first: before in the discourse of reason, the third sense. In that sense Aristotle would have to call wisdom last philosophy: Thomas at the beginning of his commentary on the Liber de Causis gives the order of learning as logic, mathematics, natural philosophy, practical philosophy, and last wisdom; texts of Aristotle (and Boethius) roughly agree.
• Aristotle means first in dignity, the fourth sense; hence in the sixth book of wisdom natural philosophy is “second philosophy”: were there no immaterial substances, natural philosophy would be wisdom, as the pre-Platonic Greeks held; after Anaxagoras, Plato and Aristotle gave good reasons for immaterial things, natural philosophy is seen as wisdom about natural things only, not wisdom simply.
• “Metaphysics” means after (the books of) natural philosophy, “after” in the third sense; by parity natural philosophy could be “metamathematica” and geometry “metalogica” [ed.: heard as “metatheologica”]. Descartes’s sense is more known to us, and we fall back on the earlier senses.
• Aside: the bookstore shelf “metaphysics and the occult,” so he hates to admit he teaches metaphysics.

7. Is there a first in change? (“in what way there is a first in change”) #

The point: reading seven will show in what way there is and is not a first in change, “a very impressive discovery.”

• Arithmetic: the first number is two, the least number; one is not a number, so cannot be the first number.
• Geometry: no first line, because of infinite divisibility; a point would be first only if it were a line, and it has no length.
• Shakespeare knew this: The Phoenix and the Turtle, love “murdered number” by making lover and loved one, and one is not a number; then reason tries to figure how two can be one.
• Asides: Socrates on talking with Homer in the underworld, so we may talk with Shakespeare “if we get to the right place”; the EWTN story of Michelangelo painting a complaining cardinal into hell and the Pope having power only over purgatory; the papers misreporting the Pope’s remarks on abuse as a “mixed message” when he condemns the evil and holds out divine mercy. The recording breaks off here.

His words #

• division: a distinction of the parts of some whole; every division a distinction, not conversely.
• beginning / cause: near-synonyms in Aristotle; cause is one sense of beginning.
• fifth book of wisdom / fourteen books of wisdom / first philosophy: his names for the Metaphysics.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• by itself / by happening [ed.: per se / per accidens]: how place and quality respectively divide with motion.
• the moved: the body itself in motion, distinct from its being moved and from the motion.
• road (via, hodos): way of proceeding; natural road, road of reason, third road of the wise man.
• more known to us / more known simply: the two ends of the natural road.
• second philosophy: Aristotle’s name for natural philosophy, second in dignity.
• metaphysica: “after” natural philosophy, in the order of learning.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Physics VI, reading 6 (Aquinas lectio 6): motion divisible in two ways; the AB/BC, DE/EF, GH argument; division by time; the five things divided together; time A and motion B; being moved to C.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics VII (nothing moves itself)
• Aristotle, Categories (senses of before and after)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (perfect and whole) and VI (second philosophy)
• Aristotle, Prior Analytics (the road of syllogism)
• Aquinas, commentary on the Liber de Causis, beginning (order of learning)
• Descartes, on “first philosophy”; Boethius; Andronicus of Rhodes
• John 14:6 (inferred), “I am the way, the truth, and the life”
• Shakespeare, The Phoenix and the Turtle

His questions #

• What does the word “first” mean? What is before everything else (and not after anything).
• Why does he enumerate two divisions but manifest only one? Division by time is already clear from what went before; division by parts is new.
• Is there anything between being and not being? No; so dying as such takes no time, but is in time through the alterations leading up to it.
• Is my health my being healthy? Is my wisdom my being wise? No; they are connected but not the same, as motion and being moved.
• Which is more fundamental, motion or the thing in motion? The thing in motion; motion is like an accident of it, and it holds the motion together.
• If the thing moved were not divisible, would motion be divisible? No; a point cannot come through a doorway part in, part out.
• What is the first number? Two; one is not a number.
• Is there a first line in geometry? No, because of infinite divisibility; a point has no length.
• In what sense is wisdom “first philosophy”? First in dignity (fourth sense of before), not first in learning, where it is last.