Distinction, Order and the Strange Lack of a First in Motion (Physics Readings 7–8)

Orientation #

He recalls that last time he showed “in what way there is a first in motion” (the first in which the change is complete, shown indivisible) (prev. lecture); today begins “the second part,” in what way there is not a first. He says Aristotle “is going to come back to this when he argues that nothing moves itself,” and that they will later look at Thomas’s summary of the arguments in the Summa Contra Gentiles.

The class, in order #

1. Where we are: distinction and order of the parts of motion (“Order presupposes distinction”) #

Readings six, seven and eight treat the distinction (six) and the order (seven and eight) of the parts of motion; seven concentrates on “first”, eight on “before”, and first is defined by before and after.

• Two things are distinct when one is not the other; in order when one is before or after the other.
• Distinction is before order (a) in being, “the second sense” of before: distinction can be without order, not vice versa; a calf and a baseball bat are distinct with no order between them, and nothing is before or after itself; (b) in our knowledge (“the fourth sense”): if I saw no distinction between today and yesterday I could not say today is after yesterday; if none between wine and water, I could not say wine is better.
• Order seems more the end: God made creatures distinct in order to have an order in the universe, “the greatest good of the universe after God Himself”; the whole universe is ordered to God.

2. Recap: the first in which it has changed is indivisible (“The Greek word would be atomon”) #

What is not a sphere is becoming a sphere; there is a first when it has become a sphere, and at that first it is in the term B, not A; and that first is indivisible (atomon).

• Born January 18th: no period of that day is the time I was first born, since if born already in the morning I was not first born in the whole day; any period would have me unborn and born at once, “contradictories”. So I am born at the end of a time, and a limit is no time at all.

3. Two senses of “that into which it has changed” (“that into which something has changed is said in two ways”) #

Reading the middle paragraph of p. 10: the first in which the change is perfected exists and is indivisible because it is a limit; the first in which it begins to change “is not at all”.

• Limits generally are not quantities of the kind they limit: point is the end of a line but has no extension; line the end of a surface (triangle, square) but no width; surface the end of a body (cube) but no depth.
• Argument that AD, the first time in which it changes, is not indivisible: (1) if it were, nows would be next to each other, but no continuum is composed of indivisibles nor is itself indivisible; (2) if it rests in the whole time CA before moving it rests in A, so if AD is partless it “at once rests and will have changed” (he notes this assumes the opponent’s position). (3) So AD is divisible: if it has changed in neither part, not in the whole; if in both, or in one only, AD is not the first. Hence no first, “for the divisions are unlimited.”
• “I first began to move today”: this morning? the first hour, six to seven? Any time I name, if I am moving through it, in half of it I am already moving; so it is not first. Only if time were indivisible or composed of indivisibles, excluded already, could there be a first time of beginning.

4. No first part of the mobile that has changed (“there’s no part of the body that has first gone through the door”) #

Bottom of p. 10: let DF be the first of DE that has changed; the same fails for the changing body.

• Shoving a piano through the doorway: not the first foot, since half a foot gets in before the whole foot; not the half, since a quarter gets in before; the body is divisible forever, so no length is first through the door.
• Student: “nothing is first, but there is a time when something’s moving.” His reply: yes, there is a time when it is moving; there is no first time in which it is moving.
• Time HI in which DF has changed: in half that time something less has changed, and so forever. Conclusion: nothing is first, neither of the changing nor of the time. He stresses: “It shows what a strange reality is… change”, and that from this Aristotle will reason that a body cannot be in motion by itself, “because that would be in motion… first, but not because of anything else.”

5. The third thing: that according to which it changes (“three things are said to be in change”) #

The changing, that in which (time), and that to which or according to which; the first two are always divisible through themselves, the third is not.

• Distinction: change according to something itself a continuous quantity (place; growth) vs. change of quality (white), which is continuous only insofar as it takes time. A man changed to white in some time: man and time divisible, white divisible only by accident, because that to which white happens is divisible.
• Magnitude AB, moved from B to C first: if BC is divisible there is something before C to which it has changed, and so on; no first.
• Running a mile today: no first distance run, since a half mile before the mile, a quarter before the half. Growing from five to six feet: no first amount grown.
• Conclusion read: only in change according to quality can there be the indivisible through itself, “but even that can be divisible accidentally”, insofar as it is in time.

6. Eighth reading: moving before having moved, and the reverse — both (“Does moving come before having moved”) #

He announces the question: does moving come before having moved, or having moved before moving? He will argue each in turn; before having moved any distance you are moving, and while moving you have already moved some distance.

• “Wonderful and strange”: Shakespeare couples the two (Hamlet: “strange and wonderful”; “as a stranger give it welcome”), an old saying going back to Homer.
• First, the changing changes in each part of the first time XR: divided at K, it either moves or not in XK and in KR; in neither, it rests in the whole; in one only, XR is not first (“the motion is by another”, as changing in the year because in the day). So it moves in each part.
• Everything moving has been moved before, argument 1: two bodies equally fast starting together; one stops at half the distance and has manifestly moved it; the other, still going, has moved that same distance in that time before completing the whole. Thomas: two bodies are used because “act is more known than ability” [ed.: potency].
• Argument 2, one body: time is what is between nows; every division of the time gives a now, and before completing any distance it has moved the distance up to that now; time is divisible forever, so it “will have changed without limit.”
• Argument 3: what changes continuously either moves or has moved in any part; one cannot be changing in the now (no motion or rest in a now); so it has changed according to each now, and if nows are unlimited it has changed infinite times.

7. What has changed was changing before (“nows are not next to each other”) #

Let it have changed from A to B in a now; not the now in which it is in A (it would be in A and B at once, and what has changed is not in what it started from); so in another now, and between two nows there is always a time, in which it was moving. So before every “has moved” there is a moving.

• Not like “which came first, the chicken or the egg”: that question may have an answer [he says it is answered “in the ninth book of wisdom” — unclear in recording]; here neither moving nor having moved is first. “Very strange result.”

8. Contrast with thinking and number; line and point; God’s goodness (“there’s nothing between two and three”) #

Thinking is more like number: after two the next number is three, nothing between (“contrary to modern mathematicians”), because the one is simpler than the point; but lines ordered by length have no next longest, since another line lies between any two, and adding a point adds nothing.

• Zeno (he thinks): the point is nothing, since a line plus a point is no longer; this assumes that what is is continuous; a point is in some way, but not continuous.
• Thomas uses this for God’s goodness: as line to point, so God’s goodness to the creature’s; the creature “added to” God is no more than God alone. Otherwise God would be part of a better whole, and one could argue God was obliged to create. So creation is “absolutely gratuitous”; a philosopher [name unclear in recording] cited by Thomas: “God alone is liberal.” Summa: as Socrates plus the arm of Socrates is no more than Socrates, so God plus what partakes of God is no more than God. Hence awe, “a filial fear”, even in heaven.

9. Student: a property of the continuous and infinity (“before every length there is a point”) #

Student: this seems to be a property of the continuous and infinity. He agrees: the continuous is neither indivisible nor composed of indivisibles. Line analogy: no first length; before every length a point (its end), but since that point is not next to the starting point, before every point a length. Motion is like length, “has moved” like a point (its limit).

• Student: no first length moved, but a first position from which it moved? Yes, a point, but no first distance in terms of motion.
• Student: is this the human mind creating it? “Not creating it. That’s the way the thing is”, and not the way thought is; the point matters for the later contrast with thinking and for the argument that nothing moves itself, since no motion belongs to a thing first.
• Summa Contra Gentiles summarizes the arguments of Physics VII–VIII from the definition of motion in III and from VI, with two arguments and many ways of showing premises; Summa Theologiae is “much more contracted”.

10. Digression: reading Thomas; “order” applied to the Trinity (“you drop the genus but keep the difference”) #

Thomas’s teaching does not develop so much as be more explicit in one work and contracted in another; his own example is order.

• Having concluded order means before and after, he read in De Potentia Augustine’s “order of nature” in the Trinity, “in which this is from that,” not before that; the Athanasian Creed says explicitly no before and after in God. He wondered whether before and after was only one kind of order.
• Later, in the Sentences commentary (obtained years after), Thomas is explicit: distinction is presupposed to order, not its definition; the genus of order is before and after; differences are particular (e.g. generating my son, I am before him); applied to God we keep a difference and drop the genus.
• He was prepared for this by Father Bolea [as heard], who often noted that when a word like scientia is carried to God the genus is dropped, the difference kept: science is a habit of demonstrating; demonstration is a syllogism making known the cause, that it is the cause, and that it cannot be otherwise; God has no habit or syllogism, but knows the cause and that it cannot be otherwise.
• Aristotle: genus taken from matter, difference from form; matter to form as ability to act; God is pure act, so what pertains to matter or ability is denied of Him, what is formal or actual carried over by likeness. Man: animal (material genus), rational (difference). Virtues in God: “just” without the genus habit; Psalms, God does not sleep, sleep being analogous to habit.
• De Potentia is nonetheless his most explicit treatment of the kinds of relations. As a teacher one summarizes what one treated at length before, which can mislead a student who has not seen the earlier treatment.
• Student: what then is “order of nature” as a difference? Son from Father (“God from God, light from light”), Spirit from Father and Son as one beginning: a difference of one kind of order. His order to students (teaching) differs from his order to his children (generation); in creatures the generator is before as cause, to be honoured; in God the difference (Son from Father) is kept, the genus (Father before Son) denied.
• Thomas shows no before and after in the Trinity by going inductively through the senses of before from the Categories: the persons are distinguished by relatives, and relatives (double and half) are not before one another in time, in knowledge (known together), or in being (neither without the other); the Father is not more God than the Son.
• Student: is there an order between double and half? Not in time, knowledge or the second sense; perhaps between the quantities taken absolutely. Aside: scientia in God likewise drops quality, habitus, accident; God knows what we know by science, but always actually, never in habit.

His words #

• distinction: two things are distinct when one is not the other.
• order: one is before or after the other; the genus of order is before and after.
• atomon: indivisible (“forget the word atom”).
• limit: the end of a quantity, never a quantity of the kind it limits.
• reading: [ed.: lectio] of the Physics text.
• ability: [ed.: potency], in “act is more known than ability”.
• the now: what determines time; “time is always between nows”.
• scientia: science, a habit of demonstrating; in God, without the genus.
• habitus: habit, a quality.
• liberal: “God alone is liberal”, gets nothing out of giving.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Physics, Book VI, seventh reading, middle and bottom of p. 10 of the handout (no first time, no first part of the mobile, no first magnitude) and the opening of the eighth reading (changing in each part of the first time; two arguments that the moving has moved; that what has changed was changing).

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (summary of Physics VII–VIII on the unmoved mover, based on III and VI); Summa Theologiae (argument from motion; Socrates and his arm).
• Thomas Aquinas, De Potentia (Trinity; order of nature; relations); Commentary on the Sentences (order: distinction, genus, differences).
• Augustine (quoted in Thomas: order of nature in the Trinity).
• Athanasian Creed; Enchiridion collections of creeds.
• Aristotle, Categories (senses of before and after; relatives).
• Psalms (God does not sleep). Shakespeare, Hamlet. Homer. Zeno (point is nothing). “Ninth book of wisdom” [unclear in recording].

His questions #

• “When are two things distinct?” When one is not the other.
• “Why can’t you say there was some period of time when I first had become a man?” You would be both unborn and born at the same time; the first is a limit, no time at all.
• “When did I first begin to move?” No time: in half of any time you name you are already moving.
• “What’s the first amount or length of the body that has come through the doorway?” None is first; the body is divisible forever.
• “Is there a first distance that I run?” No; half a mile before a mile, a quarter before a half.
• “Does moving come before having moved, or having moved before moving?” Both; neither is first.
• “Is that true about thinking?” No; thinking is like number, which has a next.
• “What is the next longest line?” There is none; another line lies between any two.
• “Is there an order between double and half?” Not in time, knowledge or being; perhaps between the quantities taken absolutely.