Where the De Anima Fits: Aristotle's Books on Nature and Life, and the Value of Common Experience

Orientation #

He recalls “the beginning of the eight books of natural hearing,” where Aristotle said we consider things in general before in particular and that science goes towards matter; he also recalls that nature was defined by motion, that growth served as an example there, and that “the confused is more known to us and we are more certain of it” was deduced earlier in the course. At the end he says “let’s start to look a little bit at the De Anima here” (next time). The verified-sources list matched Aquinas’s Physics I, lectio 1 and a handout “Note for Book One of Natural Hearing, Reading I”; the transcript itself, however, names the passage read at length as the opening of Thomas’s commentary on the De sensu et sensato, and I follow the transcript. The next class treats the proemium of the De Anima.

The class, in order #

1. Three kinds of change and the descent of natural science (“consider things in general before in what”) #

Point: the Physics treats motion in general; the other natural works each take a particular kind of change, and even among those the order is general to particular.

• Three main kinds of change: (i) change of place; (ii) change of sensible quality, which can lead to substantial change (heat or cool a man too much and you kill him) though not necessarily; (iii) change of quantity in the concise sense of growth, which is where living things begin (even plants grow).
• Why change of place comes first: for Aristotle the sun, moon and stars change place without seeming to change quality; even here below things change place without changing quality, but for a qualitative change you must bring them together in the same place. So place is more general and presupposed. Treated in the book he says should be translated “about the universe” (Thomas: De caelo et mundo, four books); the link between place and universe: everything in a place is in the universe, the universe being “in a sense the last place” (this room → building → land → state → universe).
• Generation and Corruption treats qualitative and substantial change, which is presupposed to growth: to grow you must change the quality of your food and then change it into your own substance; but such “chemical” change also occurs in the non-living world.

2. Physics, chemistry, biology (“the popular division we still have in experimental science”) #

Point: the school division into physics, chemistry, biology derives from Aristotle’s three kinds of change, but the reason was forgotten and the division became muddled.

• Physics ↔ change of place; chemistry ↔ qualitative change leading to substantial change; biology ↔ growth and other changes in living bodies. The reason for dividing the kinds of change is seen “back in the physics, because nature is defined by change.”
• Muddle: where does atomic physics belong? Student: with chemistry, really. He agrees; today the two are lumped as “physical sciences,” which have become very mathematical. Heisenberg in the Gifford lectures divides the physical sciences by mathematical formalism (a different formalism, a different physical science) yet still puts atomic physics with chemistry, not with mechanics.
• Mechanics (Galileo, Kepler) is the oldest part of modern science and is basically the study of change of place; some pre-Aristotelian Greeks admitted only change of place, unable to grasp the more inward change. Sign that Aristotle proceeds from the more known to us to the less known, and still from general to particular. “Life sciences” vs. “physical sciences.”

3. Thomas’s proem: sciences divided by separation from matter (“As things are separable from matter”) #

Point: he reads the opening of Thomas’s commentary on the De sensu et sensato, which grounds the division of the sciences and of their parts in degrees of separation from matter.

1. As things are separable from matter, so they pertain to the understanding (basis: De Anima III will show the understanding is immaterial, “not the brain”).
2. A thing is understandable to the extent it is separable from matter; things separate from matter by nature are understandable in act in themselves (though not to us); things abstracted from material conditions become understandable in act through the light of our understanding.
3. Habits of a power are distinguished by the per se object of the power; so the habits of the sciences are distinguished by difference in separation from matter.
4. Hence Metaphysics VI divides the genera of sciences: separate from matter in being and in definition → metaphysics; separate in definition but not in being → mathematics; involving sensible matter in the very definition → natural philosophy (matter in general, not individual matter).

• No fourth possibility (independent of matter yet defined with matter): no reason on the side of the thing, and none on the side of the immaterial understanding. Mathematics is “the odd animal,” reflecting the mind’s immateriality: sphere, cylinder without any matter.
• Physics II distinguishes mathematics from natural philosophy; only Metaphysics VI distinguishes wisdom from both.

4. The parts of natural science; three considerations of living things (“proceeds by way of concretion or application”) #

Point: within natural science the parts are distinguished by degrees of separation or “concretion” (application) to matter; universals are more separated, so one proceeds from more to less universal (as the beginning of the Physics teaches).

• Aristotle begins from what is most common to natural things — motion and its principle — then applies common principles to determinate mobile things, some of which are living bodies; the study of these is divided in three: (a) the soul secundum se, in quadam abstractione — not complete, since the soul cannot be understood without matter (the three books about the soul); (b) things of the soul by concretion to the body, but in a general way (the middle books, among them the De sensu); (c) application to particular species of animals and plants (History of Animals, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals, the work on Plants, which some think Theophrastus wrote).
• De Anima II’s four grades of living things: nourishing only (plants); with sensation but no progressive motion (imperfect animals, clams — “Aristotle was a marine biologist among other things”); with local motion (horse, cow); with understanding (men). The desiring powers (emotions with sensation, will with understanding) give no separate grade.
• The understanding is not the act of any bodily part (De Anima III), so it cannot be considered by concretion; its greatest concretion is in the soul, its greatest abstraction in the separated substances (angels). Hence Aristotle wrote no book on the understanding and the understandable apart from the De Anima; if he had, it would belong to the metaphysician. All other powers are acts of some bodily part and admit a separate consideration.
• The middle consideration is itself threefold: (i) the living as living — De morte et vita (with breathing in and out), youth and old age, length and shortness of life, health and sickness, nourishment (the last two lost); (ii) the motive power — on the cause of the motion of animals, on the forward motion of animals (parts opportune for locomotion); (iii) sensation, interior and exterior — De sensu et sensato, memory and reminiscence, and sleep and waking (which “makes a difference about sense and sensing”).

5. Thomas’s order of the middle books (“to go from things that are more alike”) #

Point: Thomas orders the middle books not from general to particular but per magis similia ad similia transire, from what is more like to what is less like the preceding.

• After the De Anima, the De sensu (sensing pertains more to soul than body); then sleep and waking (a binding and untying of the senses); then the motive powers (near to sensation); last the common consideration of life, where the disposition of the body is most considered.
• Why locomotion follows the senses: only animals with distance senses (sight, hearing, smell) move from place to place; stationary marine life needs only touch and perhaps taste since food comes by the water’s motion, but the cat pursuing its mouse needs hearing and sight. Aristotle distinguishes walking, flying, slithering — the little bugs that hump up and spread out.
• Aside: in the Generation of Animals Aristotle says the human soul comes from without, not from the parents, on the basis of the De Anima — “kind of amazing he saw that.”

6. Twice towards matter; nature vs. soul (“twice you go towards what matter”) #

Point: natural science descends towards matter twice — Physics → universe → generation; De Anima → middle books → particular animals and plants — and this contrasts with wisdom, which goes towards the immaterial.

• Nature vs. soul: sometimes Aristotle calls soul a nature (an inner beginning of motion and rest; growth was his example when defining nature), sometimes he divides nature against soul (Metaphysics IX), especially to reach the human soul. “Physical” comes from nature, so “physical sciences” vs. “life sciences” reflects this.
• Why does soul get a new name while the non-living keeps “nature”? Student: something added. He: nature is determined to one thing (quoting Shakespeare), but already the plant grows in opposite directions, and the higher the soul the more open to opposites, up to the rational soul with the same knowledge of opposites.
• Aside: talking with Monsignor Dionne, whose phrase for wisdom was “towards the immaterial” — from being, one, many (found in but not needing matter) to substances that cannot be in matter.

7. Common vs. private experience; the mistake of the Greeks and of the moderns (“depend only upon our common what ordinary experience”) #

Point: the Physics and De Anima rest on common experience alone; the further one goes into the other books the more private experience (experiment) is needed.

• If earth, air, fire, water were the first forms of matter, common experience could reach them; if they are hydrogen, oxygen, proton, neutron, electron, quarks, it cannot.
• Two opposite mistakes: (a) Greeks — thinking, in hindsight, they got further by common experience than one can (Empedocles’ four roots, standard for two thousand years, still in Shakespeare; Boyle’s Sceptical Chymist doubted it; Lavoisier went beyond water to hydrogen and oxygen, then beyond). Aristotle knew the limit — he complained of the distance of sun, moon and stars — yet spoke of them as they appear to common experience; we cannot know from it whether the moon’s matter differs from ours. (b) Moderns — thinking nothing reliable can be known from common experience, not even a general knowledge of nature or of life.
• Argument against (b): the confused is both more known to us and more certain than the distinct (deduced earlier); if the particular were more certain as well as more distinct, as Descartes thought, it would replace the general entirely; but one does not replace the more certain by the less certain. Heisenberg (Gifford lectures): the vaguely defined concepts of natural language have greater stability in the expansion of knowledge than the precise terms of science — stable = certain (Latin certiora, stabiliora).
• Principle of simplicity applied to experience: use no more experience than necessary; get as far as you can on common experience. Sociologists’ elaborate studies concluding that men and women differ: everyone is already certain of the difference in confused knowledge, even if saying it distinctly gets one into trouble. At least the Greeks tried to see how far common experience goes; we don’t even do that.

8. Physics and De Anima as preparation for wisdom (“closest to what? Wisdom”) #

Point: these two parts are the parts of natural science closest to wisdom, in three ways.

1. Universality: wisdom is the most universal knowledge; these parts are very universal compared with the rest of natural science.
2. In the short run they go towards the immaterial: the Physics from what is intrinsic to change, to defining motion, time, the divisions of motion, then dependence on a mover, to the unmoved mover; the De Anima from what we share with plants (growth, reproduction) through what we share with animals to what is unique to man — eating more material than sensing, sensing than understanding.
3. Both reach a proof of something immaterial: the unmoved mover is not a body (every body moves only by being moved), and the immateriality of the mind. If there were nothing immaterial, natural philosophy would be wisdom (Metaphysics VI).

• Conclusion he stresses: a man can go from the Physics and De Anima to metaphysics, but not from experimental science, whose way of proceeding is contrary and increasingly so; immersed in matter without the general books one is “kind of bound to materialism… you are never going to be a wise man. That’s it. All games over.”

9. Inward experience of life (“our common inward experience of being alive”) #

Point: the Physics rests on common outward experience of motion; the De Anima primarily on our inward experience of being alive.

• Is life as life more known from inward or outward experience? Student: outward, from motion. He: the first confused notion of life is self-motion (and sensing); self-motion means the cause is within, and that is known from inward experience. Student presses: motion is more known than self-motion. He: motion as such is not life as life; life is self-motion as such — I know I am alive before I know you are. Those who study life only from outside end by denying life means anything, reducing it to organic chemistry.
• Hunger, anger, thirst move me and I know them within; I read your anger from signs and infer something like mine; I know what the cat’s hunger is like from my own; I know how I use my senses to move.
• Herman Weyl: from outward experience life is most known in plants; from inward, most in ourselves, then animals, least in plants — and we are in fact more alive than animals, they than plants. Modern biologists begin with the cell, where life is least known inwardly, and then puzzle whether I am one living thing or a congregation; but everyone has the inward experience of being one — nobody says “we” of himself except the editorial we (“Are we going to dinner?”).

10. Closing (“What was that that you read from”) #

Student asks what he read: the beginning of Thomas’s commentary on the De sensu et sensato. Aside: his Marietti volumes of the De Anima, De sensu and De memoria commentaries bound together in his youth at Erickson’s bindery, Minneapolis, now worn out.

His words #

• natural hearing: the eight books on motion in general [ed.: Physics]
• about the universe: his rendering of the De caelo (Thomas: De caelo et mundo)
• wisdom / first philosophy: [ed.: metaphysics]
• understanding: the immaterial power, “not the brain” [ed.: intellect]
• concretion (Latin, from the Greek): application to matter or to the body; opposed to separation/abstraction
• secundum se, in quadam abstractione: how the De Anima considers the soul — by itself, in a kind, not complete, abstraction
• per magis similia ad similia transire: Thomas’s principle for ordering the middle books
• confused vs. distinct: the general is more known to us and more certain; the particular more precise
• common experience vs. private experience: ordinary experience open to all vs. experiment
• certiora, stabiliora: more certain = more stable (glossing Heisenberg’s “stability”)
• physical sciences / life sciences: the modern contrast, reflecting nature vs. soul
• self-motion: the first confused notion of life

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on Aristotle’s De sensu et sensato, proem (read in selections and translated)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics I (beginning: general before particular; towards matter); Physics II (mathematics vs. natural philosophy)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VI (division of the sciences by separation from matter; if nothing immaterial, natural philosophy would be wisdom); Metaphysics IX (nature vs. soul)
• Aristotle, De caelo et mundo; De generatione et corruptione
• Aristotle, De Anima II (four grades of life), III (immateriality of the understanding; senses and locomotion)
• Aristotle’s works on living things as listed by Thomas: History of Animals, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals (human soul from without), On Plants (Theophrastus?), De morte et vita, On youth and old age, On length and shortness of life, On health and sickness, On nourishment (lost), On the cause of the motion of animals, On the forward motion of animals, De memoria et reminiscentia, De somno et vigilia
• Heisenberg, Gifford lectures; Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist; Lavoisier; Galileo and Kepler; Descartes; Empedocles; Herman Weyl; Shakespeare (earth, air, fire, water; nature determined to one); Louis de Broglie

His questions #

• Which change is more common, of place or of sensible quality? Of place: bodies change place without changing quality, but qualitative change requires being brought to the same place.
• Does atomic physics belong with change of place or with change of quality and substance? With chemistry (a student’s answer, accepted).
• Why can there not be a fourth science, of things independent of matter yet defined with matter? No reason on the side of the thing, and none on the side of the immaterial understanding.
• Why is there no Aristotelian book on the understanding besides the De Anima? The understanding is not the act of any bodily part, so it cannot be considered by concretion; it would belong to metaphysics.
• Why does the soul get a new name while the nature of non-living things keeps “nature”? Because something is added: nature is determined to one, the soul is increasingly open to opposites.
• Where is the mistake of the Greeks, and where that of the moderns? Greeks: thinking common experience reaches further than it can (first forms of matter); moderns: thinking it reaches nothing reliable.
• If the particular were more certain as well as more distinct, what would follow? It would replace the general entirely; but the confused is more certain, and the more certain is not replaced by the less.
• Is life as life more known from inward or outward experience? Inward: life is self-motion, the cause within, known in oneself first; the student’s “outward, from motion” is answered by distinguishing motion as such from life as such.