Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
5. Paul VI, Via Negativa, and the Meanings of the Word 'Nature'
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/005-paul-vi-via-negativa-and-the-meanings-of-the-word-nature/

[0:00] Pope Paul VI, and his encyclical letter on the Holy Eucharist, which is a very important encyclical letter, Mysterium Fidei. And in the course of this letter, he's talking about why the definitions of the articles of the faith and so on that are made by the councils can be good for all time, why they're not subject in a way to the variation of time. And the basic thing he's saying is, is because the thoughts that are used in expressing those articles of faith are thoughts that come to us from what he calls a universal and necessary experience.

[0:44] I think that's really the same thing as what I call common experience. When he says universal, I think he means an experience that everyone has, common to all. And when he says necessary, it means the same thing as I mean—you can't avoid it.

[1:01] For by these formulas, by the rest which the Church uses to express the dogmas of faith, concepts are expressed which are not tied to one specific form of human civilization, nor a definite period of scientific progress, nor one school of theological thought, but they present what the human mind, by universal and necessary experience, grasps as realities. For this reason, these formulas are adapted to men of all times.

[1:28] Here he's talking in particular about the importance of common experience and the thoughts that are tied to common experience for the what dogmas of faith. But you could speak more generally of the importance of of the books of natural hearing and the three books about the soul, which are tied to our common experience, the importance of those books for what theology as a whole. Now, what's the reason for that?

[2:06] Well, when you study theology, you find out that we know more what God is not than what He is. We don't see in theology God as He is, as St. John explains in his epistle there, 1 John 3: 2 something like that, first epistle, third chapter, second verse. We shall see Him as He is. They take those words over in the mass sometimes.

[2:35] There you're talking about the vision, right? Seeing God as He is, which St. Paul describes more metaphorically as seeing God face to face. Okay. But theology is seeing God more what? Negatively. So when he says God is the unmoved mover, there's a negation there, unmoved. When we say God is unchanging. As negation of change, right? When we say God is immaterial, even when we say God is simple, though grammatically that doesn't seem negative, we show that He's not composed in any way.

[3:14] Okay. You look at Thomas's question on the simplicity of God. He shows that God is not composed. composed in this way or this way or this way or this way or this way, and then finally, obviously, is not composed anyway.

[3:27] When you take up God is infinite, right? That's negation again. He's not limited, huh? When you say God is one, he's indivisible, right? He would be divided, so on. So we know God by what they call the via negativa,

[3:56] or the via negationis you see, ways of writing the negative way or the way of negation. Okay. Even though we can see some likeness of the creature to God, to know God to some extent by the likeness of the creature to God, as John Paul the I mean not John Paul as Paul VI pointed out one time when he starts quoting the Fourth Lateran Council, you know where it's correcting the errors of Joachim of Flora get a little carried away, extending the likeness more than it should, and it's a very precise text, where it says one can never note a likeness of the creature to God without at the same time noticing a greater what, unlikeness, huh?

[4:43] Okay. There's always that infinite distance between God and the creature, and that's why you have these things in the Scripture, like in one of the Psalms, you know, "Who's like God? " Right? Right. That's what Michael means, I guess, too. Who's like God? Because it's more of a different. Than a likeness, huh? I think I mentioned the time when I was teaching the Shakespeare's exhortation to use reason there, and introduction to philosophy a number of years ago, and of course he speaks of reason as God-like, huh?

[5:17] I happened to have a student from Saudi Arabia in my class, and so after class, he talked to me, he objected, you know, to Shakespeare calling reason God-like because that was, you know, and and so I thought, you know, I should explain to him what what the Church says about right. So I, you know, was showing him this text in in the Fourth Lateran Council, you know, but there has to be some kind of likeness between the creature and God because every agent makes something like itself, huh?

[5:48] But we we see, you know, you know, an infinite distance too between the creature and God, huh? And that's that's a very famous text, that Paul VI happened to bring my attention first to one of his talks, right? But you can see in the Fourth Lateran Council, and that you can never know the likeness of the creature to God without at the same time observing a greater unlikeness, huh?

[6:11] So even our knowledge of the likeness of the creature to God is perfected by what negations, huh? Okay. Now, once you see that, then it's a very important thing you have to see: the difference between knowing something by the via negativa and knowing something by the via affirmativa. Now I know something by affirmation. I'm closer to it when I can affirm the particular than the general. So, for example, if I say you're a body, okay, that's not as close to you as if I say you're a living body.

[6:58] You're a body that's alive. Do you know that? Okay. You're a living body. It'll be a little closer to you. What you are. Now, if I say you're an animal, that's getting even closer to you. You're not a plant. You're an animal. And then when I say you're a man, I'm even closer to you, right? So as I descend from the general to the particular, affirmatively knowing you, I'm getting to know you better and better and better, and getting closer and closer to you.

[7:35] You see that? But now suppose I was knowing you negatively, huh? Okay. And let's say I say you're not you're not an oak tree. Okay, that's true, right? You're not an oak tree.

[8:03] Now, am I as close to you when I say you're not an oak tree, as I would be if I said you are not a tree? Which is getting closer to you?

[8:17] Not a tree. Yeah. When I say you're not an oak tree, I separate you from oak trees. Okay, that's true, right? When I say you're not a tree, I separate you from all the trees. Okay. Now, what if I say you are not a plant?

[8:34] That's even closer to you, isn't it? But notice, in the via negativa, I'm knowing you better when I can negate the general than when I negate the what? Particular. In affirmative knowledge, it's the reverse. When I can affirm the particular, I'm closer to you. Do you see that? Take, take a little, just an example. Sure. Let's take a math example. Suppose I'm knowing number affirmatively. Okay, I say seven is a number.

[9:14] Okay. Let me take seven as our example. Okay, it's a what? Odd number, right? Okay. It's a prime odd number. Okay. Notice that my reason is going from the general to the particular. Odd number is more particular than number, and prime odd number is even more particular than odd number, right? So I'm getting closer to seven as I go from number to odd number to Prime numbers.

[10:02] I can affirm the particular and closer to it. Now suppose I was knowing seven negatively. What should be closer to seven? Not even, or not let's say four.

[10:25] It's true that seven is not four, right? So I have a kind of negative knowledge of seven. I don't know what it is, but I know it's not four. Am I closer to it when I say it's not four, or when I say it's not even? not even? Yeah, I'm starting to narrow it down. Do you see that? So again, the same thing we saw taking you.

[10:51] I'm closer and have a better negative knowledge when I can negate the general than when I can only negate the what particular. So in theology, if I say that God doesn't have two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, like a molecule water has, that's true, right? But am as I am I as close to God when I say He doesn't have two atoms of hydrogen, one of oxygen, or when I say He has no parts?

[11:34] Yeah. So if I can negate, if I have a reason to negate of God that He has parts, am I going to bother to say He doesn't have two atoms of hydrogen and of oxygen? It's going to be useful for me to know that a molecule of water has two atoms of hydrogen and of oxygen. It's really kind of useless to the via negativa negativa if I can give a good reason for saying that God has no parts as I can.

[12:02] So in theology, we want to negate the general more than negate the particular. Now to understand a negation, you have to know what it is you are negating. So it's more important for me to understand the general distinctly than to understand the particular in theology, because I'm going to negate the general. I'm not going to bother to negate the particular.

[12:33] I'm not going to show that God doesn't melt. He doesn't freeze. He doesn't fall. He doesn't run. He doesn't grow. I'm going to say he doesn't change. So if I understand change in general, I understand what it is I'm negating. And my understanding of change in general, as we'll see later on, enables me to. Syllogize to God being unchanging. So, Paul VI is seeing the importance here for the articles of faith, and consequently for theology as a whole, the importance of those thoughts that are tied to a universal, necessary experience, and that's what we call common experience.

[13:20] And I like to remark how interesting example of divine providence, which extends all the way down to chance events. Thomas Aquinas was in the only place in Europe where he could get Aristotle's eight books of Natural Hearing at that time. I mean, Aristotle's works are gradually coming back into the Latin world, to the Arabs and so on, and sometimes to the, you know, then more directly to the Greeks.

[13:49] And he was at the University of Naples, which at that time was the only place in Europe where he could get the the physics, so-called Aristotle, the eight books of Natural Hearing. And he could not have written the Summa Theologiae, as we have it today, without knowing the eight books of Natural Hearing. For example, when you look at Thomas's explanation of the eternity of God,

[14:18] which is the definition of eternity is taken from Boethius' work, The Consolation of Philosophy. But when you explain the definition of eternity, there's several negations of what is found in Aristotle's definition of time, and also what is found in our understanding of the now of time. So, when we look later on at the definition of time and talk a little bit about the now of time, as kind of a footnote, we'll look at the definition of eternity in theology, and you'll see that it's negating things in our general understanding of time and the now of time. So if Thomas didn't understand time in general and the now of time, he wouldn't be able to explain the knowledge of the eternity of God we have in theology,

[15:10] which is according to the via negativa, which involves negating those things that you have to understand distinctly about time in general in order to do this. Huh? You see that?

[15:24] So this distinction between common experience and private experience I bring up on this page because I want to bring out that what we're going to be studying in this course, some things from the books of the actual hearing, is based upon experience. It's not just you know a game of thoughts or something. It's based on the common experience of the natural world. In order to explain that, I have to point out the distinction between common and private experience, and it helps to understand what experimental science is.

[15:57] It's based upon what a private experience of the natural world, and that's why you have that division of labor and the two parts there. But it's also important that distinction for understanding theology. Now sometimes theology makes use of what you know private experience, and you get to something very what particular, right? Like for example, when you get into moral theology, right? You're talking about about a pill whether this or that pill is what moral or not, right?

[16:32] Then you have to know exactly what the pill is doing, right? Is it aborting, you know, the baby, or is it just regularizing woman's period, or what is it doing, right? And and there you might depend upon very particular knowledge for those things, right? But but for the most part, theology makes much more use of a knowledge based on common experience because you're talking mainly in theology about God.

[16:55] And and they're used mainly to via negativa, and therefore you have to negate the what general, and the general is what you know on the basis of common experience. Even you talk a bit about creatures, you know, about the soul and so on. You base yourself upon that knowledge of the soul that comes from our common inward experience of being alive.

[17:21] Now, so Aristotle doesn't himself stop with the knowledge based on common experience. You know, he goes all the way down to you know anatomy. Aristotle you know cut open animals and plants. He read the history of animals and the parts of animals. He talks about his anatomy and what he found. And when Alexander the Great conquered the the Near East and so on, he had men who would send specimens of animals and plants that were you know unique to those areas or not found at least in Greece.

[17:51] Have them send you know specimens back to Aristotle so he could get a more complete knowledge of the what animals and plant kingdoms and so on. So Aristotle went into this private experience, but I mean. First of all, perfected this knowledge based on common experience. He's really kind of an unusual man, the way Aristotle can go from these very general and sometimes very abstract things like logic, and all the way down to these very concrete things like anatomy.

[18:20] The same way, you know, in politics he can talk about very general things like man is by nature a social animal or a political animal, as he says. They can, you know, examine 150 Greek city states and talk about the revolutions and why they took place, the revolutions, and you know, And there is a requirement of private experience, right? And so he writes the famous fifth book of the politics on revolution and how governments are overthrown, how they're preserved, and so on, right?

[18:48] He has all this private experience that he's gotten from his historical research. So I mean, he he's he's the most balanced mind in history, huh? You know, it's kind of an amazing thing, huh? And we see that in Plato, and you don't see them on scientists, right? Either in the general or in the particular. Aristotle goes you know all the way down to the particular.

[19:13] Okay. There's some of this. There's one of the scientists talking about how just descending to the particular, in a way, kind of goes on and on, but we've never completed on the level of the common experience. would you say, does it have that same characteristic, or would it be able to say, well, Aristotle kind of completed that? Well, you got to be careful about saying that, but somebody said you could say that, yeah, yeah.

[19:50] Warren Murray has interesting hypothesis there as to why Aristotle, when he got to the end there, he trusted the school to Theophrastus, right? Theophrastus was not, in fact, the greatest philosopher there is, but he was a very good what what we call experimental scientist. And Aristotle saw that that you know the substantial work had been done now in this other part, right? Based on common experience, but there's still more work to be done in private experience, huh?

[20:20] That's kind of interesting, I think, observation on Warren Murray's parts, just like you know, when Albert the Great talks about Aristotle, he doesn't do anything in geometry, but geometry is already considerably developed by the time Aristotle came along. See, but natural philosophy and ethics and so on, political philosophy, they were in logic especially, and so on, and wisdom, they they still needed to be developed a lot, huh?

[20:49] So you might have thought that the school now has a lot of the knowledge based on common experience, huh? And then if we need, you know, some people who can do this other kind of research, okay? It seems like there's. Kind of a common error, even in the church.

[21:21] Some people, you know, will say things as if all theology is private. There's only. No, no, Paul six says that, right? Yeah. Of course, you know the very word "heretic" means what? Chooser, yeah. You're picking and choosing which you want to believe. I'll believe this. I'll believe that. Choose to believe this. Choose not to believe that. That's giving up the faith, right?

[21:53] So let's look here now at the page three here. And this first reading, which is the very beginning of the second book, is the reading now where Aristotle is going to what? Define nature, but define it now, not in the sense of a perfect or complete definition, but draw a line around this cause called nature. I think I mentioned before how the great Heraclitus said that nature allows to hide, huh?

[22:29] But you have to at least draw a line around nature if you're going to talk about what natural philosophy is about. It's about natural things, huh? It's about things whose cause is nature. What do you mean by nature, huh? Okay.

[22:44] Now, before we look at this reading, one, let's look a little bit at the word nature, which is like the Greek word phusis, that's more familiar to us. So.

[23:05] And on the fifth book of wisdom, Aristotle takes up. I think I mentioned before that the word beginning cause element, and then he takes up the word nature, right? And it might seem strange he does so in wisdom because isn't it more appropriate to hear? but there is a meaning of nature that's very universal that is important for the wise man. Now, the word nature is a word that is equivocal by reason, huh?

[23:32] And you have to go back to what the first meaning of the word is, and then follow up the meanings from there. I'm going to give you some at least of what he does in book five here.

[23:46] Now, what's the fundamental root of the word nature? What does that N-A-T basically refer to? Birth. Birth, yeah. You can see that in many words in English derived from that same root. Pre-natal, post-natal. We use this very often now. Prenatal means before birth, huh? Postnatal after, right? So the prenatal care or the postnatal care of the woman, huh? The word nativity, huh? Really means what? Birth day.

[24:36] My home parish in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was Nativity of Our Lord. It was called Nativity Parish, and so we usually don't hear the word nativity used except maybe in that context. Actually, it could be for anybody's birthday. My nativity is January 18th, right? Okay, my birthday.

[24:58] What would it mean if I say to my students, "Is anybody here a native of Worcester? What would it mean to be a native of Worcester? Would mean you were born here.

[25:10] The Europeans called the Indians the those who are already here the natives. What does that mean? Well, it means those who were born here, as opposed to those who came from abroad. So, prenatal, postnatal, nativity, native, huh? You see the original root of the word nature. Now you don't see that

[25:38] in the word nature in English, huh? But you kind of guess, you know, going back to these other words that come from the same root in Latin, prenatal, postnatal, native, nativity, and the Greek word phusis is, where they get the word physics. That is that first sense too of birth.

[25:59] Now it's not strange we should have a name for birth. We name things as we know them, and we name first of all things that are sensible, huh? And they strike our senses and birth. Something's going to strike. Have a sense of something. Okay. Now, notice too in birth that the baby comes from from within, and this idea of within is going to be kept somehow in all the meanings of nature.

[26:27] If you don't understand that, you understand nothing about the word nature, and that's the reason why the fundamental reason why Heraclitus says nature loves to hide what is within is what hidden. Yeah. This is the first meaning of

[26:49] birth, and so sometimes, like in that first reading, I think I translated it instead of translating it as the the natural road, right? The road from the more known and more certain to us is the more certain and more known by nature is inborn. I translate right. Okay, inborn, trying to get a little bit of the what concrete character of the word in Greek or in Latin.

[27:21] To say something is natural is to say it's inborn. There you see the word birth right in there. Now the second meaning of birth is connected with the first one. It refers back to it. It's now the source of birth within the what woman, right? Okay.

[27:47] The source of birth, or the source of baby, you might say, within the mother. But notice that also is something within, something that is therefore hidden to us in the beginning. So the second meaning refers back to the first meaning, right? It's the principle or the source of that.

[28:21] Now the third meaning generalizes the second meaning, and it's the third meaning which will be the one we're going to be concerned with here.

[28:39] So he's going to take any source, not just of birth, but any source of any change within something. Okay. Any source within of any change.

[29:20] Now I'm not going to go through all the other meanings, but I want to mention just one of the other meanings. Eventually, the word nature comes to mean what a thing is. The nature of a thing is what it is, huh? Okay.

[29:48] And in this last sense, this is the reason why we sometimes, well, we talk about nature there in wisdom, right? Because what a thing is is something that the wise man wants to talk about, because that's altogether universal. But in this sense, we speak of the nature of a poem, the nature of God, the nature even of grace, as Thomas says, and so on. The nature of government, right?

[30:14] Et cetera, et cetera, right? Now this sense of nature is obviously too general to characterize natural philosophy. You'd find that in any science, because every science defines, every science asks what something is, right? Okay. The first two meanings are appropriate to natural philosophy, but they are too what particular to characterize the study of natural things as a whole. So these first two meanings, although they are the first two meanings, they're too particular.

[30:54] Eventually, get a meaning that's too general. When I say too particular, too general, I mean too particular, too general to characterize or to define natural philosophy, huh? Okay. Although the natural philosopher, the natural scientist would in fact talk about. Birth and source of the baby, and birth within the mother. He doesn't just talk about that, right? Okay. So it's this middle sense, it's number three here, that is going to be the important sense here.

[31:29] He's talking about, okay? Do we use that that second one in English for the word nature? No, no. See, this is again an example of what I mentioned before that we tend to borrow words from Greek or Latin in their what later meanings. In English, we tend to use the word nature in this fourth sense right away, don't we?

[31:59] And therefore, we out of order our mind right away when we use words. And you can do one of two things: you can take the English word birth and try to extend it, but then that's you are going to get doing that, right? Or you can go back and learn the earlier meanings of the Greek or Latin word. But we tend to what take over our later meaning without realizing the order that we have to go through to get there.

[32:36] Are we going to extend English words? And you can see the master of the English language in a way extending the word birth. I was mentioning my friend, their Friar Lawrence,

[32:54] and in Romeo and Juliet, when Friar Lawrence is out in the garden there, and he's talking about the natural world, and he says, "For not so vile that on the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give. Nor aught so good he said, but strained from that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Do you remember those words in Romeo and Juliet?

[33:38] He's talking about something departing from its nature, right? And that's really like a revolution, huh? Opposed to, what you should be. But notice that line there: revolts

[33:52] from true birth, stumbling on abuse. For not so vile that on the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give. Nor aught so good, but strained from that fair use, right? Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.

[34:22] You notice how very important that is for understanding ethics, right? Because we generally go wrong by misusing our parts, right? It's not using them for what they should be used for.

[34:43] So people are always misusing their sexual organs, as you know, in our society, huh? Yeah. But they also misuse their mind. To consider unimportant things rather than think about God or something worthwhile.

[35:03] Strained, huh? Moved from that fair use, the beautiful use of these things. So all of our parts are, are, are in themselves beautiful, and if they're used as they should be used, right? That's the fair use. But strained, and drawn away from that fair use, right? Then they what? Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. What does he mean by true birth there? Nature. Yeah, the true nature.

[35:31] Yeah. It's contrary, right? In general, you could say, "Why should man be reasonable? " Well, basically, because he's an animal with reason. That's why. And so, when he's unreasonable, he's what? He's in revolt from his own what? True nature. Notice what the great Shakespeare has done. He's extended the word "birth" right down into here. See how wise he is.

[36:08] When I talk about the you know the first road in our knowledge, well, you know, and many people might speak of method or something, right? But method comes from the Greek word hodos, meaning road. So I would prefer to take the English word "road" that we walk and drive on, and then carry it over, and eventually apply it to the road in our knowledge, imitating what the Greeks did with the word hodos.

[36:36] And what the Latins do with the word via? The word "road" here in the first reading, there in Greek, would be hodos huh It's hodos betach. So before we get the word odometer, you've heard that word on a bicycle—that this little thing you can use to measure how far you've gone. Odometer. It, although it measures the road. And that's where we get the word method. See, method means in Greek it comes from meta, with and hodos, meaning what road?

[37:18] But when you see the English word method, you don't see the road. When Christ says in the Gospel of Saint John, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," as are usually translated, but the word "way" there is "I am the hodos. I am the road. " Very striking, huh? I am the road.

[37:43] Is that fourth sense? Is that synonymous with essence? Yeah, yeah, essence. What a thing is. You know, essence is a very abstract word, especially in English. They kind of used to make fun of the use of the word essence. Of course, in French, essence is used for yeah. So they they use they kind of used to like to make fun of essence. But even in this fourth sense, nature is something within.

[38:11] What a thing is is within it. And that's why, you know, when I define what a definition is, I say definition is speech signifying what a thing is, or definition is speech making known what a thing is, or definition is speech bringing out what a thing is.

[38:37] Bringing out. Or we can use the expression in English to think out what a thing is. But before you think it out, it's inside, right? So the idea of being within is something that is kept in all the what meanings of nature. De Koninck gave a famous talk, he actually gave it as an assumption way back in the 50s, but it was titled, Cogito ergo sum. I sit, therefore I am.

[39:11] And he's talking about the importance of the sense of touch in philosophy. And in regard to natural philosophy, the sense of touch is the sense of the inside, huh? The eye, is what is the sense of the surface of things, huh? But what's going on inside of you, right? You know through your what sense of touch, the sense of the interior. It's a sense of substance, huh?

[39:42] It's a sense of sympathy and so on. So it's very important. So I ask my colleagues, why does Heraclitus say nature loves to hide in her Some? abstruse explanation explanation of this, and it seems to make sense. Sounds interesting. He says that nature loves to hide. But the basic reason why nature loves to hide is that what is within things is hidden.

[40:13] That's why, you know, Shakespeare has Iago. you know, he talks about how the native act and figure of his heart is, you know, is hidden from Othello and so on. But eventually, be revealed by what he does. But why does he call, you know, his inward disposition of his heart and what he wills really? Why does he call it the native? Why does he use the word native?

[40:39] Huh? That's kind of a metaphor. Because this is a matter of choice what he is, not a matter of nature to this extent. But it's something within that is hidden. You know, God scrutinizes our hearts, as we say. Hidden even somewhat to ourselves, right? What our heart really is. But even more so, it's hidden from others. Maybe what our heart really is and where our heart really is.

[41:07] The native act and figure of my heart, and compliment extern, eventually. acts, and eventually we find out what he is, even Othello does. Too late then, though. Now Aristotle is going to define nature in that third sense, because that's the sense of nature that we should have in mind when we say that natural philosophy is about things that are by nature.