Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
9. Thales and Anaximander: Reasonable Guesses About the First Matter
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/009-thales-and-anaximander-reasonable-guesses-about-the-first/

[0:00] It's interesting in regard to this central question of philosophy. Is that somewhat synonymous with like the critical question, just like this central question of the critical question? I call it a central question because it brings together the two matters about which a philosopher talks, right? If you listen to philosophers, they talk either about the way we know, like they do, especially in logic and other places, especially in logic, or they talk about the way things are, right?

[0:33] And this question involves everything he talks about in some general way, but also it brings in the end or purpose that he has in mind. Okay. So this is very what? In another sense, a critical question. Yeah, but I really call it a central question. I don't know what critical means. The critical means just to judge, huh? Okay. I'm calling it central because it touches upon everything.

[1:01] If you answer yes to this, you're going to have you know it's the most strange thing to come out of answering yes, depending upon the other premises that you add to that.

[1:15] The another aspect of it here in regard to natural things, Plato was a student of Cratylus, and Cratylus was a student of Heraclitus in the school of Heraclitus,

[1:33] and Heraclitus was emphasizing, as we'll see when we study the fragments, the fact that everything in the natural world seems to be changing, huh? Well, then this had tremendous negative influence upon Plato. How can you have a knowledge in the strict sense? How can you have something unchanging of changing things? And if you answer yes to this question, it's impossible to have an unchanging knowledge of what changing things.

[2:10] In which case, you have to to know anything. You have to find some things outside of the natural world that are unchanging, and of which you could have a real what knowledge. Aristotle is saying no. You can know changing things in a unchanging way, and we'll see that as we get in here. But he's answering what? No to this question, huh?

[2:46] Sometimes we play with this a little bit and say, is a definition of stupidity stupid? Is a definition of folly or foolishness foolish? Does the definition of ignorance keep us ignorant?

[3:18] How can we know what ignorance is? How can we have a wise understanding of the fool? The way we know, not the way the thing is. But we can, can we?

[3:38] So we can have an unchanging knowledge of the changing, huh? We'll see. But for Plato, it's not possible. So Plato, in a sense, is seeking knowledge elsewhere than through studying the world around him.

[4:05] Okay. Now I gave you the natural fragments didn't I, last time. Yes. Now we're going to set aside Aristotle for a while, and we're going to go back now to the very beginning of philosophy, and the beginning of natural philosophy in particular. We're going to go back to what is considered also to be the beginning of science. Okay. Right back to the beginning. And I think if I mentioned before that for the philosophers before Plato and Aristotle, there is no what complete work that survived.

[4:46] Socrates, of course, didn't write anything at all. He just talked. Socrates is like Christ. Christ didn't write anything down. He just talked. And Socrates just did that. And of course, Thomas. Says, why did Christ use the spoken word not the written word? The spoken word is more perfect than the written word, and so Christ used the more perfect. But then the apostles and others wrote down. And Socrates wrote nothing, but Plato wrote things,

[5:22] So Plato or Socrates wrote nothing, and the philosophers before wrote things, but all we have is what fragments, huh? More or less direct quotes in the later thinkers or later writers, and the German scholars who have nothing better to do, they go and they gather up these fragments, and others have done this too. And the most famous one is the one made by Diels

[5:53] and Kranz, is a guy who continued the work of Diels. So if you look at, I could bring in my Greek edition of Diels-Kranz, but it would have the fragments, and the number of the fragments just is a way of referring to them, but the numbers have nothing to do with the original work, right? So you'll see after some of these the DK1 or DK2 or DK3 or something like that, and those are the what Diels-Kranz number to my edition of Diels-Kranz, but the numbers have no particular significance, just a way of referring to them.

[6:30] and sometimes people number them otherwise, and they certainly arrange them differently, huh? What you're going to see in these fragments is the seeds of philosophy, and to some extent even the seeds of science, but certainly the seeds of philosophy. And then when you go to the dialogues of Plato, you see those seeds what developing, growing, and then in Aristotle, to some extent, you see the the grown plant, huh?

[7:03] So that's kind of the way these three can be ordered with a kind of botanic similitude or likeness there. Now what I've done here is to collect what I call the natural fragments, the fragments in natural philosophy. Now one can also make a collection of the ethical and domestic and political fragments, and you could also make a collection of the fragments on method that they have. We'll refer to those a bit, and I also made a collection of the the natural theology fragments.

[7:48] Okay, so here we've got the natural fragments, and. We're going to be reading these now, not as the truth, but as reasonable guesses. And there are two ways in which you can call a guess reasonable, and let me um specify it in the beginning.

[8:19] You know, a guess is not certain, but a guess can be wild or it can be educated. Now, reasonable guesses, a guess can be called reasonable

[8:37] for one of two reasons. One is there's a reason for it. You might want to say good reason. Anyway, there's a reason for it,

[8:55] and that reason is not such as to say that it must be true, huh? But there's some basis for thinking this. Okay. Now, some people may have a better guess than others, a better reason, but still, is a good reason enough for thinking one thing or the other. The other way you can call a guess reasonable is that reason is naturally inclined to it. Our faculty, reason.

[9:22] Okay. Reason is naturally inclined towards. And one thing that the scientists, the great scientists of the twentieth century, found interesting in the Greeks was this natural inclination, because they have it in themselves too. And we'll see some, you know, witnesses. Got a few things here to that effect. So as we read these fragments, I don't want to say they're fragmentary, so we don't have. In most cases, the reasons explicitly stated, although sometimes later authors give us hints.

[10:06] We want to see: is there a reason to think this, huh? Or is there something here about reason we're actually inclined to, to kind of think this, huh? Okay. So we want to try to appreciate these as reasonable guesses, and sometimes the later thinkers are making more reasonable guesses than the earlier thinkers, and want to see why that's so, right? Okay. But we're starting now on a good example, fundamental example, really, of the second road in our knowledge, which is not the natural road, but presupposes the natural road, but the second road is the road of reason as reason.

[10:48] As Shakespeare defined it, huh? And this is the road from reasonable guesses towards reasoned out knowledge. Now I say from reasonable guesses towards reasoned out knowledge, rather than to one to insinuate the difficulty of getting from reasonable guesses to reasoned out knowledge, and secondly to indicate that often the human mind fails to get to reasoned out knowledge from reasonable guesses, a reasonable guess is as far as it gets in many cases.

[11:28] And but but third, huh, to indicate that this second road is not sufficient to get reasoned out knowledge. And the reason why I say that is that each reasoned out knowledge has its own matter, its own subject, and to some extent, then the road you have to follow with each reasoned out knowledge is appropriate to that matter, that subject, and that's going to be the third road, what you might call the the private road of each reasoned out knowledge, the road that is tied to that matter.

[12:12] So in logic, when we study dialectic, you're learning about making reasonable guesses and so on, but in the prior and posterior analytics, you're learning about the common road of reasoned out knowledge. We're going to see it concretely here. We're going to see how we go from the reasonable guesses of these men to the beginning of reasoned out knowledge when we go back to Aristotle. That's kind of striking, huh?

[12:38] Because when we go back to Aristotle, we'll start with the text of Aristotle where he he logically divides up everything that these men have said, huh? And then we'll see how he goes forward from that to find the starting points of reasoned out knowledge of things. So this is what we have in mind, these two senses, huh?

[13:01] Now, the first thinker here is Thales. He's considered to be the first natural philosopher, in fact, the first philosopher, and in some ways, the beginning of natural science too. So, since Thales is at the very beginning here, we have to answer the

[13:26] four Ws, right? Okay. You can ask where did philosophy begin? When did it begin? Who began it? And none of these questions are of any importance compared to the last question: why? Okay.

[13:51] But who? Thales. Thales is the beginning of philosophy. But now let's ask where and when, just so we can get a little bit of perspective here.

[14:05] Greek philosophy doesn't begin in what we call Greece today. The Greek tribes came down and they conquered what we call Greece today. They settled down and they intermarried with the local people, and Greece was a what? They multiplied and so on. Greece is a poor land, and so they colonized to the what? East and the west. They colonized on the coast of Asia Minor, what today we call the Turkey, now the Eastern Mediterranean, and they colonized in Sicily and in what?

[14:41] Southern Italy. So there are Greek colonial cities, which later on became independent cities, in on the coast of Asia Minor in ancient times, and in Sicily and southern Italy. And the first philosophers are in these cities. First, the cities on the coast of Asia Minor, and then later on in Sicily and southern Italy. It's not so much bad if you associate philosophy with Athens. Anaxagoras, one of the late thinkers we'll meet here, is supposed to have brought philosophy to Athens.

[15:19] And Plato talks a bit about this. Okay. In particular, the first three philosophers we'll meet—Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes—they were all in the city on the coast of Asia Minor called Miletus. So sometimes they call them Milesians, but that just means they were citizens of the city of Miletus. Now I might mention that before the philosophers came the great poets, especially Homer, and we think Homer was also on that coast of Asia Minor, down from where Troy is.

[16:09] Now, when about did this begin? Well, with the fictitious sharpness of historical dates, to use the phrase the road historian, we could say circa 600 BC. Okay.

[16:32] Now you'll see in some of these books you don't like to give dates, to these guys, but nobody knows what dates are. But the only real important date that we have in Thales' life is that he predicted an eclipse of the sun would take place in the year 585 BC. And he was admired around Greece for having predicted this. Nobody knows why not. He predicted there would be an eclipse of the sun this year.

[17:02] So you could say, if he could predict an eclipse of the sun in the year 585 BC, we could say around 600 BC, his mind must have been somewhat active, huh? So if you want a nice, you know, good round number to remember, with the fictitious sharpness

[17:22] of these historical divisions, around 600 BC. Okay. Now, put that in a little bit of perspective. The death of Socrates, the trial of Socrates, the Apology of Socrates is perhaps the most famous work in philosophy. Introduction to Philosophy in the country—that's the most commonly read work. The Apology, Socrates' defense in the court. Well, the death of Socrates is 399 BC. Socrates' death.

[17:59] So roughly speaking, you could say there's 200 years of Greek philosophy before the death of what Socrates. Now Plato dies in what 347 BC.

[18:19] Aristotle dies in what 322 BC. So 322 BC. Alexander the Great, the pupil of Aristotle, died in what 323 BC, the year before. I led Aristotle to Athens because there'd be reaction now.

[18:41] So I think there's a little bit of historical order there. In this period of Greek philosophy from 600 BC to the death of Aristotle, this is sometimes called the Golden Age of Greek philosophy. There is philosophy in Greek and later on other languages afterwards, but this is known as the Golden Age of Greek philosophy. Begins with Thales and comes to an end with the death of Aristotle in 322 BC.

[19:18] Okay. Now, none of this stuff is important, really, but the question, why is important? I think I've given you the answer to that before, with Plato and Aristotle. Both Plato and Aristotle say exactly the same thing of how it all began. It began because of what? Wonder. One word. Wonder was the beginning of philosophy.

[19:49] And wonder, if you recall, is this natural desire to know what and why, as Plato teaches us, or this natural desire to know the cause? Because the cause answers the question what and why, and you can see that you'll see that in all these philosophers, they're looking for causes and indeed for the first cause of things. And as far as they knew, the only things that were in the beginning would be sensible things around us, and they could see that the artificial things depended upon the natural things.

[20:25] So, in looking for the first cause of natural things, they're looking for the first cause of what all things. It's not until the end they realize that there are things besides these material things, and then they realize that with Plato and Aristotle, that wisdom is meta ta physika. After the books of natural philosophy, but until that, natural philosophy would be wisdom.

[20:50] So you'll see in their in their words how they're looking for causes. We also have a fragment from Democritus expressing that one, and I gave that to you earlier tonight. I would rather discover one cause than be master of the kingdom of the Persians. And as I explained, the kingdom of the Persians would be the greatest kingdom known to the Greeks. So if I was master of the kingdom of the Persians, I would be the most powerful man in the world.

[21:21] I'd be the richest man in the world. I read that the Persian kings had a thousand chefs to prepare an excellent dinner every night. It was an excellent. dinner. A haram, right? The haram of the kingdom of Egypt, huh? So everything that most men want, you know, you'd be worshiped by a god.

[21:44] So everything men want: power, wealth, honor, right? Pleasure of the table, the bed, and so on. All these things that master of the kingdom of the Persians would have for abundance, right? And Democritus, huh, that fool, I'd rather discover one cause than be master of the Persians. huh? That intense desire to know the cause leads Democritus to know the first cause of the future. So that's what's important.

[22:15] now, that begin and wonder. huh? So let's look now at the first thinker, Thales. Now, Thales, I might mention, is was active not only in natural philosophy but in geometry, and they attribute to Thales the rigorous proof that the angle inscribed in a semicircle is always a right angle. You may have run across that theorem. He's supposed to have manifested to you that the diameter really does bisect the circle, which Euclid just takes for kind of granted.

[22:59] But he manifests that in a way like Euclid manifests the fourth theorem, huh? Just flip this the what, one side over the other one, and if it doesn't coincide, then the radii aren't all equal, so it contradicts the definition of the circle. So Thales, and we think others, these men too, they were geometers as well as what natural philosophers. And Thales was also something of a political philosopher.

[23:28] He is said to have proposed a from the city of Miletus and the other cities on the coast of Asia Minor a federal form of government. And the reason for this federal form of government would be to be able to withstand the Persian Empire. But they didn't follow the advice of the wise man, and so the Persian Empire picked them off one by one, and they weren't stopped until they got to Athens, huh?

[23:56] And Sparta, huh? Okay, and that's the end of the first period of world history, huh? And the second period of world history, when the Greeks stopped the Persians. But we're concerned now with Thales as a natural philosopher, not as a geometer or a political philosopher in this particular course, huh? And the Thales attributed this statement, this marvelous statement, as Heisenberg calls it, that water is the beginning of all things.

[24:29] Now, since this is the first statement, I think it's good to approach it following what we learned from Aristotle, going from the general to the what particular, huh? You don't have to repeat all the general there when we look at the particular. Now let's start with the most general. here.

[24:58] Is it reasonable to look? For the beginning of all things, I asked in the form of a questionnaire. Is it reasonable to look for the beginning of all things?

[25:27] Is there a reason for doing so, or is reason naturally inclined to do so, or maybe both in some cases? Right. What would you say? Is it reasonable to look for the beginning of all things? Yeah. What sense is reasonable now?

[25:47] To know the causes. Causes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is it reasonable in the sense that there's a reason to do so, or is reason naturally inclined to it, or both of these, or neither of these? If we're naturally inclined, to wonder Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Reason naturally tries to understand things, and it naturally looks for the beginning when it tries to understand things. And I sometimes take the simple examples there in Shakespeare's play.

[26:18] You know, who started this, right? The Fighting Woman Juliet. But. If you're in charge of some young people and there's a squabble, you know, you gotta adjust it to the matter. And you say, Now, okay, now, what happened? " Well, he hit me, you know. But he called me such and such. Yeah, but he. You keep on trying to what? Work your way back to how does this all begin?

[26:42] Suddenly the Duke comes on the scene there, where Romeo and Mercutio and that people had been some murders and things, right? And how did this begin, right? And and then Benvolio's trying to explain how it began. It didn't begin with Romeo. would begin with what? Tybalt drawing his sword and Mercutio starting a fight, and Romeo came in trying to stop that, and then he tried to stop it.

[27:05] Tybalt, you know, stuck the blade in Mercutio, right? And then Romeo got upset that he attacked Tybalt and killed him. So it didn't start with Romeo. It started with Tybalt, the fiery Tybalt, the one that you know gets Romeo at the house of the Montagues there I mean the Capulets, where he was visiting. So

[27:31] if you want to understand a man, you gotta write a biography of a man. What do you do? You naturally go back to his origin and trace him from there. If you want to understand the United States of America and why we speak English here, why people in Quebec speak French and so on, and all those other differences, you go back to the origin of the United States, and follow it up, huh?

[27:55] So Aristotle in politics says, "The man who follows things in their beginning will get the best understanding of it." So reason in seeking to understand things naturally looks for their what, beginning. huh? In that respect, what he's doing is reasonable.

[28:15] Now, more particular, is it reasonable to look for one beginning? Is it reasonable to look for one? See, the first sense, beginning is the thing. But now we're being more particular. Is it reasonable to look for one beginning of all things?

[29:03] Okay, reasonable now in the sense that you have a reason to think there's one beginning, or the reason is naturally inclined to look for one beginning. Right, because there's a good reason for it. Well, you might have had a reason, but it's after answering that first question. Now it seems beginning. Well, you don't have multiple beginnings coming and joining up with that. Hmm. Well, that'd be very hard to to give a good reason to say there's only one beginning for all things, given the multiplicity of things in the world and so on.

[29:38] Let's say you can't give a reason, right? And eventually, I think we do give a reason. Huh? But to think in the very beginning here that they had so much a reason to say there's got to be one beginning rather than many, and after all, you have a father and mother, right? You have two beginnings, right? Not one. Huh? So what would make the man think that there's got to be just one? Beginning, or would it be more

[30:05] the inclination of reason, or a reason you had? Do you think? It's the inclination. I think so. Yeah, yeah. Let's say you can't give a reason, right? It would be very difficult in the beginning to figure out a reason why there has to be one. But I say, but even apart from that, in the absence of a reason to say there's one beginning, and the absence of reason to say there's many, in the absence of either one, would our mind more inclined to one or many?

[30:39] One. Yeah, yeah. Now I'll give you a sign of that from something more known. We know that reason, when it tries to understand something, it naturally looks for order in those things. That's tied up with the idea of beginning too, huh? There's an order there. Now, is order based more upon something? one or upon many things.

[31:13] Well, you know, order is defined by before and after. So just go back, starting with the first meaning of before. I think that the order would be hierarchical. Yeah, yeah. If you're talking about an army or something, right? Yeah. Okay. An army, everything's got to come back to one man, the commander in chief. If you take the the executive branch of the United States government, got all these department heads, but they all come under what?

[31:44] The president, right? Goes back to one man. If you take the very first meaning of order, which is before in time, when we order these events, like we're ordering the the birth of, I mean, the death of Aristotle and Socrates, and dating them to when Thales was active and so on, right? All those numbers that are putting these events or these people in some kind of order, chronological order, is based on one or many events.

[32:16] Many. We have many events, but are they being ordered by many events or by one event? Oh, by one event. Yeah, yeah. Now we take the birth of Christ, huh? And we order all other events before after that. Now, if I ordered some events by the birth of Christ and some by the birth of of myself, and some by the birth of Mozart, and so on, we we have chaos, huh?

[32:44] You see? We have to refer them all back to one event in order to order them all. And even the Mohammedans there, right? They take the the Hegira the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, right? And they order events by that one event, huh? So it's not because we're Christians that we order them by one event. Reason naturally has to take one event and order other ones what before or after that one event, and then you can compare them all.

[33:15] But just as if you had two two supreme heads of government in a country like you might have in Afghanistan before long, you're going to have a kind of a chaos in that country, huh? And likewise, you have chaos if we had what we didn't refer all events back to one event, huh? See that? So order is based upon something one. So if reason naturally looks for order, it naturally looks for unity, and you'll see that in in the scientists, huh?

[33:49] That same tendency to look for some kind of unity, huh? As Max Born says, huh? The great physicist in the 20th century, the genuine physicist believes obstinately in the unity and simplicity of nature, despite any appearance to the contrary. He's that natural inclination, right? Looking for unity and simplicity.

[34:19] Sometimes I go to another step. I'm going to stick another in for you people here. Is it reasonable if you're looking for one beginning for all things? Would you look for something simple or something that is composed?

[34:42] Simple. Yeah. Because if it's composed, then it what? There's many beginnings. Yeah, there's something before it, right? Okay. So you might say that I'm asking more of a question and you can turn these apprehensions into the statement, right? Is it reasonable

[35:05] to look for one simple, okay, beginning of all things? Okay. Now you'll see that the first thinkers like Thales are looking for one simple beginning of all things, in the sense of one matter, right, out of which all things are made, huh? Okay. Now I often contrast the beginning of Greek philosophy with the beginning of the Bible, right? So you pick up the Bible, and the first sentence is, "In the beginning, God made heaven and earth," huh?

[35:58] So the Bible begins talking about one maker, huh? We find out later on it's all getting simple, okay? But Greek philosophy begins looking for one simple matter out of which all things are made, huh? Okay. Now I contrast those two, right? The difference there, the way they begin. But then I ask this question: Is it reasonable, huh, to look for one simple matter out of which these natural things are made before you look for for a mover?

[36:36] So to look for one simple matter before looking for a maker, or a mover, what would you say? Yes. Okay. Now again, I'm asking

[36:56] why you say is it reasonable to look for one matter before one maker? Why is it reasonable that they look for one matter before they look for a maker? Later on, they will talk about the mover maker. I'm not saying it's reasonable to stop with the one matter or with matter in general, but why is it reasonable to begin by looking for one matter out of which things are made rather than the way the Bible begins with one maker?

[37:35] Because it's a natural law from senses. Yeah, yeah. Isn't it more known that these things depend upon the matter in which they're made than they depend upon a maker? See, if you come

[37:51] into this room and you see the wooden chair over there, right? You don't see the maker at all, the chair, right? If you examine the chair, you see it's made out of wood and so on. And if you took the wood out of the chair, there wasn't any chair left, right? So it's more known to us that the chair depends upon wood than it depends upon the carpenter, huh?

[38:13] The same way you come into class and you see this word on the board, right? Which is more undeniable—that depends upon the letters C, A, and T, or it depends upon some writer. I don't see any writer. For all I know, the word "cat" might have always been there, right? But even the word "cat" was always on the board. It would always depend upon what? C, A, and T.

[38:44] Now, somebody says it doesn't depend upon C, A, and T. Let's take C away, then. Let's take A away. Let's take T away. But it's very obvious that it depends upon C, A, and T. There's nothing left, huh? You see? So it's more undeniable that it depends upon C, A, and T than it depends upon writer. You see that? Even if you suppose it's always there, you know, no matter whatever, it would still depend upon C A, and T.

[39:12] So in terms of what is more known to us, huh? We start with our senses, huh? It's more known to us that these things depend upon the matter which they are made than they depend upon a what maker, huh? And we ought to start with what is more known to us, huh? That's the basic rule, right? Now, going back to the Bible, huh? The Bible is the Word of God, huh?

[39:41] And He's the Maker, so He can begin by talking about the Maker, right? But philosophy is not the Word of God. It's the Word of man, right? Thinking about what he can sense and so on. So it's reasonable that the philosophy. Looked first for one matter, right? Because it's more known to them that things depend upon that, huh? Okay. Now, I just would like to stop and and dwell upon this a little bit more.

[40:18] Some interesting things. Before the the philosophers, you had in a sense an anticipation of them a bit in the poets, and that's why I say you know the fictitious sharpness, you know philosophy, and it's time to see what theories. Okay, you want to pick out a date that's as good as one as any, huh? but there are a few ancient beginnings like that in history, right? Okay.

[40:47] Now the poets would talk about not water, but about mother what? Mother Earth, huh? Okay. And mother Earth is interesting to think about. Shakespeare talks about mother Earth like a good poet. He has in Timon of Athens, huh? When Timon is digging in the ground, and he looking for roots and so on, and he addresses the earth, and he says, "Common mother, thou, whose womb immeasurable, an infinite breast teems, huh?

[41:32] And feeds all. So he's speaking there of mother Earth as beginning of all things, huh? Now, it's interesting that in Latin the word for matter, materia, comes from the word mater. So if you look even in Cassell's, you know, small dictionary, they will refer you when you get to the word materia back to mater, mother,

[42:04] because the mother is like the matter out of which the child is made, huh? Okay. So it's very interesting that the poets should have thought of mother Earth before Thales thought of water, huh? The mother Earth is more like a mother, huh? Okay. Okay. Now I'm going to develop that that a little bit, the significance of that. What's interesting in English, huh? What is the English word, the native English word for cause?

[42:39] Ground. Ground, yeah, yeah. And ground is very similar to earth, right? So it's interesting that the English word for cause is taken from mother Earth, huh? Which is kind of where matter is taken from, in a sense too, right? Was like a mother, huh? So it's very significant, huh? And I think I've mentioned before, maybe, how Shakespeare, who's a master of English language, he puns as he can't avoid doing in the this Beethen weakness there.

[43:13] He puns on the meaning of ground, so like in Romeo and Juliet, at the end there, when the night guard comes upon the scene there, and here's Juliet who's supposed to have been dead, freshly dying or freshly bleeding there on the ground, and Romeo who's in exile is lying dead on the ground, and the County Paris who's supposed to have married her is lying dead on the ground, right?

[43:38] What the heck is going on? And the night guard says, "We see the ground where on these woes do lie, but the true ground of all this we cannot, without further circumstance, decry." So he sees the ground on, I mean, Mother Earth, the place which the bodies lie, but the true ground, the cause of all this, how? What the heck is going on here? You know. You see, another place he puns upon those two meanings of ground.

[44:10] But that's kind of interesting, and the very English word for cause is tied up with the ground, with Mother Earth, and therefore tied up with the cause called what? Matter. Okay.

[44:26] Another thing that's interesting about that too is that the oldest jokes, kind of in the book, are about mother and father, and you see it in Homer. He's talking about this, and Athena comes down in the Odyssey to the son of Odysseus, and she says, "Are you the son of Odysseus?" He says, "My mother always said I was," and that's a standard joke, and you find it all the way down in the other great poet, Shakespeare.

[44:53] It's a wise son that knows his own father, and so on. But like the son of Odysseus says, "Well, but son, we never."Knows whose son he is, but notice it's more known to us that we came from our mother than that we came from our what father, huh? But the mother is more like the matter which we're made, huh? When the father gets through with his role in generating the child, there's practically no matter there at all, and so all those nine months, all the matter which the baby grows, comes from the mummy, huh?

[45:29] And even after you're born, your mother's milk there, huh? Is food for a few months or something, right? Um, I think I told this kind of funny story, you know, by children when they were getting, you know, some of the facts of life, so to speak, firm in their mind, huh? And and one day, you know, out of the blue, my son Paul is still quite young.

[45:54] He says out of the blue, you know, he says, "Did I come from Mama? " Did you hear the story? And I said, "Yes, you did come from Mama. " And he said, "Maria, that's his sister. Did Maria come from Mama? " And I said, "Yes, Maria came from Mama. " And then he asked about his younger brother, Marcus. Did Marcus come from Mama? And I said, "Yes, Marcus came from Mama.

[46:18] " Then he said, "Did you come from Mama? " And I said, "No. " And he said, "Well, then you don't really belong here, but but you can stay, " he says. Now we we've laughed and laughed about this, but but what does it indicate, see? What does it indicate, see? And the obvious point of connection between Paul and his sister and brother was they all came from Mama, and I didn't come from Mama, what the hell was I doing here in this in this house, see?

[46:50] See? But certainly it's more known that you come from your mother. Why the the father is more like a what maker? The mother is more like matter, so just as the mother is more known than the father as the origin, so matter is more known than the what maker, huh? And it's interesting that later on, with Heraclitus, when they begin to start to see the need for the cause called the mover or maker, that Heraclitus speaks of it as a father.

[47:23] Why matter was always associated with the what mother, huh? That's one of the reasons why we call God a father, with respect to us, huh? Rather than our mother, because he's a cause in the sense of the mover or the maker, and not a cause in the sense of matter, huh? So if you spoke of him as our mother, you'd think of him as a cause in the sense of Mother Earth, of matter, and totally misunderstand the kind of cause of the universe.

[47:59] It was very significant that that the poet spoke of Mother Earth, thinking of that kind of cause that we call matter, so much tied to the mother, right? To get this name from the mother, and then

[48:14] when Heraclitus begins to see the need for the mover, a bit he starts to use the word Father, huh? Very, very significant, huh? So all that helps to confirm the idea that that matter is more known to us than the makers. So we ought to begin there, and if that you know proves to be enough, then we can stop, right? But if it doesn't, you'll go on to see the need for other causes.

[48:47] Now, notice, huh? As you descend from the general to particular, you're going to find more what? More or less disagreement. More. More or less. As you descend, see.

[49:03] Because, say, if we say God, for example, is beginning of all things, right? We're talking about the beginning of all things, and we say there's one God, and He's altogether simple, right? But He's not a beginning in the sense of what? Matter, right? Okay. Is it? As you descend from the more known to the less known, from the general to particular, things become less certain, huh? Okay.

[49:34] And less. uh uh less agreement. We don't think there's one matter as beginning of all things, but we do think there's one simple thing as beginning of all things. Okay.

[49:53] Now, fifth step. If there's one matter that is The beginning of all things. Is it reasonable to guess that it's a matter like water, in being what—formless, colorless, you know, shapeless, tasteless, and so on, right? Rather than a matter of definite qualities like red wine is the beginning of all things, or sugar is the beginning of all things. If you're looking for one matter that is the beginning of all things,

[50:38] not necessarily, you know, saying that it's water, but something like water, a formless. Is it reasonable to look for one formless matter that is the beginning of all things?

[51:13] Well, notice if I took as the beginning of all things red wine, everything is made out of red wine. Everything would have to be what red, it seems, and that's contrary to what we see in the world, where you have opposite things, right? If sugar was the beginning of all things, everything would be made out of sugar and therefore be sweet, huh? So you wouldn't have sweet and bitter things.

[51:41] So it seems that there's one matter out of which all things are made. It would have to be a matter that is formless, and I use the word formless. I mean not just shapeless, but colorless, tasteless, and so on, right? But able to take on all different shapes, colors, tastes, like water can, huh? So even without yet guessing that this beginning is water, it would have to be something like water, wouldn't it?

[52:12] Do you see that? That's reasonable in the sense of having a reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You see. Now the sixth thing now is to guess most in particular now that that one formless matter which all things are made is what water. Okay.

[52:49] Water is the one simple formless matter, or you know, space here, out of which all things are made, right? Okay, which is the beginning of all things, right? Okay.

[53:15] Now, is any reason to think that that one simple, formless matter, which all things are made, is nothing other than I have been drinking here today, water?

[53:32] Well, when Aristotle discusses Thales, he says that Thales was influenced by living things, especially in guessing that water is the beginning. Of course, even today, the biologists would say that you and I are mainly water. That makes up most of us. And you know, if it doesn't rain, the things don't grow, and so on. But Thales is said to have pointed to also the fact that seeds don't germinate unless they are what moistened.

[54:07] So water seems to be the beginning of life. That's interesting from the point of view of baptism, right? That baptism is not only symbolized by water in the sense of washing the soul of of sin, but also being a source of life. And

[54:31] we'll go into that a little bit more. But so, as far as living things are concerned, water would seem to be a very good guess as the beginning of living things. To be able to choose one thing, what better guess could you make?

[54:46] Okay, but even if you take the non-living world, where the physical world, as we call it, where you have gases and liquids and solids, one way of dividing it up. Whatever is the beginning of all things would have to be able to become a gas, a liquid, and a solid. Otherwise, it couldn't be the beginning of all things, right? Now, in your daily, ordinary experience, is anything that becomes a gas, a liquid, and a solid that you know of?

[55:22] Water is the only thing that I know of that becomes a gas, a liquid, and a solid, right? So, even in that way, even in the non-living world, it seems the only thing to be the beginning of all things. Maybe in some lab with some special equipment and some private experience, you could liquefy or solidify things of other sorts. But in our daily experience, water is the only thing that we know of, right?

[55:45] So, especially from living things, but also from what, the physical world, water would seem an eminently reasonable guess. And some people, of course, think that Thales might have been a bit influenced by Homer, who, in one tradition, came after Hesiod. Hesiod talks very much about Mother Earth. But Homer has the gods swear by the river Styx. Of course, we swear by the Bible, say in court or something.

[56:21] Well, if the gods swear by the river Styx, what does that mean? Maybe water is the origin even of the what gods? How about they wouldn't swear by water? So maybe Homer is anticipating the greatest poet there, Thales. Okay.

[56:41] Now, I'll be making sometimes a scientific footnote, huh? And sometimes a theological footnote, huh? But making a scientific footnote, huh? Obviously, the modern scientist would not say that water is the beginning of all things. In fact, I guess he thinks that water is H2O, right? But notice, son. Even if water is H2O, hydrogen is of all the atoms the what simplest, isn't it? The most fundamental one, huh?

[57:13] The other ones seem to be almost multiples of hydrogen atom. So water is very close to hydrogen, huh? Okay. But to our senses, water appears to be homogeneous throughout, huh? It's only by very roundabout ways and experiments that one would realize that water maybe is not as simple as it appears to be, huh? Okay.

[57:38] Let me continue on the theological footnote, huh? Now, again, the theologian would say God is the beginning of all things, right? Okay. But it's interesting that God is metaphorically called what? Water, huh?

[57:59] And you can see this in the Psalms, you know. The Psalms, when Augustine divides the Psalms, there is three groups of fifty, right? And each has a significance. Each of the fifty, but when you read the one hundred fifty Psalms, there is a Psalm of Thirst. Each one of the what fifty, as the hind longed for the water, right? Bring water, so my soul longs for God.

[58:24] The one I am most familiar with is Psalm sixty-two, which appears in the second fifty, right? O God, you are my God, whom I seek. For you, my flesh pines, and my soul thirsts like the earth parched. Life is without water. That's why I gaze towards you, the sanctuary, to see your power and glory. So the soul's desire for God is metaphorically described as what thirsting for God, as if God is what water, right?

[58:52] Okay, you find in the three Psalms of Thirst. Um, why is God metaphorically called water? He is the water, obviously. But why is he metaphorically called water? What is the the basis for that? Huh?

[59:12] Principle of life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in fact, you know, as I said, when Aristotle discusses the opinion of Thales, he says he has more information than we have, right? That Thales was especially influenced by living things. That water seemed to be the source of life, and so we take water, which is the source of life in material things, or it used to be the source of life, and we say it metaphorically of God, and we speak of the soul as thirsting for God.

[59:42] Okay, and then, as I said earlier, that's part of the reason why water is chosen for baptism, because baptism is not only a cleansing of the soul, which we usually talk about that with the water baptism. We also say it's it's a birth, huh? Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit. Well, why is water taken as a sign there to give us this new birth, of grace?

[1:00:10] Well, it's because water is naturally what tied up as a source of what life in the material world, so it's appropriate to take that. So it's very interesting, huh? Theologians say, well, no, water is not the beginning of all things, but the beginning of all things is metaphorically in in Psalm forty one sixty two. I forget the other one number. Metaphorically called water,

[1:00:41] and to be learned, huh? Even for that. Okay. Of course, the metaphors of Scripture have to be taken from things that are what obvious to the senses, huh? And therefore appropriate to everybody. So there is no metaphors taken from hydrogen or oxygen or anything like that, or H2O. But from water, yes, yeah, water is a very common metaphor. So this metaphor for grace too, I think, water some things.

[1:01:13] I do like that of Hermann, which comes down upon the mountains of Sion, huh? It's water, okay. So you impressed with Thales now? Oh, that's from one sentence, yes, Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you notice that I'm following what I thought says, you know, which I'm particular. Now we're going to see other opinions about what that one matter might be, huh? But so I repeat all these, you know, things down, but but it's understood, right?

[1:01:47] I do that when I you have a new begin, right? About five or better, okay. Okay. Or is this all? You can stay on that if you want. Yeah. So at the house last night, we'll stop at 9 o'clock around about ten o'clock, you know, and and started my wife and I started watching this an an eternal word network, you know, the Mother Angelica. They had they're interviewing a a convert to the faith, right?

[1:02:39] It's a Baptist minister and his wife. It's kind of interesting just to give you an account of how they came in. It's very unusual. Of course, they had all these prejudices that people have against you know the Catholics at first, and

[1:02:53] the her husband would go around sometimes and talk to other you know Protestants, churches, and so on. And his wife would go with him and so on, and they're in one parishes. And this woman came up to the to the minister's wife after the ceremony and so on, and she said, "Would you pray for my son, say?" And no, no, it's a pray for my son. No, pray pray for my daughter.

[1:03:20] Yeah, pray for my daughter. And sure, and what was the problem? Well, the problem was that the daughter had married a Catholic. She was afraid. And so she was kind of very you know good woman, this woman. So she started praying for this daughter, say, and she prayed for I guess seven years, huh, for her. In the place where she worked, her regular kind of job, one day they had this new person coming in, and was a person she'd been praying for seven years.

[1:03:56] And so they became friends in the office and so on, and and the finding this daughter, you know, wanted to confide in her her problem, right? And it was the fact that there was kind of a struggle between her husband and her about how they're going to raise the children, and the husband wanted to raise them as Catholics, and she wanted to raise them as Baptists, and was kind of pulling the marriage apart, say.

[1:04:19] So, so she said, you know, she's kind of a practical woman. She says, "Well, you got to do one or the other, right? Either you go to church with him, or he goes to church with you. And since he's the head of the family, you go to church with him. " And so she started going to church with him, say, and then finally she got started taking instruction, say.

[1:04:39] But then she started talking to that minister's wife and so on, and the minister's wife to know what to do exactly because she thought this woman was maybe getting converted to Catholicism, right? And and then finally, you know, the the this woman was getting interested in in Mary and going to Marian conferences. To them, that's idolatry, you know. We got another, and so,

[1:05:08] and then finally, this this uh this daughter was starting to say the rosary and so on, see? And so, this is really a concern over the outside. And so she said, uh, when she went off to the Marian conference. You know, well, I'll bring you back rosary, right? And do we say it once, and well, okay. And then they, she and the her husband started saying the rosary, right?

[1:05:33] And they thought she was all fifteen decades, so. But they had some of the little things to describe the mysteries and so on. It took them two and a half hours to go, through fifteen decades. You just find the whole thing, you know. Eventually, of course, they were they got more interest in the church and so on, and they were kind of afraid they're going to be converted to Catholicism, and so they're checking everything they get, and they're checking it against Scripture, but they can't find any contradiction, right?

[1:06:01] And they're getting more and more, and they're looking for a sign and so on, and they did get to do get eventually a sign. And but they're also very influenced by the catechism of the Catholic Church, huh? That really had tremendous effect upon them. It tied everything together. It's kind of interesting to hear, you know, kind of people how they come into the church sometimes. It's kind of interesting, huh?

[1:06:22] But you know, the problem was it was Mary for a while, so you know, and then they begin to realize that the church was really in harmony, and they begin to see the passages in Apocalypse, you know, the Queen with the stars and so on. And

[1:06:36] one day they had this kind of, you know, the sun came down right over the road they were on, you know, and just like you know, the road the sun sits on the road, you know, just tremendous. And then you had the tremendous stars at night, and then you had the the moon, and this fitted perfectly with the passage. That was the sign they're looking for. That's kind of interesting, you know.

[1:06:56] So that's what happens when you get going, you know. I got watching that. Okay.