Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
15. Empedocles' Love and Hate, Chance vs. Mind, and Anaxagoras on Matter and the Continuous
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[0:00] Now the next two fragments. Nor does anything of the whole become empty or overfull. Nothing of the whole is empty. So whence could anything come? Anything additional come? Now here you have a position about the empty, and you might contrast it just for a second here with Democritus on the last page there, or in the first fragment from Democritus DK nine. He's saying that what truly exists are the atoms and the what empty on page nine there, last page there, the first fragment from Democritus, where he's denying that the sense qualities exist, like the modern philosopher.

[0:45] But what truly exists, he says, are the atoms and the what empty, huh? Why in the fragments before us of Empedocles, he's denying that the empty exists. So this is again a famous question.

[1:08] Does the empty exist? And a lot of questions. There's two answers. Yes or no. And Democritus, as we'll see later on, is answering yes, and Empedocles, as you can see a bit of his fragment, is answering no.

[1:43] Now presumably the reason why Empedocles denies the existence of the empty would be because the empty is really nothing. And to say the empty exists then is to say that nothing does exist. Nothing is something.

[2:02] In modern science, there sometimes they talk about empty what space. Nothing there. Okay. Now you might ask about empty space. Does it have length and width and depth? Well, now, if you say has length and width and depth, is there something there that has length and width and depth? Well, if you say there's something there that has length and width and depth, then it's not really empty, is it?

[2:32] If there's really nothing there, then then nothing has length and width and depth. How can nothing have length and width then? What? Depth is absurd. You're saying, in a sense, that nothing is what something. So you can see why Empedocles would deny that this is the empty in a way here it involves a contradiction. You're saying that nothing is something.

[3:01] Now Democritus, a little bit like Heraclitus, is getting into the position of apparently admitting a contradiction in order to save the reality of change.

[3:16] Apparently, the argument of Democritus was that if the empty didn't exist, then the universe is packed what completely tight. You know how in your suitcase, if you keep on putting things in there, you have to sit on the suitcase to close it up. And the more tightly things are packed in suitcase, the less they can move around. Well, if there's no empty in the world at all, how tightly would things be packed?

[3:47] Completely tighter. So it seems you couldn't what we'd be like fish and ice or something. We couldn't move at all. So, like Heraclitus, seeing the reality of change and wanting to defend that, he thinks in order to hold on to reality of change, he's got to admit that the empty exists. That nothing really is.

[4:16] Which is saying nothing is, but what is not. But At least he's saying that what is not is. That seems like a contradiction. Now, in ancient times, Aristotle follows Empedocles and says that the empty does not exist. And the answer he gives to Democritus is that motion in some kind of circular way could be without the empty. Huh? If I had my beer can filled with beer, the beer could still what rotate?

[4:49] Huh? Because as one is coming in, the other is leaving at the same time, right? Okay. Um. Now, in modern times, the early modern scientists followed Democritus. In fact, that's where they borrowed the word atom from Democritus. And they also followed Democritus in talking about empty space between the planets, maybe, or between galaxies, or even within the atom sometimes, right? Okay. But with Einstein, the 20th century, there's a tendency to go back and say the empty doesn't exist.

[5:23] You know that there there are fields everywhere, huh? Magnetic fields and gravitational fields, and these fields are not simply what a mathematical device; they're something real. So Einstein would seem to be going back to the position of Empedocles and Aristotle that the empty does not exist. But the early modern scientists were following Democritus and holding on to the existence of atoms and and empty, right? And because they thought motion required this.

[6:00] Now, the next more expansive fragments that we have here, DK 17, and DK 21, and DK 23, besides kind of expanding on the idea of the mixture and separation of things, they also introduce something new, and that is a third kind of cause. And that is the the cause now in the sense of the movers, huh?

[6:30] Now, notice, huh? Empedocles it said that everything is made out of earth, air, fire, and water in different ratios. And you have earth, air, fire, and water coming together, and then earth, air, fire, and water are what separated, huh? So you have these contrary effects, huh? In the world, the coming together of earth, air, fire, and water, and the separation of earth, air, fire, and water. So you have contrary effects.

[7:13] Now, um, what brings earth, air, fire, and water together, and what separates them? Well, first of all, if you have contrary effects like coming together and separating, would you look for the same cause,

[7:34] or would you look for contrary causes? Do you think that contrary effects have the same cause, or do you think that contrary effects should have contrary causes? Which do you guess? Contrary. Yeah. Contrary effects have contrary causes.

[8:04] And this is a highly probable statement. So, Empedocles is going to look for a different cause of earth, air, fire, and water coming together, and another cause for their being what separated, right? And just as coming together and separating are contrary, so he's going to look for contrary what causes of these two, huh? Yeah. Just like if you and I, for example, we saw that sometimes the butter becomes hard, and sometimes butter becomes soft, and that's a disciplinary experience, isn't it?

[8:45] Now, if all you knew to begin with, right, is that sometimes butter becomes hard, sometimes becomes soft, say, hey, those are contraries, hard and soft, aren't they? Would you look for the same cause of the butter becoming hard and of the butter becoming soft, or would you look for contrary causes of its becoming hard and becoming soft? Okay. Yeah. And you might eventually figure out, hey, if you put the butter in the refrigerator where it's cold, we put it out in the backyard in this kind of weather, maybe it gets a little colder.

[9:21] This one you get what hard, right? But you put it in the warm room or on the stove or something, then it becomes soft. So you might eventually come to not only contrary causes, but in particular, in this case, it's the hot and the what cold that are the contrary causes, huh?

[9:42] Okay. Now, there's another famous proposition, and that is that like effects have what kind of causes? Like cause. Yeah. Yeah. Now, is it true that human beings sometimes come together, and sometimes they distance themselves from each other, right? Okay. And what is it that brings people together? Okay. The fact that they they like each other, love each other, right? Okay. What is it that separates them? Huh? Well, they dislike each other, they hate each other, right?

[10:34] Okay. So, in human society, it's love that brings us together, and hate that what separates us, huh? Okay. Now, there's something like that, isn't there, in the natural world, huh? Earth, air, fire, and water come together, and then they are what separate, right? So, if like effects of like causes, there must be something in the natural world like love and hate that bring together and separate them.

[11:10] Okay, they can give whatever names you want to, but a kind of cosmic love and a kind of cosmic hate, huh? Now, his style, writing, he'll use the names maybe of gods or goddesses. He might call love Aphrodite or something, right? Or hate, you know, using the name of God of Hate or something like that. Okay. Now, we're not quite as poetic. We might say, you know, if the if the pieces of metal sometimes come together and sometimes they separate, there must be contrary causes, huh?

[11:39] And we'll call one the force of attraction, the other one the force of repulsion, right? That's basically the same idea, okay? There are contrary causes of contrary effects, huh? So, he reasonably guesses, huh, that there's something like love and hate in the natural world. A cause that brings together and a cause that separates, and uses the name of the gods or goddesses, huh?

[12:06] So he's but and he's talking here apart from that, it's kind of a cycle where love brings them together and hate separates them, and this goes on forever, huh? I shall tell something double. At one time, it grew from the many to be one only. At another time, on the other hand, it grew apart from the one to be many. There's a double birth of mortals, a double death.

[12:28] He's speaking, you know, like us, right? The coming together of all things and so on. The other, on the contrary, nourished as things grow apart, and in no place do these things stop taking turns forever. At one time, all things come together by what love, huh? Another time, again, everything is carried away by the hate of strife, huh? Okay.

[12:55] So, so he's teaching us, huh? The next paragraph, he says, "But come, listen to my words, for truly learning causes the mind to grow."

[13:08] Does he have any kind of change besides change of place for the mind to grow? Yeah. I was just thinking Okay. But again, he's just describing again the same thing here, right?

[13:22] Okay. So he's talking about how things came together and they're separated. But look at her with your mind and not sit with your eyes in amazement. It is she who is recognized to be unborn the limbs of mortals, by whom they think friendly things and achieve concord, calling her by the name of Joy or Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

[13:50] So that's what's really new in these fragments on the bottom of page four and top of page five. He's talking about all these different mixtures and segregations, right? But he's introducing now a third kind of cause to bring the things together: love and another one to separate them, hate. So now you have in Empedocles at least three kinds of causes. You have the kind of cause that the Greeks begin with, namely matter, right?

[14:18] And he thinks that that's basically four in kind, earth, air, fire, and water, but that's the matter. Then he brings in the form, the ratio that Pythagoras had talked about, and then what maybe Heraclitus is trying to get at when he said war is the father of all things, and when he chose fire rather than a more passive matter, he was thinking of the mover, right? He brings out now the mover or the movers are love and what?

[14:44] Hate, huh? Okay. So he has three kinds of cause: matter, form, and then the mover, love and hate. But both Aristotle and Thomas following, Aristotle, note that he's in a way what? A little bit along the Manichean line, right? There's a good and a bad principle, love and what? Hate, huh? Okay.

[15:10] But but there is a interesting fragment of Empedocles that Aristotle will use for a number of reasons. But he says there's no hate in gods. That's interesting, huh? There's love in God, but no hate in God, but because of his other positions, as we'll see in the last part here on page six, there are some contradictions there, so I'll get some into. Okay. Now, what are the next three fragments here on the top of page six?

[15:45] These strange fragments. Well, we have a fuller account of Empedocles' thinking than these fragments would give you, and here we have again another famous dichotomy.

[16:16] As we study animals and plants, especially, we see that animals and plants have a variety of parts, right? And we notice that these parts are well arranged; they're where they should be in the body. So my biting teeth are in front, and my chewy teeth in back. That's what they should be, right? And my stomach and all my holes and so on, and trunks are in the right places.

[16:43] My arms and legs, and I'm well arranged, huh? And the cat's parts are well arranged, and even the tree's parts are well arranged. Now the question is, what is the cause of this? How did you get this good order of parts in animals and plants? Okay.

[17:15] And the fundamental dichotomy in thinking here will be between Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras is the philosopher who brought philosophy to Athens, and he became the friend of the Athenian statesman Pericles. But he had to leave Athens on the charge of impiety, which may have been partly a way of getting at Pericles. But anyway, Anaxagoras, in looking at the good order of parts in animals and plants, he saw Anaxagoras the likeness between this and the good order in the parts of a chair, or the good order in the parts of a building, the good order in the things made by what man, Man, huh?

[18:15] okay, the artificial things. So he saw the likeness between the order in the parts of animals and plants and the order in the parts of. Artificial things, huh? Okay.

[18:31] And then, using the probable statement we saw earlier, like effects have what? Like causes. Like causes, right? Okay. And then, what was the cause of the order in artificial things? The order in the parts of a chair, or the order in the parts of a book, or the order in the parts of a house or something, huh? Well, it's the human reason, huh? The human mind, huh?

[19:02] That's responsible for that order. It's human mind that knows and directs us in that order. Well, if like effects have like causes, and the order in natural things is like the order in artificial things, and the cause of the order in artificial things is human mind, then you could guess reasonably that there's a like what? Cause of the order in natural things? Another mind, huh? A greater mind, huh?

[19:31] And we'll see in the great fragment of Anaxagoras towards the end of the great fragment DK12, which we'll be looking at later on, that all minds are what? Similar, huh? The lesser and the greater, huh? Like in the bottom of page eight, the very last sentence: Every mind is similar, both the greater and the lesser, huh? So Anaxagoras reasonably guesses that there's another mind and it's greater than ours because it's responsible for much more order than our mind is, the more intricate and amazing order, right?

[20:07] That there's a greater mind that's responsible for the order in animals and plants, which our mind is somewhat like, right? That is responsible and known to be responsible for the order in the parts of artificial things, huh? So notice the marvelous reasoning there of Anaxagoras.

[20:31] He sees the likeness of order in artificial things and in natural things. He knows the cause of the order in artificial things, right? But he has to investigate the cause of the order in natural things. But he also has the probable thought that like effects have like causes, right? So he reasons he guesses that there is a greater mind, and we'll be studying that. And this is what really caught the attention of Socrates.

[21:03] If you read the dialogue called the Phaedo, Socrates was very impressed with this thought of Anaxagoras. He thought he could have developed more the consequences of it, but he was pretty much caught up with that. Now, Empedocles is trying to explain the good order without a mind, with only mindless causes. So he has to explain the good order as being readied by by chance? Okay.

[21:39] Now, if a mindless love is bringing things together, and then a mindless hate separates them, and so on, right? And this goes on and on. What would you expect then? Well, they might come together in any old crazy combination. And these particular fragments are describing some of the crazy things that happened as the mindless love is bringing things together. On it, many sides of foreheads without necks burst forth, and bare arms wandered bereft of shoulders, and eyes wandered in need of foreheads, right?

[22:14] Okay. But yet, when God was more mixed with God, no see he means earth air fire and water, which he's given the names of gods and goddesses. But yet, when God was more mixed with God, these things fell together in whatever way. Everyone happened to me. Okay. So my eyes might come out in my stomach, right? Or they might come down the bottom of my feet, or some other place that would be make it miserable for me to.

[22:41] Okay. And many other things besides them continue to came to be, and all these crazy combinations. Many things were born with two faces and two breasts, offspring of cattle with faces of men. Others, the reverse, born of men with the heads of oxen, mixed in part from men and part female by nature, adorned with dark limbs, and so on. So you might have had a mermaid or a centaur, any crazy combination.

[23:07] Now, this is only part of his thinking, huh? But what Aristotle says, Empedocles said. In addition to this, he was that all these crazy combinations can't survive, huh? So if you had a mermaid, let's say a mermaid, she had up here she has human lungs. And down here she's a fish-like thing, but she can't really survive in the ocean because she got lungs, and she can't survive on the shore because she doesn't have any legs to walk around and hunt and so on.

[23:36] So the mermaids are going to perish, huh? Even though in Columbus's voyage there's report of having seen mermaids, huh? Because nobody knows exactly what they meant when they said they saw mermaids.

[23:50] So Aristotle supplies the rest of the thinking then in his account of this that Empedocles said all these crazy combinations that he's describing in the fragments they all perished because they couldn't survive. But since love keeps on bringing these things together, eventually it happened to put them together in the what good way, right? And that good combination what survived, and all the bad ones what perished, huh?

[24:19] Well, notice that's kind of a remarkable imagination because you're saying that what we actually see in the natural world today, everywhere we see good order in all the animals and plants. But he's saying that's not basically the way nature's at all. He's imagining, right, that originally nature produced what you know all these crazy combinations, right? But they've all perished, right? And the one in a million or one in a billion or whatever, it took, right?

[24:52] That one survived, and that's why we have the good ones around now. Now my my friend Warren Murray there was describing this to a modern biologist. He said, "Oh, that's my theory. " It basically is, right? You see, okay, by chance, huh? But Anaxagoras makes it look more sense when he introduces the greater mind as being responsible for the order. And as the great Heraclitus said, huh?

[25:19] Thinking of this mindless fire of his and so on, and the other mindless causes that the thinkers of That time had, he said. The earth, the cosmos is what a heap piled up at random, right? It should be like the, you know, the remains there of the World Trade Center there, right? Huh? That's fire roaring through the thing, right? What's it got? a heap there, right? All the order's gone, it's, just a mess, right?

[25:42] Now you see pictures of that nauseam there on TV and so on. Incidentally, I saw a bumper sticker first time today. It says, Surgeon General warning, television may be dangerous to your literacy.

[26:00] Just like two years, you got to keep television stuff away from, especially little kids, but even adults get wasted and tired of them. So, Anaxagoras is much more reasonable, I think. But we'll come back to that. Talk about this again. I say this is kind of a great dichotomy between Anaxagoras. But as I say, Socrates was tremendously impressed with this idea of Anaxagoras. And Aristotle was still so full of admiration.

[26:29] He says Anaxagoras seemed like a sober man among drunk men. We need to use the greater volume. That's about a couple of times. Did you say said that? Aristotle. Aristotle. Yeah, it seemed like a sober man, Anaxagoras, among drunk men.

[26:49] Yeah. Now these last two fragments are touching upon Empedocles thinking about how we know. And the first fragment, is saying, "By earth we see earth, by water water, godlike air by air, destroying fire by fire, love by love, and hate by hate." It's because we have these in us that we what know them, right? Now, is this true that

[27:33] the thing known, whatever it may be, the thing known must be in the knower before it can be known. That's what he's saying, right? Okay, the thing known must be in the knower

[27:57] before it can be known. So he's saying that, huh? That we know earth, air, fire, water, and so on, and love and hate because we have all these things in us.

[28:17] Now is that true? In other words, if if I can remember you people, does that mean that I have your shape and your color and so on in some sense inside of me?

[28:35] Could I remember you if I didn't have your color and shape inside of me? Can I? Couldn't I? Could you say? So there seems to be truth in what Empedocles is saying, that the thing known must be in the know before it can be known. Aristotle gets in a little difficulty with God there because he recognized that there's no hate in God, because he thought of God as something what eternal.

[29:03] And if there's hate in God, then hate is a cause of corruption. Then God would not be eternal if there's hate in Him. So that's a good insight into God that there's love in God. But you know Saint John says God is love, right? No hate in God. But then if there's no hate in God. God wouldn't know what hate is according to this fragment, huh? And therefore we'd know something God doesn't know.

[29:27] Of course, that's laughable to all the Greeks. It's one of the problems, huh? But no, it's a more basic problem here. There's metal inside the chair. Why isn't the chair then no metal? In the wooden chair, there's wood. So why isn't the wooden chair no wood? In what way is the thing known in the knower? Granted in some way the thing known must be in the knower. Now, if you open up my head here, would you find a little bone statue, let's say, or a little flesh statue, or something of everybody that I know and remember and I've known in my life?

[30:15] Got rows of little statues up here, huh? Find those up there? See? In other words, is the shape, huh, and the color, huh, of everybody that I remember in my head like the shape of somebody might be in the statue? We make a statue of that person. See? Have I taken in your shape in the way that if we made a wooden statue of you or marble statue of you, we had Michelangelo here and he chipped away, or some other artist that he made a statue and he put your shape into the wood or the marble?

[30:49] See? Is that the way that I have your shape inside my head? My eye starts to, you know, change its shape and take on your shape. See?

[31:03] Well, as the later thinkers and especially Aristotle would see, there is truth in what he's saying here, but he doesn't understand the way it's in there. It's not in there in a material way. It's in there in a what? Immaterial way. That I receive the shapes and the colors of other things without losing the shape or color that I have. I don't take on the colors and shapes of other things as my own shape now, like the the wood would or the marble would, right?

[31:35] It remains the shape of another, right? So sometimes they speak of knowing as receiving the form of another as other, right? Or retaining the one that you have. So there is a kind of immaterial reception, immaterial way that the thing known is in the knower. And the higher you go in knowing, the more immaterial it becomes. When you get finally to the reason itself, it's completely immaterial.

[32:06] So, Empedocles is seeing some of the truth there, that the thing known must be in the knower before it can be known, but he's not quite able to understand the way it's in there. If you understand as being there in a material way, then the the Pietà or some other statue, right, would know the person of whom what? It is the statue, right? Because it has now received the shape of that person, right?

[32:37] But I must have received your shape in a different way than the pietas or the marble received the shape, huh? Because the statue doesn't know the person of whom it is a statue. But I know, right? Somehow you, right? By having your shape in me, so I haven't received your shape in the material way that marble or wood would receive a shape, huh? I'm receiving it in a immaterial way.

[33:05] So this is kind of a beginning of thinking of how we know, but he's seeing some truth there that somehow the thing known is in the knower, but he can't really what understand the way it's in there. He's thinking of it as being in there in a kind of material way, and then he'd have problems of why the chair doesn't know metal because it's got metal in it, huh?

[33:30] It's got to be in there in a in a way other than something is in matter. Okay, so this is something that we bring out when we study the the soul, right? The kind of receiving, huh? That takes place even in sensing, but even more so in reason. But it's immaterial reception.

[33:54] Now, Empedocles is still thinking even of thought as being something quite material. Where it's really Anaxagoras that we mentioned before, who's first going to start to think of the mind as something immaterial, and Plato and Aristotle will follow Anaxagoras in that regard. But Empedocles, like most modern scientists, they think of what thought is something material. Now, if you're still thinking of thought as something material, and you think that the matter which we're made is basically bone, flesh, and blood, right?

[34:35] Which would be the most reasonable guess as to what thought is? Is it bone, or is it flesh, or is it blood? Yeah, blood, huh? Now, one reason for for guessing blood is that thought seems to be a kind of what movement, huh? Yeah, as Shakespeare says, it's what you know. Discourse, right? And discourse comes in the word for running, so it's like a motion. So blood circulates.

[35:00] So that's one reason to think it's blood rather than flesh or bone that are that are more stationary, huh? But another thing that we'll see more clearly in Anaxagoras, thought seems to be something very what subtle, doesn't it? Compared to other things, it can penetrate things. And we speak of a good mind as having insight into things. We speak of a good mind as penetrating. Now, which is more penetrating, bone or flesh or blood?

[35:31] Well, if I take out my handkerchief, this thing was beating this morning. It's not beating. But if I put a bone, dry thing, a piece of bone in here, would it go through? No. If I put even a piece of dry flesh here, I know would it go through? No. If I put blood, it would probably go right through. So if blood is the most what penetrating, the most subtle thing, it has insight and get into things, right?

[36:03] Then it must be what blood rather than flesh or bone, huh? Okay. There's a couple reasons at least, right? If you're just you know limited to those, right? Blood is either bone. I mean, thought is either bone or flesh or blood. The best guess would be what blood, huh? Okay. And even you know Anaxagoras will speak of thought as being the or mind as being the thinnest of all things.

[36:27] Okay. So he says, nourished in the sea of blood, which goes in two directions. Here, especially, is what men call thought. For the blood around the heart in men is thought. Now it's the same thinking you find in the modern biologists often. They all maybe identify thought with the brain waves or something like that, right? Well, take the finest and the thinnest material thing they can think of.

[36:50] It might be electrons going up and down these things or something, right? That's just your thought. Same thinking really as him, but but the idea that whatever is the finest matter you can think of, that's what thought is. Yeah. But bone would be a very bad guess, huh? My biology professor when I was a sophomore in high school, he was a real tough guy, the biology guy.

[37:18] And he'd come in, he didn't know the answer, you know, he'd stand the desk, say, "Boneheads." I don't know how many times he called boneheads. Of course, we're all scared of Mr. Gado. And all kinds of stories, you know, of his his brutality, you know. The story of like he broke one of the windows there, and one of these windows had one of these latches like that, and it was locked.

[37:38] He didn't notice it, and he was trying to open up the window, and of course the latch flies off, and on the lock, you know. Another story about throwing a kid down the stairs. I don't know if there was something like that. But I'd be up you know till one, two a. m. in the morning studying for one of these exams. I studied more for his exam than for biology in college.

[37:56] And I was in a pre-med one, biology course. Biology didn't say as much as it did for this guy. And that's where. I met Warren Murray. We were both in that biology class, you know, and kind of competing there. But but Warren knew a lot of science, so you know, and he'd always call upon Warren. Nobody else knew the answer, and Warren gave him the answer. But one time, Warren didn't know the answer.

[38:18] Then he really blew up. But anyway, you know, I just mention that because you know that was his his name for us. We didn't know the answer. Boneheads. So that'd be the worst thing. I started complimenting because bonehead. So he took something much more subtle than bone, right? Something even the blood, huh? That's what that is. Must not have been a lot of bloodletting among these guys.

[38:45] Well, maybe so. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So that's the the great Empedocles, huh? Yeah. Greek philosopher, kind of used to say, but not the greatest, huh? Not the greatest, Anaxagoras. Now, Anaxagoras,

[39:17] we'll see first his position on matter, and then later on his position on the what mover, huh? Following that order. And sometimes Aristotle, you know, is hard on Anaxagoras as regards what he says about matter. And sometimes even says, you know, that in some ways Empedocles is better, right? What he says about matter. Other times, he'll say if you listen to what Anaxagoras is trying to say.

[39:48] But anyway, we'll see later on. We'll go back to Aristotle. A After a while, a long critique of Anaxagoras, but it's extremely interesting critique of Anaxagoras, and he would recount the whole argument of Anaxagoras, and then he'll give eight arguments against Anaxagoras's position on matter. But it's kind of interesting he singles out Anaxagoras to attack, you know. But in some way, Anaxagoras's position reveals the difficulties of those who can't quite understand ability, and Anaxagoras is trying to understand ability, but he can't quite express it.

[40:27] He'll be saying everything is inside of everything in infinitely small pieces. Let's not even talk about potency here, or ability, but he's trying to get down to the idea of ability. But it's interesting that Anaxagoras's way of speaking about matter came back in the 20th century, in the most advanced part of modern science about in

[40:48] the study of matter, the study of elementary particles, huh? And they begin studying elementary particles in the middle of the century. Here, the common way of speaking was Anaxagoras's way of speaking. Now it had the same difficulties if you take, you know, the words, right, that Anaxagoras is in when Aristotle gets to them. So it's kind of interesting, you know. See. Now, we can, as I say, someone reconstruct Annexagris' argument by Aristotle's account of it, huh?

[41:22] No. Is there any chance Aristotle knew him as an older man, or anything, or were they completely separate? No, I think he probably would have been dead by then, yeah. Because Anaxagoras, as I say, came to Athens in the reign of Pericles, huh? Pericles. He was a friend of Pericles. But the charge against him was impiety for saying that the sun is a hot stone, the sun is a stone on fire.

[41:48] Oh. Well, the sun, as you know, is the god Apollo, in case you didn't know. So that's obviously impious to say the sun is a stone on fire. Now they they think the reason why Anaxagoras said this was that, you know, what we call shooting stars or falling stars. Okay. These are really what we call today meteors, aren't they? Falling stars, but they're meteors, huh? A meteor is what more or less a rocky thing, but it hits the atmosphere and it bursts into flame.

[42:22] That's what you call these things that are falling to the earth, but they burn up before they hit the earth usually, and they don't come down to the earth except maybe in the form of dust or something, but not in the form of a rock. But occasionally you have a meteor that's so large that it's still a burning rock when it hits the earth, and that makes one hell of an impression upon people, you know, because in I suppose fiction now they, you know, talk about disaster.

[42:52] And there's one, for example, that hit somewhere in the southwest of the United States back in Indian times, and apparently they made such an impression upon the Indians that the father would pass on the description of it to the sun and it would go down a number of generations, and then the white men heard about it through the Indians, and they just thought when these Indian things it had no basis for it.

[43:15] But now I guess they go scientifically over that area, and they you know actually they use airplanes and so on. They photograph that they actually see the the impact on the terrain under this thing. Well, they know that in northern Greece, there where Anaxagoras came from, there was one of those things happened. So here's a huge rock, which is one of those falling stars, so-called, falling to the earth.

[43:42] So maybe the sun and the stars are really what burning rocks, and so this may have been behind the thinking that the sun is a is a source of fire, which would be impious because it's a god of power, right? You can't say those things. And. Aristotle himself was

[44:02] didn't think that that the sun was was fire because it would have burned out long ago. And I guess the pupil there of Heisenberg and Weizsäcker is supposed to give an explanation of why the sun can go on so long, right, without burning out. I mean, it's but eventually, I mean, it's incredible. If there was ordinary fire it wouldn't have burned out long ago. It's incredible how much energy.

[44:24] I mean, you think you know how much energy we get from the sun down the earth here. We're supposed to be what 93 million miles, something like that, from the sun. Of course, the sun is sitting out in every direction, right? So we're getting just a tiny, tiny fraction. Amazing. I mean, how can they do that for a century after century? And apparently, it never seems to be diminished, although maybe it is.

[44:45] But it's you know, so that to me a hard thing. It's not surprising Aristotle thought the sun was something quite different from what's down here. That doesn't make any sense to think. That the sun is is is uh still on fire. Would bring out much. Even the great fire of London, right, went on and on, but I think New York is still, you know, smoking, I guess. But it's going to go on forever, right?

[45:06] It's going to go on for hundreds of years, smoking and burning and so on. So Aristotle was quite correct in saying that's not ordinary fire. The sun or the stars must be something quite different. But anyway, it took quite a second to explain that. idea So apparently, Anaxagoras' thinking about matter begins with a kind of an inductive observation that you can start almost anywhere in the natural world and eventually get everything else.

[45:45] Okay, and let me give a kind of an oversimplified version of that. Let's start off with grass out there. Okay, now the grass is let's say eaten by the cow, and you get a bigger cow, right? So you're getting more cow, not out of nothing. That's impossible. it's not out of nothing, right? You're getting more cow out of grass, right? Okay. Now Berquist wants a steak or something, so

[46:15] you get more man now out of the cow, but eventually out of the, what grass? Then get more man. Okay. Now we find out the Berquist is a Christian, so what you do with a Christian is you give to lions, huh? So now you're getting not only more cow and men, but more what lions out of that grass? And the lion is punished for his iniquity. They're eating a Christian, and he's food for what worms, huh?

[46:43] So you're getting more worm out of grass, huh? And maybe the bird gets the worm, so you're getting more bird out of grass. And then the cat gets the bird, so you're getting more cat out of grass. And the cat dies, and the cat's pushing up daisies. So you're getting more daisies, huh? This seems to go on forever, right? Okay. So by a sort of induction,

[47:16] he arrived at the conclusion that everything eventually comes to be from everything. Okay. And to that he added the thought that we saw already in Empedocles, but it's probably a thought that's common to all these really Greeks. You can't get something out of nothing. You can't get blood out of a turnip. They say that's an old saying. You heard that? Why not? There's no blood in a turnip, right?

[47:45] And so in DK 10, he sees some of that thought here. The first fragment: How could hair come from what is not hair, and flesh from what is not flesh? How could you get blood out of a turnip? There's no blood in a turnip. So how could you have gotten more of all these things out of that grass, unless there was a bit of cow and man and lion and worm and bird and cat, and daisies already in the what grass?

[48:11] Okay. Now before you laugh too much at that, what happened in the study of elementary particles in the twentieth century? They noticed in their experiments that out of any elementary particle, you seem to be able to get eventually all the rest. And therefore, the well-known formula among the students of elementary particles was that every elementary particle is composed of all the rest. Because like the Greeks, they would automatically think you can't get something out of nothing, right?

[48:43] So just as you could get hydrogen oxygen out of water, water must be composed of hydrogen oxygen, right? So if you can eventually get all the other elementary particles out of any one of them, any one of them must be composed of all the rest. And that's a conclusion that Anaxagoras reaches, right? That if everything comes to be from everything eventually, and you can't get something out of nothing, then everything must be inside of everything, huh?

[49:12] So it's kind of amazing that coming back, every elementary particle consists of all the other elementary particles. That's the well-known formula. It's very easy to study them.

[49:27] Now, to that, Anaxagoras added another observation, which was we think common, and we talked about it with Anaximander a bit. Things keep on coming to be forever in this world. Every year there's a new spring, and that means new things spring up, right?

[49:49] So if you keep on getting forever things out of that original grass, how many Things must there be in the original grass? An infinity, okay. Now the point is, you say, well, here's the blade of grass; it's finite, huh? How can you have an infinity of pieces of everything else inside that grass? How can you fit them all in there? Well, you have to make them infinitely what?

[50:17] Small. A little bit like the modern mathematician sometimes says that a straight line is composed of infinity of points, right? Okay, but because the points were infinitely small, right? You can think you can fit in an infinity of them, right? So because things keep on coming to be forever, there must be an infinity of pieces of everything inside of everything, and to fit them in there, you have to make them infinitely small.

[50:44] So there's an infinity of infinitely small pieces of everything inside of everything, okay? And this is what he's talking about here in the famous DK one. All things were together, unlimited in number and in smallness, huh? I use the English word unlimited, but infinite you could use too. The Latin word, huh? They're unlimited or infinite in number, meaning in multitude, and in what? Smallness, huh? They're infinitely small, right?

[51:17] Okay. And all things being together, nothing was clear because of smallness, huh? There he's trying to get the idea maybe of everything being in there in ability by making them infinitely small, huh? But still, when you're making them infinitely small, he's still making them be actually in there, and he doesn't really have the idea of ability. And notice how a little throw back there to Anaximenes and maybe Anaximander too when he talks about the air and the ether, right, huh?

[51:48] And their unlimited character, huh? We've been influenced by that. But his thought is kind of that there's an infinity of infinitely small pieces of everything inside of everything. Now we'll see how Aristotle criticizes this and there's a very interesting critique of this, but that's his position, right? And in a way, you would have the same thing in the modern scientist if he says every elementary particle consists of all the rest.

[52:13] Well, then inside each how many particles all the rest of them, and inside each one of those would be all the rest, and so on, and be getting smaller and smaller and smaller, right? Okay. Now the next fragment is kind of an expansion on this idea. These things being so, it's necessary to think that there are many things of all kinds and all compounds, and the seeds of all things.

[52:37] He calls them infinitely small things, like the seeds of all things, huh? Okay. Okay. Now again, in DK four, he continues to talk about the seeds and how nothing is distinct one thing from another because they're so small.

[53:09] Now in DK three, a very interesting statement here: nor is there a smallest of the small, but there is always a smaller. Now this is certainly true of the what mathematical line. And now the expression here: for what is cannot cease to be by being what cut. Okay. Now let's stop on that a bit, huh? Because when we define the continuous, to go back to logic for a moment, when you get to quantity, we distinguish two species mainly of quantity, and one we call discrete, and the main kind of such quantity is called number, and the other we call continuous,

[54:05] and the main kinds of that like the line, the surface, the body, and so on. Sometimes we add time and place to that too. Now when Aristotle distinguishes these two kinds of quantity in the categories, he does so in terms of their parts, and the difference he assigns is that in a discrete quantity, the parts don't meet anywhere, but in a continuous quantity they meet. So the two parts of a what line meet at a point, and the two parts, let's say, of a circle meet at a line, and the two parts of this piece of chalk would meet at a surface in the middle. But in the number seventh, do the three and the four meet at a point or a line or something?

[55:00] Do they have any boundary? No. So that's one way of distinguishing discrete and continuous quantity. That's the way the logician does that. But now in natural philosophy, when he talks about the continuous, Aristotle in Book Six of Natural hearing you have the whole philosophy of the continuous there. Then he gives a second definition. He calls this one, but he gives a second definition of continuous. The continuous is that which is divisible forever.

[55:34] That which is divisible forever. Now, number is not really divisible forever. When you get down to one, you can't divide the mathematical one, the abstract one. It's simpler than a point. That's why the modern mathematician confuses you there, right? he divides the one in arithmetic, because he's thinking again of the continuous, huh? Okay. Now, why do we say that the mathematical line is divisible forever? We say you can cut it in half, and you can cut the half in half, and cut the half of that in half.

[56:24] How do we know that this is divisible forever? How do you know that? Well, when Heraclitus, when Anaxagoras says that what is cannot cease to be by being cut,

[56:42] if you cut a straight line into two shorter lines, you still have something you can cut again, right? Okay. If you cut it up into nothing, that's impossible, right? Okay. Now the only other alternative besides cutting it up into nothing and cutting into shorter lines would be to cut it into what points, right? Now, if there was a line, let's say two points long, and you cut that in half, right?

[57:11] Then you couldn't cut it any further because a point is indivisible. Okay. But is a line composed of points? Can you put together a line from points? Huh? Well, we sometimes show that you can't by an either or what syllogism, huh? Okay. So let's give the either or syllogism here.

[57:42] But notice this is contrary to what the modern mathematicians sometimes say, especially in grade school, high school, that the straight line is composed, right, which means put together, composed of an infinity of points, huh? We're going to show that you can't put together a line from points, huh? Okay. Now, we're going to use an either-or syllogism. If you're going to put together a line from points, the points are going to have to come up in touch, right?

[58:11] Okay. To make one continuous line. Now, there's really three or four ways, or actually four ways, two things can touch. You can have a part

[58:29] touching part. like I have these two circles, right? Part of one touches part of the other, right? Or you can have part touching the whole, like say these two circles, huh? Part of one touches the whole of the other, right? And vice versa, the whole of one touches the part of the other, right?

[58:58] The third way would be for whole to touch whole, and I can't draw this very well. I just go around twice. The whole touches the whole, and then the two of them would coincide, right? Yeah. Now, is there a fourth way the two things could touch besides part touching part, part touching whole and vice versa, and whole touching whole? We might seem at first exhausted because what you got besides the whole parts, right?

[59:36] But couldn't two circles say touch at their edge? Okay, like touch at a point, you know. Okay. So edge touches edge. The edge is not really a part. Edge touches edge. So you've got four ways that two things can touch, right?

[1:00:03] Now, if the points touched, could they touch in this first way, that part touches part? No, because a point has no parts. In fact, that's the way Euclid defines it, if you recall, right? Okay.

[1:00:19] The point is the end of a line, right? Does the end of a line have any length? No, They have any length? they haven't come within the line yet. Okay. So two points cannot touch as part of one touching part of the other because they don't have any parts. For the same reason, part cannot touch what? One touch the whole, of, the other. So these two ways are eliminated, huh?

[1:00:47] Now, can you make any distinction between a point and its edge? Then you're making the point a little circle, right? You had something inside this, you know, not the same as the edge, right? So this way is impossible, right? The only way two points can touch is like when the whole touches whole. That is to say, the only way they can touch is to coincide, right? Okay.

[1:01:17] Now, two points coincide. You have no more length than with what? One point, which is no length at all. And if ten or a hundred or a million or infinity of points were to touch, the only way they could touch would be to coincide. And if they coincide, they have no more length than one point, which is not at all. So there's no way to compose a line, right, from points.

[1:01:51] The points would have to touch, and if they touch, they coincide. They coincide. They have no more length than a point. It's no length at all. So when you divide a straight line, you never get two points. And you never get nothing. You can't make something out of nothing, right? So when you divide a straight line, what do you get? Two shorter lines. And as long as you got a line and length, you can always divide that in half, right?

[1:02:16] And what do you get? Same thing, two even shorter lines. There's no smallest of the small, no shortest of the short, huh? Do you see that? Okay. And that's true about the line. Then the same is true about a square, right? Because the line is going to be shorter and shorter, and the square smaller and smaller. Okay, the same about the circle. Because the circle, by rotating a straight line around itself, one of its endpoints.

[1:02:42] huh? Okay. So this is one way we see the infinite visibility, the continuous. huh? But in the sixth book of Natural Philosophy, there, of Natural, Hearing, Aristotle would give me the other ones, huh? Because he's showing you know how he shows, for example, in one argument, how distance, like a line, and time are both continuous. They're both divisible forever. You know the way he shows that? We take something we all know that one body moves faster than another body, right?

[1:03:15] Okay. So the faster body moves the same distance as the slower body in less time. In that less time, the slower body would lose move a what lesser distance. In that lesser distance, would take the faster body in less time. So just by alternating the two, you can see together that time and distance are what divisible forever, right? Because the faster body always covers the same distance in less time.

[1:03:47] In that less time, the slower body always covers less distance. In that lesser distance, the faster body would cover even lesser time. So the two are divisible forever, right? You know. So Anaxagoras the Great, is seeing something of this. Nor is there a smallest of the small, right? But there is always a smaller. For what is cannot cease to be by being what cut, huh? We have to point out, you know, that you can't cut into points too to be complete there.

[1:04:21] But there's also something greater than the great. Now, why? What's the connection between that? The fact that there's no smallest of the small, and there's no greatest of the great.

[1:04:36] How can you reason from there being no smallest of the small that there's no greatest of the great? Well, as you divide the line, and keep on dividing the line, what is getting greater? The number. The number of lines is getting greater, right? So if the if the continuous is divisible forever, then the numbers can get greater forever. Yeah. See. That's one way. That's one way of understanding the

[1:05:32] infinity there of numbers, huh? You can say that number arises from the division of the continuous. Now, strictly speaking, the first meaning of number one is not a number, is it? Because number is a multitude, huh? Composed of units, huh? So if you have a continuous straight line there, you've got one line there. You don't have a number yet. But you divide that, and now you have what?

[1:06:13] The first number two. Now you divide again, and you got the next number three, right? If you can keep on dividing forever, then the numbers will keep on going up forever. So if there's no smallest of the small, you never get to an indivisible line. Then you never get to a greatest what? Number.