Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
16. Anaxagoras: Everything in Everything, All Things Forever Equal, and Q&A on Good and Evil
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[0:00] That's why number, when you speak of the Trinity, means something quite different, huh? Because there's nothing continuous there in God, huh? God's not a body.

[0:10] Okay. Now, a little, confusion there at the end of the fragment, huh? Each thing to itself is both great and small. Does he understand the category of pros ti towards something? Is great and small to itself or to another? To another. Yeah, it's not something absolute in itself, is it? In the categories, Aristotle gives example. You know, if if I had a hundred people in my house, something like this, right?

[0:46] You'd say, oh, big big dinner there, big dinner party in your house, breakfast, a hundred people. Well, if you had hundred people there watching the World Series, you say, "Oh my gosh, you know, this terrorist is really getting into the the business, right? That'd be a small crowd in the World Series—hundred people, right? Yeah. But no, it would be the same number, absolutely speaking. Huh? Hundred people in my house.

[1:08] If I had hundred people in class, that was a big class. Oh my gosh, hundred people, and they correct all these papers. You see? But if I'm running Yankee Stadium or something, you know, a hundred people. Oh my gosh, yeah, we're gonna pay the pay the hot dog stands for this kind of a crowd. Huh? I'm gonna pay pay Clemens and the rest of these pitchers. I was gonna pay for him.

[1:30] Yeah. You see what I mean? So great and small is toward something, huh? So you know, seven foot man is tall compared to us, let's say, but compared to a what? Redwood tree, he's small.

[1:52] So when I was first, you know, studying astronomy, and you'd read about Betelgeuse, and of course, this is after you've learned the dimensions a bit of the solar system, and then you you realize how huge the solar system is. Like you know, we're 93 million miles from Sun, all this thing. And I said, the whole solar system would fit into Betelgeuse, huh? Wow, you know. Now I realize it's all relative.

[2:13] I'm not impressed with that too much anymore, right? You know, because just think of the number of molecules inside of you know me, or the number of molecules inside of my glass of water. See, you know, you know, no big deal, you know.

[2:30] It's all relative, right? I'm first first very much impressed because I think of it as an absolute thing, right? Oh my gosh, we can fit the whole thing in there. Or there was some star, I guess, where you bring bring back a thimbleful of the star, you know, and weigh a ton on the Earth. Oh. Oh my gosh, you know. It's like my children—they're little, you know.

[2:52] Daddy, can you count to 100? Yes. Wow, you know, really impressed, you know. Then they get a little bit older, you know. Daddy, can you count to a thousand? Yeah. Wow. See, now they're not impressed at all. It's like I can count to it wouldn't be a big deal. I can count to a million, then I'm not gonna be impressed. It's relative, huh? You know. Yeah. You

[3:18] know, when the scientists call man the Homo sapiens, the sapiens means wise. And I say, well, is that contradicting what Socrates or what Pythagoras said? You know, don't call me wise. God alone is wise. Then you have the proportion, though, you see, of Heraclitus that as the ape is to man, so man is to God, right? So man compared to God is not wise, but man compared to the ape is wise.

[3:47] That's what Homo sapiens really means—the wise ape. Or he says, as a child is to a man, so is man to God. So to a little child, Daddy seems to know everything. In comparison to God, Daddy seems to know nothing. You see, kind of relative, huh?

[4:10] So we're wise in comparison to ape, but not in comparison to God. Now that's a very interesting fragment, but later on we'll come back to that, because

[4:30] there is a difference between quantity and pure mathematics and quantity of natural things. And Aristotle will point that out when he starts to argue against Anaxagoras. Aristotle was the first man to to talk about this, to discover, in a sense, that there are limits in the quantities of natural things due to the natures of things. But in pure math, we're just considering quantity in the abstract and separation from natural bodies.

[5:04] Nothing prevents you from dividing these things forever. But we'll come back to that when we see that in the second, third, and fourth arguments against Anaxagoras. But they involve what I call sometimes the second difference between quantity and natural philosophy and quantity and math. But Aristotle was open to discovering the second difference because he saw the first difference. He realized that in mathematics you're considering quantity in separation from matter and motion, in separation from all natural bodies.

[5:41] And that left him open to discovering that there could be something in the quantity of natural things due to the natures of these things that could not be foreseen from the point of view of pure math. But we'll see that when we get to his critique of Anaxagoras. But it's still very interesting, huh? And it reveals an understanding of the continuous, huh? And maybe even of the connection between the continuous and and number.

[6:11] Now in the next fragment DK six and DK eight, Anaxagoras is talking about how nothing is really entirely separated from anything else, and especially in DK eight, the things in the one world are not separated from each other and are cut off with an axe, neither warm from the cold nor the cold from the warm. Well, again, if you don't understand ability, this is even more radically true.

[6:43] See, we could say, you know, that a piece of clay, let's say that is a sphere, is able to be a what, cube, right? So in that sense, sphere and cube are not cut off. But if you make it actual, yeah, a sphere is never a cube. If you,

[7:07] if the lion ate me, right? If the lion had the board there, if the lion ate me, my matter would become what, a lion? The worms eat me, like Hamlet says there. Polonius said dinner? Where? Where? Not where he's eating, but where he's being eaten, right? That kind of horrible sense of humor of Hamlet there after he's killed Polonius, huh? So there's something in me that's able to be what, a lion, able to be a dog, able to be a worm, huh?

[7:43] Able to be dust, huh? But it's not actually all these things, is it? See, actually I'm cut off, but not completely from lion and from worm, huh? Because there's something in me that in a way is my enemy, in that it's able to be something other than me, a lion, a worm, a dog, you see? But not seeing the idea of potency, he has everything inside of everything actually. And therefore, very much so, one thing is not cut off from another.

[8:20] Aristotle will also raise some problems here about the multitude of things that he has there. If there's an infinity of them they cannot be known in word or in deed. Now, starting at DK9, there in fifteen and sixteen, Anaxagoras is talking about at least the partial separation of these things due to a circular motion.

[8:56] Okay. And eventually, he's going to say the circular motion was caused by the greater mind. Okay. Now, two things about that. One is that when you look around the world, it seems like the whole sky is revolving around us, right? Okay, appears to be doing that, right? So you still see that there's still what the remnants of a circular motion, huh? Okay. And the heavy things like the earth seem to have settled down in the center of things, and then on top of them the water, and then the air, and then these fiery things up in the top there, right?

[9:34] Okay. Now, does man himself use circular motion to separate things? I always take the simple example: I want to break your window, let's say, huh? With my rock, huh? I might tie my rock, the string around my rock, and then I'd what? Spin around and then let go, right? And get more force, huh? You see. And my friend Jim Franzak, there, the great boxer, he was a golden gloves boxer, you know, one night he puts the gloves on me, right, you know, ties my hands, puts the gloves on me, he's gonna give you a little lesson, right?

[10:14] I'll take it easy Jim, because these guys. but no, it's, you know, the first thing Jim says, you know, you don't sit like this and walk like this, right? You stand like this, right? You know. But that's what you're doing there. You're using the circular motion to what? Get force, huh? Okay. And

[10:36] you know, when they use what they call a cyclotron, right? You know, they what? Accelerate the particles and then they shoot them at something and they split the things open, right? Okay. So we tend to use the circular motion, don't we, to divide things and separate them, right? And there seems to be some evidence that in the natural world, things have been separated, and that's why the heavy things like the earth are at the center and the light things go flying off.

[11:05] And I remember being as a little boy there, an altar boy, an altar boy picnic, huh? And they go out to the amusement park on the altar boy picnic. I'm with my brother Mark, huh? And I got my little baseball hat on, see, and one of these little machines, you know, around a circle. Well, off goes my little baseball hat, and I could see it flying off and being ground up in the machines and so on.

[11:30] But I stayed on. See, I didn't go flying off, ground up. See, so the the heavy stayed at the center, and the light things went flying off. Huh? You see, well, that's happened in the universe, apparently, right? Because you got the heavy Earth there, settled down in the middle, right? And then you got the the water, which is maybe a little lighter, and then the air, and then the fire, which is very light.

[11:50] You know, around the periphery there, the sun, when the stars, that's fire, right? What else could it be? And then you have air and so on. So the circular motion separates to some extent the heavy things from the light things. The biology has something like that, don't they? They use two and they separate the. Yeah, yeah. See, so it's a common thing to use the circular motion to separate things.

[12:15] And so, greater mind is like the lesser mind. Yeah. But but notice that this is still really change of place, isn't it? See, and now on the top of page eight, you'll see Anaxagoras saying something similar to what Empedocles said.

[12:38] You know how using, saying you know men shouldn't speak of coming to be and dying and so on, right? Well, he says something similar. The Greeks do not rightly take coming into being and perishing. Nothing comes to be or perishes, right? If something really came to be, you'd be getting something out of what? Nothing, huh? And if something really perished, you'd be cutting something up into nothing, huh?

[13:03] See, I might be able to cut you up until we couldn't find the pieces of you, but could I really cut you up into nothing? It might seem so that I can't find the pieces, but you know, you've got no. Far reaching mind is you fool, as Empedocles says, huh? But it's mixed and separated from existing things. Do you see that? Same thought, huh? But we think this thought runs through all these guys, these early guys.

[13:29] But you find explicitly here in the fragments we have of Empedocles and Anxagoras. and thus they'll be right to call coming to be mixing and perishing separating. So I go down to the hospital and the wife has a new baby, right? Oh, a new mixture, huh? And when I go to the funeral house and you know, oh, I see a separating, huh? You know, you know, separation of elements, right?

[13:57] But nothing's really come into being or perished, right? Something in the back of our mind says something wrong with that, right? But they can't really quite understand how it's possible, right? Without getting something out of nothing, right? But notice, huh? If we didn't have enough chairs in this room, we might go to another room where we got some other chairs and bring them in here, right? Okay.

[14:21] And we're not getting something out of nothing in that case, are we? Because there really are chairs in the other rooms, huh? But maybe we got chairs out of the trees originally. At least the wooden chairs, right? Now were there already chairs out in the trees out there? Potentially. Yeah, potentially, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you got chairs out of the trees, are we getting something out of nothing?

[14:45] No, no. It's not the same thing to get chairs out of trees and get chairs out of the next room. Chairs out next room, they're actually in there. Chairs are not actually in the trees out there. But there's something in the tree that's able to be a chair, right? It's a very strange thing, isn't it? Tough to think about that. If you can't quite understand ability, then it's like how can you get blood out of a turnip, right?

[15:09] There's got to actually be blood in there. How can you get chairs out of a tree if there aren't chairs in there? It's a little hard to understand ability.

[15:23] Now the next marvelous fragment there. These things having been thus separated, it is necessary to know that all things are neither more nor less. And notice the reason why there are never more is that something would have come into existence out of nothing if there ever were more. Nor can there ever be less because then something would have gone what? Out of existence, right?

[15:50] For it's not possible for more than all to be, okay. And if they're neither more nor less, then you could conclude that all things are forever what? Equal. Okay. Now sometimes I tell the students now the whole modern mathematical science of nature is based on this one statement here. That all things are forever equal. Why do I say that? Well, the characteristic way of speaking of the natural world, expressing the natural world, is in something we call the equation, right?

[16:28] Okay. And the equation comes from the word what? Equal. Yeah. So that all things are forever equal is underlying all knowledge expressed in what? Equations. Now notice even in simple algebra, it's based upon this idea that nothing is comes into existence and nothing what goes out of existence. So I'll take a simple example here from algebra.

[17:05] Okay. Now. Okay. What's my algebra teacher going to do with that? Is he gonna Mark that correct or incorrect? Incorrect, right? Okay. Now, if I'm really stupid, he's going to say, "Berkus When you say 2x plus y, right? It means you have two of this x plus y's. Okay. So you got an x plus y, you got an x plus y. So you have two x's and two y's, don't you?

[17:47] Now over here you've got what? Two x's plus y. You've lost a y. A y is gone out of what? Existence. Existence. That is not allowed. Nothing goes out of existence in algebra. Okay. And you won't allow me to say well we're out of existence when you went to the other side. That's not allowed. Algebra is based on the idea that all things are forever what? Equal. You can mix them and separate them in various ways, huh?

[18:18] Now suppose you've given Berquist the reverse. Suppose you give Berquist 2x plus y, okay? And Berquist is put over here in 2 in parentheses x plus y. Now, would he have marked me correct or incorrect? Incorrect, yeah. And he would say, well, now he point out that I have what? Got two x plus y, so I've got x plus y and x plus y. I've got two Ys over here.

[18:45] And I start out with only Y. Well, I got out of nowhere. It came out of nothing, right? You know, just just just. You're not allowed to do that. You see? Nothing. You can't get anything out of nothing in algebra, right? Okay. So all you can do is what? Mix these things and combine them in other combinations, separate them. Here I have what? Put x plus y together, and then I separate them, the x's and the y's, right?

[19:18] If I wanted to, I could, you know, x plus x plus two y, and do all kinds of things, right? But nothing can ever come into existence, really. Nothing really dies or comes into existence, right? All you do is mix and separate things that always were and always will be, and forever equal. But you see that that's underlying here in the equation, isn't it? An equation, huh?

[19:43] Is saying that all things are what? Forever equal. Makes it kind of an interesting world in some way. But you could say it's all based on this one statement here that all things are forever equal. And certainly fits in with thinking that change of place is the only change in the world, huh? Because in change of place, you know, if you and I start changing our seats here and so on, it's not going to change the number of people in the room.

[20:10] It's going to remain the same. huh? It's going to be neither more nor less. if we just change places, right? We've got to kill somebody or convert to somebody or something to get get more people here, right? But you just change place. You're not going to have anything more or anything less, huh?

[20:30] It's interesting too that that he goes from neither more nor less to being equal. Because Aristotle speaks that way in the tenth book of wisdom that equal is after more or less in meaning.

[20:48] Two lines are equal when one is neither longer nor shorter than the other. What's kind of interesting to go back to the argument in the the Phaedo, right? Because Socrates in the Phaedo, he argues in the new kind of recollection he has there that the idea of equality was not gotten from the sensible world. And the argument is that. If you recall, the the things in the material world, like these two chairs here, they approach equality, but they're not exactly equal.

[21:22] And if you recognize that these material things approach equality but not exactly equal, you must have a knowledge of equality not derived from them. And that when you see them approaching this, it reminds you of that your knowledge you already have of equality. But when you recall what equality really is, you judge these things to be somewhat unequal, right? To somewhat fall short of it. And it's kind of a beautiful comparison there, you know.

[21:52] If you showed somebody a painting, and let's say it's a painting of you or me, and we're looking at the painting, oh, that's a painting of Socrates or a painting of Berquist or somebody, but it's not exactly the way he looks, you know. You must have a knowledge of Berquist not derived from the painting. Like when Lafayette came back to the United States, you know, after Washington had died, and he found all these statues and paintings of Washington.

[22:18] They were very good friends, Lafayette and you know one of the closest friendships there were. And that's why when Lafayette went back to France and got into all trouble with the French Revolution, right? You know, Washington had agents there with money trying to extricate him, you know, from his situation But when Lafayette came back to the United States after Washington had died, we came back finally after he got out of his troubles.

[22:41] He came back and he'd see these different statues and paintings and he'd say, ah, you know, well that's not exactly what he was. Ah, that's that's that's the man, you know. See, but you'd have to have a knowledge of Washington not derived from the statues or the paintings to say that they what are like him, but they don't quite equal him, huh? So Socrates is arguing that the things in this world that we call equal aren't really strictly speaking equal.

[23:10] And and the same thing you'd say about the flat surface and so on. But certainly the things we see in the material world are what larger or smaller than each other. And if you get your idea of equal from larger and smaller, then the argument would collapse, huh? But it's kind of an interesting

[23:29] thing to see the way he proceeds here. Because in English, when when you say equal and unequal, unequal corresponds to be the negation of equal. So you think of equal as being before unequal. But maybe we get the idea of equality by the negation of more and less. In which case, then the argument would collapse and the fate of that particular argument. Okay, so I have to tell students the whole modern science is based on this one statement.

[24:03] Well, it's kind of exaggeration in a way, but I mean, in a way, it's true, right? See, I mean, the idea that you can express the world in equations, right,

[24:12] means that what basically things are always what equal. You never gain or lose anything, huh? And you see that especially in the fundamental laws and the conservation laws.

[24:30] So the example I was giving you last time was the conservation of energy. If you recall, right, the amount of energy in the universe is always what equal. There's never more energy in the world. You may think you have more energy, maybe you do, but someone else has less energy, right? That's the old joke, you know, about how do the kids have so much energy? To get it from us, from the parents.

[24:56] So I mean, what the children gain, the parents have lost. So, but no, conservation laws—they're saying that the amount of energy is always equal one day to the next, right? Maybe in a different form, right? Maybe kinetic energy, it may be potential energy, it might be heat energy, it might be some other kind of weird kind of energy, but it always remains equal. We have to understand it in the way that we understand algebra here.

[25:26] It always remains equal. Just mix and segregate these things in different ways, huh? But that seems to fit, especially this with this idea that the universe has only change of what.

[25:44] Yeah, yeah. But then again, they say what the problem there about knowing, right? Is is knowing increasing? Is there more knowledge in the world now because of my teaching? Is it? Are we just you know taking some knowledge out of me and putting it into you, and I've gotten dumber, you know?

[26:08] Or is the amount of knowledge? I mean, people really discovering things, you know. You know, is the amount of knowledge really increasing? Or if I go through Euclid there, you know, and I learn another theorem, right? I have some knowledge I didn't have before now, right? Are all things forever equal? What do you think?

[26:42] Materialist. Well if you're a materialist, right you might say, "all you're doing is rearranging atoms and molecules in your head. That's what you're you're doing, right? Shifting them around, right? Yeah. But whatever energy you gain here, some other thing loses, or vice versa.

[27:10] But that is an interesting statement. All things are forever equal, isn't it? When you think about it in terms of modern science, especially. But to see the connection between that and change of place as the only kind of change in the world lends itself more to that.

[27:36] Now, in the next three fragments, you see the beginning of his starting to talk about the mind here as being responsible for the circular motion, and

[27:49] he's going to see the mind as being separate from this collection of all things inside of everything, right? Okay. Maybe we should stop here, huh? And leave for next time, a discussion here of the great fragment on the mind here, which is DK twelve. This whole long fragment here, and this great fragment is really like a a book adventure about the mind. Okay. And now, to some extent, what he says about the mind, he's getting from an understanding of the human mind, which he knows, huh?

[28:35] But some things will be said of the greater mind, but our mind may be in a lesser way. Okay. So you have to kind of, you know, understand what he says about the mind to understand your own mind. Okay. And see if you, when you read through this fragment, see if you can see. The apparent contradiction, huh? Which is the key to something very important, huh? Not a real contradiction, but an apparent contradiction.

[29:05] In what in- in what he said? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think in all of my teaching of this fragment, there's one student in all the years that saw the apparent contradiction. But a lot of people miss it, you know. And I tell them, you know, you know, it's among these things when they look at, they can't see the apparent contradiction, you know. But you know, most students, you know, once in a while, students will will see it, huh?

[29:29] Must be kind of a marvelous thing here what he says about the mind. As I mentioned before, that's what caught the attention of Socrates, huh? You know, he got very enthusiastic when he first heard about this, huh? He thought that Anaxagoras could have developed the consequences of it better, but but Aristotle and Plato admired this very much too.

[29:54] Okay, it's about 5 minutes to five, so I want to, you know, if we can do that as a whole there, huh? Now, when you, when you get through with Anaxagoras, um, we may look at the last part of this secondary reading here, the part on the mover that we didn't look at, the moderns on the mover. So make a little brief comparison between what Heraclitus has said about the mover and what Empedocles has said about the mover and what Anaxagoras said about.

[30:30] the mover. Just make a little brief comparison there, so you may look over that part of the moderns on the mover. Okay. 3 p. m. Do you see that the Pope's address? You get Pope speaks a lot. You know, you're always getting the, you know, six months later, you know, when he made the talk, you know, but in his talk at the Consistory, there he's talking a little bit about the the danger of modern science, you know, and the way it it disposes the mind, you know, in a way it's not too favorable to the faith, huh?

[31:07] Kind of interesting remarks he has there. I have to bring the text in, you know. Kind of interesting things he says. Another text in there where he's talking about the difference between man and the other animals, But he's always emphasizing love. but here, you see reason first, Then go to love, right? You know, proper order. huh Okay.

[31:34] So size is relative, I just want to make sure this is correct. Well, I'm not saying size so much, but when you say large and small, say, you know, you know, we'd say that, you know, if I have a large pea here, right? You know. You know, it's a large pea, right? But it's very small compared to what a mountain, right? You know, or a large apple, right?

[32:00] You know, so is that is that something absolute? Huh? The size. Well, a large apple would be a small what? Man. A very small man, right? In relation, in relation to. Yeah, yeah. The large and small are relative. They're towards something. Okay. And the way Aristotle brings it out is that the same thing would be called large and small in comparison to different things. Huh? So if I had 100 people at my house at dinner, you know, what'd you invite all these people for, You know, How are you gonna feed all these people.

[32:36] You know, this would be a large a large dinner party. I would call a hundred people in my house. But if you had a hundred people for the World Series, that's all that showed up for the World Series. My gosh! I mean, I guess Americans have lost interest, or they're afraid of the terrorists. Like that'd be a very small crowd, right? See, it'd be in itself the same number within a hundred people.

[32:58] Does it follow then that if the whole universe were shrunk to the size of a teacup, all in proportion? Yeah. That we would never notice. Well, that's what they say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the truth. That seems to be correct. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Can I get pictures while you guys are talking? I try. Can I get pictures while you guys are talking? Because I need to fill up the newsletter here.

[33:25] Okay. Just keep talking. I'll put the mail. out. I'll let you What? No, yeah, keep talking. Okay. Okay. I mean, I just want to get that clear that that was the truth. Yeah. But but it didn't have to be true, though, to make these things smaller and smaller. huh? Can I get this glass out of the way, then. Hey. Right. I can take it out of Photoshop.

[33:51] So. Okay. So Aristotle was mainly pointing out that. Great and small are in the category of what? Towards something. Yeah. They're not in the category of quantity. Quantity is something absolute, huh? In itself. Yeah. Whether you know it or not, it's something absolute in itself.

[34:14] But large and small is nothing in itself. How much is that? That's in comparison to to what? Something else, huh? Mm-hmm. So. That's neat to think about that. Yeah. Now this Descartes, in that I think therefore I am. Yeah. I was always trying to figure out, you know, where he went. It seems to be it's not quite right. Is that because of what what the thing we're talking about?

[34:49] with, Plato and Aristotle differed on how they thought. What we is he is that in a way of saying that? There's nothing wrong with saying that. In a way,

[35:02] you have to be before you can think, huh? Yeah. So once you understand that, then you realize that if you think, you must be, huh? Because it's a question of looking before and after, and seeing it before and after that's in the thing. But did he also take that to mean that what I think is true in reality? Did he bring? it Well, that, that would be another thing, but that's not involved in that statement itself.

[35:26] Okay. Good. Okay. That's not involved. Yeah. Okay. Is that statement then? Is there anything wrong with that? No, no, no. Some people sometimes say, you know, it's not really reasoning in the full sense because kind of the mind goes so quickly from one to the other. It sees that one involves the other. Okay. That always seemed true, but for some reason I had the impression, maybe because of some Descartes.

[35:52] Yeah. Why not? You should be suspicious, huh? To moderns. Okay. Now they're they're guilty of having some insight, you know. We start reading reading the moderns, you know, reading them with some, you know, some insight into their errors, you know. You kind of get the the the habit of you know I know I wonder what this guy's errors are going to be if you pick up a modern philosopher because they all have their own their own mistakes, huh?

[36:18] I think what's interesting is that the the Greeks they kind of build on each other. And I was using a phrase there that Cajetan uses about Thomas in the Summa Theologiae, which I think is the 13th quotes in the encyclical. That Thomas seems to have inherited the mind of all the Church Fathers because he so reverenced them. Mm-hmm. And he learned so much from them. So when you read Thomas, you're not reading as were.

[36:52] A thinker was starting from scratch, in a way you're reading what's good in Gregory and what's good in Augustine, what's good in Chrysostom, and so on, right? Which Thomas has brought together and unified and ordered in a way that may be new, but he's drawing things from all these people out of them. In the same way, Aristotle, you could say, I think, that Aristotle read so carefully Plato and those who went before him.

[37:24] He seems to have inherited the mind of all of them. And you see it even already to some extent in Empedocles huh that he's, you know, taking thoughts about matter from these different thinkers before him and combining that with the idea of numerical ratio, and he's seeing something more, right? And he's adding the mover and so on. And Aristotle's interesting way of speaking there, I think, it's in the Politics there, where he says we should try to say some things better than our predecessors said them.

[37:58] huh? There are. Other things we should try to say as well as they said. Since there's some things that they did say very well, and one should try to

[38:11] be as good as they were, but not better, but than they in that respect, you see. And then once you try to add some things, one you know sees maybe correct some things, you may think it's mistaken, right? That's the way to go forward, see. You know, to absorb whatever you can that's good in your predecessors, and then try to you know correct to have a reason for correcting anything you might think is deficient, right?

[38:42] And to add what you can add to it, that's the way the mind goes forward. But you don't see that really in the modern philosophers. You know, I I find You know, if you compare them with the Greeks, that they'll often say the opposite of what the Greeks say, but without noting that the Greeks had said something opposite, and without recalling why they said it, and without giving reasons to say that what they said was wrong or point out a defect, right?

[39:16] Aristotle will will take he'll sometimes you know disagree with his predecessors, yeah, even with Plato himself, but he will note what they said first of all, right? That they said something, and he will give an account of why they said it, right? And then he would give reasons why he thinks what they said was wrong, and reasons why he thinks their arguments are defective, where you try to show why they think.

[39:42] I mean, you know, the thing I gave there from Descartes there about the confused and the distinct. He's saying exactly the opposite in a way. Aristotle is saying that distinct is more certain than the confused, and then he's he's not noticing or noting that Aristotle said the opposite really, nor is he recalling the arguments Aristotle gave. He's just kind of starting out in his own, you know.

[40:08] And so you you kind of repeat the mistakes of the past, now. Do they teach that at like Harvard and Stanford too? Well, they're all over the place. See, you know, you see, because you know, you get as I was saying to students today, we're and I said, do you want to get to that point there? But we're going through Aristotle's distinction there, the four kinds of causes.

[40:33] And so I went through, you know, the name of each the four kinds of causes and explained the definition that Aristotle gives of each and the examples he gives and the significance of examples. Then I said, now, what is the order in which Aristotle distinguishes the four kinds of causes? And I pointed out first of all that it's the historic order in which these causes came to be talked about, and you know came to light, you might say, with the Greek philosophers, and I showed that a bit.

[41:04] And then I went on to show, though, but more important, it's the order in which we can best learn that there are four kinds of causes. It's the order in which we can force reason, right, to admit that there are these four kinds of causes. But then I was remarking as to how the historic order and the order of learning to some extent correspond in the Greeks.

[41:30] Why is that so? Well, it's because the Greeks are the first philosophers, so they naturally begin with what is more known to us and proceed gradually to what is less known to us, and that's the proper order in the order of learning. But now, once you have philosophers and books of philosophy and the printing press and so on, right?

[41:56] Then you could begin by whatever book happens to come into your hands. Get interested in philosophy. Go down the library. You whatever book you happen to run across, you start looking at that. And wherever the author begins, that's where you begin, right? Whatever is fashionable or at your time, yeah. See, or you go to Professor X's class whenever he's talking about. That's what you start to think about.

[42:19] You went to Professor Y, you would have started thinking about something else because he's talking about something else, right? And so there's an element of of chance there, right, as to where you might begin. And with the monophilosophers very often they begin where the last monophilosophers were left off, right? Yeah. And so whatever happened to be, you know, making a big hulabaloo or was fashionable, right? That's where they start.

[42:43] And so they never get back to what is more known to us, huh? And and become strong in that and go forward, huh? So those four causes: material, efficient, a matter, form, mover, and end. Yeah, that's the order in which he gives them. But that's both historic order. We'll see. You get two, but it's also the order in which we can best see that there are these four kinds of causes.

[43:13] Yeah. Okay. Okay. Can I ask you a question? Just about learning in general. Yeah. Now, this has been a big discovery for me. Is I used to read hundreds of books and I didn't get anything out. I didn't remember anything. Yeah. I might do this for years.

[43:34] No, I mean I was terrible. You'd ask me what? I go, okay. Well, I started this breaking down the text, and I don't, sure, I don't do it perfectly, but whatever I do, I'm trying to understand why it helps me so much. And I think it is something to do with. Writing it down and thinking it out it forces me to understand it. Yeah, yeah. It and then divide and conquer.

[44:07] Yeah. So Thomas does the text of Aristotle. So if you look at Thomas's commentary, you'll be dividing the text of Aristotle and then seeing the order in the text. Huh. And

[44:23] now you can do that, you know, with with a man like Aristotle because he's very orderly, right? You know, a modern philosopher you may be all over the place, you know. He jumps from topic to topic, and you know, but in Aristotle there's really a reason, See. I seem to have to write it down. Like I tried it without it. Like I read it over five or six times and tried to think it through.

[44:46] But when then I went through and I wrote down what it was saying and I got a lot more out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know myself, you know, when I'm thinking something out, I'm always kind of, you know, teaching an imaginary person. That's a good way to do it. Yeah, yeah, and it's like, even though I don't have in mind, you know, any class I'm going to be teaching this material to, I'm just kind of, you know, it's always an imaginary person I'm explaining it to, and kind of forces you to to spell it out.

[45:19] I've been doing that, so it's just a good thing just to try to explain it to someone in your mind and think it through. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's just the opposite. I used to never do that. I read it once, but I've never read it again. These things are so basic, you know. I mean, and you get to the 15th reading, which you'll see later on there Aristotle's critique of Plato, but it's kind of the key there to understand what bad is.

[45:47] And the first meaning of bad, the second meaning of bad, and the third meaning of bad. What are they? That's something very basic, right? But the average person doesn't know where to begin, though. Yeah. And you get to the 15th reading. In fact, I had one of the questions on the exam there that gave them. You know, what's the first, second, and third meaning of bad? And once you understand what the first meaning of bad is, which the second meaning depends upon, and the third meaning depends upon the second meaning, then you can see, you know, why there can't be anything bad in God.

[46:24] Well, I don't know what the first meaning of bad is. You see, you see. Well, you see, you're in bad shape there. You got to

[46:32] follow this course. We'll find out, see. Yeah, but we're going to see it when they when they go back to Aristotle eventually, huh? And then we'll know what Augustine, why Augustine says, you know, that sin is nothing, and the man who sins becomes nothing, right? Very strange statement at first sight, huh? Mm-hmm. Why actually Augustine say that. I see Thomas quoting him a lot too. Sin is nothing, and the man who sins becomes nothing.

[47:09] What does that mean, right? It's kind of a way of of emphasizing what the bad really is. What the bad really is basically is what it's a lack, huh? See, it's a non-being. Therefore, a something you are able to have and should have, but don't have. That's the first meaning of bad. Yeah, it's always a lack, huh? See.

[47:43] You talked about this. Now the second meaning of bad is to have a lack. You could be said to have a lack, huh? And the third meaning of bad is what causes lack in something, huh? So, for example, blindness is something bad, huh? Right. Blindness is the non-being of the power of sight in something that is able to have sight and should have sight.

[48:14] Okay. Now, because blindness is something bad, then it's bad for you or for a dog, for that matter, or a cat to be blind, huh? Okay. Have that condition we call blindness.

[48:31] And then, if it's bad for you to be blind, then it's bad for me to, let's say, poke your eye or something and cause you to be blind, huh? That's the third. That's a cause. Yeah, yeah.

[48:45] See. What was the second one? Blindness. So, so what has the blindness? What has the lack? What is lacking? Yeah, yeah. So is it good to be a blind man? No, I don't mean it's bad in a moral sense, but it's bad to be to be blind, huh? But it's bad to be blind because blindness is bad, huh? Just like it's good to be wise because wisdom is good, so it's bad to be blind because blindness is something bad.

[49:31] Something bad. Yeah. That's the second. Yeah. To have to have a lack because it's said to have a lack, huh? Right. Okay. And the third meaning is what causes lack in something, huh? So for me to poke your eye with a stick or something is bad, right? Because it could cause you to be blind, right? And that's bad because blindness is bad, right?

[50:03] See. Or take another example here: bad, something bad. Ignorance is bad, right? Okay. And then an ignorant mind is bad. The second meaning of bad, right? An ignorant mind is bad because ignorance is bad. And then what causes the mind to be ignorant or keeps the mind ignorant? Huh?

[50:29] Many things cause that. Huh? Is something bad, right? That's the third meaning of bad, huh? Okay. So reasonable, huh? And you say you talk about a bad human act, right? A bad human act is bad in what sense of bad?

[50:52] Yeah, yeah. It's not simply a lack, right? But a bad human act is an unreasonable human act, huh? It's an act that lacks the order and the ordering and the measuring of reason. So when I eat too much or drink too much, right? My eating and drinking is disordered, huh? Unmeasured, right? It lacks the order, ing and the measuring of reason.

[51:23] So the original meaning then of bad, fundamental meaning, is always a lack. always a lack. Yeah. That's why Augustine says, you know, since a lack is is as such a non-being, a nothingness, that's why Augustine emphasizing that fundamental thing. He says sin is nothing, right? See, now it's a little bit of an exaggeration because sin. may be an act that lacks what

[52:02] the order it should have, huh? Okay. So that lack of order is is the fundamental meaning of badness, huh? But then an act that lacks that order is bad because it's not a done being, right? It's lackingness. Can I ask you a quick spiritual question? Well, you can ask him, yeah. Okay, this is. I was reading in St. Thomas. This has been confusing me all along. You know, about eating in moderation, that eat what you need to be healthy and stuff kind of.

[52:43] Yeah yeah And the Summa, and a lot of the saints St Thomas, says he compares the natural virtue of temperance to eating just what we need. Yeah. But he said the supernatural virtue, we chastise our body by depriving it. Yeah. Now,

[53:09] what are we supposed to do? Well, even that, you see, the the the mean for that, right? Uh huh. Might not be the same, right? Uh huh. So what would be excessive, from a purely human point of view, right? Might not be, for what a spiritual reason, huh? Oh. Okay. So when Thomas takes up the virtue of chastity, you know, the vow of chastity, right, huh? Yeah.

[53:41] Somebody say, "Well, isn't that excessive, right, huh? " I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, excessive in the sense of of seeking these things less than right how one should do, right, huh? Uh huh. Well, but maybe one is being ordered to a higher what? Supernatural good, right?

[54:08] Okay. And in view of that in, this is not excessive, right? Go without the joys of marriage, is what we say, right? Is not excessive, right? With view to what? Seeing God face to face, let's say, huh? Even these saints damaging their bodies through fasting. I mean, it seems. Well, no, no, you got to be careful. Got to be careful there because we have even the words of Bernard of Clairvaux, right, where he engages some penances that he thought were excessive, right?

[54:43] Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it's always a question of prudence. Forsights, yeah, prudence, yeah, as to what's what, you know. But you know, when people are entering into the the Dark Night of the Soul, see, any attraction to to material things there prevents the soul from turning maybe completely towards God, right? And you know the famous example there is, you know, when Saint Paul was carried up to the third heaven, he talks about a little bit there, and it came to roundabout way there in one of the epistles, and he says, "Within the body or not, I know not."

[55:23] Right? When his soul was drawn out of his body, right? But but he knows his soul isn't any more in his body, right? He was that you know drawn up to to a direct knowledge of God. Well, that was worth, right? You know, kind of complete ignoring of the body, right? You know. So you know what's what's a mean,