Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
23. Three Kinds of Beginnings, Custom, and the Role of Contradiction
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/023-three-kinds-of-beginnings-custom-and-the-role-of-contradiction/

[0:00] You know, there's much common sense in those days, right? You know, we're so, we're so accustomed, you know. Remember one time Rose and I going with a young couple who weren't married yet, you know, to see a movie, right? And of course, Rose was a little shocked by the the scenes, you know, in the movie, you know. And and Targdada, who was a good girl too, but you know, but she was, you know, going to movies regularly, and you know, it's you know, it didn't shock her just so could get accustomed to it, right?

[0:28] Otherwise, it's falling apart. It's falling apart. Well, it's falling apart, but but if you get accustomed to it, it seems to be the normal way of doing it, huh? Because Sergius used to give a kind of a crazy example. He says, you know, the guy comes in to see the doctor, right? And he's not feeling too good or something, you know. The doctor says, "Well, tell me about your daily routine, right?"

[0:52] And he says, "Well, I get in the morning, you know, I shave, I vomit, and I brush my teeth, and then I have breakfast." He says, "What? I get in the morning, I shave, I vomit, and then I." Did you vomit? Yeah, yes. Doesn't everybody? That's my view, right? Doesn't everybody, right?

[1:22] And Heisenberg remarks, you know, on how Einstein, Einstein wouldn't go along with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, although the evidence was there. And but he's so accustomed, as they were, to the principle determinism, right, that he couldn't, you know, revolutionary as he was, and Einstein was in some ways revolutionary, he couldn't, you know, it's such a great change from from everything he had been brought up on, huh?

[1:49] Okay. And as we said, with freely assenting, so we see in a sense the sharing of the freely part of experimental science. Would there be a sharing in the philosophical part of that something that can be built on? What you're talking about faith now, or what? Faith, yeah. Yeah, faith is like the beginning in philosophy here in uncertainty, right? Uncertainty. Yeah, but it's like this insofar as you what freely ascent to the word of God.

[2:25] Okay. I mean, it's more involved than that because the will is moving the reason to ascent, see? otherwise it wouldn't be a free act. But the will is being helped by divine grace, huh? And the reason is being helped by the gift of faith itself, huh? Which enables it to be, disposes it to be moved by the will, huh? And then God is joining these what exterior motives of credibility too, as as Vatican I points out, huh?

[2:58] So it's not a sensus sensus. But nevertheless, it remains something free. So the Trinity is not forced on the mind. When you see God face to face, then the Trinity will be as obvious as though there's a whole world more than a part, right? Couldn't be otherwise. But reason doesn't see that by itself, now, right? But it's moved to ascent to it, okay, by divine grace, moving the will, okay, and the gift of faith there in reason itself.

[3:35] So it takes a long time to study three beginnings, but it's good to note that there are three different beginnings and in our thinking, huh? Yeah. Have you had you done studies on modern physics? Have you done anything with modern astronomy at all? I just had this thought, Father Anthony, we're talking briefly about this one time. I was trying to figure out.

[4:03] Father Anthony made a good point that you could see reasonable guesses in modern astronomy. One of the things I kind of wonder about it: there seems to be a lot of imagination involved. Like I mentioned, it seems like a lot of it's more science fiction than. Yeah. You know, Einstein said one place that the creation of scientific hypotheses is like writing a novel. He said, "Okay, so it's much more like fiction than philosophy is, and it's much more tied with the imagination, huh?

[4:33] " Right. Much more tied up with the imagination, and that's why the great scientific theories are usually invented by young men, relatively speaking, huh? Yeah, yeah. And when Einstein, you know, left Europe and came to America, I mean, you know, he didn't come up with anything really, really successful like he did in the earlier years, huh? But most of these guys, it's in their twenties, sometimes in their thirties, but rarely later than that.

[5:03] If they have their brilliant ideas, that's because imagination is most perfect at that age. But you know, when I read Heisenberg said, and even these kind of semi-popular things, in a sense, I mean, these things for for laymen like me. Yeah. But I mean, if you read them down through the years, he gets more clear in understanding of what it all meant as he goes on, right?

[5:27] See, but but the his original ideas go back to his twenties, huh? Because imagination, imagination is better at twenty or thirty than at fifty, you know. But the reason is better at fifty than it was at twenty, huh? Say.

[5:46] So he's more inventive in his twenties or thirties, but he understands better what he invented in his fifties than he did when he invented it, huh? I said in Heisenberg, you know, that I guess more and more clear, crystallizes in his mind. Brilliant way, he understands it better and better as he goes on. Would custom hinder the imagination as you got older to cross it? Well, yeah, I suppose, but it's something.

[6:13] I'd make suppose something bodily too, partly, huh? Because imagination is in the brain, right? And so, it's slowing down. Combination. of nature Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[6:43] And sometimes you see Mozart, you know, he takes a melody from one of his earlier pieces and he proves it, you know, they're high, you know. But the original idea there, you know, the imaginative part comes from the earlier part. A lot of kids aren't getting it. That shouldn't. He died so young, anyway. Mozart's hard to tell.

[7:07] Okay. Now, so that's the second step he takes, right? So it's a very important step he's taking there, right? When he sees what kind of a beginning this is in the minds of these Greeks, huh? It's more one forced on the mind by truth itself, rather than hypothesis, huh?

[7:35] Now, the third paragraph of page three takes a third step to become a strong. And he's pointing out that they try to take all the pair that's most fundamental,

[7:51] but some take a pair that seems to be more fundamental to the senses, like hot and cold, right, or moist and dry. Others take a pair that reason sees as more basic, like odd and even, right, or hate and love, right.

[8:15] So he's pointing out, right, that they're all trying to find the most fundamental pair of contraries, but some judge which is most fundamental more by the senses, some more by what reason, huh?

[8:36] Okay, so that's the third step he takes forward, huh? Just that distinction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's manifesting the sense that they are trying to take the first pair of contraries, right? But some look at more from the senses, which would tell you hot and cold, right? And then these crazy mathematicians—they don't follow their senses. Odd and even, right? Even in Empedocles taking hate and love, which are not as sensible as as hot and cold, huh?

[9:19] So that's the third step, right? Now the fourth step, huh? Thus they say the same thing in some way and something different from each other. Other, just as it seems to the many, the same, however, in so far as proportional. Now, sometimes I call, as I say, I call this the fourth step. But you can put along with it the first step in a way, huh?

[9:52] You can say they're all saying the same thing in two ways, right? Okay, they're all saying the same as we saw at the beginning of the beginning in general, right? But not in particular, right? But now he's pointing out that they're all saying the same proportionally. Okay. Now we're using the word proportion here, of course, in the Greek sense of analogous. I'm translating by. But in Euclid's sense, right?

[10:24] Where proportion doesn't mean a ratio, but a what likeness of ratios, huh? And since we find that first in math, let me illustrate what Aristotle is saying here, right? Okay. Let's see where the thinking goes here. Suppose thinker A said that the causes are two and three. Okay. Thinker A said that. Okay. Thinker B said they're four and six. Okay. And thinker C said they're eight and twelve.

[10:59] And thinker D said they're ten and fifteen. Now at first sight you say, "Oh my God, here we go again! Nobody agrees with anybody else. Nobody has anything in common with anybody else. It's hopeless to human life. " See, A says two and three, and nobody else says either two or three. Nobody thinks that. Another guy says four and six, and nobody else says four or six, right?

[11:28] And this guy says eight and twelve, and nobody says eight or twelve. They have nothing in common, right? And so on for ten and fifteen, right? Then you come back and you say, "Yeah, there's something kind of interesting about this, huh? " You say, "Two is to three as what? " Four. Four is to six as eight is to twelve as ten is to what? Well, yeah, they don't have exactly the same, right?

[11:59] But proportionally, it's the same, right? That she is to him as the other woman is to her husband, right? See. In other words, a woman usually likes to have the man be a little bit taller than her, right? And like to dance with the man just a little bit taller than her, right? Don't like to dive so much with a man who's shorter than they are, right?

[12:18] You know, more than. Now, when I was in grade school, there was there was this one guy who was kind of tall, and taller than the rest of us. There was one girl who was rather tall, and she was always chasing this guy. He's not a priest, by the way. He's scared of her finding him. But but I mean, the point was he was the only guy that was.

[12:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the thinking is is similar, right? Okay. And another example, too. You know, a little different one, but something like that. Now, sometimes people say, you know, well, there's nothing wrong with a man wearing his hair long, you know, and that sort of thing, and and they say, well, Christ wore his hair long, and so on, so on. But the point is, you go back to the age when men wore their hair longer, and the women wore their hair all the way down to their ankles, almost, right?

[13:12] So that what's natural is not maybe the absolute length of the man's hair and the woman's hair, but the woman's hair should be longer than the man's hair. That a woman's glory is her hair, as the Bible says, right? But don't compliment a man on his hair. That's really an insult. You should be concerned about those things. But a woman, you know, the hair is a woman's glory.

[13:36] It says in the Bible. So that the woman's hair should be what longer than the man. So proportionally, it hasn't changed that much, right? Is it?

[13:47] Is it the idea? Okay. Okay. So. You can say that the although one man says, let's say the dense and the rare, the dense is to the rare something like the mix is to the what segregated,

[14:18] like love is to what deep, as the what full is to the empty, as the hot is to the what cold, right? Okay. And so on, right? Now,

[14:42] at this point, I sometimes tie things together here and at the beginning. I say, Aristotle's pointing out that they're all saying the same in two ways, right? They're all saying the same in general. Because they're all saying the beginnings are contraries, although they disagree in particulars what the contraries are, and they're all saying the same what proportionally, okay?

[15:11] There's two ways that they're all saying the what same, right? But the proportion is the, but the principles are contrary. Well, it's more than that, see, okay?

[15:29] And so different points you're making, right? You're saying that one principle is to the other, as the other one is the other one, right? You know, but when you say contraries, you're just kind of, you know, seeing what they have in common, right? But now he goes on and he says,

[15:51] and worse and better, right? Okay, in the middle of that paragraph, huh? Worse and better. Now Thomas sees in that another step, right, that Aristotle's taking, and that is that of the two contraries, one is better or more positive, and the other is not as good or is lacking something, right? So to compare the dense and the rare, if I give you a mug of yellow beer, I give you a mug of beer foam, and I charge you the same amount, the man with the beer foam is going to what?

[16:31] Object because he's getting less beer in the same thing, right? Okay. But likewise, the mix has something that the what segregated doesn't have, huh? That's why the mix thing than the salad dressing, right? Okay. Love seems to be better than hate, huh? Hate seems to be missing something, right? Obviously, the empty is missing something compared to the full, right? But even the cold we think of as somehow involving a lack of heat, huh?

[17:03] Okay. So he's pointing out that not only are they proportional, but in this proportion, one member is to the other, right? As somewhat lacking, okay? So you don't want to say just you know dense is to rare as the empty is to the full, thinking of the opposition, right? But dense is to rare as the full is empty, because the rare is the one that's lacking something, and the empty is the one that is what lacking something in comparison to the other.

[17:42] Now this idea of lack will come out later on in the first book, huh? You know, and this idea of lack will in some way become even more essential. Then the idea of contraries we'll see later on. Here is a kind of hint at it, right? That one of the two things is better or more positive, and the other seems to be not so good or bad or lacking something compared to the other one.

[18:08] That's a very important thing, but only Thomas would notice that. Okay, and that's what he understands these words and worse and better, right? Yeah.

[18:32] So however you want to distinguish those, you get almost five or six what steps that Aristotle takes to become strong, right? You know, one thing he takes is what he gives a reason for what everybody's saying without giving a reason, right? Secondly, he points out that this thought that they all have is the kind of thought that seems to be forced on the mind by truth itself, right?

[19:00] Rather than hypothesis or something that seems probable, okay. And what third they all try to take, not just any pair of contraries, but the very first pair of contraries, which some of them judge more by the senses, some judge more by what reason, right? Right. And if I make these two, you can say they all take the same proportionally, right? They all say the same proportionally, and they all take the same what?

[19:34] In general, right? Okay. Now go back to my comparison there with men and woman there in marriage, huh? Okay. If you look at these two marriages here, right, and you have the woman and the man, and then you have the woman and the man. Okay. Well, you can say what do they have in common? These two marriages. Well, in both cases, you have a man and a woman.

[20:04] Okay. That's what they have in common, right? Each is the union of man and woman. Okay. But then you come back and say, yeah, but this woman is that man, as this woman is to what that man, and therefore you have a what kind of proportion there, right? Okay.

[20:26] Just like we had two, you know, nuts and two bolts, right? And you say, well, each is a nut and a bolt. That's not a bolt and a bolt. But then you see, yeah, but this bolt is proportional that nut; it fits the thing, and this fits that one, right? Okay. Okay. My brother Mark and I were just out there. Oh, he says invited a couple up there, you know, to the house, you know, and.

[20:51] To get to know the husband, the wife, you know, and so on, and these two couples used to invite a lot. You're struck, you know, by that they're well matched, huh? But but if this husband had married that woman, and vice versa, would have had horrible problems. Two families, right? So there's something, you know, in the sense that she's the wife he needs, and she's the wife he needs, but she's not the wife he needs, and vice versa, right?

[21:19] Huh? See, and it just got special, you know. It just would have been, you know, maybe you could see the problem, right? On this, so but there's something proportional there, right? huh? You see, Okay. In the same way, we might put wine in the meal, right? You see, I mean, you should drink the wine that that that matches the meal, huh? You see, and it might be different wine that matches chicken, let's say, and matches what? Steak, right?

[21:55] As I say, the the main reason to eat spaghetti, is so I can drink Chianti. See, But Chianti, you know, is better with spaghetti than with maybe chicken, let's say, huh? Or maybe Chardonnay would be better with chicken, right? Okay. So, yeah, I'm having food with wine. Food with wine. That's in general, right? But you can say, yeah, but Chardonnay is to chicken as Chianti is to spaghetti, or something.

[22:20] You see the idea? Yeah. So, you have the reason, right? You have the observation that they're all saying the same, right? I mean, it's true that there's force on the mind by truth itself. You have the distinction there of how they try to take the first pair of contraries, right? Not just any pair of contraries, right? But some judges by the sense, some by the reason. And then, if you want to make these two, you can say they're all saying the same proportionally.

[22:54] They're all saying the same in general, right? To tie up with what went before. And then that one member of the pair in each case is what lacking or inferior in some way to the other one. Okay. You have something like that in in I can't even remember the whole the whole table, but Aristotle, Thomas gives it in the metaphysics there. That the Pythagoreans had this table about ten contraries, right?

[23:25] And one column is a good one, and the other one is a bad one, right? So right is good and left is bad, and male is good, female is bad, you know, go right down the line, right? Huh? It's kind of interesting, huh? Which one they put in the good column, which in the bad column? But that's kind of anticipating what Aristotle was saying here, right? That one contrary seems to be better, and the other not so what?

[23:49] Not so good, huh? Tragedy and comedy, right? You may look at tragedy in the good column and comedy in the inferior column, right? Huh? But so there's about six steps you want to make it here, right? We're becoming strong.

[24:10] But the main thing is, it is clear that at the beginning should be what Contraries, right? Okay. Now, the major step forward, though, is going to take place in the eleventh, but reading, huh? Okay.

[24:31] But it doesn't take place right away in the eleventh reading, huh? The major step he's going to take is in the eleventh reading where he's going to say that a third thing is required besides the two contraries. Okay. And this is going to be very important how he goes from two to three, huh? But it's going to be forced by the truth itself in part to go from two to three.

[24:57] Okay, but we'll see that. It's going to involve the role of what contradiction in the development of our knowledge. And perhaps the first man to have some insight into the role of contradiction in our knowledge was Heraclitus. You know, war is the father of all things. He said, right? Hidden harmony is better than apparent harmony, and so on. But we'll be looking at some texts. You know, I'll bring them next time.

[25:26] I'll be here next week, as I mentioned to each other. But I'll bring in some the texts on the role of contradiction. Now, the basic ones from Heraclitus, and then the key one from Aristotle when he talks about this, and then the ones from the scientists when they talk about this, because Einstein and Bohr and others talk about this, and then the ones from the theologians. Okay.

[25:50] You know, what's kind of striking is that in philosophy and in science and theology, they all see a role that contradiction plays in the development, either of philosophy or the development of science and development of theology, how important it is, right? But the first major example of that is going to be in reading eleven, where Aristotle is going to go from what two to three by untying the apparent contradiction in all change that Heraclitus was pointing out, and which got Parmenides all excited, right?

[26:26] Okay. And the thing is that what they all recognize is that you have to see these contradictions, which may be in your thinking or may be apparently in the thing, but not really in the thing, or contradiction between your thinking and the thing. But the untying of that contradiction, or the breaking down of that contradiction, is actually the discovery of something that was hidden to you before.

[26:58] And so this is something of universal importance, as I say to the students. As an old saying, you know, get it from the horse's mouth. The race is going to take place. An old saying, like the horses down there, they've been talking about things, and it was going to win the race, huh? If you get it from the horse's mouth, well,

[27:18] most of us get discovery at second, third, fourth, fifth, and right, and with no understanding of how the great discoveries are made. But you go to the great philosophers, and they will tell talk about the role that contradiction played in their great discoveries. And you go to the great scientists, especially the ones of the 20th century here, and they will speak of the role that contradiction played.

[27:48] And you go to the great theologians, huh? And they'll talk about this, huh? The importance of this for theology. Okay. So I had some, you know, short little readings, but very key readings from the philosophers, the scientists, and theologians, because just about everything we read in a course like this is extremely basic, right, for the whole life of the mind, huh? But it's appropriate to talk about it here because this is the first major.

[28:19] Nothing was difficult by any means, but it's the first major example of how the human mind goes forward by trying to what unravel or untie, as Aristotle would say, the contradiction, or break it down, as Einstein would say, right? Okay.

[28:38] And we'll see how the philosophers and scientists and so on and theologians are saying basically the same thing, although they have somewhat different language when they talk about the role contradiction, huh? But we'll see how similar their thinking is. But the first man to see this was Heraclitus, and that's one reason why I call him the central thinker of human thought. And sometimes I say that if what all these philosophers and scientists are saying about the way they went forward was first anticipated by Heraclitus, huh?

[29:18] Then Heraclitus is the father of the progress of human mind. That's quite a title, right? The father of the progress of the human mind. But he's the first man to see, to some extent, how the human mind would make its greatest steps and most profound steps forward, huh? And that's that's that's quite a accomplishment, huh?

[29:44] Now, what does Aristotle do in this eleventh reading? Well, he raises the question about the number of beginnings, the beginning of the very reading itself, right? Okay. And what he's going to do is to eliminate.

[30:08] He's going to eliminate the two extremes, huh? Okay. He's going to eliminate there being just one beginning, okay? And the other extreme, that there is a what infinity of them, right? Okay. There's just one beginning, and there's infinity of them. Okay. An unlimited

[30:37] multitude of beginnings. Now he's going to eliminate one very quickly by saying the beginnings are contrary, so they can't be just one. Okay, so you got to have at least two, right? Okay. Then he's going to, by four brief arguments, eliminate there being an unlimited multitude of them. Okay.

[31:06] So now, at the end of that, you know there must be at least two, right? Okay. Then Aristotle says, is any reason to go beyond two? And then he's going to say there is reason for going beyond two. He's going to speak with philosophical modesty. There's some reason, right? It's very much reason, right? He's going to give three arguments, but the first one is the one where the prince, where the royal contradiction appears, right?

[31:34] Okay. And he's going to say and he's going to say, and he's going to say we're really forced to go from two to three. Okay. Now you're going to see throughout this the famous principle of fewness, which in modern science is sometimes called the principle simplicity. But we saw that a little bit in this text here. right? Fewness and truth, as the great Shakespeare says. But what that principle is is not that fewer are better, but fewer are better if they are enough, right?

[32:05] Okay, that's the fundamental principle for Newton, right? The fundamental principle for Galileo, for Einstein says it underlies the whole of natural science and the Greeks all the way through my work. Okay, so although two is fewer than three, he's going to argue that two is not enough. There must be a third thing in change. Okay, but then he's going to say that's enough. And he's going to give a couple arguments to say, you know, I indicate that's enough, right?

[32:36] Okay. Now I say the thing I emphasize most of all. I think the most important thing is to see the role of contradiction going from two to three. Okay. As I said, this is this is historically, or not historically, in the order of learning. This is the first major what place where the role of contradiction takes place. The reason why I say that is that

[33:05] our knowledge starts with our what senses, huh? And as Shakespeare reminds us there in Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses does therein things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs.

[33:25] Okay, and everybody to some extent sees the changes between contraries, huh? And we all say that one contrary becomes the other, without recognizing that in so saying, as an apparent contradiction, what are we saying? Because we say that dry becomes wet, huh? And becomes means what comes to be. Yeah. So if the dry comes to be wet, then the dry is wet, and something is both wet and not wet, and dry and not dry at the same time.

[33:58] you've got an impossibility, right? But if the dry never becomes wet, then things are going to remain dry forever, right? And the healthy will never become sick. But if you're sick, you never become healthy either. Okay. So change is what first what gets the attention of the senses, huh?

[34:19] And there's an apparent contradiction there in change, which Heraclitus was the first man to emphasize a lot, huh? Okay. And the untying, therefore, of that contradiction is in the order of learning the first major example of the role of contradiction, right? But ever since Aristotle did that, that's the way the human mind has gone forward, huh? Now, as I say, it's somewhat anticipated by Heraclitus, and maybe more so by Plato, but it's really fully comes to evidence here in Aristotle, huh?

[34:57] So it's appropriate after we see that then to stop and to talk about the universal importance of contradiction in development of our knowledge. And then we'll see why Heraclitus is the father of the progress of the mind. He's the father of the going forward human mind. As of the tremendous man,

[35:26] it's kind of funny there. We had a session there. You know, we get together once in a while, and we get together at somebody's house, like you know, a Friday or Saturday night, and we start about seven o'clock, and someone presents a little paper or something, right? And then we go on, you know, even about midnight, see. And you know, it's a good chance to discuss something.

[35:43] And they wanted me to do something, so I said, "okay, I'll do Shakespeare's exhortation to use reason?" And we went on to about midnight, you know what this say. And now I didn't bring it up, man. Somebody's gonna bring it up. We're talking about the going forward of the human mind. too Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're gonna make a point of this. Something happened that night.

[36:13] Oh, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Somebody was asking me when I talk about Shakespeare's phrase "looking before and after," which is the definition, right? I, you know, I give him the copy of Aristotle's chapter in the Categories and before and after. So, you know, you expect the question. You know, what did Shakespeare know these these things, right? And I says, "Well, stop and think that in the play called Hamlet, Hamlet is concerned about his mother's marriage, right?

[36:42] And why? Because she married first of all so soon after her what husband had died, right? Which enough to you know bother you, right? But then, as we find out in the scene where he upbraids her, right, he compares his father with the uncle, right? What a superior man he was, right? Right. See, that was his father was such a better man. So that's the first and the fourth sense of before, isn't it?

[37:14] Right. He's bothered by the fact that she married so soon after the death. Right. In fact, he says bitterly, "You know that the food for the funeral meal, right, could serve as the wedding. " I don't know if that's literally happened, you know, but it was that close that he said that you know one could be the other. And then the fourth sense of before, which is better, right?

[37:37] You know, she married so soon after the death of her husband, a man so inferior to the man that had died, right? That's doubly bothersome, right? You see, so he had in mind the first and the fourth sense, right? Okay. And he writes the prologue to Romeo and Juliet. That's the third sense of before, right? But then I took the example of. How in the

[38:04] all's well that ends well, right? When Helena is kind of forced by the Countess to confess her love for the what? Her son, the Count, right? Then he puns on the first and the fourth meaning of before, or meaning of before attached to the first before in place, right? He kind of kneels down to the Countess, and then before you, right? I confess that before you and next to heaven, I love your son.

[38:34] Well, you know, here Shakespeare's putting the first before itself, right? See, okay. So he is somewhat aware of the fact that the word "before" has more than one meaning, right? Now, whether he saw it as fully as Aristotle, there, well, that's another question, right? I mean, certainly does talk, you know, about Polonius looking for the cause of Hamlet's apparent madness, right? And so he's certainly aware of that, right?

[39:00] In fact, he even has a little fun there with the scholastics, right? You know that that madness doesn't have an efficient cause, but a deficient cause, they say. This effect by cause or deficient cause, he's got these little tad bit, but he changes the word of all this, right? You know, so he seems to have all the senses in mind. But say, apart from that, my my attitude towards Shakespeare is sometimes to be a good reader of Shakespeare and to enjoy, you know, Shakespeare.

[39:32] Other times to be a good student of Shakespeare, right? And then I try to do what Thomas says a good student should do. Thomas has a famous passage on the good student in his in his prologue to Sacred Scripture, where the good student is compared to the earth. And Thomas explains the metaphor there. Right, the earth is lowly, humble, so the good student, right, he humbles himself under the master.

[40:06] And then, secondly, the earth is what something stable, right? So he has some judgment; doesn't just take anybody's word for anything. But then, third, like the earth, he is what fruitful, right?

[40:22] So one tries to what take the thought of the master and see what follows from it. Okay, and you might possibly see something that follows from it that the master had not thought about, right? Okay, like in Anaximenes I give the example of Anaximenes when he when he concludes that water animals came before land animals, right? Which would be a nice deduction from Thales' thought that water is the beginning of living things, right, and therefore would come from that.

[40:55] And he confirms it with the example of the frog, right, With the newt. It's like a fish in the beginning, right, and then it becomes a kind of land animal. So, say you read Shakespeare, you see this is awfully wise what he's saying, and maybe Shakespeare doesn't see everything in the word before that Aristotle sees, right? But a good student, right, tries to what be fruitful, right?

[41:20] You know, and so whether Shakespeare saw that or not, right? When I read Euclid, I sometimes deduce conclusions that I don't find in Euclid, right? I suspect it's obvious that you could do them, right? I mean, that's what a good student does, right? You know, it's an obvious deduction from Proposition Five, which is that you know if these two sides equal, the angles are equal. It's an obvious deduction. From that and 6, that in an equilateral triangle, all the angles are equal, right?

[41:58] Big deal. I mean, you know, that's a good student does, right? He sees the consequences of this, huh? And the same when I read the Greek fragments, right? I see an awful lot of wisdom in them. Did the Greeks see all the wisdom in that? I know when I was in a talk at TC, I don't know if Richard or somebody asked me, you know, if he's a physicist, and I don't know if you did that when was talks mentioned or what, I don't know the one.

[42:28] Yeah, but not that one prior. Yeah, but but you know, I was I was seeing so much in the fragment of Heraclitus, and he was asking me, you know, you know, did Heraclitus see all this? And I said, I don't know, but but but then I said I gave the example of Max Planck, right? And Planck, you know, presented the quantum hypothesis in 1900. And Heisenberg, in giving the you know his lecture on the history of quantum theory, says Planck went for a walk in the park after he presented this, right?

[42:57] And he said to his son, I think I discovered something as great as Newton, right? Okay. Now five years later, Einstein showed you can't understand light without the quantum. And then 13 years later, Niels Bohr showed you can't what understand the atom without the quantum, right? And so by then it became clear that nothing in the physical world, neither matter nor light, was existing without the quantum, huh?

[43:24] And now did Planck see all those consequences going to come out of his discovery? Huh? Maybe not. No, not to Einstein and Bohr, you know. But nevertheless, he knew there was something extremely important, and when he went for this walk with his his son, he said, I think I discovered something as important as Newton, right? He realized that there was something here, right? You know. And so,

[43:48] but as I say sometimes you know the good student, right? He will see some consequences that the other one doesn't, huh? I know when I was when I was at Leval, there the last year that Dionne lectured, right, huh? And he he was lecturing on on the dependence of the life of the mind not only upon reason but upon the will, right, huh? And he was dealing with the dispositions of of will and appetite that you need for the philosophical life.

[44:20] He was doing it in a very very concrete way. He's using the Confessions of Augustine, so to show the movements of Augustine's will, and you know, pointing out you know universal truths, you know, to be seen in the movement of Augustine's will, and so on, and so.

[44:40] Well, then I was I was listening to Dionne there, and I was reading Thomas's commentary on the Epistles of Saint Paul, right? And then when Saint when Thomas divides the causes of error, he divides in the same way that Dionne divides. These other things, huh? You know, there's the cause of error on the side of the will, and the cause of error on the side of the knowing powers, right?

[44:59] And our brother Dionne, so he said, "he never thought of that exactly, you know, that way, you know." But I mean, beautiful text in Thomas, right? You know, But, I'm taking the idea that Dionne had given me and just kind of, you know, developing it, right? You know, and and and as Heath points out a lot, huh? You know, in the Pythagorean school, they were always saying, you know, they're attributing everything to Pythagoras even the discoveries that they they made because it's all coming out of the the things that he had done, you know, huh?

[45:28] You know, and and reverence for the master, you know, involves a recognition, right, huh? When the master sees all the consequences of what he said, right, huh? I mean, you yourself, I mean, if you see something basic, right, you yourself as the time goes on, will start to see more consequences of it, and so you know, but what difference does it make, right? Who, you know, whether he saw it all, or you as a good student, right?

[45:58] But when you read something like Shakespeare, right, you know, you're struck with something, right? You know, I was this year. I was just happening to think. I'm always quoting this line: "wisely and slow, they stumble; that run fast." I'm always quoting it, right? And suddenly, I sat down one day and I said I think there's more meaning in there than I've ever really unfolded, right? I started thinking about it I said, more and more, is coming out of this, you know.

[46:23] And you know, I go and I give a talk to the to the legionaries every year. You know, the students there, and they have to go up there. and I said, I think I'll give a talk, you know, and Friar Lawrence on stumbling, You know, that's a kind of catchy title, you know, Friar Lawrence on stumbling, you know, and Nopia drives home my talk. But I mean, when you start to think about it, oh yeah, I didn't I didn't see that at first, right?

[46:50] You know, and it's it's so suggestive, the line, once you start to think about it. And did Shakespeare see everything? I don't know. I mean, you know, it just starts to unfold, you know, and and it's

[47:05] amazing, right? You know, just something amazing. There's more in there than I've really seen before," you know. I said, "I think I just got to stop, sit down, and then all of a sudden, you know, something I've never noticed coming out of this. That's amazing, right? You know, just incredible, you know, how much. And so, So I said, I said, what does it make, you know? I mean, I gave these other texts, you know, where where you know Shakespeare, you know, is punning on the different meanings of before.

[47:33] So obviously, he understands something about the equivocation of the word, right? Who cares, I mean, you know, you bring in Aristotle because you have an explicit text where he's unfolding the meanings of before, right? And you see, you know, the, the the how much Shakespeare's words cover, right.