Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
48. Natural Hearing III: Why Motion, Place and Time Come First
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/048-natural-hearing-iii-why-motion-place-and-time-come-first/

[0:00] Really, just it's it's really absurd to say that everything is accidental. Yeah. Saying there's only accidents. Yeah. Yeah. It's always got to be something as such before what is accidental, huh?

[0:28] Okay. So the arguments for nature acting for an end. What kind of arguments are them? Would you say the demonstrations or dialectical arguments? No, they're more dialectical. They enable you to see the truth of this, you know, from your sense experience.

[1:06] Well, more than that, they're kind of monoductive, yeah, but they do enable you to see it. It must be so. You had syllogisms and you backed up your syllogism. The second premise usually with another syllogism, I thought, at least on the first three, and then the other ones use induction to back up your second premise.

[1:36] But it's it's self-evident to someone who understands all that it means, what nature means, what the end is, maybe that kind of. Yeah, it makes clear in your sense experience, right, that this is so. Okay.

[1:57] Why in geometry, you know, you make clear that something is so in your imagination, and here you make clear in your sense experience that it is so.

[2:07] Okay. Okay. So now notice that when you get down to experimental science, which is biology, right? Um, they consider these questions again in a more particular way, and biologists now are coming around a little bit back to Aristotle's position, huh? But it's kind of

[2:34] not that intellectual history there goes in a in a circle, but in a what spiral, right? Comes back to the same spot but at a different level of experience, huh? If you read, you know, Denton people like that, um,

[2:52] it's amazing, you know, how much would be required to go right for the eye, right? And what's especially important about is that. All of these things have to happen at the same time. See, that's the one thing that that Darwin never explained, right? You could have you know a bunch of insects and you know they change their colors a little bit over the period of time, and one color fits into environment more, so that's enables it to survive, right?

[3:25] But in the case of the eye, or in the case of the basic plan of different kinds of animals, everything's got to be in place at the same time. See, right? Darwin hasn't coming in piecemeal. Even before Denton, you know people like this were reattacking the Darwinian idea. I go back to Bertalanffy you know. I mean, it was clear to Bertalanffy that the large plans of life, you know, can't come in piecemeal; they have to come in all at once, huh?

[3:54] Okay. And isn't that science imitates that? Huh? Heisenberg is very clear about that. You know that you know some people think you know science can can what go forward always by tinkering and modifying a little bit this here and there, right? Sometimes you have to replace the whole thing, you know. Or, you know,

[4:17] so even science is like that. Huh? It doesn't develop in that sense. Huh? You go from from Newtonian physics, say, to quantum physics or to relativity physics. Heisenberg says we don't have to get the attempt to understand. He says, but we have to learn a new meaning of the word understanding. Very strong way of putting it, huh?

[4:43] Okay. So, any questions about the attractive argument? Could you say again? You gave the you gave kind of division of the six arguments. Yeah, the the first two arguments are looking at how nature produces the good, right, or the way it produces the good, huh, in nature. And the first argument points out that nature is producing the good in animals and plants and their parts, for example, almost all the time, right?

[5:27] Okay. And that's a sign that it's directed towards the good, huh? If it's not directed towards the good, then it'd be three hundred and sixty, right? You know. See, you know, if I aim at the target there, you know, I may miss the target, right? But if I'm aiming in any one of three hundred and sixty directions, the chances of hitting the target are practically nil, aren't they?

[6:00] Plus 360 going this way too, so 360 times 360, without even getting smaller than the than the degree, right? You have a huge number, right, of misses compared to what he had done. Okay, now the second argument is pointing out that nature produces the good in animals and in plants, starting with a definite beginning, a definite kind of seed, right, and going through an ordered number of steps, huh?

[6:31] Such as to result in that good thing, huh? Okay. Now both of those show that nature is directed towards the good, that it produces it most of the time, and that it produces it by going through an ordered number of steps, such as to lead to that good end. That's where Aristotle compares in the second argument. There he compares it to what takes place in the art of cooking or some other art.

[6:59] Huh? If I follow the recipe for lemon meringue pie, right? Those are an ordered number of steps, such as to result in the lemon meringue pie, right? And most of the time it will. It won't result in a chocolate cream pie or a filet mignon or something. Okay. So the fact that nature produces the good most of the time and through an ordered number of steps, such as to result in that, shows that it's acting for an end, huh?

[7:32] Then I multiplied the argument from art imitating nature into two. Okay. So I I grouped those two together, right? They both proceed from the fact that we know human art acts for an end. But the first argument that I gave was from all human arts, right? And the second one was from the arts that help nature.

[8:02] So in the first argument from human art acting for an end, we pointed out that human art, which we know acts for an end, cannot act for an end without imitating nature.

[8:18] Now what is it that nature does that human art imitates? Well, in general, as you go through your own body or the body of any other animal, you see that each part is made out of a matter suitable for its function. So the heart is not made out of bones, right? And the tongue is not made out of what the teeth are made out of, and so on, and vice versa.

[8:45] And secondly, we see that nature has given that part a shape, right, a form suitable for its what function, huh? Now it's impossible for human art to act for an end in making a chair or a saw or a pillow or something else, right? Without doing exactly those same two things, without selecting a material suitable, right, for the use of the thing, and giving that material a form suitable for its use, so we don't make the pillow out of what we make the saw out of, and we don't give the saw the shape of the pillow.

[9:27] Now, if it just sometimes happened, right, if it just sometimes what human art did imitated nature, you might say, well, no, coincidence, right? But the fact that it's impossible for human art to act for an end without imitating what nature is already doing is a very good sign that nature must be acting for an end. Now, I was comparing that to something commonly done in teaching of philosophy where. The apology is the most commonly used work in introductions to philosophy around the country, huh?

[10:06] And it's because philosophers see Socrates as kind of a model, right? Now, if you can't be a philosopher without in some way imitating Socrates, you can make a good guess, huh? That Socrates is himself doing something like philosophy.

[10:26] Okay. Now, the other argument is taken from those arts that help nature, like the medical art that helps the woman give birth, huh? Or the art of gardening or farming that helps the seed grow into a healthy plant, right? Now, if these arts are acting for an end in helping nature do what it's trying to do anyway. Well, you can't really act for an end in helping another if that other isn't trying to achieve something.

[11:01] So, if these arts that help nature are acting for an end in helping nature, the one they're helping must, in fact, be trying to achieve something. Okay.

[11:13] Then Aristotle's fourth argument, but our fifth one because we've divided the third into two, is an inductive argument, right? And so, when you study in detail what the insects do, right, you see all kinds of things for the sake of something. It just jumps out at you. Or you see even that the body of an animal is an organic body, which means a body composed of tools.

[11:39] What's more, obviously, for the sake of something than a tool? So the eye is clearly a tool for seeing, and the teeth in front tools for biting, and the teeth in back tools for chewing, and the heart a tool for pumping blood, and so on, huh?

[11:58] Now, the last argument of Aristotle, or our sixth argument, is more abstract than based upon something we saw before, right? That matters for the sake of form. Form is the end of matter, and nature, in fact, is what always forming matter, right? And if it breaks down matter like we do when we digest food, that's ultimately for the sake of building it up into some other form.

[12:28] So we don't, you know, chew and and digest our food just for the sake of breaking this down, right? We put it through the grinder. It's something else. Do it even faster, right? But for the sake of what, ultimately, getting that into a condition that we can rebuild it into what human flesh or blood or bone or fat, huh? Preserve us for the winter, y'all understand, right?

[12:58] Okay. The next question is very important, as we said, for ethics later on, huh? Because if you answer yes, like we've answered yes, and as Socrates and Plato and Aristotle before us did so, then you might look and say, does man, who is by nature right and whose parts are by nature, does man in his parts have by nature a end or purpose, huh? And so, in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle finds out what the natural purpose of man is, and the rest is how do we achieve that end, huh?

[13:45] But those who answer no, either because they're convinced by these arguments against it, right, or because of custom, as we mentioned before, huh? Or because of this understanding of what is being said,

[14:03] everything's up for grabs. Use it for any purpose you want to, you know. That's arbitrary, right? I use you to fertilize my garden. Why not? Right?

[14:23] Because if you're made by nature, and nature didn't make you for anything, then nature didn't make you for anything higher than fertilizing my garden, did it? Huh?

[14:36] People don't always hear out the full implications of it. But somebody does, you know. Eventually, you know, I think that you know the story there, Brothers Karamazov, right? Where the university and miseducated comes back and explains everything's allowed, right? Well, if everything's allowed. it was kill the old man off and get the inheritance or what, right? Because he's shocked, you know, the consequence of his own ideas, but that's it.

[15:09] It's interesting, you know. In Whitaker Chambers, I think I mentioned this, but Whitaker Chambers' book, The Witness, huh? And he was a communist for many years, and then he broke. And but the occasion he mentions there in the witness there is he was in the kitchen there, and his little daughter was there, and he happened to be kind of looking at her ear, you know. Oh yeah.

[15:30] And he, it's only struck him that that could not have happened by chance, that ear. Because the ear is not the most, but you know, you know, not as sophisticated as the eye. I don't think you know, you know, but just just didn't seem like that just happened, you know.

[15:49] So, but if I'd even a biologist, you know, who would deny maybe you know if you pin them down when nature acts for an end, but when they're thinking, they they act as if it did, right? And they find something. They say,

[16:03] "What's that for? " And you know. You know what's his name? The guy you read out there, Harvey, right? Huh? Harvey was very much taken up with belief that nature does make for an end. So this helped him define that eventually the circulation of blood, right? Because some things you wonder what is this for, and then had a connection with the fact that blood is circulating, keeping blood from flowing back.

[16:35] So in practice, they they often act as if they, you know. But in a sense, I mean, they had a you know a little mental dishonesty there. In a sense, and it's like saying you know, well, it is useful in research to act as if nature is acting for an end.

[17:08] People out there, you know, like my old professor Kasurik. One time he's down some philosophical meeting there in Chicago, and Kasurik is kind of a tough guy, you know, and he's pitting the speaker of his down the corner, you know, and he's got the guy in a contradiction now, right? Kerseric says, "Okay," he says, "Now you contradicted yourself. What are you going to do?" And the guy said, "Well, that's a contradiction I've learned to live with."

[17:39] Yeah, yeah. I was in the in the metaphysics this this week there in the beginning of the second book, right? And Aristotle is considering, you know, whether knowing truth is easy or difficult for man. He's going to that, right? And so I said to them, you know, Aristotle assumes that man is able to know the truth, huh? See. And so he goes to the question, you know, whether it's easy or difficult for him to know the truth, huh?

[18:08] See. Now shouldn't he have considered, known, whether man is able to know the truth? I was trying to see if they could see why Aristotle doesn't do that, right? Why Aristotle would say probably it's laughable, right, to ask that question, partly because we're sure that we do know some truth. One of my favorite recent examples is you know statements exist, true or false.

[18:37] And even the man who says statements do not exist, right, has made a statement. So I mean, there's some things that obviously are true that we know, huh? Like the whole is more than a part, and so on. And so to try to prove what is obvious is is laughable, huh?

[18:58] But likewise, you know, someone investigates now whether man is able to know the truth. Isn't he assuming that man can know the truth about that question, right? Okay, or is he assuming at least that

[19:16] man is able to investigate the question? That's true. Either he can't know that he, he can know the truth, or can't know that he can't know the truth, is that he'd be knowing some truth, right? You know.

[19:39] It's like those people in ethics, you know, who want to reason out whether we should do by reason or by our emotions. Well, if they want to really enter into that conversation seriously, then they're accepting reason, right? As having the right to decide whether we should live by reason or by our emotions, so we're already admitting in a way that reason we should live by reason. It's

[20:11] like those who deny the axiom of contradiction because they think they found something that contradicts it. Okay. So any other questions? Actually, this this question is it may just be I think it's just that I missed this months ago. Just a whole bit about um and and I also understand you're probably not really covering this now, but you mentioned last time about the first argument against nature acting for an end.

[20:48] You mentioned that um that it breaks down because nature doesn't have a mind because a mind. This is my question now that mind is unlimited. As Anaxagoras I think Anaxagoras said. Yeah, I missed the whole demonstration about mind is unlimited. I mean. Yeah, it's something we took up when we were reading the fragments of Yeah, it's the whole fragment DK12 there of Anaxagoras, which is about mind, huh?

[21:19] And he says many different things about the mind, right? But the first thing he says about the mind is that it's unlimited, huh? Now, when he says the mind is unlimited,

[21:33] you want to first of all see that he doesn't mean the mind is unlimited in the way in which he and others had been saying matter is unlimited. For example, Anaximenes thought that air went on and on and on and on, right up and up and up, right? Okay. So you might think of unlimited in the sense of something that um you know in every direction goes on forever, right?

[22:05] Okay. Okay. Now later on he's going to say mind is the thinnest of things. Ah. So he's not obviously thinking of mind as being unlimited in the way in which a body, right, be that went on forever in every direction, right? Okay. Um. Nor because he has one mind is he thinking of the mind as being um an infinite or unlimited multitude, right? Okay. Which is a position Anaxagoras had about matter, right?

[22:38] The size of matter, there's infinity of infinitely small pieces of everything, right? Okay. Okay. Um. But again, if there were a multitude, it would be the thinnest of things. Okay. But again, he's only positing one mind. So what does he mean then when he says the mind is unlimited? I'm sorry, I got to ask. What do you mean? He's positing only one mind, only one mind. The greater mind he's talking about.

[23:05] Fragment, yeah. Greater mind. Okay, okay. So in what sense is he saying the mind is unlimited? Well, we have to approach it through our own mind, which is more known to us, huh? And as he says at the end of the fragment there, DK12, every mind is similar, right? The greater and the lesser, right? So we start from our own mind, right? In what sense is our mind unlimited, right?

[23:37] Well, basically, what what is the genus of the mind, right? The genus of the mind, what it is in general, is an ability we have, an ability to do something. Okay. So

[23:53] mind is an ability to know, know something. Okay. Now where do we see something unlimited in the ability of the mind to know? Well, you have to go to the object of the mind, right? What it knows, huh? Okay. And the mind is an ability to know the universal.

[24:27] Now what is the universal? The universal is what is common to many and set of many, huh? And you can see that some universals, like for example, odd number, right, are common to how many things or set of how many things? Infinity of things, right? And so is even number, right? And number is set of even more, right? And if you understand that something is not nothing, you must understand something as well as nothing, right?

[25:06] And something is set of everything, yeah. So because the mind is able to know the universal, right? Right. It's an ability to know universal, and universal covers an infinity of things. That's one way that the mind is clearly what unlimited, right? Okay. Okay.

[25:26] Now they're also pointing to the mind's ability to go on forever with numbers, right? Okay. So my children were amazed I could count to a hundred one hundred eight, right? And later on, they're amazed I could count to a thousand, right? But the mind can go on forever, right? Okay.

[25:46] And of course, there's outside signs of this too that our mind is always what. Inventing a new thing like a automobile or an airplane or a atom bomb or a computer, right? Or it's in inventing these, but reinventing them, right, a new way. So we redesign the airplane, or we, you know, design automobile, or the, you know, computer. I mean, it's out of date before you, you buy it, right?

[26:14] Before you bring it home. Before you bring it home, they got a new one that's more powerful or can do, you know, twenty things more or something, right? Or hundred things more, whatever it is. You see, so in if you compare man with the bee, the bee makes these wonderful beehives, and they notice the reasonableness of, you know, the hexagon there in in combining these things. But the bees are making these beehives the same way they did when the Greeks described them.

[26:48] You see, so there's kind of a limitation there, okay? Right. In the same way, you know, with the insects that we were talking about in class a little bit, insects do one or two things very intelligently, it seems. But you get them out of that, and they they're they're lost, right? Again, a sign of the infinity of our mind is language, huh? As opposed to these natural signs, groans and grunts and screams, oh, groans and yadda yadda and so on.

[27:17] Um, but you know, I guess there's a variety of meows in the cats, but they're limited, right? See, but language has a kind of infinity about which you can express in language. There seems to be no no end to that, huh?

[27:38] But the you know if you look inwardly, you really see the basis of the infinity of the mind. It's an ability to know the universal, and you can see that the mind, in a way, is open to everything. I mean, even you say, "I don't know everything." You understand, in some way, by the word "everything." Everything, don't you? Oh. Maybe a confused way, right? But it shows that your mind, in a sense, is open to everything.

[28:04] Even to say you don't know everything. If I say I'm not open to everything, what do you mean? Not open to it? What do you mean by everything? I mean some things. No, I mean everything.

[28:21] So it's kind of infinity there that the mind has, huh? In its ability, right? Not in its size or multitude, huh? That's one way they reason later on that the only thing that can satisfy the mind is what seeing God, huh? We need something unlimited, right?

[28:51] So in chapter about 43 of the first book, the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas gives ten. Reasons why God is infinite, but later on we see in the third book, right, that this unlimited ability can only be satisfied by an unlimited object, right?

[29:14] So God's the only thing that will satisfy our mind. Okay. so let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of Natural Hearing.

[29:40] Everybody got a copy of the third book of Natural Hearing I put in parentheses "physics" because it's usually referred to and translated as physics, but it's not really a very good translation. Translate means to carry over, right? The Greek word phusis means nature. It would have been better if they called it nature than physics. It'd be more clear in English, right? Because the word nature is, and its origin with birth is kind of there are signs of that in English, right?

[30:21] Prenatal, postnatal, nativity, and so on, right? But physics you don't see that connection with birth, so completely lost the origin of the word with the word physics. Plus the fact that physics today is the name for experimental science, right? The actual Greek thing is Physikes Akroaseos, which is the word hearing. Phusikēs, natural hearing. That Greek word hearing could also have the sense of lectures, you know. I like to keep the the title natural hearing, and

[31:00] I see a lot in that title. The eight books of natural hearing. Why do you call it natural hearing? Well, one because you're hearing about natural things.

[31:29] And two, you're listening to nature as a student listens to his teacher. I think I mentioned that Immanuel Kant, on the second preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, he has two very interesting proportions, right?

[32:10] And he's talking about experimental science, Newtonian physics, which he was an Newtonian physicist, and he's saying that in physics or in science, there our reason learns from nature, but not in the way that a student learns from his teacher.

[32:38] He says our reason learns from nature in the way that the judge, or we could say the lawyer too, I suppose, learns from the witness.

[32:52] I think it's very interesting those two proportions, huh? Now. Newton, huh? Not Newton. Kant, huh? Kant thinks that that's the only way to learn from nature, as a what? Judge or lawyer learns from the witness, huh?

[33:21] Now I think, huh? That in the beginning of our study of the natural world, right? We should learn from nature as a student learns from his teacher.

[33:36] But later on, maybe we have to learn in that second way, as a judge or a lawyer learns from the what? Witness, huh? Okay.

[33:49] Um. So I see the the two proportions there of Kant is useful, but he's trying to choose one rather than the other, right? And I say we should learn from both in both ways of nature, but first in the way that a student learns from his teacher. Now the student listens to everything his teacher has to say, even though he may have a hard time absorbing it all.

[34:20] The judge or lawyer doesn't say the witness, you know, when he gets up in the thing. Let him say whatever he wants to say. See, teacher comes into class. He's got a prison audience in front of theirs, as they say, and he can say more or less what he wants to say, right? For a while, anyway. And and and the student, you know, listens to whatever the teacher has to say, huh?

[34:41] But the lawyer and the judge don't allow the witness to get on the stand there and say whatever he wants to say. No, he's what? To answer only those questions that are put to him, right? And he's supposed to answer those questions.

[34:58] Well, I think there's some truth to what Kant said there, right? I think that's what we do, in fact, in experimental science, huh? When we perform an experiment, right? We have a particular question in mind, right? And want to get an answer from nature, if possible, to that one particular question. Okay. As Louis de Broglie, the father of wave mechanics, says, if we had asked other questions, maybe our science would have gone another direction, right?

[35:27] Okay. And you know, I was reading, you know, a book one time by one of these trial lawyers, right? He's saying you don't go into courtroom and ask the the witness questions at random. He says that's a very dangerous thing to do. You've got to go in with already a plan of exactly what you're going to ask that witness, huh? Because if we don't do that, you're as likely to get him to say something that's going to hurt your case.

[35:57] He has the other, right? It's interesting, right? And that's why Schrödinger, right, one of his essays says, "Is science the fashion of the times?" Right? And he's talking about the fact that we don't ask, and in fact, we can ask, right? All the questions we could ask, right? And so only certain things are coming to light. The things that we decide to be enlightened on. You see?

[36:35] But in the beginning here, we're listening to nature in the philosophy of nature in the eight books of natural hearing. We're listening to nature as a student listens to his teacher, and that's the importance of the word "hearing," because as you know from the "Proemium to Wisdom" we read before, huh? That's the standard contrast between sight and hearing. Huh? Sight is a sense more discovery by yourself, and hearing is a sense of learning from your teacher.

[37:05] That's why you know Thomas is always quoting Saint Paul there. Fides ex auditu, right? Faith is from hearing, right? Okay. And the fragment of Heraclitus here is very interesting, huh? I think I've quoted that before. Heraclitus is a central thinker of human thought. Heraclitus says, "Wisdom is to speak the truth and to act in accord with nature." He says, "Giving ear there too." See how compact that is.

[37:47] Giving ear there too, huh? In the experiment, you might almost say you're learning. You're more observing what nature does when you act upon in this way, right? Not simply sitting down listening to nature, huh?

[38:08] So that's another reason why we call it natural listening, right? You're listening to nature, right? Okay. That's why you know we're not wanting to lose anything of this. What's suggested by this? The very title, right? Eight books of Physikes Akroaseos huh? Which we're hearing. Phusikēs, natural hearing, right?

[38:42] Now, third thing that we've seen already in our reading of the first book and so on, huh? You're listening to things that are very close to what you naturally know.

[39:06] You're listening to say with and through what is naturally known. I'll go back a moment to the tenth reading there in the first book.

[39:36] As you recall, in the second reading, first of all, Aristotle gives a logical division of all his predecessors say they're all saying something different, right? But then in the eighth reading, he finds a common basis among those who said there was one matter, and a common basis among those who said there are many matters, right? And then in the beginning of the tenth reading, he. finds. A common basis shared by all of them, right?

[40:04] And he points out that this common basis, which is the changes between contraries, changes between opposites, right? That this thought seems to be forced on our mind, he says, by truth itself.

[40:22] It seems that anybody who who thinks about change will come up with some pair of opposites. It doesn't seem to be an hypothesis, as Einstein understands hypothesis. Einstein says that hypothesis is freely imagined. Well, contrast that now with the phrase that Aristotle uses for his thought: the changes between contraries or opposites. It seems to be forced on the mind by truth itself. Something you naturally almost think of, huh?

[41:01] Of course, at that point, as you remember, I usually stop and pause, and I say, "Now, what major civilization was the furthest removed from Greece at this time that Aristotle is writing these things? " China. It was the Chinese civilization, right?

[41:21] The other two major civilizations, the old Middle East and India, there was a little bit of contact, right, with them and the Greeks, but China was. Now, it's an old saying that East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, right? And a lot of truth to that, obviously, customs in the East and the West. But you go to the I Ching, right, which is the book of changes, the book that Confucius said if you'd add another ten years to his life he'd spend them studying the I Ching.

[41:52] So it's kind of a Chinese classic about change, but it's all based upon contraries or opposites, the Yin and the Yang, right, represented by the broken line and the unbroken line. So, unbeknownst to Aristotle, the time that he's finding a common thought shared by all the Greeks that seems to be forced on their mind by truth itself, the Chinese have got the same thought. So here, East and West meet, right?

[42:20] Then you go to the moderns, right? And you see, you know, for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, as Newton says, huh? Or as Einstein, in the Evolution of Physics there, he quotes the great physicist Helmholtz that we still read a lot. But he's trying to explain everything by attraction and repulsion, right?

[42:43] And the solar system is explained by centrifugal and centripetal forces, right? And the atom by what? Contrary forces, nuclear forces that are holding the protons together because they're trying to. Spread out, okay. So that's an example of how you're close to what we kind of actually know, right? And Aristotle speaks of them as all saying that without giving a reason. He goes on to give a reason for it.

[43:13] That's part of the way he's becoming strong in this, right? But he says they all said without giving a reason, as if being forced by the truth itself, something that you naturally think. Just like the idea that a whole is more than a part. Everybody, east and west, ancient and modern, has that in his head, right? It seems to be something we either naturally know or naturally come to know.

[43:40] An avoidable, right? Okay. So what characterizes the eight books of natural hearing is not that what you know there is all naturally known, right? And you have to think things out, right, and reason things out, right. But you're very close to what we what naturally what understand, okay? So that's three ways that our hearing is natural, right? We're hearing about the natural, right? We're we're hearing or listening to nature as a, but much more so than scientists does, although he does too, right?

[44:22] But we're listening to nature. Do you find proportion there, as a student listens to his teacher, right? In the way that the great Heraclitus said, we should listen to him, listen to nature. And then what? We're listening to it with our natural understanding, right?

[44:53] So I have to keep the original words here in the Greek, you know. Eight books of natural hearing. That's in the Greek I guess. Is there a different word in Greek for hearing and listening?

[45:12] It probably is, but I think akroasis is really the word for hearing, right? Yeah. I don't know if Stichas uses that or not. In terms of the commentary, sometimes he touches upon the the Greek. I mean, I mean the Latin equivalent of Greek, right? It's auditus huh Auditus in English. Yeah.

[45:45] So especially in that first book, but that's the foundation of it, right? Especially in that first book, though, you're you're very close to what you naturally understand, huh? You said when we went through. Second book, or at

[46:02] the beginning, the definition of nature that Aristotle gave there was in circling. Yeah. Yeah. What is or a strict definition? Well, you're getting closer to nature when you realize it's both matter and form, right? And you start to understand what matter and form are. Okay. Not that you understand them too well either, but you're getting more into what nature is, huh? As you go from that definition to matter and form.

[46:37] So the reason why I sometimes do that—that definition of nature—before we go into Book One, right? Even though it's later Aristotle's thing, is because when we start to find out what's found in every change, right? Like in ten and eleven there, or in twelve and thirteen, what's found in every becoming, right? You see how that's relevant to natural science once you see the definition of nature. Aristotle is going to do the same thing here because he's going to begin now the investigation, the definition of motion, huh?

[47:11] But that's relevant to natural philosophy is seen from the very definition of nature. So he recalls, you know, part of the definition. Since nature, he says, is the beginning of motion and change, and the road we are following is about nature.

[47:32] What motion is ought not to be hidden from us, huh? For this being unknown, necessarily nature is unknown. See. Of course, in a confused way, we know what motion is, right? So he had some understanding when he heard the definition of nature, huh?

[47:53] But if we don't know what, more distinctly, what motion is, we don't know really distinctly, right? Nature as much as we can know, right? Okay.

[48:07] And you know, yeah, something like that in other books of Aristotle, you know, like in the Nicomachean Ethics, right? When you define happiness in the first book, you Aristotle uses the Greek word perigraphic, right? To draw a line around happiness, huh? But in the very definition of happiness, you eventually have the word virtue. It's man's own act, huh? According to virtue throughout life, and then you say, well, we got to investigate human virtue now, right?

[48:41] To see more clearly what happiness is. And so he spends, you know, many many books going through the human virtues, and then in Book Ten he comes back, right, and takes up the definition of happiness again, right, and sees in what. virtues, does it chiefly consist, huh? and then he distinguishes the two what kinds of happiness, right? The human happiness, which is based on what virtue of foresight, and ultimately the foresight of Winston Churchill, right, the political leader, and then wisdom, right, more divine happiness.

[49:22] Okay, but he has to have gone through the virtues, right, the moral virtues and the virtues of reason, right, before he can see more clearly. Man's own act according to virtue throughout life definition of happiness. would you say? Yeah, we can take up ethics. I don't want to defend that right now, but just make a similar point, right? That sometimes

[49:47] we define something, and one part of the definition we know in a confused way, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But after that definition, we see the importance of investigating that. Part of the definition and knowing distinctly what it is, huh? Yeah. Now I was giving the students, you know, Shakespeare's exhortation to use reason, right? I tell them it's blank first. I know what blank first is, no? Okay. What's unrhymed iambic pentameter?

[50:18] Now you know what iambus is, you see? But I mean, you know, you wouldn't see the reason why iamb is important for talking about the exhortation there, right? What's written, unless you had seen that what? That's the definition of blank verse, and exhortation is written in blank verse. Okay. So that happens sometimes, huh?

[50:47] So when I come into class, introduction to philosophy, the first day, say, anybody know what a philosopher is? But sometimes you have somebody who hears something, but he's a lover of wisdom. That's what the word means, right? That's the first definition of the introduction to philosophy class. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom. But that raises the question, what is wisdom, right? And then we go to the proemium wisdom to find out a little bit about what wisdom is, right?

[51:16] Say. But but strictly speaking, you'd say the definition of wisdom is before the definition of philosopher in the sense that, you know, since a philosopher is a lover of wisdom, we don't know what a philosopher is. we don't know what wisdom is, right? Since nature is the beginning and cause of motion, we don't know what nature is unless we know what motion is.

[51:42] But again, you know, you can you know qualify that a bit and say, if you know in a confused way what motion is, you can know in some way what nature is, or you can know what nature is, right? But if you know in a more distinct way what motion is, you know more fully, right? So you've got a very easy idea. of. What wisdom is? You know, in a very easy way, what a philosopher is.

[52:04] Don't you find out what it is? Okay? Sometimes I give them the paper. You know, does a philosopher love wisdom too much? Seven wise men met at the Oracle of Delphi, and they said, "Meden agan nothing too much." The philosopher is loving wisdom for its own sake, more than anything else. The philosopher's own sake, the very end of his life, the reason for his living.

[52:39] Reminds me of just flipping through a little book, you know, on marriage, right? You know, books around the house there, some gave us, and it has all kinds of quotes of people on marriage, right? But had one that purports to be from Socrates. I don't know. No, I see that it's Socrates. It says, "By all means, marry," he says. If you marry a good woman, you'll be happy," he says.

[53:03] "If you marry a bad woman, you'll become a philosopher." I've told my colleagues. I don't. know. I've never seen this in there. you know, You know some of these quotes you can't trust them. in. These books, you know, kind of popular books, but you know, he's supposed to have been married to a shrew, you know, say, you know, but the question is, you know, whether he became a philosopher because she was a shrew, or she became a shrew because he was a philosopher, and not bringing the bacon home, you know, his husband is walking around Athens, you know, talking, not making any money or bringing anything home, and and eventually getting into trouble for all this talking he's doing.

[53:38] so he might have Okay. So, notice the emphasis there on the first paragraph, then, right? That's we got to talk about motion now. Now, those determining about motion ought to try to go through in the same way the things which follow upon motion,

[54:11] for motion seems to be among the continuous things, and the unlimited first appears in the continuous, huh? Now, it's the sixth book of Natural Hearing, where you have the whole philosophy of the continuous. Okay, and later on we're going to do a little bit from the sixth book. In fact, a lot from the Book Six, huh? Okay,

[54:45] but the definition of the continuous, huh? The definition of the continuous that you will meet in Book Six is that the continuous is what is divisible

[55:10] forever. Okay. The continuous is what is divisible forever, infinitely. So, like a a mathematical straight line, continuous in one direction, right? You can cut that in half, and you can cut the half in half, and you can go on forever. But that's going to be proven in Book What Six, right? So, something unlimited, right? Something infinite, if you wish, in the continuous, huh? And Aristotle is saying motion is something what continuous, right?

[55:56] So that's why in the second part of this third book, he takes up the unlimited, huh? But you really see the way that motion is unlimited or continuous more fully in Book Six, right? More appropriately,

[56:12] Aristotle there will show that not only is the line, let's say, continuous, but the motion down the line is continuous, and the time it takes to go down the line, right, is divisible forever. Okay, and as many ways we'll see of showing that, huh? But one way just mentioned here, interestingly, where he shows that distance and time are divisible forever. He says we all know that some bodies are faster than others.

[56:52] Okay. Of course, the faster body covers the same distance in what less time, and the slower body in the same time covers what less distance. Now just take those two truths that we all know, and you can reason from them that the distance must be divisible forever, and the what time forever, right? So let's say the slow body goes this distance, right,

[57:29] in this time. Okay. Then the faster body is going to go this distance in what less time. I don't care how much less, but less time, right?

[57:47] Now, if the slower body in this whole time went this distance, in that lesser time, the the faster body goes that same distance, it won't have gone the whole distance, will it

[58:00] Well that's got to be divided, right? Now, if the faster body in this time here went this whole distance, then this lesser distance it must have gone in what lesser time? Lesser time, right?

[58:19] Now, if the slower body went this distance in that time, even lesser time, can't go the same distance, otherwise it would be just as fast, wouldn't it? So it's got to go even lesser distance. You see how they're divisible? What forever, right? Because now the lesser distance, and so on. They just using those two things, huh? Okay.

[58:52] So he says the unlimited first appears in the continuous. Hence, it takes place that those define the continuous. It should be used, I guess. Not uses. Use many times the notion of the unlimited, as the continuous is what is divisible without what limit, right?

[59:14] Now, in addition to these things, motion is impossible without place, and the empty. Now, when he says the empty, he doesn't think that you need the empty for motion. So why does he say it here?

[59:33] Other people thought it. Yeah. Now Thomas Aquinas, who's the best student Aristotle ever had, and the best commentator, right? He points out that before Aristotle takes up some subject, right, before he tries to determine the truth about some subject, right, he'll often speak according to the thinking. Of his what General his compatriots, right? General notion Okay. So in the fourth book of Natural Hearing, he takes up place, right?

[1:00:10] First, which he thinks there is such a thing, right? Then takes up the empty and shows it that doesn't exist, right? And then he takes up time, right? Okay.

[1:00:24] One of the first places I remember where Thomas was talking about that thing in Aristotle was in the beginning of the *Nicomachean Ethics*. Aristotle was saying, you know, that every art and every science and so on seems to aim at some good, you know, but different arts and different sciences aim at different goods and so on. And he gives a bunch of examples, right? Like the medical art aims at health, the household art aims at wealth.

[1:00:50] That was commonly said among the Greeks, right? Okay. But in the first book of the *Politics*, when he takes up the house, he denies that and reasons against wealth being the end of the household art. That's a merely instrument, right? That's not the end or purpose of it, huh? You see? But you wouldn't know that from the other part, right? See? So it's not that Aristotle has changed his opinion, right?

[1:01:15] Right. But that he's using an example not to prove something, right? But to illustrate something, an example that his audience would be what? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. See, they would see that as illustrating that sort of a thing, right? Okay.

[1:01:38] Now he's giving a reason up to this point in the paragraph for considering not only motion, but for considering the what the unlimited or the continuous, and for considering place and time, right? Okay. Because they're all connected with motion.

[1:02:00] The most common kind of motion is change of place, right? But even for what alteration, right? I want to you know blacken or darken my bread to toast, right? I've got to carry it over and put it in the thing, right? Okay. I want to get warm. I got to walk over to the fire, right? Okay.

[1:02:27] So alteration presupposes change of place too. If I want to grow, you got to eat. You got to take the food and put it in your mouth. So place seems to be common, right? To any kind of change in some way, huh? And of course, motion would seem to take what time, right? Huh? Okay. So notice what he's reasoning. He's reasoning that because philosophy of nature. Or as Shakespeare calls it, the wisdom of nature, right?

[1:03:00] I like the amphiboly of the wisdom of nature, as I explained with that title, right? Because the wisdom of nature, in the sense of the philosophy of nature, is about the wisdom of nature, in the sense of the wisdom that nature shows or reveals and what it does, right? Which is something of the divine wisdom, right? Okay. So in Heraclitus, says, you know, wisdom is to speak the truth, meaning looking philosophy, and to act, which is practical philosophy, in accord with nature, right?

[1:03:33] Giving ear there too, right? As if nature is wise, and we have to learn from nature. And only a fool would think he's wiser than nature, which shows how many fools there are today, right?

[1:03:50] Um. So because natural philosophy is about things that are by nature, and nature is defined by motion, then you have to consider motion, right? But the continuous and place and time are all tied up with motion, right? So therefore, you have to consider those things as as well, right?

[1:04:14] And then he gives a second reason why we have to consider those things. He says it is clear then that on account of these things, because they're all connected with motion, which is in the definition of nature, right? You have to consider these things, and because they're also what? Common to all, right? Universal, right? We're considering natural things in general, aren't we? As we saw in the beginning of the book.

[1:04:43] And everything in the natural world is somewhere, right? At some time, right? Of course, the Greeks had a common opinion that whatever it is must be somewhere, right? If it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist, right?

[1:05:06] But to be somewhere is really a property of what? Bodies, right? Huh? But they thought that all that was at first was bodies, right? Okay. But of course, we're in natural philosophy, or not in wisdom, which is about all things. We're about we're natural philosophy. It's about natural things, and the natural things all seem to be in some place, right? At some time, right? So place and time seem to be common to all these, but natural things.

[1:05:38] So if this knowledge is about natural things in general, these are common to all natural things. That's another reason to take them up, right?