Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
49. Defining Motion: Descartes, Locke and Aristotle's Act of the Able
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/049-defining-motion-descartes-locke-and-aristotles-act-of-the/

[0:00] Okay. You see the two reasons, huh? One is that natural philosophy is about things that are by nature, and nature, of course, is defined by motion. Therefore, it's about motion, and these things are all connected with motion. Right? Our natural philosophy is about what's common to all natural things. These are all common to natural things. Therefore, right? Two very good reasons, right? For taking these things up, huh?

[0:25] Kind of funny, huh? One time I had an advanced course in philosophy of nature, right? And wasn't able to keep it because we didn't have enough students. But I entitled the course when I submitted it: motion, place, time. Exactly the order Aristotle does. Motion in book three, and then book four, he takes up place and time. Motion, place, time. On the course schedule, it's about space, time, motion.

[0:57] The modern fixation, right? You know, who did it? You know, stop bitter or something, or you know, computer translated it. See, but Aristotle is very clear here. You know, the first reason he gives why we take up place—not space, but place—he says, right? Yeah. The reason why we take up place and time is because they're connected with motion, right? And motion is taken up before them, so.

[1:26] Yeah. That's why I named my course motion, place, time. You guys saw how ingrained these customs are, huh? You see, you know, people can't. Well, Shakespeare says, "Custom is a tyrant," he calls it. It is very much a tyrant, huh? You know, it rules your mind for its own good, not for the good of your mind. Yeah.

[1:56] It's kind of funny, you know. People are always talking about having an open mind, you know. And they really, you know, their mind is closed by customs so much, huh?

[2:09] What's going down the hall there? Something happened in his office door there. A closed mind is a good thing to lose. But I think the word conclusion, you know, comes from the word closed, right?

[2:30] So the mind is not closed to anything. It's never what come to any conclusion. It's never really come to know anything. But you know, I mean, it's what the mind is closed by that's the question, right? If my mind is closed to this by custom, yeah. Um, that's bad, right? Yeah. See,

[3:08] Aristotle in the second book of wisdom, there he talks about how. Men want you to speak in the way in which they are what accustomed, right? Say, and in other way seems strange and foreign, right?

[3:26] And what you'll see, you know, is how, um, like you're on a college committee of some sort, and you have professors from different what disciplines, and they they approach the same thing in different ways because of their what their customary way of proceeding, right? And you know, I mean, Heisenberg and the great physicists of the 20th century, they saw that even within physics, you have to learn maybe was as Heisenberg put it very clearly, huh?

[3:58] You may have to learn a new way of understanding, right, or a new meaning of the word understanding. You see, but a fortiori, even within physics, right, as you go from from relativity, I mean, from Newtonian physics to to relativity theory, or from Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics, huh? Quantum physics.

[4:19] The way of understanding becomes so different, right? That it seems to be a new meaning of the word understand. But therefore, if you go from that, to, trying to understand the poem, or trying to understand the soul, or trying to understand this, right? You know, just, just can't, huh?

[4:48] Aristotle was something of an experimental scientist, right? And Charles Darwin, you know, admired him as a biologist, huh? And when Darwin read Aristotle, when they made a new translation of him there in the 19th century, there, and Darwin wrote the the translator, right, and said, you know, that Linnaeus and Cuvier had been my heroes, he said, but they were mere schoolboys compared to Aristotle. That's a strong thing, you know.

[5:21] Well, yeah, you know Aristotle, at least my friend Warren Murray says, you know, Theophrastus, you know, who was the man who succeeded Aristotle in the school there. He says Theophrastus was not as good a philosopher as Aristotle. In fact, you know, but he was a better experimental scientist. I mean, the the the you know customary way of proceeding is so different, huh?

[5:50] So now we could plunge into Aristotle here, or we could stand back for a moment, right? Aristotle's going to work his way here now towards a definition of motion, huh? But the father of modern philosophy, so called, Rene

[6:27] Descartes, right? He thinks it's impossible to define motion. Okay. And in his one of his works, there he quotes in a kind of garbled version the definition of motion. He says, "Who understands that? "

[6:57] Well, not very many, including you. And so he thinks that Aristotle is is trying to define something that everybody knows what it is. Okay.

[7:16] Now, perhaps. Part of Descartes' problem is something we saw earlier in the course, right? That he identifies certitude with clarity and what distinction, right?

[7:37] And perhaps by a third figure enthymeme, right? Mathematics is more certain, right, than the other sciences, which it is. It's more precise than the other sciences, right? So this seems to be a sign that precision, distinction, and certitude go what together, right? Okay.

[8:03] Well, as we saw before, Aristotle argues that the confused is is is more known to us, huh? Than the distinct, and what's more known to us is something more about.

[8:24] So he has a syllogism, right? First figure, to prove that. But, you can see the weakness of Descartes' argument, huh? Because the third figure enthymeme is not too strong, right? An example in Aristotle's rhetoric there, but third figure enthymeme is that Socrates is just. Socrates is a philosopher. Therefore, philosophers are just. Berquist is Swedish. Berquist is a philosopher. Therefore, philosophers are just. I mean, are Swedish? You know, I mean, it's a weak argument, right?

[9:11] Though we use it sometimes, it doesn't mean it's. Well, Aristotle is a syllogism of what he's saying, huh? Now, maybe Descartes too is is is um

[9:26] confusing what is clear to us with what is clear. So you gave me a glass of dry red wine to drink, right? It might be clear to me that I am drinking a dry red wine, but not clear to me that I am drinking Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, 1956. But that this is Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, 1956 is much more what clear than just a dry red wine, huh?

[10:04] But not to me. So you may be confusing, right? That determination in the object with determination of our mind, huh? Okay. Um but it seems, you know, if you stop and just consider, that one is in fact more sure the confused than the distinct. What's this table made out of?

[10:39] Okay, but you know, I have a waste paper basket that looks like wood, but it's not really wood, you know. They have a lot of things now that kind of fool you, right?

[10:49] So the more precise you try to be, the less what? certain you are, right? Now, if Descartes made a big mistake here, as we've mentioned before, there's two kinds of mistakes that he can get into because of that. He can think that if he's very sure about something, he must know it clearly and distinctly, because they go together, right? And the the fact that he he makes that kind of mistake is seen when he talks about thinking, right?

[11:32] And thought, because he's very sure that he's thinking. I think therefore I am, right? The famous think of Descartes, which you know, Augustine had used before against the the academics, right? I think therefore I am is not original to Descartes. Uh, Saint Augustine used it against the the later academics who were skeptics, huh? And you know, some people attack Descartes, and say, well, you stole that from from Augustine, you know.

[11:58] And but Augustine didn't try to base all his thinking upon that, and Descartes tried to do that, right? Okay, but but okay, you're very sure that you're thinking, but does that mean you know clearly and distinctly what thinking is or what a thought is? No, see, and Descartes assumes that he knows clearly and distinctly what a thought is because he knows he has thoughts. They say.

[12:28] Sometimes in class they say, you know, we're all sure there's a difference between men and women, right? But you try to say exactly the difference is, then you get into, you know, somewhere doubtful, right? You see? But vice versa, when Descartes got into the mathematical science of nature, he started giving these mathematical hypotheses. They were so clear that he tended to think that they must be what?

[12:59] True, right? Okay. That's part of the reason why these these conspiratorial theories, right? You know, often what? Persuade. Persuade people because. It's really remarkable how stupid people are sometimes, right? And even for their own interests, right? And they'd make much more sense, much more clear if they were purposely trying to betray the country, you know.

[13:40] But people muck through an awful lot, and they do a lot of very inconsistent things, and so on, right? You see, things are not as clear as they would

[13:56] could be, right? Okay. So Descartes, I think, is influenced again by his general position. There, we're very sure that there's motion. Therefore, we must know clearly and distinctly what motion is, right? It doesn't follow, right?

[14:36] The fact that that we're sure about motion might, if anything, be a sign that maybe we don't know too clearly what it is. Like we're sure we're alive, right? But exactly what life is is not too easy to say.

[14:59] Now, as you say, Descartes is often called the father of modern philosophy, and he's the first of the philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries who are called the rationalists, right? And he's followed by Spinoza as a rationalist, and then by Leibniz, right? But they all have a mathematical bent, the rationalists. The rationalists, in the sense of mathematics,

[15:32] a science that to some extent is independent even of experience, right? Now, then you have on the other side in the 17th, 18th century the philosophers that they call not rationalists but empiricists, right? And they're mainly the British philosophers, and usually they start with Bacon, right? Who's almost a contemporary of Shakespeare, right? But who's a propagandist for experimental science, right? Knowledge is power, right? Okay. And then later on, you have Locke and Berkeley and Hume, right?

[16:08] And finding Mill, right? Okay. And they're called empiricists, but from the what Greek word for experience, huh? And they're men who have not so much trust in reason, right? But want to get experience more, right? Okay.

[16:35] And then you know, starting with Kant and going on from Kant all the way to Einstein, right? That kind of sets the parameters of their discussion, right? You know, Einstein says the whole question is what is the role of experience and what is the role of reason? You know, there's some combination of the two, right? In science, they're trying to understand you know the relative role of the two, right?

[16:58] But those first ones there seems to be a little bit of of one-sidedness, right? Okay. An emphasis upon what reason can accomplish even independent of experience, huh? Which you see design.

[17:15] And then a kind of dependence upon experience to the point of almost distrusting reason, right? A bit, huh? Of course, here's a reason to distrust reason a bit, but experience is not enough, right? Sometimes they think, you know, that make it exaggerated. The extent even experimental science to which experience could give rise, you know, to experimental science You just make it more and more experience and more than the topic science isn't it the way at all.

[17:45] But anyway, now one of the famous empiricists, of course, is John Locke, right? Who has some disagreements with Descartes, which we won't go into now. But Locke also rejects the idea of a definition of motion, and he gives more of a reason, maybe, than Descartes, because he divides our ideas into simple ideas and composed ideas, and the composed ideas can be what defined, right, by their parts, but the simple ideas cannot be defined, and motion is a simple idea.

[18:25] Therefore, there'd be no definition of motion, right? Okay. Now, now a more general statement underlies the thinking of Descartes, perhaps, and John Locke, a statement that is by no means original with them, right?

[19:00] And that is that not everything can, and not everything should be known by definition. Sorry, I'm sorry, Miss Linda. I say there's a statement underlying, to some extent, the thinking of both Descartes and of Locke, but a statement that is by no means original with them, right? A statement which Aristotle made before them, that not everything can be defined, right? And not everything should be defined, right?

[19:36] That there are some things that are known without definition, okay? And if there wasn't something known without definition, you couldn't define it all. Aristotle, of course, sees that even more clearly than Descartes or or Locke, right? And it's similar to what we have with statements, huh? Reasoning, if you recall the definition of reasoning, reasoning. Is coming to know or guess a statement through other statements, right? And if you come to know in strict sense a statement through other statements, those other statements have to be what known already, okay?

[20:30] Now, if every statement was known through other statements, if every statement was in need of being known through other statements, would you ever know any statements?

[20:51] This would go on what forever, right? In fact, you couldn't begin to know any statements because the statements you use to prove any statement, someone would say, well, prove those before you use those, and then prove the ones that you use to prove those. So you couldn't begin at all, right? So unless there are some statements known without proof by other statements, right? No statements would be known, and of course there are some statements known.

[21:27] We say through themselves, meaning not through others, right? So if you understand what an odd number is and what an even number is, it's obvious that no odd number is even, right? If you understand what a whole is and what a part is, it's clear that a whole is more than one of its parts, right? And so, so statements that are known, right,

[21:53] without having to be proven by the statements that are the beginning of all of our knowledge of statements, huh? And so, in a way, the the problem of knowing in the strict sense now, knowing the truth of statements, depends upon what working your way back to those beginning statements, and then building your way up from them, right? Okay, so if you prove something by syllogism from them, you can use that to prove something else, maybe, right?

[22:29] It's this marvelous thing that we have in geometry, right? Huh? We start off with statements that are known without having to be proven, and through them you syllogize other ones, and you keep on going. And I don't think Euclid could ever have to stop. And I sometimes take his his statements that he's shown and show something he hasn't shown, you know, but nothing too profound to report to you, but

[23:00] okay. Um, but the same thing could be said about definitions, right? If every part of every definition, like part of the definition here of motion, I mean, of nature, right? Motion, if it was in need of being defined or need to be defined, and no part of any definition was known without being defined, would you ever be able to define anything? No. No. This would go on, what, forever, right?

[23:35] And we had the same argument basically for definitions as we had for what? Statements, right? And sometimes I give a third thing that's like that that's maybe easier to see for some people, but it's a similar principle.

[23:53] If I run across a word that I don't know the meaning of, I go to the dictionary maybe and look up the word, right? But they explain that word by other words, and if I don't know what one of those words mean, right, then I have to go and explain that word, right? I look it up in the dictionary, but that's going to be explained by the words, right?

[24:18] Okay. Now, can all words be known in that way, through other words? No, because that would go on forever. One thing, right? There'd always be another word you have to look up before you know the meaning of any words.

[24:44] And but furthermore, you couldn't even begin to know words because you come into this world not knowing any words. So if you have to learn all words by other words, you couldn't begin to learn any words. So how do you learn the first words, huh? Not through other words, huh? You learn the first word by associating something that you sense, right, the sound, with something that you sense, huh?

[25:17] Used to have a tape of my firstborn there, Paul, there in the high chair, you know, trying to teach him the word cookie, and his attempt to pronounce the word cookie, making a big deal about it. Know if the tape is lost now, I don't know where it is, But they say that's the way to learn a foreign language, huh? You know, to not associate the foreign word with the your English word or your native word, but with the object directly, huh?

[25:48] And I know myself, you know, some of these prayers I know of Thomas's, like the Adoro te devote in Latin, right? And sometimes you know, like you'll say visus, tactus, gustus, in te, decipitur, right? Instead of thinking of what sight and touch and taste and so on, you know, I think of visus, you know, I don't see them there. Tactus, you know, I can't feel them there, right?

[26:18] Gustus, I can't taste them there, right? You know, quite by think of my senses rather than think of the what English word, you know, you know, but that would be the way to learn, a sense, of foreign language, huh? So but you see the similar principle there, right? Not every word can be known by other words, but after you know some words, then you can use those to know other words, right?

[26:41] So the same principle in a way is with definitions. Now, as Thomas said about the Latin Averroes, He says they speak as if wisdom began with them,

[26:59] and Descartes and Locke, you know, speak as if, right? They saw that not everything can be defined, right? And this old fuddy-duddy Aristotle hadn't seen that. They speak as if, right? Because, to my knowledge, they never recall the fact that Aristotle had said this before them. Okay.

[27:26] Now, the question is, where does the buck stop? As the old saying goes, right? You know, what is that thing or things that you know without what definition, right? And that's a different question than saying and admitting that there has to be something somewhere known without definition, right?

[27:52] Now, Aristotle in the ninth book of Wisdom, when he talks about act and ability, he says act cannot be defined, and we shouldn't try to know everything by definition. Okay. But he's going to use act and ability to define what motion, right?

[28:19] Now it's a sign, you know, of how the moderns, you know, didn't read the Greeks right very carefully, that they don't recall the general thing that they agree with in Aristotle, right? That um that Aristotle already said before them, right? That it must stop somewhere, right? There must be something known without that, but they don't recall in particular what Aristotle said was where it stopped.

[28:45] You know, either dishonest or they don't know that. So there's a defect there of one or both, huh? One of those things at least. It's pretty common, huh?

[29:01] Warren Murray used to joke about, you know, all these statements made about the ancients, you know, by the modern scientific mentality, and they have all these hypotheses about what the Greeks said, but they never test their hypotheses by going back and reading them, right? It's kind of funny, right? I mean, they insist upon the experimental method, and and they accuse Aristotle of not, you know, having, you know, learned this method or not having appreciated it sufficiently or something, you know.

[29:28] But then they make all kinds of, you know, statements about what the ancients actually said or thought, right? And don't go back just to verify their hypotheses in the text, right?

[29:43] But anyway, okay. Now, in talking about something simple too, if something is simple, motion not so simple, it's divisible forever, maybe, as we hinted at here, right? But even if something is simple and has no parts,

[30:10] does that mean you can't in some way define it, huh? When I define a Shakespearean sonnet, you know, I say it's a a likeness of thought and feeling, right? In fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, divided into three quatrains with alternate rhyming and completed by rhyming couplet. Okay, but no, in a way, defining it in a way partly through its parts, right? Okay, or we say water is H two O.

[30:46] That's not a definition, but something, you know. But it's got parts, right? Well, if something had no parts. Could you define it? Might seem at first sight no, right?

[31:02] But what about the point, for example, in in geometry, huh? Well, maybe the point has no parts, so you can't define it through its parts, right? Does that mean there's no multiplicity that could serve for speech rather than just a name?

[31:27] The definition is always a speech; it's never one name, right? And it's more distinct than one name, huh? And so it seems you have to have some multiplicity to have a definition, right? And if the thing is simple like the point and has no parts, where is the multiplicity that could serve as a basis for what? Parts of the definition, right? Say.

[31:49] Well, there's something to be said for that, right? But maybe the point is something of another thing. Just like health is something of a what? Another thing, right?

[32:10] I mean, health is not something that exists by itself, is it? Health is something of the body, right? And so, if you wanted to say what health is, without trying to be too profound, you might say health is the good condition of the body or something of that sort, right? Because it's something of another, you can say what it is of this other, right? And then you have a multiplicity, right?

[32:35] Okay, not because the body is a part of health, but because health is something of the body, right? Do you see that? Okay. Now,

[32:48] suppose I say that a point is the end or limit, be the one, of a line. Well, a line is not a part of the point, right? And it's not a point, right? But it can be used to make known what a point is,

[33:21] because maybe the point really is something of a what? Of a line, right? Okay. So actually, to our senses, what's most clear is bodies, right? And then we speak of a surface as being the what? The end of a body, right? And then we speak of a line as being the end of a surface, and then the point as being the end of a line, right? Okay.

[33:55] So there may be a multiplicity that will serve for a speech, right? This is a name, right? No part of it signifies a name by itself, right? This is a speech, right? It makes, it signifies more distinctly. What a point is, than the name or word point can signify, right? Okay.

[34:23] And why do I say all that? Well, first of all, as I hinted there, maybe motion is not as simple as they think it is, right? Okay.

[34:38] But maybe the parts of motion aren't too useful in defining motion, nevertheless, because a part of motion is motion, right? Just like you're saying the part of a line, well, it's a line. You can't define a thing to itself, right? You know, so I mean, you know, so though a motion is not really a simple thing it has parts, right? Maybe those parts aren't too useful in defining it, right?

[35:06] Okay. Now, sometimes the mathematician tries to get around this and say, "What a line is composed of infinity of points." Now, of course, sitting aside the problem, we're going to have to what a point is to a line, but if a line were composed of points, right, then maybe you could make known what the line is by saying it's composed of points or infinity points, right? As a matter of fact, it isn't composed of points, as we showed earlier in the course, and we'll see again when we get to Book Six, right?

[35:41] The book on the continuous, right? Okay. What's this got to do with with motion, right? Well, even if motion doesn't have parts, or even if the parts that it has don't enable you to define it, right? Okay. Because the parts of motion are like the parts of a line, the same thing basically, right? Okay. It's a short motion. But is motion like the point there, or like health?

[36:18] Is motion something that exists by itself, or is it something of another? Something of another. Yeah. Yeah. In other words, you go bowling, which I don't do, but maybe go bowling. Is it rolling that goes rolling down the the lane? Huh? You go for a walk. Is it walking that walks? When something falls to the ground, is it falling that falls? It's always something other than the motion that is in motion, right?

[36:57] It's not the falling that is falling. It's a stone that's falling. It's not walking that goes for a walk. It's the cat going for a walk, but the man went for a walk, right? It's not growing that grows, right? It's the dog or the tree or something that grows, right? The man.

[37:20] So motion is never the thing in motion. So motion is always the motion of something, right? Something other than itself, right? Just like health is always what a condition of something other than itself, right? Okay.

[37:47] So if motion is something of another, there you have a multiplicity, right? That could serve as the basis for a speech to be more distinct than just the name. You could say, "What is it of another?" Right? You see? Okay.

[38:12] So when Locke says the simple idea, what does that mean? Does it mean it has no parts? Well, motion does have parts, right? You have to go back and say, "Well, it doesn't do any good to to look at those parts to define it. That may be true, but it doesn't even see that, right? It has parts. But there's another multiplicity besides having parts, right? And that is to be something of a what?

[38:40] Of another, right? Okay. You could stop and consider that, right? Okay. But now there's a difficulty in maybe in defining motion, never less in that way, right? Because what are you going to say? Motion is of? It's something of the thing in motion, or you can't actually say that because the thing in motion that phrase includes motion, right? And you'd be defining motion by what? By itself, yeah.

[39:20] Okay. Now I could avoid the obvious use of the same word by saying motion is something of the movable. In fact, it's the act of the movable, right?

[39:37] The movable is able to be in motion, but it's not always so, right? So motion is the act of the movable, right? Someone might say, "What do you mean by movable?" So what's able to be in motion? So you're actually defining it by itself, right? And Aristotle, you know, this is part of dialectic, right? One of the places in dialectic there is to examine the definition to see if you're trying to define the thing by itself, right?

[40:07] And Aristotle says, "Well, in some cases, you know." It's very clear to do this because using the same word, right? But in other cases, it's hidden until you define what that part means. Aristotle's example is very simple. The sun is a star that appears by day, or the sun is a star that can be seen during the day. I said, "What do you mean by day? " Well, the sun is the definition of day, so you're really defining sun here by itself, right?

[40:40] Because sun is a part of the definition of day, which is now being put in the definition of this. So if I say that motion is the act of the movable, right? Someone might say, "Well, what is movable? What is able to be moved, or what is able to be in motion? " Aren't you really defining motion by itself? Okay. So the mere fact that motion is something of another means doesn't mean that there's some problem there.

[41:05] It's still trying to define it, right? Okay. Now, what is Aristotle going to try to define motion by? Well, he's going to use act as definition of motion, right? Because motion is an act, even though it's not a definition to say motion is the act of the movable. It's a true statement, right? Okay. But it's circular, right? But still true, right? Okay. So,

[41:52] well, he's going to make use of act and ability, or the able, to define motion, right? Okay. Now, is there some reason to think that that might be the way to approach the definition of motion, through act and ability, huh?

[42:17] Well, as I say, there seems to be some truth in you say motion is the act of the movable, right? Even though that's obviously circular, right? But you are bringing in it's a true statement, and so when you say act, you've got what? The word act, obviously. When you say movable, you got the word able, haven't you? Say. So it's a true statement, but it's circular, right?

[42:41] Okay. But it hints that maybe act and ability have something to do with this, right? Okay. Now, let's take something else. When I'm standing out in that hall, am I actually in this room?

[43:06] Okay. But when I'm standing on that hall, am I able to be in this room? Yeah. Okay. And now I'm actually in this room, right?

[43:20] Now how do I get from being able to be in this room, but not actually in this room, to actually being in this room? Motion, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[43:39] And I'm five foot ten officially, I guess. And one time in my life I was what? Not actually five foot ten. I was knee high to a grasshopper, right? But I was able to be five foot ten, right? But now I'm actually five foot ten.

[44:03] How do I get from ability to act? Growing, growing, which another kind of you know motion here we said is being used in a broader sense, huh for change. Right, okay. And when I make tea in the morning. I put water on the stove. The water is cold, but it's able to be what? Hot, in fact, boiling. Right. And but I don't pour it until it's actually hot, huh?

[44:35] How does it get from what? The ability to be hot to being actually hot. Some kind of change going on here, right? Okay. So motion or change seems to be sort of in between ability and act, right? Or going between ability and act. So without saying that you have a definition there, you can say, well, you're going from ability to act to motion, right? So motion, ability, and act clearly have something to do with motion, don't they?

[45:09] Okay. So we're trying to see if there's a way to define it through this, huh? Okay. Now, let's go back to the example I first started with here, coming into the room, right? Huh? Okay. I

[45:35] make two statements about this, right? Okay. Say. Coming into the room, it is the act of what is able to come into the room. Okay. Coming into the room is the act of what is able to come into the room. True or false? That statement.

[46:25] Seems true. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. My ability to come into the room, right, is actualized when I'm coming into the room, right? Okay. So this statement here is true, but now is that a definition of coming into the room?

[46:52] Can you define something by itself? No. No. They call that circular defining, right? Just like circular reasoning, right? If you use a statement to prove itself, you don't have any proof, really, huh? Okay. So the statement is true, but what? Circular, right? Okay.

[47:20] But now, since by coming in the room is the way I actually got into the room, right? Let's make another statement here and say, coming into the room is the act

[47:39] of what is able to be in the room. Now, is this still circular? Am I defining coming into the room by coming into the room, or am I defining it by something else? Yeah. Huh? Seems to be something else. Yeah, I'm defining it by the ability by by being in the room, right? By the end. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you can say about this here is that it's not circular.

[48:22] Okay. But is it true? No. See. Some might say, well, the act of what is able to be in the room is being in the room, right? So you might say the statement is what false. Okay. You see. Oh. In other words, you know, we see a part of the truth before we see the whole truth, right? And we're looking for a speech that is both truly said of motion, right?

[48:56] Otherwise, it can't be the definition of motion, right? And a speech that is not circular, that does not contain the very thing I'm defining in it, right? Well, this has one of the criteria. The speech is true, right? Truly said of motion, but it not it's circular. This here is not circular. So avoids that, but it's false. I need something that is both true and what not circular, right?

[49:31] Okay. Now sometimes people will try to define motion in this way. They'll say it's a going from ability to act, right? Okay. But does that avoid really circularity to say it's a going from ability to act? Going is a motion. Yeah. Yeah. So you seem to be defining motion still by itself, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[50:03] So it's not easy to define motion, right? Yeah. Yeah. Now. But now, on second thought, right? When I'm coming into the room, am I not partly in the room?

[50:34] I'm coming through the doorway, you know, and you know, coming through the doorway here, right? Into the room, I'm partly in the room, aren't I? Right? See? So that my ability to be in the room is partly actualized, right? In my coming into the room, right? So when I say coming into the room is the act or the actualization or the actuality of my ability to be in the room, that's not entirely false, is it?

[51:14] Because when I'm coming into the room, I'm partly in the room, right? So my coming into the room is, in fact, to some extent, imperfectly, incompletely, an act of my ability to be in the room. You see? Okay. Now, as opposed to being fully in the room like I am now, you see? So if I added here something like coming into the room is the imperfect act of what is able to be in the room, right?

[51:54] As opposed to being fully in the room, right? That would seem to be what true, right? Okay. Right? Okay. See? Just like when I'm filling up my my glass, right? The ability of the glass to be full is not fully realized, right? But partially being realized, right? Okay. But now, suppose I stop in the doorway, like I'm stopped now, right? Am I coming into the room now?

[52:35] No. I'm standing in the doorway, right? Checking people's IDs or something. Okay. Now when I'm standing in the doorway like I am now, I'm partly in the room, aren't I? But I'm not coming into the room, am I? See? So to say that coming into the room is to be partly in the room is true, right? But standing in the doorway, like the salesman with his foot in the door, which don't go any any further, right?

[53:12] Is also partly being in the room, but that's not motion, is it? See, so I have to separate coming in the room, both from fully being in the room and from standing in the doorway, right?

[53:29] Okay. Is it too late now? to go on or are you on? I- I got mass. in five minutes. Yeah. Okay, that's fine. That's fine. Okay. So how do you do that? I'm sorry, doctor. Could you repeat the question? How do you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You say, um, when I'm coming into the room, I'm partly in the room, right? Right. Okay. But when I'm standing in the doorway, I'm also partly in the room, right?

[54:01] See. See. So I have to separate coming into the room, both from fully being in the room, which imperfect or something like that does, right? Right. But That doesn't separate it from standing in the doorway, right? See, that's also imperfect. Yeah, active ability to be in the room, right? See. Okay. So,

[54:29] what's the difference between standing in the doorway and coming through the doorway, right? See. Well, now you again see the importance of the distinction between the as such, right, and the by happening or the accidental, right? See. It's accidental to standing in the doorway that you ever come further in, right?

[55:00] You may or you may never come in further, right? But so long as I'm coming into the room, I will be in the room more, right?

[55:15] If I haven't stopped coming into the room, right? So long as I haven't stopped coming in, so long as I'm still coming into the room, I will be in the room more, right? Okay. So

[55:35] Aristotle wants to bring out both of those, right? But likes to kill two birds with one stone, right? Okay. So he says motion here is the act of what is able to be in

[55:55] so far as it is able to be. Okay. Now, what does that second, that third part of the definition bring out? What brings out, first of all, that's an act of the ability to be that has not been what? Does not fully actualize it, right? Because it's an act of what is able to be in so far as it's still able to be, right? Okay.

[56:29] But at the same time, it shows that it's an act on the way to a what? Further Further act, right? While standing in the doorway, right, is not as such or anything further, right? It's altogether accidental to standing in the doorway that you ever go in further, right? You might stand in the doorway just to check people's IDs, but you don't intend to go in, right? Or you get your foot in the door and not even further.

[57:03] So, do you see the idea? You're looking for terrorists at the doorway or something. Okay. Do you see that? So this third part of the definition separates the act which is motion, both from the full act which is being in the room, right? And from the partial act that is not what ordered to anything further, right? Okay. Now to take this in another kind of change from change of place, right?

[57:46] Let's go my example of the water there, right? Huh? When the water is becoming hot, right? Something of the ability of the water to be hot has been what actualized, right? Okay.

[58:04] But it's going to be actualized more so long as the water is is becoming hot, is still becoming hot, right? As opposed to being warm, right? If I take the the thing off the heat, right? It's going to have some something of the heat. It's going to be warm, right? But in being warm, it's accidental that you ever go what

[58:30] more, right? See, so being warm is a partial act of the ability to be hot, right? But not on the way to any further act. It's accidental that, right? Like the mother who who might warm the baby's milk bottle, right? She doesn't want to be hot, right? She wants it to be warm, right? And you know the the the wrist is heated to warm the baby, right?

[58:57] Don't want it to be hot, right? See, she wants it to be warm, right? So what's the difference between being warm and becoming hot? Because one is becoming hot and already has some warmth, right? It has some of the heat, but it's accidental to being warm that it ever become what hot. Yeah. Yeah.

[59:21] See. Any more than it is, right? But so long as you're becoming hot, you have an act that is on the way to a further act. That's essential to it, right? Otherwise, you've taken it off and you've stopped the thing. It's no longer motion.

[59:40] So this is the way Aristotle defines it, huh? The act of what is able to be as such, insofar as it's able to be, right? But you have to understand at least two things, if not three things, in that third part, right? The two things emphasizing is the fact that it's a imperfect or incomplete act of that ability, right? And therefore, it's insofar as it's still able to be, right?

[1:00:06] And it's on the way to a further act, right? It's ordered to a further act, huh? If you take away it's going further, then you you you stop the motion.

[1:00:35] Now, it's a little bit like if you define learning, right? See, if you define learning as the act of the ability to learn, that would be true, but circular, right? If you define learning as the act of the ability to know, you'd avoid the circularity, but you'd seem to be identifying it with the same thing as knowing, right? But when one is learning, his ability to know is somewhat actualized, huh?

[1:01:10] But so long as you're learning, you're going to know more. So learning is the act of the ability to know, insofar as you're able to know, right? And that able to know means what? Not only that the ability has not been fully actualized, right? But is going to be actualized more. See, as opposed to the student who drops out of the course, as I say, the students, right?

[1:01:38] You may drop a course, and you go away imperfectly knowing something, right? But you're not learning. You see? See? And if you never, you know, may never go back to that subject, right? See? So it's not the same thing. As long as you're still in class learning, you're going to know more. See? But it's accidental to imperfectly knowing something that you ever go back and what? You know, you might intend at some time to go back, and you might not intend to go back, right?

[1:02:12] But in the case you know something imperfectly, huh? There are many things that I know imperfectly that I have no intention of going back to. I think they're more important than this, right? You see? While other things I know imperfectly that I that I plan, you know, if I live long, to go back and study that some more, right? You know? But it's accidental to imperfectly knowing, right?

[1:02:33] Whether I do or do not intend, let alone do or not go back and and go further, right, some time, right? See? But if I'm not going further, I'm I've stopped learning, right? Monsignor Dionne used to say, you know, he came down, he used to come down to visit the old students. They didn't invite him down; they paid his way down. They think, you know, he'd say, you know, they all seem to be in the same place where I left them, except for Kasurik my teacher.

[1:03:05] Kasurik was always what? You know, because you know, Kasurik knew more than the last time he saw him, right? You see, so I mean, you know, some some people, you know, they get to certain thing and that's it. They they satisfy this imperfect knowing, and other people are always what learning, right?

[1:03:27] There's always something to be learned, right? But they're always going to go further, right? Now, you know, others just kind of they're satisfied with that.

[1:03:37] You know, you could teach high school or even college, you know, with what you know already, right? And be a Playboy in your spare time or something else,

[1:03:52] and then you would imperfectly know something, but you would be learning, beating yourself. It's okay, Socrates says, right? They accused Socrates of always saying the same things about the same things. He said, "well, that's." better."than always saying opposite things about the same. thing Okay. So