Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
64. Motion and Indivisible Points: Aristotle's Physics, the Three Senses of "Before," and a Digression on Mill
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/064-motion-and-indivisible-points-aristotles-physics-the-three/

[0:02] Okay, and I do the same thing with with the word what before, right? Huh? That first sense of before, which Aristotle gives in the categories, before in time, before in the what motion that takes time, and before in the what magnitude over which the motion goes, huh?

[0:24] So he says it is clear from these things. For if a magnitude is composed of indivisibles, the motion over it will be from equal indivisible motions, as if the magnitude ABC were composed from the indivisibles ABC. The motion DEF over it, according to which O is moved over ABC, has each part indivisible, right? Okay.

[0:55] Now, if motion being present, something necessarily moves, and if something is moved, motion is present. To be moved will be from indivisibles, right? In that case, huh? For O has moved on A, being moved by the motion D, and on B by that of E, and on C likewise by F huh.

[1:21] And if it is necessary that the thing moved from one place to another, not at once move and have moved to where it is moved, as if someone walks to Thebes, it is impossible at once to walk and to have walked to Thebes.

[1:40] O is then moved on the partless A, as the motion D is present, so that if it has come later than it comes, it will be divisible. For when it came, it neither rested nor had come, but was in but was between. But if the one walking when he walks goes and has gone at once, he will have walked and moved to where he moves. If then something has moved, the whole ABC, and the motion according to which it moves is DF, and in the partless A is not moved but has moved, motion will not be from motions but from having been moved.

[2:20] What does that mean? In Latin, they use the word momentum there. You know, momentum is to motion. What the now is to time, or the point is to the line, right? Okay. Um.

[2:37] But um. Can you make a distinction between my moving to A, um, and my having moved to A? Only if it's continuous. One is divisible, right? You see, okay. So

[3:10] I can't be moving into a, right? Before I have moved into a, can I? If a is indivisible, no. So I have moved without moving, right? In the same way, for the next indivisible b, right?

[3:33] Can I be moving from a into b before I have moved into b? Then b would be divisible, right? See, I can be coming into this room before I have come into this room

[3:49] because part of me is in the room and part of me is outside the room, right? Okay. But can I come into a point? Coming into a point before I have come into the point.

[4:03] See. So in every part of the magnitude, I'm not moving, but I have moved, right? So motion is composed not of what motions, but having moved without every There being any motion. So that, rather than Latin, these momentums. Yeah I don't translate myself by momentum by having been moved. You see, because momentum in in in English now refers to what something in physics, right? Okay. And that's not the meaning.

[4:48] The momentum here, right? Okay. And something will have moved. He says the next paragraph. And something will have moved without moving, right? For it to have gone through a without going through it,

[5:06] so that something will have walked without ever walking. It has walked the same without ever walking it. If then is necessary that everything move or be at rest, and it rests according to each of a, b, and c, so that something continuously resting will at the same time be moved. For it moves the whole a, b, c, and it rests in each part, and hence in the whole.

[5:36] Well, T. J. Kasuri wrote an article there called. Motionless motion. But you have a motion that is composed of what? Having moved. Yeah. So no motion, but he has rest, right? That really a kind of a contradiction there, right?

[6:14] See, can I move from one room to another room? I do that often. But I'm moving from this room to the next room. I'm partly what?

[6:31] In this room, and I'm partly in the next room, right? I move one to the other. But if instead of rooms, here you had points, right? Can I move from one point to the next point? No.

[6:48] Say. Say. I couldn't be partly in the point and partly not, right? Because the point for one thing doesn't have any parts, right? To be either wholly in the point or wholly in the what? Next point, right? In other words, going back now here, it might be wholly in this room, and now I'm wholly in that room. When did I move from this room to that room?

[7:20] Say. Was I moving from this room to that room when I was wholly in this room? No. Am I moving from this room to that room when I'm wholly in that room? No.

[7:39] That's the way you would be if the line was composed of points, and therefore the motion corresponding to that would be composed of what? Indivisibles, right?

[7:52] Interesting thing about. Like a movie. What? It'll be like a movie. Yeah. Yeah. There's no motion; they just have a. That's kind of the way the moderns, you know, envision these things, right? Um. Schrödinger,

[8:19] you know, the physicist guy who perfected the mathematics of wave mechanics, you know, and so on. But after quantum theory, you know, they came back and they they're thinking again about this instantaneous velocity. See, in Newtonian physics there you you kind of try to unite motion

[8:47] in a circle with motion in a straight line, right? And they try to speak to what? Motion at that point where the line touches the circle. You have really no motion in the in the indivisible. So isn't this a a fiction, right? To speak of instantaneous velocity, the velocity had at that point or in that instant, right? The velocity implies motion, and there's no motion in that, right?

[9:20] And he says, "It should have struck us, right? There's something fictional about this, huh? " It's kind of strange about science in a way, because

[9:36] you know sometimes you, I've read scientists, you know, even Catholic scientists, you know, they think you know, well, they'll deny the proposition maybe that whatever is in motion is moved by another, right?

[9:51] And kind of thinking the law of inertia, right, that a body in the absence of external forces, right, Um it's in a state. of motion or continue that state of motion, right? Okay. But they're speaking of motion as if it were a state, which means standing, right? So they are conceiving of what is, in fact, in motion as if it were not in motion. Now, is that a reason to deny that what is in motion depends upon a mover?

[10:36] So they say a body in the absence of external forces remains either at rest, right, or in uniform motion in a straight line. And then they see you know speeding up or slowing down, that's a change, right? See, otherwise your state, status, your standing is the same, right? But once they talk about change as change, they're really talking about accelerations, if that's what change was. Then it depends upon something else, right?

[11:08] The body speeds up or slows down, right? It's because of some other thing, right? So when they conceive of change as change, they agree. with what Aristotle was saying, right? See, and when they conceive of uniform motion in a straight line, right, that's not motion at all. Then they what deny it, right? See,

[11:38] they're not thinking about change as change, right? They think about if if uniform motion in a straight line, which remains the same, wouldn't be change, would it? And they're calling that remains the same as if it were not a change.

[11:58] Now, in a sense, that is a what? A fiction, right? It's a little bit like you know, if we say you know by by health you are healthy, right? And then we say by blindness you are what? Blind, right? As if blindness were something, right? Like a form, right? By which you are blind,

[12:33] just as the clay by its shape is a sphere. The shape is something what real, right? Blindness is really the non-being of something. So

[12:46] reason sometimes takes what is is not, and speaks of it as if it were what something, right? Sometimes Aristotle speaks, you know, of. Metaphorical sense, you know, when someone says my car is totaled, right? You know, I'm a complete wreck. My my car is a complete wreck. You know,

[13:14] completely gone, right? You know, the car, but is is a lack of something, you know, complete, right? Yeah, it's completely empty. You know, I mean, you don't realize how much fiction is involved there. Um, and

[13:45] it's the question why why this particular fiction might be what useful, right? Huh? You say, but you have to realize that it's what nevertheless a what a fiction, huh? You know the um. Now it's first an assumption there. You know, I was introduced by a friend there in the history department to William McNeil's there, The Rise of the West. Have you ever seen that?

[14:13] Yeah, we we have it here. Yeah, yeah, and it's probably you know from a secular point of view anyway the best world history we have, huh? But particular,

[14:24] the historian was really the best historian at the time. That assumption, um, this is a gift that his thesis director had given him as kind of a personal gift, right? You know, this kind of a thing. So I use that book a lot. There's a lot of good things in it, huh? But one thing I like is you know when you divide historical periods as you must do in a history book, right?

[14:45] Um, and he used the phrase fictional sharpness. Oh yeah. Of all historical, you know, dating of periods, right? Say, so if you want to talk about you know the industrial revolution as a family historian does, right? Sure. And well, when what years are the years of the industrial revolution, right? Say, maybe the first one is 1760 to 1820, during England.

[15:14] But um, we talk about the age of the automobile, right? You know, you give you know some boundaries, right? But isn't there a fictional sharpness to that? Huh? You know, the modern world begins when 1500 AD, right? Mm-hmm. See? There's all kinds of things, you know, that

[15:41] old things are living on side by side with new things, right? Say, so when we went from from horses to driving cars, that was a gradual thing, right? So when did the horse and buggy age end and the age of the car begin, right? And so, to some extent, there is something kind of arbitrary, but but maybe it's better to call it fictional, right? And to some extent, you you have to what in in writing the history of a country, you have to divide into periods, right?

[16:13] Otherwise, it's just a blur, right? You know, you see, just it's all continuous, right? See, in a way, it's something like the continuous, right?

[16:27] Well, that was the end of that age, and then the next age began, right? You know, fifteen hundred. You know, it's the end of the medieval world, and all some, you know, and so. But can the historian avoid those fictions?

[16:45] No, I can't understand. So, in some way, those those fictions are useful, right? Okay. So maybe we'll start here with the third reading here, right? Well, with a little more, the second reading again, right? Okay. Maybe some copies of this, maybe.

[17:32] Okay, so. I can give this to you when you're going off. Yeah, or else just next time, you know. I'd look at paraphrase the Latin and Greek a little bit. Okay, copy. So that

[17:53] will be done. What does that mean? On earth, as it is in heaven. I love the riddles. You wonder, like, can anyone enjoy one

[18:05] of the riddles? You know. Well, you know, you know, Austerlitz huh? His thing towards an evaluation of music, right? He was talking about the fine arts, right, and so on. I think a good remark. He says they're the fine arts, right? Music and fiction, so on. They're too high for the beast, and too low for the angels. I just find that fascinating, though. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can always come up with stories.

[18:38] No, I say. Well, what's interesting about fiction is, yeah, no, the statement is kind of good. You know, the fiction and things of that sort, music, the fine arts, are what are most pleasingly proportionate to man. See. And and I often use that when I'm when I'm discussing Mill, right? You know, Mill, of course, has a kind of defective understanding of ethics, right? And he's kind of in the Epicurean tradition in a way, right?

[19:03] Utilitarians, huh? So pleasure and pain is the measure of everything, right? Okay. And then, but Mill tries to, you know, nuance this a bit, right? And he says some people object to this, saying, "Well, this is a you know ethics for beasts, right? Because they live pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, right?" He says, tries to turn the table on them and say, "Well, you know, they're accusing us, our philosophy is being bestial, right?"

[19:33] And he says, "You are the beast," he says, because you're assuming that man has no pleasures that the beast doesn't have, right? Okay. And he says that he tries to argue, you know, that those who have experienced right these pleasures that man has that the beast doesn't have, right? They all say that those pleasures are greater than the pleasures that he has in common with the beast, right?

[19:59] It's only those who have not. experienced Experienced, right? See, okay. So you see, for for Mill, in a sense, there's no reason to say one pleasure is greater than another, except the person who's experienced both, right? See, just like with pain, if I say that a you know a broken leg is more painful than giving birth, why can't I say that? See, but a woman who's had a broken leg and given birth, she can say something maybe about this, right?

[20:29] Okay, and so someone who is experienced the pleasures that man has and the beast doesn't have, right? Can maybe make some judgments which ones are greater, right? Okay, but but anyway, see, there's a little distinction there. But what I do is I divide the pleasures, you know, improving upon them upon them into three, right? There are the pleasures that man shares with the beast, like the pleasures of eating and so on, and sleeping.

[20:59] But there are also the pleasures that man shares with the what angels and God, and those are the pleasures of understanding, like in the sciences, right? Okay, and then there are the pleasures that are human in a in a narrow sense, but in ones that the broad sense, right? The pleasures which, like Owsley says, are too low for the angels, but too high for the beast. But these are the pleasures of the fine arts and you know fiction, music, but they involve both the reason and the what the body, right?

[21:31] You see, and that's why they're they're so proportioned to man, right? Oh, but I guess when I glorified body, then we're back to where we were. Yeah, yeah, we have those pleasures, yeah, yeah. Thomas says explicitly there would be laus vocalis in heaven, right? Yeah, there would be you know Palestrina and music theory, but the point is, it's kind of interesting about these things, seeing that the pleasures that we share with the beasts, right?

[22:02] Um, like the pleasure of eating, drinking, but we have them in a more refined way than the beast does. See, so we cook our food and we drink wine and so on. But nevertheless, it's substantially the same you know category of pleasures, right? Okay, the pleasures that we share with the angels is reversed. We have them in an inferior way. We don't understand much compared to what they understand, right?

[22:27] See, but these other pleasures, so far as they involve the body and the soul, the reason and the senses, or the reason and the imagination, right? They kind of involve the whole man, and therefore they're more. His expression was they're more pleasingly proportionate to us, right? See, okay, because one pleasure is almost you know. Now I think what's interesting about that, and kind of a sign of this being proportioned to us, is the fact that we can more continuously.

[22:57] Enjoy the pleasures of literature or music or the fine arts, than we can of eating, or of philosophizing, right? See, because as we philosophize, which is a long time, we get kind of tired, or you know, and

[23:15] and like as opposed to eating, you know, you don't eat so much that it becomes, you know, I mean, people on Thanksgiving there, you know, they, you know, in an hour they've exhausted the pleasures of the table and they're actually feeling uncomfortable, you know, see, but you could go and listen to an opera, say, two or three hours, or play two or three hours, or you know, even a movie, right?

[23:40] You can you know can spend two or three hours in a museum looking at paintings and so on, right? See, in a way, you can more continuously enjoy music or fiction of that than you can philosophy, or you can eating, right? But Marko, you would say, you know, the first beer tastes better than the second beer, and the first swallow tastes better than the rest of the beer.

[24:03] I call it the law of diminishing returns, right? In these sense pleasures, you know, I mean, you see, can be a little bit hungry, you know, to enjoy these things, and and the way you get satiated with food and it becomes kind of revolting in a sense, right? Some kind of force to eat more, you know, you want to eat more, but but you know, people can sit and you know, read a novel or something like that, right?

[24:28] You know, for you know, two or three hours in the evening or more, right? In a way, they can't sit down and philosophize most people, right? The only reason I ain't going to drop in, especially in good novels, your body conks out before your yeah, yeah, yeah, your imagination, yeah, it's riding along with it, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, it's something, I guess, between that point of the receiving your glorified body, it's just that idea that you can imagine things.

[24:59] Just imagine that. That's just. But I have a hard time, you know, trying to understand, you know, because is that my soul separated from my body is not going to be in place, right? Yeah, where's it going to be? Here, there, it's not going to be in place. You know, it's very hard for us to understand that that things are what you know quite distinct

[25:26] without one being here and one being there, right? Yeah, see, we can't understand that very well, right? It's interesting, you know, even logic, you know, the word difference that we talked about, species making difference, and in the Greek word is diaphora, right? But difference in diaphora means literally carried apart, right? See, as Thomas says, you know, when you place one thing here, one thing there, then it's.

[25:51] It's clear they're different, right? And you know, even the way we speak something. On the one hand, on the other hand, if I have one thing in this hand, one thing that hand, they're obviously two different things, right? But then we we tend to what talk about things that aren't in one hand and the other hand, but we use the expression right, the one hand and the other hand, right?

[26:12] One's here, one's there, right? But you can't say Gabriel's here and Michael's there, and you know. you see? Well, I'll be points coinciding. but not that either, see? Because then then we all be in the same place. We're not in different places. We're not in the same place. Not a place at all. You see how hard it is for us to transcend the imagination, right?

[26:49] Now, not reasoning in heaven, and whether we wouldn't, we'd be above reasoning in heaven too. Wouldn't we like? Wouldn't we think like the angels? Be more like no. Well, you talk about not the beatific vision, now. Yeah, yeah. There's no reasoning in there. That's all at once. We partake of eternal life, right? There's no before and after in that vision, right? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but we still wanted to reason.

[27:16] I don't know why we do it, but you know, we could still reason. You know, outside the vision, right? Okay. We would have that ability. Yeah. Be there and virtual. Yeah. Yeah. They wouldn't. Too much reason do it. We're going to see the beatific vision, not only God, but everything else that we naturally want to know. We're going to see Him. We see God. Hi, Orange. It's got

[27:49] kind of funny, you know. Remember, I found one on the we have kind of split level house, right? So you come in the front door and there's like four or five steps coming to living room, right? And then four or five steps going down to the lower level. And she wanted to have you know carpet put in like the center thing, you know. But you know, you leave the wood on the sides, right?

[28:16] Okay. So it's all. Let's talk about it. We're going to take your shoes off you from the house, right? You know. And I was saying to to her, saying, "Now, you know, as soon as you get that in, that cat's going to see. That's a good place to, you know, you know, and that sure you won't want the cat doing that, right? " So the first day we put it in there, and the cat was upstairs.

[28:37] So Tammy went upstairs at night time. You know, funny, she went down on the wood. You know, fell right down on the wood. And it's making a small wood, but she heard me. You know, five days she went through down the car, down down the center part, but the first, you know. Deer too, you know. She's going down the the little wooden part that was left, you know.

[28:58] The rug is down the center of the bigger, you know, little thing. And she's, you know, like she heard us, you know. And she's going, "What the heck is this?" You know. All the way down. I'm sure she'll discover, you know. They did. You know, it's nice to, you know. Some people they get like a post and they put a you know old piece