Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
70. Motion and Time Divisible Forever: Aristotle's Argument from Faster and Slower
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[0:00] So let's go now to the second reading here. Now, as Thomas explains in the commentary, in the first reading, Aristotle has really shown this for everything continuous, but it's more clear in the case of the magnitude from what he said. So he's going to come back upon the motion over the magnitude, right, and show that that is more fully that, that is continuous, and then in the third reading and the fourth reading, he's going to show the same thing for what time, right?

[0:44] Okay. So he says in the first sentence, there is the same reason for composing magnitude, time, and motion of indivisibles and divide them into indivisibles, which of course is what we found was false, or none of them, right? Huh? Okay.

[1:04] Now he's going to start to develop the presupposed things to showing this, and he's going to later on in this reading deduce the what absurdities, right, of composing the motion from what indivisibles.

[1:26] So he says, 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, for example, A B C, is from the indivisibles A B and C, then the motion D E F over it, according to which is moved, oh, that's the mobile over A B C, has each part what indivisible? Okay.

[1:59] I take some things that kind of obvious. If motion being present, something necessarily moves or isn't motion, and vice versa, if something is moved, motion is present. present, right? To be moved in this case will be from indivisibles, for A has moved on A having moved by the motion D, and on B by that of E, and on C likewise by F.

[2:29] And now the fourth, the the fourth paragraph, the other thing he's going to take into account here, which is going to get us into some troubles, right? Making motion composed of indivisibles. and if it is necessary that the thing moved from one place to another, not at once move and have moved, right, to where it is moved. It says, someone walks to Thebes, it is impossible at once to walk and to have walked to Thebes, huh?

[2:58] Okay, and incidentally, Aristotle will come back to that in the ninth book of the Metaphysics ("Wisdom") right? When he's distinguishing between an activity like walking home, an activity like understanding, or an activity like loving, or even activity like seeing, right? That when I am walking home, have I walked home? When I am coming into this room, have I come into this room? Not fully, but when I when I am understanding what a triangle is, have I understood what a triangle is yet?

[3:37] Yeah. When I am loving you, have I loved you yet? Used to move this, amuse the students. You know, we say, "What do you say to your wife or your your girlfriend?" Right? Have I loved you yet? I am just loving you. I haven't loved you yet? But even the case of seeing, same way, right? When I am seeing the painting, have I seen it yet? Yeah.

[4:04] But when I am walking home, have I walked home? See, when I am building the house, have I built the house? Okay. So in motion, there is what you haven't. You are not moving at the same time that you have moved, or vice versa. You haven't moved when you are what moving. You haven't moved that distance that you are moving when you are moving that distance. Okay.

[4:28] So he takes the example of walking to Thebes. I always take the example of walking home, right? Okay. So when I am walking home, I haven't walked home yet. Okay. Well, those two paragraphs are those old statements naturally understood. They're close to it, yeah, yeah. A little more particular, right? Okay. All

[4:53] 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. There'd be a problem there, right? Okay. For when it came, it neither rested nor had come, 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.

[5:21] If then something is moved, the whole A B C, and the motion according to which it moves is D E F, and in the partless A is not moved but has moved, motion will not be from motions but from what? Having been moved. Okay. Now, in Latin there, even in Greek too, you have one word, right, which is the old word momentum, but it has much different sense in modern science, huh?

[5:50] Okay. So a little problem here, right? I've gone to A without having gone to A, or if when I'm going to A, I haven't gone to A yet, then A is not indivisible, is it? But if A is indivisible, you're going to have a real problem here, right? Because I will have gone to A

[6:14] when I'm going to A, or without having gone there, right? And he goes on there, next sentence there, very good. And something will have moved without what? Moving, right? I have gone home without going home.

[6:33] I will move to A without without moving to A, and then I will move to B without moving to B, right? Okay. For it will have gone through A without going through it, so that something will have walked without ever walking. It has walked the same without ever walking it.

[6:59] If then it is necessary that everything move or be at rest, and it rests according to each of A, B, and C, there's no motion there, so that something continuously resting will at the same time be moved. For he's saying it moves the whole A, B, C, right, and rests in each part, and hence in the whole. See all the difficulties that arise, huh?

[7:25] And if the indivisibles of D, E, F are motions, it will happen that motion being present, something is not moved but is at rest. And if they are not motions, motion is not from motions, which would be like saying the line is not from what Lines, right? Okay.

[7:52] Okay. Now, in the third reading, he's going to start to show this about what time, huh? Okay. Time, he says, must be indivisible and composed of indivisible nows, in the same way as magnitude and motion.

[8:11] For if every magnitude is divisible, and in less time the equally fast goes less, time will be divisible. And if the time is divisible in which something moves at distance A, A will also be divisible.

[8:34] I know. See, he's first going to reason, I guess, from what two things that are equally fast, right? Okay. And then he's going to reason from what two bodies, one of which is faster than the what other, right? And then he's going to reason from in one body moving, right? Okay. And my favorite one is the middle one, right? I think it's more more illuminating, right? Okay.

[9:01] But now let's make daring a little bit here. Language a bit of what Euclid does in the second book, where you take two lines and show something, and then you'll take one in the same line and cut it away, right? And I just think, you know Heath or something will say, you know, that, he does this because it's easier to see the two first, right, than the one, right?

[9:37] That's kind of similar principle, right? So, if you have two equally fast bodies, right, and one of them, let's say, goes this distance in Calls distance, and it covers it in this time, right? Okay. Now a body equally fast

[10:08] is going to go part of that distance, right? In the same time, an equally fast Because if the equally fast body, if body A, in this time moves this distance, right, then the equally fast body in a lesser time will have lesser distance, right? So you can see that these are going to be divided in a similar way, right?

[10:42] But there you're taking, you know, as known that the distance is what divisible, right? If the time must be, or if you take from the first reading that the argument does in a way apply to time as well as to distance, right? Then if you say that the time is divisible, you're going to have to say that the distance is divisible.

[11:11] Now we're kind of maybe a little bit of overkill here, huh? Aristotle is going to start now in the third paragraph to reason from a faster body and a slower body, and this is the one I often give, huh?

[11:28] He's going to develop first some things he's going to reason from. Since every magnitude is divisible into magnitudes, it has been shown that it is impossible for something continuous to be from indivisibles. Aristotle seems to obviously what be proceeding from its not being from indivisibles to its being what always divisible into magnitudes, right? Continuous. Yeah, that's another way of saying it's always divisible into magnitudes. It's always divisible into something divisible, which is another way of saying, in effect, that's always divisible, right?

[12:02] Okay, so he seems to be arguing more from it not being what being impossible for it to be from indivisibles, right? And every magnitude is continuous. The faster moves an equal distance in less time, right? Of course, that's the way we we think at first,

[12:28] but even more distance in less time as some define the faster, right? Okay. That reminds me of my favorite what theorem there in in book two there that proposition five, right, huh? That theorem, proposition five in book two, Euclid.

[12:55] Yeah. Yeah. It says that if a straight line be cut into what equal and unequal segments, right? Oh, yeah. The square contained by the equal segments, right? Mm-hmm. Is always going to be greater than the rectangle contained by or oblong by the unequal segments by the square. On the interval between the points of section, okay. It's a very interesting theorem, right? Okay.

[13:28] Now, sometimes you know, to make it interesting, I transcribe that and I say to students, now, if you take rectangle in the broad sense, which includes square and oblong, right?

[13:41] Can you have a rectangle with the same perimeter but more area? Well, this shows you can, because this square would have the same what? Perimeter as this what? Oblong. Okay. See it's possible to have a rectangle, in the broad sense, now,

[14:10] with the same perimeter but more area. Okay. But then the amazing thing is, it's possible to have a rectangle with less perimeter and still more area. square. You see? So now, if you have a a square five by five, quite a dead theorem, but you depart from that, you take let's say a rectangle four by six. You're keeping a perimeter of what? Twenty. They both have perimeter twenty, but the area of one is greater, right?

[14:49] Mm-hmm. And Euclid shows in that theorem there, the difference in area is always the square of the difference between the sides, right? So five and six, or five and forty-one, the difference is one, and that's the difference in area between twenty-five, twenty-four. Now, if you go out, let's say seven by three, then you get a perimeter still twenty, but now the area is dropped to what? Twenty-one, right?

[15:20] And again, it falls what you talked about, the square and the difference between the points of section there. Between five and seven, the difference is two, and two squared is four, and that's exactly the difference between twenty-one, twenty-five. See? And then, let's say you get down to let's say two and eight. Well, now the perimeter is still twenty, isn't it?

[15:44] But the area is now dropped to sixteen. And notice, huh? The difference between five and eight, or five and two, is three, right? Three squared is nine, and sixteen is exactly nine less than twenty-five, right? Okay. Now,

[16:04] once you see that, then you realize the possibility, though, because of the infinite divisibility, the continuous, you'd actually have a square with what? Less perimeter. With more area. So if you take one, let's say two by ten, well now the perimeter is no longer twenty, but it's what twenty twenty four, ten by two, twenty four. But the area is what twenty, huh? So now you have less perimeter, more area.

[16:40] Yeah. Okay. Here you have same perimeter, with more area. Once you realize that possibility, because of infinite divisibility, you could take something in between, right? Or you'd have actually what less perimeter, but still more area. And what happened? Oh, I mean you can take a kind of example, right?

[17:08] So Aristotle saying something like that there, huh? Once you realize that there is a that the faster body is covering the same distance in what less time. Or covering let's say a greater distance, right? Yeah. In less time, huh?

[17:29] Greater distance in the same time. Yeah. Well, it's just it's covering a greater distance in the same time. Okay. It can also cover a greater distance even in lesser time. Yeah. Because of the infinite divisibility of those two, right? Once it's doing one, it's doing the other. Yeah, but it would always cover a greater distance in less time. No, but isn't it true that if if you have it covering a greater distance in lesser time, or excuse me, equal time it will always cover a greater distance in lesser time.

[18:04] Yeah, at a certain point, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah that, yeah. It only goes so far, but yeah. So this is going to manifest this a bit. Let A be faster than B. Since then the faster is what changes before. In the time A is changed from C to D, as in the time let's say, FG, in this B which is a slower body will not yet be at D, right?

[18:31] But will fall short, right? So that in equal time the faster has gone what further, right? Okay. But also further in less time, right? So he says in the time A has come to be at D, B will be at E some shorter distance, right? Being slower. Since then A has come to be at D in the whole time F G, it will come to H somewhere in between there in less time than this, and let this be an F I.

[19:06] The C H which A has gone through is greater than CE in the time F one less than F G. So it has gone further in what less time, right? Now you know all those letters that you kind of mixed up, huh? Let's just you know, some diagramming on the board here. So

[19:30] let's say that the faster body goes this distance, right, in this time, right, huh? Okay. Now can the slower body go the same distance in the same time? No. So let's say the slower body, however you put it, is going to be somewhere on here. Less, huh? So it goes that far, right, huh? Okay.

[19:59] Now, if the faster body has gone this whole distance in this time here, what about this distance right here? See, it's going to go that distance, which is greater than what the slower body has gone. Does it going to go this distance in all this time? No. So it's going to be in less of this time, right? So in less time, it has gone further. I don't know if it's on the tape, but it's the board here, right?

[20:36] Okay. Do you see that? Yeah. It's almost like overkill, right? Yeah. It's clear then from these things also that the faster goes an equal distance in what? Less time, right? I could argue for that too, huh?

[21:04] Because if the faster the slower went the same distance in the same time, one would be faster and the slower, right? So you're forced to say that two bodies go the same, faster slower body go the same distance in what? Less time, right?

[21:22] Isn't that the same as saying that the faster is what changes before? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a little different way of stating it, right? Okay. One consequence of my being faster, say, than you, right? Which I don't think it's true, but but one consequence of that is that in the same amount of time, I'll go further than you went, right? Okay. But that you and I will go what?

[21:51] The same distance. Take you what? More time. Yeah. I mean, less time for the same distance, right? Yeah. Now, what is he going to do on the basis of those facts, right?

[22:17] Well, he's going to show by alternating those two truths, right, that the time and the distance are both what? Divisible forever, right? Okay. So

[22:33] you start off and you say, well, the faster body goes this distance in what? This time, right? Huh? Okay. All this the time, all this the distance, and this the time. So the faster body has gone this distance in this time, right? Okay. Well, then the slower body in that same time has gone a what? A lesser distance, right? So now the distance is being divided, right?

[23:13] Okay. Now, if the slower body has gone this distance. In this time, right? Would the faster body go this lesser distance in the same time as the slower body? Did it? Lesser time. It's got to do in lesser time, right? So we now would divide the what? Time, right? Now, if it took the slower body this whole line to go this distance, right? No only part of that time can it go the same.

[23:50] No, it's going to go only part of that. It's going to divide the distance again. Okay. Now, if the faster body went this distance in this time, it's going to do this distance, which is less in less time. You can divide that, right? So just by alternating those two truths, we're going to go on what? Divisible forever, right? I was talking about that argument against Anaxagoras, right?

[24:22] In the ninth reading, Aristotle argues, you know, against the position of Anaxagoras that the flesh and blood and bones can be infinitely small; they can fall below any size, right? And he has an if-then syllogism. You know, he says if the parts can fall below any magnitude, right? Then the whole, which is composed of the parts, could fall below any magnitude. And then he goes out to nature.

[24:47] He says the different kinds of animals and plants don't have just any size. Okay, therefore the parts don't have just any size, right? So anyway, I was contrasting this difference between the quantity of natural things, which have limits, huh? As to how big or how small they are, due to the kind of thing, right? That it is. So the trees here don't grow as big as the redwood trees say in California, and the ant doesn't come as big as the elephant, right?

[25:20] And the mature elephant is not the size of the ant, right? Okay. But in geometry, is there a smallest or largest, huh? And so I was just, you know, the fun of taking these theorems in the in the fourth book, these circumscribing and inscribing, right? And you have a theorem there that inside of any square, you can what? Inscribe a what? Circle. Circle, yeah. You know what that means, huh?

[25:54] Just touches one point in each side of this one, but that's proven there, right? Okay. And it's proven universally inside any square, you can inscribe a what? Circle. But the reverse is also proven that inside of any what? Circle. Circle. You can inscribe a square. Yeah. So inside of the circle, you can inscribe a square. But you can always inscribe a circle in a square. So inside of this square, you can inscribe another circle, right?

[26:24] Since you can always inscribe a square in a circle, inside that circle you can inscribe a square, that's even smaller, and because in every square you can inscribe a circle, right? So just by alternating those two truths that inside of every circle you can inscribe a what square, inside of any square you can inscribe a circle, you can see that the squares and circles are going to get smaller and smaller and smaller, right?

[26:51] And you never come to a smallest, right? Okay, because then the theorem would cease to be true that inside of any circle you can inscribe a square and vice versa, right? Okay. Then you have these other theorems that around any square you can circumscribe a circle, right? Touching at the point, right? And around any circle you can circumscribe a square, right? And given those things, given that you can always circumscribe a circle around a square and square around a circle, then I can keep on what just alternating those two and get bigger and bigger and bigger, right?

[27:35] And there's no such thing as a what largest? Largest, huh? See, well something like that here, right? Except you're going the direction of the small, right? Huh? See, if it's always true that the faster body, right, goes the same distance in lesser time, right? This can always be true if it's faster, right? And it's always true that the what slower what? The the faster body the faster body goes an equal distance in less time or I'm I'm missing yeah or even you can say something with the slower body the slower body always goes a lesser distance in the same time that's always true, right?

[28:18] Okay. So you can alternate like I was doing the circumscribe and and you can say that we can always divide the distance, always divide the time, right? See that's kind of a marvelous way Aristotle has of showing and since together, right, that both of these things are what divisible forever and that's the second definition of the what continuous. Kind of marvelous he does that and kind of shows too how wise Aristotle is in making one knowledge, right, of all continuous things as far as they're being divisible forever, right?

[28:59] It's a way the same knowledge of both, right? Huh? In sense to these very simple statements, huh? That the faster body covers the same distance in less time or the slower body in the same time covers a lesser distance. On those simple truths, you can show together that the distance and time are divisible what forever. So it seems to be the same knowledge of both, right? And actually belong to the same science, and in geometry, you're really what assuming that, right?

[29:39] That these things are divisible forever, right? So that sense, the natural philosopher is wiser than the geometer, Right? He's in a way proving, right? But the geometre has to what assume, right? Okay. The same way, though, the geometre has a theorem that you can bisect this straight line, right? You know, and bisect it half and go on forever. But

[30:07] geometry suppose the things are divisible forever, and you know I mentioned. before. how the geometry says that what between any two points you can draw a straight line that implies that you can't what put points touching yeah if you could bring two points close enough to touch without coinciding you couldn't draw a straight line between them right If you could put a house in between my house the next neighbor's house I wouldn't want you to do that because I like these little bigger lots you know you don't want to have the noise and everything over here but if you moved my house up you know like in old Quebec or someplace you know where my wall was touching his wall then you couldn't put another house in

[30:59] there unless you had two dimensional creatures on that house You couldn't put a house in there right Because they're touching, right so really the idea that between any two points you can draw a straight line depends upon this here right so the natural philosopher is wiser than the what mathematical philosopher

[31:30] um so another sign of that is what we saw earlier in the course there where in the second book of natural hearing here Aristotle distinguished between natural philosophy and what mathematical philosophy and his distinction between natural philosophy and mathematical philosophy does it belong to mathematical philosophy or natural philosophy to do that natural

[32:05] it would be more natural philosophy I'm thinking but it would be properly metaphysics because it's key. well you see when you get to the to these sixth book of wisdom right sixth book of metaphysics then Aristotle distinguishes between mathematical philosophy and natural philosophy and wisdom right okay but the principle here I think is of universal importance and that is that it always belongs to the higher knowledge right and the knowledge which has more the character of wisdom to distinguish between itself and the lower knowledge and secondly then to consider the order of the two right so natural philosophy can distinguish you know because it has something of the character of wisdom in comparison to mathematical philosophy it can distinguish between itself and mathematical philosophy and

[33:05] it can also determine to what extent mathematics is what useful in natural philosophy okay um. And sometimes when I present that principle, I I go back, you know, to the starting point, and I say,

[33:31] does belong to the senses or to reason to distinguish between the senses and reason? The senses can't do that. The eye, the ear, right? Okay. And to distinguish between reason and imagination belongs to the imagination or to reason. Now, there's very clear that only the reason can distinguish between itself and the senses, or between itself and the imagination. But reason has more the character of wisdom than the senses.

[34:01] On wisdom is a knowledge of reason. That's why we're called Homo Sapiens, right? Because we have reason, right? Okay. But then you see how natural philosophy distinguishes between natural philosophy and mathematical philosophy and talks about their order. But wisdom, right, distinguishes between itself and what both natural and mathematical, right? Um,

[34:31] and belongs perhaps to political philosophy to distinguish between political philosophy and rhetoric, right? Okay. And between political philosophy and domestic philosophy, like Aristotle does in the first book of the Politics, huh? No. But that's another reason why modern philosophy got into such bad shape was that in the middle of the period and after Christ and so on, theology came on the scene, right? Revealed theology, huh? And as Thomas shows in the first question of Suma, revealed theology has more the character of wisdom than even metaphysics does, because reasons from what we know about wisdom.

[35:23] Um, so the distinction between philosophy and theology belongs to theology, yeah, not to philosophy. And consequently, the order between philosophy and theology belongs to theology, right? Now, what happened in in modern times was that the famous thinkers, anyway, right, gave up revealed theology, right? They discarded it, huh? Okay. And some of them some of them became atheists but they suddenly gave up revealed theology. But they lived in a world where there were believers, right?

[36:04] Where they were exposed to all these things, right? But now they're what given up the knowledge whereby they could sort these things out and see their order.

[36:18] So what you find the modern philosophers doing sometimes is um. Trying to do in philosophy, what should be done in theology, and that fouls up philosophy in another way. You see, and they can't get out of it because they'd have to have theology to sort them out, and they've given up that. They'd have to look at something Yeah. So what's very clear is you see the difference between modern philosophy and Greek philosophy.

[36:51] Greek philosophy is before revelation, at least before the revelation of Christ, and the Greeks are kind of philosophizing independently of what the faith, right? And and without being exposed to it, right? Say, and the only religion they're exposed to is the maybe the imaginative religion of Homer, right, and the poets. But they can judge that because reason judges the imagination, and you see this in the great thinkers like Xenophon and so on.

[37:25] Xenophon says, you know, he says that horses could make statues and paint things and make their gods look like horses. The cattle could make statues; the god looks like like cattle. And he says that the Ethiopians, their gods are black, and so on. And the Thracians are they're blonde, and so on. But he's showing that the poets are what don't really know the gods, right? They just, you know, imagine the gods to be something like us, but you know, you know, more powerful and so on, huh?

[38:00] And so there's a there's a big difference between the Greek philosophers judging the theology, want to call it that, of Homer, right? Which is based in the imagination, which is inferior to reason and can be judged by reason, right? And the modern philosophers trying to judge a theology based on the word of God, huh? So not back in the position of the of the Greek philosophers, right?

[38:30] And their skepticism is not of the same sort at all. And so when they when they give up theology, they didn't simply go back to the Greeks and start to philosophize in the absence of this, right?

[38:45] And one of the key turning points between Hegel and Marx is a perverse little work by Feuerbach called "The Essence of Christianity." You know that used to be on the index in the old days. I remember when I was I was teaching at Saint Mary's College. You know, of course, Marxism was still in power in Moscow, and I was supposed to give a course on Marx, right?

[39:09] You know, so I wanted to use a little bit of the essence of Christianity, right? The connection between Hegel and Marx. And in those days, you know, you had to get permission to use a book like that, and the registrar would handle it. You know, he'd send the books and he'd send down to the thing. Oh, and the. That came back, you know. The registrar called me again, You know, he says, "He says you got permission to use that book."

[39:31] He says, "But it says here you're responsible if anybody loses their faith." Which is, you know, which is a good thing, you tell the professor, right? Of course, I didn't intend to use actually the text of it. I just wanted to make a few references to it, you know. And but no, it's nothing like the essence of Christianity. You know, what Feuerbach is maintaining in there is that the that Christianity, God became man, right?

[39:54] Is a kind of poetic way of saying that man himself is God. You see, and so it's kind of you know obviously a perversion of that, right? You don't have any perversion of the mysteries of the Christian faith and the Greek philosophy that ever presented with them, right? You see, Um incidentally, Feuerbach's. Argument is based on the fallacy of equivocation.

[40:23] He quotes theologians who say the infinite is God, and then he says man's mind is infinite. Therefore, man's mind is God. But the word "infinite" when said of God, right, instead of our mind, is equivocal. When we say God is infinite, we mean there is no what limit to his perfection, right? He's universally perfect. But when we say our mind is infinite, we mean our mind is always able to learn something more, right?

[40:53] So it's a much different kind of infinity. But the average person can't distinguish those kinds of infinities, so it's not a good argument, you know. So Karl Marx and and Engels said they became enthusiastic for Bakuninians huh? Yeah. The same way about love, right? Juliet says, "My love is infinite." Right, the more I give, the more I can give. There is something infinite about love, but again, our love is not infinite in the way God's love is infinite.

[41:22] So by not seeing that equivocation, that's what they sort of built there. Yeah. It's part of their system on it, really. Yeah, he's a link between you know Hegel, but Hegel's really getting that point too.

[41:39] So Hegel's philosophy of history is more like what the city of God trying to do in philosophy something that the Greeks never tried to do, you know, in philosophy, but it's kind of a. It's kind of like you know they say you know it's one thing to never have had anything, another thing to have had something and given it up right or lost it right. And so, this the modern philosophers they seek a substitute for theology, right?

[42:09] And the Greeks are not because they never really had this revealed theology. You know, when Thomas talks about the certitude of revealed theology, it's much greater than the certitude of philosophy, because it's based on the word of God. Well, then you have the modern philosophers seeking in philosophy a certitude, right? More than what human, right? You know, so that the you know the the defect of let's say the senses, right?

[42:40] The senses are imperfect means of knowing. The Greeks were aware of that, right? But it becomes an obsession with the modern philosophers, right? To the point that they're not going to what trust the senses at all, right? Well, that's the beginning of our knowledge. You can't you can't really know anything except you can't understand the words you are using because they all start with the what senses, right?

[43:01] I wanted to tell this character we had on campus the other day. I said, "Why do you use the words like 'teleological'? You know, why do you ever have to understand the word telos?" But you know, as I say, you know, teleological end. You know, I mean, just

[43:17] you know, in general, I always object to people. Calling something by the name of the what? Science that studies it. You know, when it's what the science studies, that really makes you know what the science is. You know, people say, you know, you have a psychological problem. You got a problem in your soul, buddy. You got a medical problem. You got a problem in your body.

[43:53] I say, I remember even my friend there, William F. Buckley. You know, speaking of life biologically defined. Well, of course, he's thinking of you know the way the you know what they call biology studies life, right? But even so, I mean, life biology defined. No, I mean, biology defined by life. It's the logos of bios, life, the study of life.

[44:22] Okay, I'm gonna put that aside here. Okay, so I'm gonna have to go through every paragraph here, but he's um. It's all the way down to almost the last paragraph, right? He's developing the argument that I'm saying.

[44:49] It's that last big paragraph, the final part of the argument is there. Okay, so no, it's just here to go through it word by word. Understand the argument.

[45:21] Okay. It's based upon two simple truths, right? The faster body moves what? The same distance as the slower body in less time. And in the same time, the slower body moves a lesser distance. Now, would you admit? Do you trust your senses enough to admit that some things are faster and some are slower?

[45:52] In this world, right? For the sake of argument. Typical modern. So once you admit that there's a faster and a slower, then you're going to have to, you know, you spell out what faster and slower means, right? And you're going to be forced to say what? The distance and time are divisible. what? Forever, right. Yeah.

[46:23] And if the motion takes time, then the and time is divisible forever. You could argue that the motion it must be what divisible forever, right? So, for Aristotle it's the same knowledge in a way that the magnitude and the motion over that magnitude and the time it takes to go over that that they're all divisible forever, right? And that none of them are what put together from the indivisibles of their

[46:54] own Indivisibles Yeah Yeah some modern thinkers want to put them together from indivisibles that because it seems easier to understand well maybe you know I'll get some things that on if I can find them my files there you know but the most common example of that is is the mathematician saying in high school that a straight line is composed of infinity of points okay now why did they say this right

[47:32] well you have a straight line and you cut that straight line what do you have there you cut where you're cutting two lines now yeah you got a point right there right oh okay okay now sometimes I'm in an aggressive mood I I quote Richard Nixon right in his first campaign for office right and he said about the Democratic program right any way you slice it he says it's still the same old what baloney right

[48:07] now if every time you slice something you get baloney right what's it made out of baloney baloney it seems right okay so if every time you cut a line you get a point it must be what composed of points it makes sense it seems to right yeah yeah yeah now the question is

[48:35] was that point there before you cut the line and if it was there was it actually there or was it there in ability you could

[48:53] say there's but infinity of points on the line in ability which wouldn't contradict this right and you can say that when you cut the line you make it actual right

[49:07] but the human mind has a difficult time understanding ability and wants to imagine right what is inside of something only in ability to be actually in there. I always quote Weizsäcker, who was the physicist in the 20th century there, who apparently perfected Kant's theory of the origin of the solar system. And I guess he also was the scientist who showed fully how the sun can what put forth so much energy without being exhausted, right?

[49:49] You know, here, I mean, Anaxagoras had thought the sun was what a stone on fire, right? That's what he's charged with impiety in Athens there. But Aristotle knew that the sun couldn't be a stone on fire because fire, as we ordinarily know fire down here, could not possibly burn as long as the sun is burning, right? So Aristotle, rightly, I think thought that the sun is something much different from from fire, right? Okay, and apparently the sun is not diminishing at all.

[50:21] at least in the course of our time. And Thomas, you know, Thomas says, "Well, this sounds reasonable, right? But maybe it takes longer than many, many, many generations of men, right, for a change to take place." So Thomas is aware of the fact that you know Aristotle's reason for saying that the sun is eternal is not necessary, right? I am sure Aristotle was aware too, right? But it took until Fight Socrates gives an explanation of how this is.

[50:52] It's still hard to understand, you know, because when you stop and think, you know, of all the energy we get from the sun, the warmth from the sun, right? And we're supposed to be about ninety-three million miles from the sun. You draw just kind of a sphere there, you know, ninety-three with a diameter or radius of ninety-three million miles, with the sun as the center. It's almost nothing that the Earth is occupying, you know, and yet that's energy going on in every or the whole sphere.

[51:24] It's incredible, you know. It must be something far different from ordinary fire, right? You know, it's unbelievable, right? But anyway, Fight Socrates has some interesting things to say. He's kind of off the deep end the last recent years, but anyway.

[51:42] But he has some interesting things to say, and one thing he's very interesting. He says that when we imagine something, we make it actual in our imagination. And can you sense or imagine, in general, any kind of ability? Even my ability, say, to walk, and my ability to talk. Do you really sense my ability to walk or talk? No, it's not. We're actually doing it. It's it's what I do because of my ability, right?

[52:12] And only reason can what figure that out, right? Because only reason knows one thing to another, right? It's like like Shakespeare taught us there, right? He says it goes through discourse to know one thing to another, and ability has to be known through the act which is an ability. The ability is not the same thing as act. Now, act was in a sense in trouble with what Anaxagoras, right?

[52:36] He's trying to understand matter, and he knows you can't get something out of nothing. So everything you got out of matter must already be in matter. But he's imagining it to be actually in there rather than in what ability. Then he runs into all these problems because to get everything in there, he's got to make them what infinitely small, and that gets into contradictions.

[53:00] Well, as I pointed out at that time, that in the most advanced part of modern physics, as far as the study of matter, say Heisenberg's time, right, the study of elementary particles. The common way of speaking was that of what Anaxagoras. And for the similar reason, right? They saw that out of every elementary particle, you can eventually get all the other elementary particles. You can't get something out of nothing.

[53:29] They are an actual plot. Therefore, every elementary particle is inside of every other elementary particle. And so, as Heisenberg says, the well-known formula was every elementary particle is composed of all the rest. But then the elementary particles would be getting what smaller, smaller, and smaller, right? As inside each elementary particle, be all the rest. Inside each of those, all the rest, and so on forever, right? As Heisenberg said, there I never believed, you know, simple and forever.

[54:02] Okay, but there may be something you know before that. I don't know. Maybe the quarks, who knows? But anyway, that ran into contradictions with the experimental fact that each kind of elementary particle has a definite mass and size and so on, right? But why was that the well-known way of speaking this thing? The trying to imagine everything that you can get out of an elementary particle as being actually in there, right?

[54:33] And just as when out of the water, I guess by, I don't know, electrolysis or something, they got what hydrogen, oxygen, right? They said, well, water must be composed of hydrogen, oxygen. Well, maybe this in some way I don't know exactly. Maybe it does not. But if you get out of the elementary particle all the rest, it must be composed of them, right? So the inability to understand ability, not the absolute inability, but you know, difficulty, right, of understanding ability.

[55:08] So, not understanding ability. They think that when you cut a line and you get a point, the point must have been there already, right?

[55:22] How can you get as many points as you want to without limit, and therefore infinity, by cutting a line, right? If there weren't infinite ones already there, is that so? Well,

[55:41] by the you know, it'd be easier in a sense if it's easy to understand how you get chairs out of the next room. if It's actually chairs in the next room, right? And I get chairs out of these trees out here, right? It's easy

[55:58] to understand the way chairs are in the next room, or chairs are in this room, and the way chairs in the trees out there, right? Because they're only inability, right? Is it chair inability? What do you mean? You know, it's kind of hard to understand, right? But the difficulty of understanding ability, and especially this ability to be. Is, as Aristotle points out in the second book of Wisdom, there, the difficulty is in the thing itself, huh?

[56:28] You can see dust in there when he's when he's thinking about the first matter, you know, and he doesn't know what to say. If I could say, he says, "Is something that's nothing, or nothing that is something?" I would say so, but he knows he can't quite speak that way, right? You see, but doesn't have the advantage of Aristotle and so on, right? But but he's puzzled by it, right?