Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
71. False Imagination, Wonder, and Learning from Nature: Student or Judge
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/071-false-imagination-wonder-and-learning-from-nature-student/

[0:00] So it's this what we call sometimes to use Thomas's phrase here, false imagination. False imagination is the main cause of deception on the side of our knowing powers, right? And that means what? It could mean imagining something other than it is, right? Which you often do, right? Or imagining, or trying to imagine something that cannot be imagined, right?

[0:44] So when people think about the soul, the soul cannot be imagined. So the poet, even men in general, will be kind of what? Imagine the soul to be a kind of air-like substance, right? In the shape of the what? Man, yeah. And sometimes you know they do this in a movie too, you know, and you have kind of that shadowy thing coming out of the person. But this is the way Homer represents the souls down in Hades, and they're brought up in the Odyssey on the way back, and then we got other blood and all this to get them to come up.

[1:22] And they're kind of like shadows, of the former cells, right? And even the great and noble Achilles said, "You'd rather be up plowing the ground than be down here in this kind of, you know, substanceless existence, you know." And even Dante, you know, poetically has to represent the souls as what? These ghost-like things in the shape of men, huh? And so he goes through purgatorio or something like that, and he sees the soul of somebody new.

[1:49] He recognizes being, you know, your soul because it has the same shape and thing, and and he wants to you know hug the person he hasn't seen for some time, and it's hugging the air. It's very frustrating. He can't give him a hug, right?

[2:05] I think the average person imagines the soul to be that way, right? See, and so they're being deceived in a sense by what? False imagination.

[2:16] In this great dialogue, the Parmenides, Socrates is represented as a young man talking to the great Parmenides, and they're talking about the universal, and Socrates is trying to imagine universal. Like the big sail covering all the individuals under it, you see, and getting into all kinds of problems because of this, because only part universal would be over each man's head, right? So if man is covering us, maybe you know one of us has got animal over us, the other guy's got rational.

[2:43] One's rational, I'll be an animal; one's being an animal, yeah. But all kinds of problems arise because he's trying, you know. But you know, if you if you run into the modern logicians, they can't understand universal, and they they want to substitute class for universal, and a class is something you can imagine, right? A multitude, and

[3:07] so any time there's there's some kind of thing that cannot be imagined, you try to imagine it. If you follow your imagination, you're going to be deceived, and that's why you know if you look at Thomas's commentary on the De Trinitate of the great Boethius, Boethius. You know, has a section there, and you you can't judge by imagination here, right? That's the nature of the angels, or, in fact, very the nature of God, huh?

[3:39] And Thomas has nice article developing that idea. Can't resolve imagination, but that's true in logic. First, true about talking about the soul. And when Thomas is talking, you know, about the soul being indivisible, it's not indivisible like a point. It doesn't have any position here or there like the point could have.

[4:04] But you can be deceived even in geometry by false imagination, even though things there can be what, be imagined, huh? And and this, you see something in the Latin there, the falsigraphus, right? The falsely drawn, right? Say. And

[4:29] you know, men men imagine that you know two lines would always have the ratio of a number to a number, right? Then they find out this scandalous thing, right? That the ratio of the diagonal, let's say, to the side of the square, is not proportional to the ratio of a number to a number. This is a terrible discovery, right? Shocking discovery, and

[4:55] you know, had to you know rethink all their geometry, right? Until they get this great fifth book of Euclid there, right? You know, where you can still have ratios and proportions that aren't expressed in what numbers, right? My favorite example is the one from, I guess, Book Three, right? Was a magnificent theorem there, and it's the one where he's talking about if you draw, you have a circle, and you draw, let's say, the radius there to the point there in the circumference, and you draw a line that's right angles, right, to that radius.

[5:39] Yeah, you can't fit a line in. Yeah, that straight line, begins with, it said to touch the what circle, right, at that point. But in the other point, does it touch it, right? Now, if I've never studied Euclid, I think I would imagine that at that point where the they touch, starting there, I could draw a straight line between the circle and the what straight lines, right?

[6:13] The reason why I'd imagine that way is they say, well, above that what point between the circle here, there's space, right? Yeah. And because you know space is infinitely divisible and so on, right? Surely you could draw a line in there, right? You see. And there, I would be falsely imagining, and I would be deceived by that, right? I told you a little, a little story of you know my politician friend Roy Monroe.

[6:48] When I got out of college, I'd never read Euclid. Say, I didn't go to TAC, right? So, and I didn't have a trivium, you know. So I said, this lousy Euclid. I want to call him in high school or in geometry there. So when I graduated from college, my old teacher, the curate, said, "Duane, go out and buy Euclid." And I said, "Why? Go out and buy a reader," he said.

[7:11] Didn't that give you a reason why? Go out and buy a reader. Okay, you know. So I went out and I started reading. He said, "Hey, this is very interesting." I said, "Not like this stupid geometry in high school, sir." So I'm really a kid and caught up in it. And so I'm talking to my one day to my politician friend there, Roy Monroe. Roy said, "What are you doing these days, Duane?"

[7:36] So I'm studying geometry. He kind of laughed with kind of a half sneer, you know. I said, "Well, it's kind of interesting." So I looked into this theorem gradually. See, you know, I was talking about how you know what a rectilineal angle is, right? And you can bisect it, make it smaller, smaller like a scissors closing up, you know. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So could you draw, you know, the curved line and straight line, an angle that would be smaller than any rectilinear angle, right?

[8:05] Of course, it's easy to put it right because these can be made, you know, as small as you want to make them, right? Eventually get them to fit in. Well, here you get an angle, what they call a horn angle, I guess. It's like a horn there, the thing, which is smaller than any what? Rectilinear. Yeah, that sounds impossible because of the infinitesimal infinitesimality of this thing.

[8:28] And so I said, "It was amazing, right?" And and all the all the thing stops, see, you know. It's a little like you always have that in life of the mind that kind of satisfies you, you know, whether it's when it's nearing or all of a sudden all of a sudden turns to wonder, you know. My my brother Mark remarks, I guess. We used to have this this power hitter there for Saint Paul, or for Minnesota, really.

[8:56] Uh, Killebrew, I don't know if you've ever heard of Killebrew. Killebrew? See, yeah, Yeah, they've got a big man, right? And one time, I guess the fans were razzing him, you know, full of brew, full of brew, you know. Pick

[9:10] up at the home plate, you know, and whack the ball way out of the ballpark, you know, and all of a sudden, just like that, all that mocking and so on stopped, just like that, you know. And I guess there was a time when when Babe Ruth had went there cheering for some reason. How do you know? Got the place, and he said, "He pointed

[9:32] right there, you know. Someplace out of ballpark, right there, you know. Why, right there, right out of ballpark, right there, we said. You know, all of a sudden, you know, all that thing just stops like that. It's kind of amazing to see that, you know. So, this is not so obvious a thing, right? I mean, when I showed that to him, he's kind of full of wonder, you know.

[9:55] It doesn't make fun of me anymore, for instance. You could, huh? But anyway, I'm making this because when when when Thomas explains Aristotle doesn't spot out there, but and the mathematical example Aristotle takes for wonder at the end of the premium to wisdom in metaphysics, and

[10:24] I guess is the example of it, right? The the one of the incommensibility, right? But what's remarkable about this is that when these things are contrary to what you expect, then they would tend to arouse what wonder, right? And this razor

[10:49] just fell to the floor, right? Huh? Okay. If this thing should fall in my hand and fall to the floor, you wouldn't wonder about it falling to the floor, would you? Even though, in fact, you don't know why it falls to the floor. But if I let go of this instead of falling to the floor, I went up. Then you wonder why it went up, right? Not just because you don't know why it went up, but because it's going up is contrary to what you expect, huh?

[11:14] And so Thomas is making the point that although we can, in some sense, wonder about any cause we don't know, right? We especially wonder about the cause of some effect which is contrary to what we would what expect. Expect, yeah. It's interesting that he sees that because Einstein makes the same point again in his Hare's his books, Harper Torch books, you know. There's a whole series of them of different thinkers, you know.

[11:49] But this one's called Einstein, you know, scientist, philosopher, that. And it's really a collection of essays, mainly by scientists, but some philosophers about Einstein, right? And then the great man at the end can make a reply to all these papers on him, right? And so you have that Einstein, but you also have you know a little autobiographical sketch of Einstein where he talks about what wonder his own life, right?

[12:19] He talks about two kinds of wonder, but the kind of wonder here that's like this, he's talking about the wonder that a magnet had when his father brought home a magnet, right? And what he wondered about was the magnet was a body, but it seemed to move other bodies without coming into contact with them. And he expected that one body could move another body only by coming into contact with it.

[12:47] And so he wondered about this, right? And he makes the point that people don't tend to wonder about something that happens all the time, even though they don't know the cause, right? See, apparently Newton, you know, knew that he didn't know the cause of the stone falling to the ground. His editor, you know, apparently tried to give the impression that he did know. So when Einstein went to England to give his talk on Newton, he said he admired Newton for what more for knowing what he didn't know, like you admire Socrates right?

[13:19] And for what he didn't know, right? But among the things that Newton knew he didn't know was why a stone falls to the ground, why the apple falls to the ground. As it goes up, right? Newton knew he didn't know why. See, we don't wonder about why things fall to the ground. Although Einstein was trying to find out why they do, but he didn't. We don't usually wonder about that because it happens every day, right?

[13:44] When something contrary what we expect, then we begin to what wonder, right? See, that's as far as what this theorem is. It arouses my wonder because it's contrary to what you might expect, right? That theorem that I kind of expand on that fifth theorem in book two, where you realize that a rectangle could have even less area or less perimeter and still contain more what area, right?

[14:12] That's kind of contrary what the average guy would what would think, right? If I use more fence to you know enclose my rectangle, I must have enclosed more land than you did, right? But you're a dummy. You put you put it like that, and I did like this, and I used less fence, and my kids got more room to play in than your kid does. It is.

[14:37] See, and I don't know. Was it the youth of somebody there mentions you know how these crooked geometers in ancient times they would sell land by perimeter. Oh no. And so I'm giving you land with more perimeter than the one you have. You're actually losing land, and I'm gaining land, right? But I seem to be the generous guy because I'm giving you a even trade there, right?

[15:02] And they even discuss how people would would estimate the the area of an island by how long it took to sail around the island.

[15:10] Might be more indentations than it was. So you actually take longer to sail around a what? Smaller island, right? See, but that's just a little more naive, you know. See, but it's a good example, you know, of how you know what Thales is supposed to have said, you know, that the philosophers wanted to make money, they they would know how to do it, right? And the geometer wanted to make money, right, out of the knowledge of these things.

[15:37] He could in in buying and selling land, which is where a lot of people make their money, right? You know, in in our civilization, they buy land and sell it to advantage, right?

[15:52] So. So even in but I was starting out this example here because many things you learn from that about wonder, but I would say that even geometry you can have what false imagination, right? Even though geometry is a science where you can what Use your imagination. You can resolve the imagination, right?

[16:21] Um, I think my brother Mark was talking about the fifth postulate. You know, some people want to call it the parallel postulate. Well, it's not. About parallel lines, is it the fifth postulate? No, it's about when a straight line falls upon two lines and makes angles less than what two right angles, those lines will meet, right? So why do you have a postulate about lines meeting rather than lines going on forever and never meeting?

[16:53] It's because you can resolve the first. Yeah, you can imagine two lines meeting, but lines that go on forever, and never meeting, you can't imagine an infinite line. Any time you imagine something, you make it finite. The imagination, say, so you wouldn't be able to resolve the imagination, which is the way you judge things ultimately in geometry. I know you were supposed to write a book on the falsigraph on, the falsely drawn.

[17:20] Oh. Yeah, I don't know if we have it or not. I heard about it, but it's mentioned, you know, you know, in the notes there, Heath, you know, so. But I had very good student years ago. He used to get hundreds all the time in philosophy, but he went to Dartmouth there, graduate school in math, you know, and was in math. He said one of these things, you know, puzzling over it, you know.

[17:43] One of these things, you know, this pretends to be a demonstration, you know, but you know, I don't know if I figured out what. I'll let you know, but makes you kind of fearful. You always glad to be deceived, you know, about these things. I'm not going to be deceived about that thing. I think I wouldn't,

[18:01] you know. I think not. If you go back just to your senses, you could be deceived. You've got to do cool. Yeah. The proof.

[18:13] We used to argue about whether it's obvious: the straight line can be bisected. You know, there's a halfway point in a straight line. huh? Because obviously, in some numbers, there is not right in it. An even number, you can divide it, you know, halfway, right? But an odd number, no way to divide it once. I mean, the two equal halves, right? You know. So is it obvious that a straight line can be divided into two equal parts?

[18:45] Every straight line. It's easy enough to prove, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're you're you're proving it. Yes. Yeah. Assuming it's continuous. And again, I never thought I never thought of this before. It's it's in book six here that Aristotle proves the nature of the continuous of the infinitely divisible. But in geometry, I guess it was just assumed.

[19:18] Although that is that is a that is a a demonstration, isn't it? Yeah, geometry. Yeah, yeah, to bisect it. Yeah. I mean, I heard some people. I've argued with people about this, you know. I mean, they're assuming, you know, that we already know that it can. Be just quite know how to do it, see? Or, or does the theorem itself teach us that it can, that there always is a middle point, right?

[19:49] And think about that a bit, huh? Okay. Go back here now to the last paragraph here. In the last paragraph, in a way, he's reasoning from one the same body moving right, as the moderns would say uniformly, right?

[20:20] Furthermore, from the customary reasons, it is clear that it can be said that if time is continuous, distance will be also. For it has gone half and half the time, and generally less and lesser time. For there will be the same divisions of time and distance. He's thinking here now of what one in the same body, right? Huh? Okay. And something like like the first one there, right?

[20:46] Or you had two bodies equally fast, right? And we said for sake of clarity, he has two bodies, and he can say that okay, one body goes this distance in this time, right? And a body equally fast is going to go

[21:08] in less than that time. The equally fast body goes that distance. An equally fast body will go in lesser time, lesser distance, right? Okay. And vice versa. Well, could you take this with one body going uniformly at the same speed all the time, right? That if it goes this distance in this time, then in this time it's going to go what? Less. distance. Less distance, right? Okay.

[21:38] So if the time is divisible forever, right? Okay. And vice versa, if it goes this distance in this time, it's going to go less than that distance in what? Less time. Less time, right? Okay. So you do it just one body itself, right? Doing that,

[21:58] huh? So. Okay. So maybe I'll stop there at the end of the third reading, huh? Trying to stare really there. My son's birthday there.

[22:27] My little thing for him. My youngest son's birthday. I'm going to bring up a recently developed picture of me talking to the youngest grandchild, you know. So I'm the oldest grandfather. Say I'm a little bit older than the other grandparents. So as you're the oldest, talking to the very youngest, right? Now, what's very interesting, you know, about talking to the little baby there is that you, you know, really talk for a little bit to them, and they try to talk back, right?

[22:57] Of course, they don't have any words to talk, right? But they get kind of excited a while, and they go, and they say, like that, you know, you know, like they're trying to communicate. I don't know what they're trying to communicate exactly, but but they really are, you know, in a very human way, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, reacting to that. You know, you realize how important that that kind of stimulus is for a little baby, you know.

[23:24] They found, you know, in these hospitals, you know, where the mother is, you know. been killed, or something's happened, right? You know, you know that the nurses have to, you know, just the baby and hug the baby and so on, and that without that, the baby doesn't even develop properly physically, let alone emotionally, right? You know, it's kind of amazing thing, you know. You know, and

[23:50] you know, going back to the idea of the natural here, a bit, you see, Um, you know, is it something like a smile or a frown? You see, are they natural signs? See, see.

[24:07] I think a smile is, of course, a a can mean more than one thing. I think, huh? See, so sometimes smile is just a sign of what joy, right, or pleasure, right? Okay. Sometimes a smile is a sign of amusement, right? Okay, and sometimes smile is a sign of what affection or love, right? Huh? Okay. So I mean, it's not a simple a sign that you might want to think at first, right?

[24:44] See, to me, a smile is much more interesting than a laugh, right? Because a laugh is is more, you know, tied tied with the with the laughable, right? Okay, but a smile is a little more what ambiguous. You want to say that, right? Um, you know, sometimes when a person is speaking and someone in the audience is smiling, you don't know whether they're amused at what you're saying, or or whether they enjoy what you're saying, or or they love you, or what what it is, you know.

[25:11] Um, something, you know, you know, the one about the Mona Lisa smile. but I don't, really like the Mona Lisa myself, but but I mean, you know, there's there's something very rich about a smile, huh? Um, but is a smile, nevertheless, a natural sign of these things? You know, if you frown, you know, look angry, um, to a baby, the baby will start, will start to, you know, whimper right away.

[25:41] You see, and and as if they kind of what naturally know that, right? See, and you smile at the baby, and you know, and they get they smile back, and they they really, um, and I mean, I but are they learning to smile? You see, just like they learn English, you know, or is a smile something natural that they would do? see, See. You know?

[26:09] I bet you observe the baby most of all. What's very interesting about them is also that I notice sometimes, you know, I'm looking at somebody else, and then I catch their eyes like that. They're looking up at you and smiling at you. You know, or looking up at their mother and smiling at their mother. You know, it's kind of amazing to see that. You know, you know, and but.

[26:31] Of course, they're always talking about the first smile the baby gives you in the morning. You know, it's always very, you know, it's been a while since they've seen you, you know. Really, huh? So they, you know, with with this one's, you know, the first born that family, they get, which we, talking to them, you know, and so on. Just look at the expression of their face; they kind of remember the thing.

[26:54] It's really kind of interesting to see, you know. You know, lucky all day they show, what's going on in their own mind, you know, but but they really know you're talking to them, that you're, you know, and they want to respond in some way. At least I said this. And Chris, you know, then finding their attention span. Of course, it can't be too long, else you know, else when they're distractors like that, you know, you know, the rest of the line they come back and you start again, you know.

[27:22] And they really get the real intensity and and smile and try to talk and so on. Sometimes my my my my wife or my daughter long, you know, they'll they'll be over there, you know, so you know because the baby's talking to me, you know, so it's really kind of amazing things, amazing this and that. It seems to be a smile and a frown that these are natural signs.

[27:45] I don't think you could, you know, you know people talk about white and black, you know, and I guess there are some cultures where white is associated with sorrow and some where in black with joy. It's so hard for me to see, you know, but but but white and black are not as natural as as a smile and the frown. I don't think, huh? Is there? Uh, but there's a place where the bride is dressed in black.

[28:13] It's a groom that's dressed in black. I don't know what that says about the thing. That says about you, but but the the I think the smile and the frown are really natural. You got to

[28:33] hold on to every little bit of nature you can, you know, given this crazy modern world, huh? The Why do they give up that natural understanding?

[28:50] Is it just pride and you know revolt? You know, they want to be, you know, they want to be free to imagine things. Was it was it at first simply to try and they wanted to prove something so they could know that it was true. They wouldn't believe them. They wouldn't believe natural understanding. But if someone said, you know, there is no natural understanding, right? There are no statements that we naturally know, right?

[29:24] Well, if there's no statements we naturally know, then really no statement could be known, right? Oh yeah. So they couldn't really know that there are no statements, huh? Okay.

[29:37] Now, so so apart, you know, if you call it a pride, you know, this pride in any age, right? I mean, you know, why why should the moderns be more proud than the ancients, right? You see, you know,

[29:54] but is there something also that might encourage this pride, right? And maybe not, and and even operate somewhat independently of the pride, huh? So there's some reason, something else there.

[30:11] Don't you think a lot of it has to do with moral? Because then you you listen to nature, then you'll be hearing some moral responsibilities. Yeah, yeah. If you descend to that, yeah. I'm giving an exam to introduction to philosophy students tomorrow, right? And we just got through with the apology, right? Of course, the most famous statement in the apology, and the most famous statement in the whole Plato, is in the apology, huh?

[30:35] The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being, right? For a man, it's okay for a dog, okay for a tree, but not for a man. Say, and why is that, right? Say, well, it's because the examination of life is made by reason, right? So an unexamined life is one that has not has not been examined by reason, right? Therefore, it's not a life based on reason.

[31:03] Therefore, it's not a human life. I think his name. So I said, thought that was taking a question, you know, or a sub question. Not that I want to grade it, just what they say, though. So I said, so after asking the question about this, I said, now, are students living an examined life or unexamined life? I had a student just in the office where I came down here.

[31:26] They just taken an oral exam. I said, what do you think? Students on campus who are living, leading an examined life or unexamined life? So yeah, unexamined life. He mentioned it

[31:42] all their life, but for now, living an unexamined life. But you see, you know, if you read the apology carefully, you see the two parts of the speech, the main speech, touch upon those two things, huh? Because in the first part, Socrates is talking about how he's been going around examining people, right? Because of the Oracle of Delphi and so on. But then in the second part, he says that he's been examining the Athenians mainly about their preference for the goods of the body and outside goods over the goods of the soul, right?

[32:24] Say. Since we've been examining them upon the life that they're leading, right? And so as you pull that out, then we reason out, you know, that Socrates is correct and the Athenians are mistaken, right? Okay, a lot of other things we've taken up in the course. And then I say, well, then, within the life of the Athenians, and they agree that the life of the Americans is like the life of the Athenians, then the life of the Athenians is based on mistake, right?

[32:58] I say that's a bit annoying to have somebody going around and pointing out that the life you're leading is based on a mistake, right? That's a little bit irritating, or especially when I go on living that life, right?

[33:12] And so no wonder they, you know, you know, put him to death, see you know. So um see that is not a good state to be in you know. To have your whole life based on a mistake. Because That that statement, the unexamined life is not worth living, is kind of an exhortation into practical philosophy, as far as philosophy is concerned, right? Maybe an exhortation to do an examination of conscience too.

[33:50] Don't get too close to home. At least I'm a practical philosopher. So, one reason why you might deny statements naturally understood. as I mentioned before how

[34:22] after philosophy had been developed, and you had a lot of philosophers and books, you could you could start anywhere. Besides, at the beginning, earlier you kind of have to start at the beginning with your senses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you did that, then you might

[34:43] come to think that you kind of could start anywhere, perhaps. Yeah. You see. Kant, I think, has a couple of interesting proportions, right? You know, he's saying, you know, he admits that in some sense. reason he has to learn from nature, right? Okay. He gives two proportions, right? It's very good that he does this, right? Okay. You know, just like like Aristotle is talking about reason and the emotions, huh?

[35:20] And he says, "What should be the relation of the reason and the emotions? " Huh? He said, "Should reason be to the emotions like a master is to a slave? " Or should reason be to the emotions? He says, like a father is to a son. That's a very good way of setting up the conversation, right? Okay. You know Aristotle's reply is don't you? Father to

[35:55] son. Yeah, like the father is to the son, right? That's very interesting, huh? Aristotle is thinking of the Greek family, right? Where the relation of the father to the son is different than the relation of the master to the slave, right? Okay. And two differences are this: that the master rules the slave for the good of the master, not for the good of the slave, huh? Like the father rules the son for the good of the son, right?

[36:28] Okay, that's one difference, huh? And the second difference he gives. Is that the slave has nothing to say about what he's going to do today, right? The son has something to say about what he's going to do today, right? And the father may say, "Well, you can't do that," or may say, "You can do that," right? Huh? But there's a little bit of leeway there, right? Okay.

[36:56] Within reason, the father may allow the son to choose certain things, right? Okay. You see that? So the two very interesting differences, but it's hard to see what relation can or should be between reason and the what emotions, right? Okay. And what, what Aristotle is concluding eventually is that reason should rule the emotions as the father rules the son. That is for the good of the emotions that they be ruled by reason, huh?

[37:31] And secondly, that emotions have a certain what leeway, right? Huh? Okay. Now, I sometimes, you know, use the other proportion that they use, you know. You say reason is to the emotions like the father is to the children.

[37:51] I think it's a matter of experience in family life that where the children get some discipline, right, but the parents not tyrannical, even as children they're happier. See, oh yeah. But the children who are allowed to run ragged, right, they become extremely restless, right, and dissatisfied with everything and so on, right? And so I see that in poorly regulated families, right, the children are actually, you know, emotionally speaking, unhappy compared to those in families where they get, you know, firm discipline, but they get the love and so on, right?

[38:28] Um, and the same thing happens with emotions, right? Huh? See, the reason rules the emotions, prevents certain excesses in the emotions, They're emotionally what Upsetting, Upsetting, yeah, deranging, yeah. You see, you see, and I think you see that. Okay. Now, Kant has, I think some very interesting proportions, right? He says,

[38:55] to raise the question, should reason be to nature as a student is to his teacher, okay? Or should reason learn from nature like the judge or the lawyer learns from the the witness? Okay. That's a very beautiful setting up with the question, right? Okay. Okay.

[39:32] Now he contrasts these two. He says the student comes into class, right? He sits down and he listens to whatever the teacher has to say, right? Okay, and the student doesn't decide what the teacher will say today, right? Okay,

[39:54] he listens to what the teacher has to say. Okay. Now is that the way that our reason should learn from nature, in the way that the student learns from the teacher? Now, or should reason learn from nature in the way that the judge or the lawyer learns from the witness? Huh? The witness doesn't get up in the witness chair there and say whatever he wants to say in the court, right?

[40:19] No. He opens his mouth in reply to a question that is put to him by the judge or by the the lawyer, right? And he answers that question, right? Or those questions, and that's it, huh? You see? So the judge doesn't listen to the witness might want to say today, right? What he has to say. he listens to only what the witness has to say in reply to those questions that he, the judge or the lawyer, sees fit to put to him, right?

[40:54] Okay. So what should be the relation of our reason to nature, in the sense learning from nature? in the sense kind of admits we can. But should we learn from nature like a student learns from his teacher, or a judge from a witness? Okay. Now, having said it up very nicely, huh? Kant says this is the way. This is the way man should learn from nature. Not not this way.

[41:34] Okay. Now I think it is there's some truth in what Kant is saying as far as experimental science is concerned, huh? And experimental science, we, especially as it develops, we perform an experiment, huh? Make an observation to answer a question we have in mind, right? We're not just going out and observing whatever nature is doing or could do, right? If a definite question we want to be answered, right?

[42:09] And we're in a sense putting this question to nature, like to a witness, okay? Okay. Now, Erwin Schrodinger, huh? You know who he is? He's a famous physicist in the 20th century, Austrian. He's the physicist who perfected what wave mechanics, huh? Okay. So he's responsible for the mathematics and Wave mechanics. He showed the mathematical equivalence of wave mechanics and quantum mechanics. Heisenberg, right? So there's something called the Schrodinger equation.

[42:47] you'll need. Okay, so. He's a famous physicist, right? But anyway, in this beautiful collection of essays that Dover puts out, it's, in the course of the time, it's had one one title can just slap a title on these collection essays, right? The edition I have of it says, Science, Theory, Man." Okay, but it's a collection of different essays. There's a lot of interesting things in there. But one of the essays is entitled "Now Is Science a Fashion of the Times?"

[43:19] Kind of strange for physicists, and a world famous physicist, to be asking the question, "Is science fashion of the times?"And he's not explicitly referring to Condidol, right? But he's saying that we don't perform every experiment we could,

[43:42] especially these complicated or difficult experiments. Huh? It's because we have a particular idea and a particular question that seems interesting to us, right? That we decide to perform this experiment rather than another. And if we had asked other questions and performed other experiments, right? Other things would have come to mind, right? And dominated our science in a way that different than it is now. See? I think it's kind of interesting.

[44:15] It's kind of a reflection of this, huh? And one time we had a book there by a trial lawyer, right? It was about going to court and questioning witnesses and so on, right? And he says, if you go into court and start asking the witness questions at random,

[44:47] the witnesses are likely to say something against your case, but a harm your case is helpful, right? So he's saying you got to go in there with a plan already. What you want to do?

[45:04] And that plan will dictate asking the defendant these questions, but not those. See? And that's the way the trial judge, the trial lawyer, develops this case, right? Okay. You see, every investigation, the courtroom takes the direction of the questions asked, right? He asked some of the series of questions, that might have gone in a different what direction, right? You see that in congressional hearings or things of that sort, where one guy might take a different line of question than somebody else, right?

[45:43] And something much, much different picture emerges. You see? So this question, you know, was science of fashion time has some connection with this fact, right? This is the way you are. Okay.

[46:03] Learning from nature. Now, if you ask me, I would say that we should first learn from nature in this way up here. Okay. We should first listen to nature, as a student listens to his teacher. Okay, and see how far we can get doing that, right? In the eight books of Natural Hearing, that's the actual title of the book, not Physics. Natural Hearing. Perhaps part of the meaning of calling these the eight books of Natural Hearing is that you're listening, right, to nature in these books as a student would listen to his what teacher.

[47:02] Okay. This kind of, you know, applying those words to a Pericleitus right? Is wise. Excuse me. I want to Say, wisdom is to speak the truth and to act in court of nature, giving ear thereto, right? Okay. And as Aristotle and Thomas often say, right, the ear is the sense of what learning from another, right? The sense of the student right? So in saying you're, you know, very kind to us, speaking, giving ear there too, right?

[47:35] Teaching Pythagoras his what? Attention to nature as a what? Teacher. Teacher, yeah. Now, how can you listen both to nature like the student listens to teacher? The student listens to everything the teacher has to say. How can we listen to everything nature has to say? Right.

[48:02] Well, the answer is, in general, can. You can't listen to everything nature has to say in particular. I can't study every kind of insect. Okay. Can I every kind of plant? Right. No, I can't listen to everything nature has to say in particular, but I can learn to to listen to everything nature has to say in general. That's what the philosophy of nature is, huh? A general knowledge of the natural world based on our common experience of it, right?

[48:41] So this is a beautiful set of two beautiful right proportions to raising the question. But having said that, I don't say one or the other, right? I don't say this is the way we should learn from nature, not that, right? I don't say this is the way we learn from nature, not that. I say, in the beginning of our study of natural things, we should learn from nature in this way.

[49:07] Later on, we have to maybe learn from nature in this way. Do you see? Okay. But for Kant, this is the only way to learn from nature, right? You can check that, right? See. Because his whole experience is that of experimental scientists, right? And so he goes on his example there of Galileo, the you know, climbing a plane and other people, you know, some three or four famous experiments, right?

[49:36] You know, where you put a definite question you're trying to answer, right? You're proceeding in the second way, right? Okay. So he's caught up in that success of experimental science, right? And it made me, in fact, that that this is going on here, right? Now,

[49:55] yeah, was was the first question regarding reason to the emotions also from Kant or? So this is Aristotle, right? Okay. I made the comparison here that you know we have to understand things by proportions, and Aristotle raises a very good question about reason and emotions by these two proportions, right? But Aristotle doesn't say you should sometimes do one thing the other, right? Well, sometimes the saints almost say you have to come the emotions to kind of violence sometimes, right?

[50:27] But for the most part, you'd say reason should rule the emotions like a father a son, right? Okay. And that's why we, you know, should use the fine arts, you know, good music and good literature, right? Because there are the something that kind of appeals to the senses, right? And therefore you're ruling the emotions not in tyrannical way, but you listen to them a bit, right? Giving them a little what they like.

[50:54] You see? But you're still ordering them, right? Okay. But here it seems to me that the truth is not in one of these and the others, but there may be truth in both of these. But we should learn first from nature as a student learns from a teacher. Secondly, in this second way, right? So quite different, yeah. There is a lot more truth in the, and partly in the first one, all the principles there and things like that.

[51:23] So there's a lot more truth in the first. Although there is something in both, that's true. But now, as you as you try to know nature in particular becomes more difficult, you know, more in detail. And now the question is going back to what I was saying before about the complete dependence of philosophy upon the natural, right? And how we know what we don't naturally know in philosophy to what we do nat do naturally know.

[51:53] But is that still true in experimental science? Say, in other words, that water is let's say H2O, right? I think that's true. That water is H2O.

[52:07] Do we understand that or know that? To what we naturally know, There's something kind of strange about this because, you know, I think the great scientists realize the the central place of what they call the hypothesis, right? You know, and that moves everything, right? See, and you could say the hypothesis is the soul of experimental science, right? See, and that they rarely perform experiments at random anymore.

[52:56] See, just you know, let's do this and see what happens, right? They don't do that, right? They have a they have a theory, I mean a hypothesis in mind already, right? Which suggests a question they want answered, right? And they design and conduct an experiment to test that particular thing, right? Okay.

[53:22] So the experiment. Now, sometimes, of course, when they conduct an experiment, something happens in the experiment. You know that. was totally unexpected, right? And that—can that's kind of something that just happens, right? Okay. But the experiment itself, reason they chose the experiment was because they had a hypothesis that seemed interesting, right? But the hypothesis, according to Einstein, is what freely imagined, right? Okay. And has no justification at all from what we already know.

[53:56] Being freely imagined, its whole justification is what you might predict on the basis of it, right? And if you can predict not only things that you already know to be so, but if it leads to a prediction of things that nobody's ever observed, and then they are finally observed, right? Huh? It's kind of an amazing example in there of in physics in the twentieth century. Always sticks in my mind is the one of Dirac.

[54:27] I guess he worked out the you know Heisenberg. People came to him with with the theories, and Dirac worked out some of these things mathematically, right? And out of mathematics came a came a negative electron, right, or a positive electron, which became but no one ever observed what what you know something like that, something like an electron but with the same mass but you know positive charges or like that, right?

[54:52] And then some months or years later, the positron showed up in an experiment, right? Here is a guy who predicted the existence of a particle that nobody knew existed, right? Came out of his theory, you know. And that's really what what what strikes them, you know, you see, on something that they had never observed, right? Um.

[55:17] So, are these things then really known through what we naturally understand? I don't think so. Or can they be proven through what we naturally understand? I don't think so. And of course, Einstein says that the even after you confirm the scientific hypothesis, it remains a guess. It's a tested guess, but you still don't know it's so. Of course, in elementary logic, we know that that the confirmation is not a syllogism.

[55:54] You know, you are saying what if A is so, B is so, B is so. Doesn't follow to say that A is so, does it? No. And Einstein gives example of Newtonian physics that predicted so many things. What was amazing about Newtonian physics, I guess, when they made more observations and so on about the planets, they discovered that the planets are not traveling exactly where they should according to Newtonian physics, right?

[56:24] But they had had so much success in Newtonian physics that they were not ready to jettison it, right? And so they guessed there must be other planets unknown to them, and their mathematics was so exact they could predict where these planets would be, and they trained their telescopes and so on. And eventually found the last planet. See, that's an amazing discovery, right? That they've discovered you know a planet that had not been known from you know over the thousands of years men have been studying the sky, right?

[56:53] And so that they begin to think well, Newtonian physics must be true. I mean, there's so many amazing, you know, things. And then all of a sudden, in the in the 20th century, Einstein, with a different hypothesis, right, predicted the same things that Newton predicted, but also some things that Newton couldn't predict, right? And and then he said it became crystal clear that you never really know that these things are so.

[57:20] Um, I say the basic reason is from elementary logic, right. Now, the more things you predict, and the more precise those predictions are, you know, the greater probability there is. That's why you know when they try to use experimental method in sociology, it doesn't mean much, you know, because the predictions are so vague. But when you say there's going to be an eclipse of the sun starting at you know five o four, and there it is five o four, you know, it's kind of hard, you know, to say it just happened, you know, that you hit it right in the nose, you know, five o four, right?

[57:51] We say you know it's going to be trouble, you know, you know something going to be a vast, you know, sociology is very vague things, you know. Um. So.

[58:12] So maybe through what we naturally know, you don't know these other things, right? In fact, you don't know. Period. This makes sense. You know.

[58:25] So if a man is is accustomed to experimental method, where all ideas are hypotheses, right? Then he might think, because of custom, right, that all ideas are the kind that he's accustomed to, huh?

[58:46] And I always, you know, to me it's kind of laughable, but you know, one of the great scientists there, Claude Bernard, right, the biologist, right, has a very naive view of philosophy and theology, right. Ah, for him, the scientist, you know, he has ideas, but he tests them, right? You know his ideas. He deduces the consequences of them, and then he what tests the consequences, right? The philosopher he has ideas, deduces the consequences, he never tests the consequences of ideas.

[59:21] The theologian he just has ideas. But he's a good. He's one of the fathers of modern physiology, right? And has a good understanding, you know. You know of the, you know, he says, you know, that doubt is intrinsic to his normal method, right? You see, but but he he he has these very naive views of what philosophy theology is, because oh, they could be the truncated, you know, or you know, a part of what you know, the only method is there is the scientific method, right?

[59:53] And he has no real understanding of those things. My my friend Warren Murray often jokes, though, you know, they they often make remarks about the ancients without reading them, right? So they're always making hypothetical statements about what the ancients did, but they never bothered to verify. So they don't u use their, you know, they don't use their own method, you know. It's kind of amazing. I like to kind of kid these people a little bit, you know, you know, Plato and Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas

[1:00:28] thought that there was a maximum speed in the universe, right? And no one thought that until what? Einstein, right? You know, So say Aristotle in ancient times, Thomas Aquinas, in the Middle Ages and Einstein in modern times, thought there was a maximum speed in the universe. Nobody else did.

[1:00:47] All kinds of things, you know, that are kind of interesting, you know, huh? Like that, but they make all kinds of outrageous statements, you know, about what the ancients were doing without ever what testing their hypotheses. But of course, we can't all be can't always be consistent, you know. To err is human.

[1:01:13] So next time we'll start in the fourth reading, right? Over below the other, then that's contrary to all the radii being equal. Okay, and therefore the definition of circle, right? So therefore they have to coincide, right? But Euclid doesn't get that as a theorem, does he? Conclusions and not axioms, right? But in some way, the the axioms of dependency, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, and so there's there's

[1:01:44] there's some kind of a movement of the mind there, but but more so, say in the fourth theorem of Euclid, right, or more so in that movement from the definitions of circle and diameter, right, to the equality of the two parts of the circle gotten by the diameter. Trying to lose so much sleep as to, I mean, I mean, there's some kind of a manifestation of that, right?

[1:02:11] See, but the same way, when you take the postulate that the all right angles are what equal, right? Okay, and Euclid doesn't try to prove that, does he? Right. Okay. Now. We know by the definition that these two angles are equal, and by definition that these two are equal. But how do you know that this is equal to that? Right?

[1:02:43] I think you go through a little process there, right? You imagine this line laid at this line at that point, right? Okay. Now, if this line coincides with this line, then obviously they're equal, right?

[1:03:01] Straight lines are