Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
73. The Now as Indivisible Limit of Past and Future
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[0:00] Now this kind of ends the kind of general consideration of the continuous, right? Which is very important for many any time the continuous comes up, right? Whether you are studying the continuous or you are studying what is not continuous, because you have to know what you are negating, right? Okay. Now, starting reading five, he's going to go more in particular, right, into the divisibility of motion, right, and the order, right, therein of what is found there.

[0:34] But in reading five, as as Thomas explains, he's going to establish some things that presuppose to that consideration. Okay. We may not get all the way through reading five today, but that's preparing the way for this more particular consideration of the divisibility of motion, right? Okay.

[0:59] And really. We wants to show here is a couple of things, right? Wants to show first of all that there's no motion in the now,

[1:18] and in order to show that he wants to show that the now is in fact indivisible, right? And therefore we'll be able to show that there's no motion in the now. Okay. And then towards the end of this reading, he wants to show second thing that the thing that moves, the mobile itself, is what divisible, right? Okay.

[1:44] This is important when Thomas back in the premium, you know, when he's saying what is the subject of the natural philosophy, and he'll say it's

[1:56] ens mobile. Okay. Sometimes he says like in the commentary. on the Nicomachean Ethics, he refers to the subject of natural philosophy. He says res mobilae, right? Okay. But in the beginning, the commentary in the physics, they look at. He says such as ens mobilae,

[2:25] movable being or movable thing, right? He says the subject is not movable body. Okay. Even though we later on we say that that everything that moves is a body. Okay. But he says we show like here in book six that what moves is what divisible and therefore what a body, right? So it's like a what? Logically speaking, property. Yeah. Conclusion. Yeah. So in the beginning of science, the subject that you're studying is known without the properties, right?

[3:07] Okay. Just like when you know Euclid doesn't define triangle as a plane figure whose interior angles are two right angles. Now that's a property that's going to be proven in thirty-two. Thirty-two. Thirty-sixteen. Thirty-two, right? Thirty-two. Is that when you prove the two right angles? Right, right, not. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Some of these numbers stick in your head.

[3:42] So that would not be the subject, but a property to have the interior angles as two right angles. That's proven not till thirty-two, right? So you define triangle in the beginning, and so we're going to talk about the triangle. You don't have any definition of triangle, so you find out that ens mobilae is a what body, right? Okay. Now the second book of Aristotle after the eight books of natural hearing, the so-called physics, the second book, which in Greek the actual title is about the universe, about the cosmos, right?

[4:21] But in Latin they was referred to as the de caelo et mundo. Have you seen that? Okay. I think that's due to a confusion there going from Greek to Latin, because in Greek the word there can mean the universe or can mean what the heavens, right? And so they translated by the word for heavens in Latin de caelo. Aristotle doesn't just talk about the heavenly bodies; he talks about the earthly bodies, right?

[4:53] And therefore they felt the need to say de caelo et mundo. Why don't they? Why don't they see that if it can mean universe or heavens, and he talks about the earth? Well, it's a lot of chance in these things, you know. I was mentioning before, you know, you should give us a title in this book, the physics, right? Okay. Which is kind of a transliteration, not a translation, of the Greek word "phusis" there, which is part of the title, right?

[5:21] So it's kind of Greek in its origin. But then they always refer to the three books about the soul as the "De Anima Everybody calls it the "De Anima." So that's from what? Latin, right? So might they want Greek? One, might they both be Greek? You got more than Greek, right? Instead of calling it, you know, Peri Psyches suitcase, they call it the De Anima right? No, Peri Psyches is too hard to say.

[5:49] You see? So you have to go back in a way to the original what language? Yeah, to see what the title was. As Thomas explains in the proemium to the book on the universe, right? It's about the universe. Aristotle talks about the universe as a whole, the universe book, right? But it's limited or unlimited, and so on, right? And then the the the constituent parts of the universe, right?

[6:17] It's about change of place, basically, right? But when you study place, you realize you have to really know what place is. You have to what? Eventually, know the whole universe. When I was a little boy, you know, and get a little bit funny, I'd sign my give my addresses: Dwayne Burquist, seventeen sixty nine, Stanford, Ramsey County, State of Minnesota, Midwest, USA, North America, Western Hemisphere, the Earth, the solar system, the universe.

[6:54] Both count, please. I didn't know. I'd like to say. Okay, but the point is, in a sense, if you say, "Where are we?" Right? You know, and say, "We're in this room." Well, where is this room? You know, the question "Where" eventually leads you on to what? The ends of the universe. Yeah, the universe as a whole, right? So it's interesting that the study of change of place, the book that's devoted to change of place in Aristotle in particular, is called about the universe.

[7:29] As if that's a noblest thing, right? Well, one thing I discovered years ago, and I was thinking about this, that the the four parts of natural philosophy,

[7:47] in a certain way, correspond to the four causes. Not that you don't talk about one kind of cause in each part, right? But it's in a different part that you go the furthest with respect to the four kinds of causes, huh? So when Aristotle divides natural philosophy, you know, he talks about change in general in the eight books of natural hearing, the so-called physics. Then change of place in particular in the book on universe.

[8:13] Then change of quality leading to change of substance in the books on generation, corruption, and then growth, right? Change of quantity in that sense, and then a change in living things, time, the dynamo, all the biological ones. Well, at the end of the eight books of natural here, and you arrive at the unmoved mover, right? That's going as far as you go is that third kind of cause, the mover, right?

[8:39] In the books on generation, corruption, he goes all the way down to what matter, right? And in the book on universe, a change of place, you go to the what universe as a whole, kind of like the the ultimate form, right? The order of the universe. And if you realize that Aristotle says that in a way the soul and the human soul is the end of nature, then you do that in what The fourth part getting with the living things, where you talk about inner purpose most of all, huh?

[9:12] So it's kind of interesting the four parts of natural philosophy here, natural science in general. That in each of them one goes the furthest with respect to one of the four kinds of causes. You're going to talk about even more than one kind of cause in each part. That's interesting. So Thomas says this is the subject, and this is like a property. Did you prove that the movable is what divided like he does it at the end of this?

[9:43] The most of this, as I said, is taken up with showing that the now is indivisible, and that there's no motion in the what now, huh? And that really makes you realize how motion and time and so on hardly are, right? Because what really is? What's going on? Past and future. Yeah, what's going on now, right? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. The past is not really here anymore, right?

[10:18] And the future is not here yet, right? All that's really here is the now. And so if there's no motion in the now, is that a real thing?

[10:35] When really is there motion? That's already past. That's when it really is. Sounds kind of strange, doesn't it? When they say the Roman Empire, it's really now, right? Because now it's in the past, right? Not any sense, is it? So when when is motion really? In the past or is in the future?

[11:11] Sort of existence it has, it has in the now, and that certainly makes you appreciate more calling the motion imperfect act. Yeah. Because you really see it's not fully in it. Yeah. It it barely is, Aristotle says. You know about motion, about time, right? The same thing could be said about motion, right? It barely is.

[11:40] It always seems to be in the past, the future, never, never to be. That's why it's hard to understand, and it causes difficulties. Aristotle says, isn't it? As Boethius says, after Aristotle, Thomas says after Boethius, and Aristotle.

[12:04] And yet, as Aristotle points out. In his book of wisdom, motion seems most real to us because it strikes our senses. As Shakespeare says in *Troilus and Cressida*, "Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs." So if you're at the airport or someplace and you take some attention, you you wait, right? And you don't want to be seen, you try to what? If you're in the bushes, don't move, right?

[12:31] They might not see you, right? They're looking for you. Okay. So what seems most real to us is what? Least real than us, yeah, yeah. But to us, God seems kind of unreal, right? Eternity seems kind of unreal, huh? What's most real seems kind of unreal to us. You know, I thought I was lecturing in class and Titus and I had a seminarian right? Actually, in class and I had some reference to angels.

[13:10] You know, and he's kind of puzzled by angels. Do angels really exist? You know, he asked the seminary, "I mean, yeah, yeah." And I said, "They're more real than you are."

[13:25] That's my answer. Do they really exist? You say. I said they're more real than you are. My old teacher, Kasurik used to say when you die and you see your angel, huh? Your guardian angel, you know, you're going to start, you know, like this is God. This must be God. And you'll say, no, no, no, no, no. I just your angel, you know. But you could be so impressive these angels, right?

[13:51] No, they're really impressive. Much more impressive than you've ever seen. Not even what. Frangelico, right? Can do justice to them, right? But you know, my brother Richard came back and he spent 12 years in Rome. He's working his doctoral thesis there. But you came back from Rome, you know, or from Italy there. He had, you know, for these angels of Frangelico, right? And he has them all, and nicely, you know, mounted and so on, you know, for the boys' room and so on, you know.

[14:30] But they're really impressive angels. The ones you usually see, you know, are very poor, you know. And Frangelico, I mean, he's he's he's not been canonized yet, but he's been beatified, right? Isn't that all the way? I don't think yet. But but this in the last ten, twenty years he's been beatified, right? So I mean, he's a saintly man, right? I mean, he's he's and he really has an understanding of you know what a magnificent creature these are, but of course you have to put it into painting, huh?

[15:01] You know. used to have another. picture, you know, you ever see this one of the saints in heaven, they're kind of in a circle there, Franciadelico there, is kind of doing like a stately dance in a way. Is he that one? Used to have a reproduction of that one in in the classroom there where I studied with Monsieur D'Ar. You know, beautiful. But you know, I still for class, you look at this one, you know, and he's really something.

[15:24] This Franciadelico. My brother Richard always said, you know, that what impressed him the most in Europe was that San Marco. You know, if you ever been there, each cell's got you know a painting by Frangelico. Yeah, and then there's some other ones, you know, that are in the halls and so on, and they're very well preserved. I mean, they must have, you know, you know, they've been very well taken care of, and so that impressed him the most.

[15:49] Anything he saw in Europe, and he saw all these things in the museums and so on. You know, it's really, really, really something, Franciadelico. He, I mean, there's something about him. You know, like the the icons. You know, I guess where they they fast and you know go through a you know spiritual but aesthetic preparation to do this. Right, you don't just go in there and and paint your mistress like a lot of the the Western painters, you know, painting their mistresses as a Madonna or somebody.

[16:18] You know, but but here it's really you know trying to get some spiritual understanding of this, and so far as possible, put it into the into the the painting. You know, so far you get those things.

[16:36] So they're much more real than we are, those angels, right? The circle used to compare you, you know, trying to make a decision in your life, you know, you know, trying to, you know, you know, to you watching an ankle, or, you know, the angel watching you is like you watching an ankle, or trying to decide where to go.

[17:01] Yeah. I have one question. Is that when you go from immobile to show it's a body? Is that just a before and our knowledge? Isn't body really isn't being mobile a property of body? Well, it's in our knowledge, yeah, yeah,

[17:26] but a reasoning from the former, you know, to the latter, like a property, right? I guess the more universal to the less universal. Oh, you you say though that that it's a property of the body to be, yeah, you could say that.

[17:45] It kind of shows, you know, that the fundamental motion isn't our thinking, right? That we go in this order, right? Very interesting. How much you end up with a mathematical body, right? Descartes' bodies. Seems like some people try to make that more real by making him more real. Yeah, yeah. oh, yeah. I can't hear him real, yeah, And we falsely imagine eternity to be a frozen now, you know, of time.

[18:27] That's how it is. Yeah. Okay. So he says the now, which is not through another, but through itself and first. What does that mean?

[18:55] Well, he's talking about the now in the strict sense, huh? Sometimes we speak of present what year, right? Although we know the present year is partly in the past, right? Partly in the future, right? The present month we might speak of. You got a calendar. We got the present month up there, right? If you forgot to, if you remember to change it, right? But the present month is only present by reason of one day of that month, right?

[19:30] And the other days are in the past or in the future, right? Well, then the present day, right? Well, the present day is not present, as he says, what? All, all at once. Yeah, to itself, right? But to the hour right now in which we're talking, right? And even that's not present through itself, right? But only through part of it, right? Okay. So he's trying to find the present or the now in the strict sense, huh?

[20:03] The one that is not present through some part of itself being present, right? Okay. But itself through itself, right? Is present that? And he says the now, which is not through another, but through itself and first, necessarily is what indivisible, right? And exists in all time, huh? Now we met the now back in Book Four when he talked about time, right? But we're going to understand the now better, right?

[20:33] As we study this, huh? Now he's going to kind of manifest this, right? Okay. For there is a furthest extremity, a further, a furthest limit of the past, beyond which there is nothing. Of the future, and again of the future beyond which there is nothing of the past, which we say is the limit of both.

[21:08] Now, what is he saying there? Does the past extend forever? Well, maybe in that backward direction it might. We don't know, right? We don't know. Faith, it doesn't. Okay, but by reason we might not know, right? But it comes up to the what? The now. The now, right? So the now you could say is the end or the limit of the what? Past. Past, right? None of the past extends beyond the present, beyond the now, does it?

[21:42] It's all bound on this side, at least, by the now, right? Okay. Now the future, right? We don't know how far it's going to go. By reason, even by faith, we don't know how far it's going to go, but we know it's going to come to an end. But by reason, we don't know how far it's going to extend, right? See, but coming back this way, right? It doesn't extend beyond the what?

[22:11] Present. right? As long as, you have some of the future and the past. and the past, and the future, would, make any sense, right? Okay.

[22:20] So the now then is the what? Limit of both. Yeah, it's the end of the past, right? Beginning the future. If you want to say that, right? Okay. Now, it concludes that it is necessary that the now, the same now, be the limit of both times. He's going to go on and develop this and show it more fully, but notice how that fits in with the definition of the continuous.

[22:51] Time is something continuous, right? And continuous means that whose parts have a what? Common boundary. Common boundary, right? Like in the the circle, right? The diameter, right? Common boundary, the two sides, the end of one and the beginning of the other, right? Okay. So the time being continuous, the future and the what past got to have a common what? Boundary, and that common boundary or limit is the what?

[23:24] Now. Yeah. That's that's the definition of the continuous from logic, correct? Yeah. So then, do then bring in regarding the the definition of the continuous from natural philosophy? Are they really can't use them interchangeably?

[23:50] Well, you can show that that that that it's the same it's the same thing, right? This is like a table with continuous quantity. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. This table is continuous quantity. So is is the table then as a body truly divisible forever? Well, you see, you're looking in a way at the same

[24:19] thing, which divides the continuous, right? And which is the limit of the parts of it, right? So if you wanted to divide a circle, let's say into two equal parts, right? You do it by a line, right? Okay. So the line is what divides the circle into two parts, but it's also the limit the two parts what are continuous at, right? Okay. Or in the case of of a of a line, when you divide it, you have a point there, right?

[24:58] So the point is the division of the line, right? That point divides the line into two parts. But you could also consider that point as being the limit

[25:09] that the two parts have in common, if they meet at that point. Okay. But you are looking at in the one way of of

[25:22] from the whole going towards the parts, right? Which is like going from form towards matter, and therefore appropriate to natural philosophy. Or you can look at from the point of view of the parts going to the whole, right?

[25:36] I mean, suppose I said that the word cat, right, is a word divisible into c a and t. And someone else said the word cat is a word composed of c a and t. We're

[26:03] talking about the same reality. In one case, we're going from the word cat, dividing it into its parts, right? Other case, you are going from the parts and seeing them as what composing the whole, right? So the definition in logic is more in terms of the wholeness of it, how they come together, right, to make the whole. And the natural philosophy, the one that Aristotle knew in natural philosophy, uses the one from the logic too, is in terms of what the parts into which it can be divided, right?

[26:40] Or if you go back to the proportion that Aristotle gives in the chapter we saw earlier, of course, the chapter in the four kinds of cause, right? If you recall that chapter, that reading had three parts, right? He distinguished the four kinds of causes, you know, naming and defining and exemplifying each of them. Then he gave the three corollaries, right? And then the third part, he comes back to four kinds of causes and shows that you can understand them in a very universal way.

[27:14] And then he makes that proportion that the form is to the matter as whole is to parts. Okay, so that all parts composing parts that is are something like matter.

[27:30] So even in our friends here, the angels, we could speak of you know the three orders as being the matter out of which the hierarchy is made, right? Okay, but it's not matter in any ordinary sense of the word, right? Okay, but it's in a very broad sense, huh? So when you define the continuous, looking at it in the direction of the whole, right? How the parts come together to make a whole, it's one whose parts meet at a common boundary, right?

[28:01] So if you look at those two semicircles and you put them together, so to speak, so they have a common boundary, right? Then they form a what? Circle, right? Or like you learn in Euclid, you know, every parallelogram. There, you know, you can draw a diagonal, right, and get two triangles, right? Okay. The two triangles come together if they have a common boundary there and make a what?

[28:29] A parallelogram, right? So you're looking at it towards the whole, therefore towards the form. Well, logic is a formal science, dealing with only in reason, you know, Immaterial, but formal, just like math, dealing with form mainly. But in natural philosophy, it's appropriate to natural philosophy to talk about matter, right? And and natural philosophy goes towards matter, right? So you go from from these books to the book on the cosmos towards generation and corruption.

[29:00] You're going down into matter. As you go again from the dianima to the way Thomas orders all the books and the, you know, on life, you go down towards what matter, end up anatomy and things of that sort. Yes.

[29:17] So it's appropriate in natural philosophy to define it looking towards the parts, right? And therefore he defines it as was divisible forever, right? Divisible into always divisible, right? Okay.

[29:34] Which are really kind of talking about the same thing in a way, huh? Okay. Right? Am I the mind going from the whole to the parts, or the parts to the whole? Right. I mean, but there's a difference in the mind going. What does Heraclitus say? It's the same way up and the same way down. But you're going in contrary directions.

[30:07] Bodies are examples of continuous. Yeah. So then, would any body then be divisible forever? That table is it divisible? Well, again, again, again, Thomas, you know, raises the question:

[30:25] How does this harmonize with what Aristotle said in the arguments against Anaxagoras, right, and elsewhere, right? And he says, well, he's considering the continuous here, right, in a very general way, right? Not yet what? Applying it to particular kinds of what? Bodies and so on, right? Yeah. And so something can be true on this general level, right? There might be something impeding it when you get down to the what?

[30:59] Particular, right? Okay. Okay. I forget how exactly is it that he defines Aristotle defines continuous in in logic. Well, that whose parts meet at a common limit, common boundary.

[31:26] So the parts of a line meet at a point, parts of a surface at a line, parts of a body at a plane or surface. In time, it's the past and the future. They have a common boundary there.

[31:53] Now, if you're saying that the going back to the axiom we talked about last time, that the limit of something is not a what? Same kind of thing as that of which is a limit, is it? So we say the limit of a body is not a body, but a what? Surface, right? A surface has length and width, but no depth. Where a body is length and width and depth.

[32:27] So the limit of a body is not a body. And the limit of a surface is a what? Line. A line, and a line is not a surface. A surface is length and width, and the line has length but no width. And the limit of a what? Point. And a point has no length, so point is not a line, right? What's the limit of a point?

[32:59] Yeah. It has no limit, right? Okay. Okay. Not lacking a limit, though. No, it is the first limit, right? These matters. Okay. So would the limit of time be time?

[33:24] See, I might, I might say that the the morning is the beginning of the day, let's say, right? Or the evening, or whatever it is, is the end of the day, right? But is that really the end in a strict sense? No. So.

[33:46] The twelfth hour is the end of the day. Twelve. Eleven, eleven, twelve. That's the end of the day, right? That hour, right? Three, I'm coming in the day, you know. It's eleven o'clock. You've got an hour to go, right? So can the the end of the past, which is a time, right, be itself a time?

[34:12] No. And being the end of the future. No, the beginning of the future. Just like the beginning of the day, can the beginning of the day be an hour?

[34:24] How about a minute? Say, say, you know. Strict sense, the beginning of the day can't be any time at all, can it? Because if I had any time one wouldn't be all there at the beginning, would it?

[34:46] Okay. So can the just from that way would seem to make sense, right? I'm just going to manifest it more that this now is going to

[34:58] be what. Indivisible. Yeah. Because if it were di if it were divisible it'd be some time, wouldn't it? Yeah. And then time would be the end of time, right? The limit of time. Makes sense, does it? And sometimes, you know, we we we speak more loosely. We say that the, you know, if you have had a laminated surface, you know, like in that counter there in the kitchen, something like that.

[35:27] I say, well, this is the surface of the counter, right? I mean, it probably, I get the repairman or his man if I did that that was a surface, right? Because it has some thickness, but that's really something you can peel off, and it's a body, right? So a surface you can peel off is really a what? A body, right? See, and it's really not that whole body that you can peel off the end of the of the upward extension of this thing, right?

[36:04] It's only indivisible, right? The depthless, huh? Okay. But anyway, it goes on to say. First of all, now that is necessary that the same now be the limit of both times. Now, it could the end of the past and the beginning of the future.

[36:25] Could they be two different limits? You'd have time between them if they if they were different. You'd have time between them. Yeah, and the past would not be next to the future, would it?

[36:50] Is the limit between the United States and and Canada? Is that limit? The northern limit of the United States, the direction of Canada, and the southern limit of Canada, the direction United States, are they the same limit?

[37:09] If they weren't the same limit, what would you have? Something between. I could have a no man's land, right? And then Canada would not be next to the United States, but no man's land. I'd probably end up having over there in Palestine, right? I could have a no man's land there, right? I mean, it's either Palestine nor Israel, right? That's about the only solution that they seem to be able to come up with, right?

[37:37] Or even propose. I mean, they haven't realized it, obviously, right? But they're going to have another Berlin Wall, right? But it's going to be a little. It's going to be along those lines, right? It's going to be like the Great Wall of China. It's going to go on and on and on all the way around, you know. The national collective to build this wall, or what they're going to do, but I said, what's wrong?

[37:58] Probably they're shooting things over, you know, getting getting rockets from other countries and shooting each other. So I don't know. Man has his own way of being endless, right? There's something about our fights. Something endless about our fights. I don't know what it is, huh? Go on. I don't know. Four. He said, "No such phrase. It will not be the now to itself, but to another, right?

[38:32] Which is really not the now in the what strict sense, right? Which is what we're we're after, right? Now, no, there's something puzzling about this thing because

[38:50] is the now in the past? No, because the limit can't be. Well, you see, go back to the line. You see, is the end point in the line?

[39:19] In the line? I guess not. Well, in the wait a minute if you see the end point, the end point is not in the line. Then they're outside the line. Yeah, it is in the line. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. Now, just make an allusion there to the. I mean,

[39:44] we talk about the sense of the word beginning, right? Are we in the metaphysics? You know, when Aristotle talks about the word beginning, which is the first word in the fifth book, the the whole book five is devoted to the words that are especially used in wisdom. And these are the words that pertain either to the subject of wisdom or the parts of that subject, or they pertain to the properties of that subject, or they pertain to causes, right?

[40:22] Causes the subject. As Thomas explains in his commentary in the fifth book, in every science you have a subject, right? And you have certain causes of that subject, and then you have properties which belong to that subject. And so the words that are used in talking about causes or talking about the subject of wisdom or talking about its properties, Aristotle has discovered that all these words are equivocal.

[40:53] But they're equivocal by what reason and not by chance, huh? And so he spends the whole book, the whole fifth book of wisdom, distinguishing these words, right, into their central meanings, but also ordering those meanings, right. Okay, and so he takes up the word beginning. The first meaning he gives of beginning is the beginning of a magnitude, right? Like the point is the beginning of the line, right?

[41:28] This is the beginning of the desk here, right? The curve is the beginning of the campus here. I see the students and so on, right? And then he says, sometimes you don't begin though to begin a magnitude. If I'm going to take the road, let's say to Boston, I don't necessarily go out to the beginning of the road to take that road, do I? If I live, you know, halfway down the road, right?

[41:56] That's where I'm going to begin, right? That's still very similar to the first meaning. Okay, but then he comes to a third meaning of beginning, which is the Fundamental part of something, like he says, the foundation is the beginning of a what house, right? Okay. And then finally, he goes to the fourth meaning of beginning, which is the mover or the maker. Why does the mover or maker?

[42:25] Why does the sense in which a house builder is the beginning of a house, right? Come after the sense in which the foundation of the house is the beginning of the house. Why is the sense in which the foundation of a house is the beginning of a house more like the way that a point is the beginning of a line? Okay. than the way that a what house builder is the beginning of a house.

[42:51] Because it's still part of the thing. Yeah, yeah. So Thomas says the house is is a part. The foundation is a part of the house, right? The house builder is not a part of the house. At least he shouldn't be.

[43:09] So the foundation is the beginning of the house is more like the way that a point is beginning of a line, or a line is beginning of a surface, or a surface is beginning of a body, right? Yeah. That's because the point is in that which is the beginning. of the house, right? The line is in that, right? Okay. So just as you speak of a circle, right?

[43:35] The circle is not just that that line, right? It's this whole thing here, the circle, right? But that line is what the limit. Yeah, but it's is it a part of the circle? Yeah. Or is it the limit of the circle?

[43:58] Well, now, do you want to make that which has no width a part of that which has width? No, no, not strictly. No. Yeah. So,

[44:25] but if you want to say that that line is in the circle, right? Okay. So, if the now is the limit of the past, and the now is in the past.

[44:52] And if the now is the limit of the future, then the now is in the future, right? And the past is in the future, and the future is in the past. Yeah. Well, I would have a problem? You know, Automatically, if you say that it's the same now, right? Yeah. But maybe there is no time in the now, right? Right. Because the now is indivisible, right? And the past means what?

[45:25] Time. Some time. That's a part of time. And a part of time is something divisible, right? The indivisible is not a part of the continuous. So if the past is a part of time, the past is is an amount of time, right? Okay.

[45:44] The same way the future, right? So what are you going to say? There's no time in the now, right? So although the now is in the past,

[46:05] it's not part of the time that is the past. It's not part of the time we call the past. The end of the year, right, is not December. strictly speaking, right? The whole month of December is not the end of the year. They're talking about what April 15th. You guys don't know about this. but... April fifteenth is a deadline, right? See, you know, more or less for taxes, right?

[46:43] But April fifteenth fell on Monday, and on Patriots Day in Massachusetts, here, right? So Massachusetts said you don't have to file your your state income tax on the fifteenth. You have what extended the day, right? Okay. The question was, what about what about the federal tax, right? And someone asked me, I wasn't sure. You know, would the Fed apply to that, right? See. Anyway, they had this thing about it's going to be postmarked by midnight on this last day, right?

[47:20] You see, Or else you have to file for extension, right, and so on, right? I guess there's an automatic extension, you can get when you gotta file, right? You see, the penalty for not filing is worse than the penalty for not paying. Oh, my God. You see? You know, if I owe the money, I have to check, in. That can be, you know, you know, penalized in some way, but if I haven't filed, there's going to be more severe penalty, right?

[47:45] Because they want the information on you, right? So I've got until midnight, you know, to get my thing stamped, right? You know, postmarked, right?

[47:58] So that's the end of the period, you know, that I can still. file it. I filed it earlier, by the way. So we're all teaching conservatives to file on the last day. Yeah.

[48:16] Give them their money that you know hold off as long as you can give you their money. well? The it's not the last hour, is it? Is it the last half hour? Last minute, you know.

[48:42] So no, the the end of the day is no time at all, is it? Is it? No. So if the past is time and the future is time, right? And the now is in both, is the past and the future and the future and the past? It doesn't seem so. So, But if you give the nows, you may give it some what extension, right? And then the now is in the past and in the future.

[49:21] Then you'd have what time both in the past and in the what future? Wouldn't you? Doesn't make much sense though, does it? Yeah. But of course, as he points out, wouldn't wouldn't all be now, would it? In the strict sense, would it? Because if it had any extension of time, part would be before and part afterwards, right?

[49:49] And that would not make it all at once, would it? Okay. It wouldn't be the now, as he says, what to itself and first, right? But the now, by reason, only a part of itself, right? Or something in itself, right? Yeah. And so long as that something in itself that you're looking for is going to be now, through itself, and first, to use that phrase, I used at the beginning of this reading, right?

[50:15] So long as you're looking for that, it can't have any part, can it? It's only part of it would be there, right? Unless you want to say the past and the future are there together, but that's obviously absurd.

[50:35] So you've got to have the same now, and it's got to be what indivisible. But it kind of turns it around now. On the next page, here it looks the other way around now. Say.

[50:48] Could we just review a second? What is the second meaning of beginning? Aristotle says, "Where it's most convenient to begin along the road." So. really just kind of like So suppose there's a road that begins here, right? Sure. And goes here to Boston. Sure. It begins in Springfield and goes to Boston, right? Sure. The road actually starts in Springfield, right? Right. There's no pavement down there; just dirt down there.

[51:22] Right. No road. That's where the road begins. But I, if I start from here, that's the beginning of the road, right? Yeah. But if I live here, the beginning of my trip to Boston is going to be what? There. That's how I'm going to begin my trip to Boston It wouldn't make sense for me to go out here and start there. You know, you you you've heard of you know various neuroses you know.

[51:48] This would be a neurosis you know. You have to very road. you know have to all the way to where the road begins. you know. to take that thing. Just being a consistent philosopher. he's looking out.

[52:03] Hey, you gotta be careful. when you read that text of Aristotle, by the way, see? Because... So Aristotle makes a comparison, and he says he compares it to what we do in knowing, right? We don't begin from the beginning of the thing, but we begin from what is more known to us, and what's easier for us to understand, right? See, so you know, notice in in our thinking here, we knew water before we knew hydrogen, right?

[52:34] And we knew hydrogen before we knew the proton, right? The proton means what first, right? And it may not be altogether first, but among those two things, the proton is first, right? But our knowledge was just the reverse: water, hydrogen, proton, right? So we don't begin at the beginning of the thing, do we? See, and I've seen Heisenberg say that he says when when we consider reality, we never start at the beginning.

[53:07] And what he means by that is what where we begin is never the beginning of things. Okay. I mean, if we would begin from the beginning of things, we'd begin with God, right? Yeah. But God is the last thing we really what know in philosophy, right? The last part of the last part of philosophy. So Aristotle makes a beautiful comparison there, right? You know, beginning here where I live, right, rather than where the world begins, right, is like what you do in knowing, where you begin with what you know, even though it's not the beginning of the thing.

[53:48] We usually begin with the effect, don't we? See, and not the cause, and if the cause has a cause, that comes even later, right? Okay. She hit me. Why she hit me? Well, she angry with me. Why she angry? But something made her angry. Then she hit me. You know, and she hit me because she angry. But I got hit first, and then I realized she was angry.

[54:14] And then later I realized what I hadn't done that made her angry, right? Well you see the point I mean, right? But some people, when they read those words of Aristotle, they think he's talking about the beginning and knowing, right?

[54:34] And Warren Murray was remarking one time, he was, seeing a conversation there between Monsignor Dionne there and John Galp You know Galp was misunderstanding the text, looking at the Aristotle, And Galp says, No, no, look at what Thomas says here, right? " And actually, the sense in which the starting point of knowledge is the beginning is not until the fifth one, right? Because that's more hidden in the mind, right?

[54:59] You start from what's sensible. This is the beginning of the table, right? Foundation of the house, right? You know the house builder out there, you know. See, you can see them, right? You know the man who's commanding, right? And so on, right? He's a mover. He's a beginner, right? Beginning, you know, knowledge is more what inside of us and hidden, right? That's the fifth meaning of beginning.

[55:24] So the Aristotle's ordered it perfectly, huh? As Thomas explains, we name things as we know them, and so the first thing we name is the things we can sense, and that's why we what you find that the first meaning of these words is originally something sensible, and then it's carried over to things that are not so sensible, and last of all to to something that you can't sense at all.

[55:50] Okay. So that fifth one expresses that the beginning of now. Beginning, yeah. You could say in geometry the definitions and the axioms, the postulates are the beginning of geometry, right? But is that as well known to us as this is the beginning of the disk?

[56:09] Little kid going to know about that? Now you stay in the yard, right? Don't go in the street. Yeah. This is where our land begins, right here, the curve. right? See, he sees that sense of beginning before he's going to see the sense that you know the definitions, the axioms about being and not being at the beginning of our knowledge statements. Yeah. You tell people in class, what?

[56:41] I know that. Yes, sir. Yeah. We say that second sense is beginning an emotion, like we did with the end. What the second sense? Yeah, yeah. In a sense, you're kind of taking it to emotion, right? Where you begin your emotion, right? And you call that the beginning, right? Even though it's not the beginning of the road itself, right? But I might mark the spot in the road, so that's where I begin.

[57:07] I started to begin the road. That's where I began my motion, right? Well, if I traveled the whole road, you know, then the beginning of my motion is the beginning of the road, right? Here, the beginning of my motion is said to be the beginning of the distance I went, but it's not the beginning of the road itself. Just call it something like

[57:32] say a subjective beginning because it depends upon who. Or would that be a bad way to express it? I wouldn't say it's that I would say it's a reasonable convenient place for me to begin, right? You know, Nothing subjective about it. It doesn't make any sense to go out. It's long enough to get to Boston. You know, if I'll go all the. way up to the end of...

[58:00] Okay. So in a way, he's arguing that up to this point, that if it's indivisible, it's got to be the same limit of both, right? And now he's kind of turning around, manifesting the same. But if it is the same, it is clear that it is indivisible.

[58:22] For it divisible, the same things as before will happen again. It's clear from what has been said that that there's something indivisible in time, which we call the what? The now, right? Okay.

[58:39] Now we we talked about the now a bit back when we talked in about time, right? Remember how I was mentioning how we talked about eternity and Boethius has this way of leading us by saying the now that flows along makes time, and the now that stands still makes what? Eternity, right? Okay. So we sometimes speak of the eternal now, right? Because there's no what? Before and after, right?

[59:12] In the eternal what? In eternity, it's all once, huh? But unlike the now of time, right? It doesn't always flow. So the now of time, in some sense, is always and other in some way, right?

[59:36] So we're losing the future all the time, aren't we? I guess so. The future is always pointing to the past, right? So now is always in a sense moving along.

[59:54] So when when what's his name? Boethius defines eternity. He said it's the what? Possession, right. It's a possession, right? It's a firmness there. You can't possess the now of time, huh?

[1:00:13] People are always saying, you know, which is when ends, you know, kid or something, you know. Yeah. My my oldest grandchild there, she had some kind of a birthday little party there with the relatives and so on. And it was one of the first times we'd been around that many children, you know. And she's, I'm so happy, she says. But it doesn't last, I'll say you know.

[1:00:43] Okay.