De Anima (On the Soul)
25. Purity, Light and the Transparent: Aristotle's De Anima II.7 and Empedocles' Photons
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/025-purity-light-and-the-transparent-aristotles-de-anima-ii-7/

[0:00] I noticed St Thomas uses the term, but it doesn't use puritas but pudicitia, which would be more from pudor, like shame. Yeah. So it seems like our sense of using it more from English to use the term purity, but

[0:21] it still seems they follow the same reasoning as you brought out last time about something higher than the the shameful, the base. I thought that was kind of curious that he uses that that word, and he really doesn't use the word purity. No, I mean, I mean, you use the word pure. I mean, all up to God. God is a pure act, right? Yeah. Yeah. But if you say, why is why is one virtue in particular called purity?

[0:59] Right. Right. Well, it's because the fact that these sensible pleasures, right, most of all, kind of contaminate the soul, right? They they drown reason, shall we say? Right. Yeah.

[1:30] Interesting, you know how Shakespeare, you know, metaphorically, you know, he'll call you know, type wrath and love, and I can as you like it, right? They're in the very wrath of love. It's that about

[1:55] what's his name? Not Orlando, Orlando's brother there. Um, and the other cousin, Uh, Oliver, yeah, Oliver, and what's your name, the cousin's name? But they're in the very wrath of love. Clubs cannot part them. See, but see, when two dogs are fighting, you know, the only way to stop them is a club, right? Well, the man and woman here are so attracted to each other, they've got to get clubs to break them, right?

[2:25] They're going to get them married right away. See, but notice the expression—they're in the very wrath of love. See, that's kind of funny metaphor in a sense, right? But because

[2:39] lust, you might say, and and anger are very what strong emotions, right? And and very much needing to be what moderated, right? So when Thomas, you know, in the Summa Theologiae, takes up you know the four cardinal virtues. And then he takes up the other virtues that have resemblance to them. So, for example, mildness, which moderates anger, is put with temperance, right? Because they have a similarity there, right?

[3:11] You have a strong passion, right? Strong emotion that needs to be what? Restrained. That's kind of interesting the way the word there, because you know the word to moderate one of the words is temperance, right? And people didn't understand what you're saying there. So, when somebody gets angry, say now what? You know, temper, temper. You know, originally the temper was you know that you know moderates your anger, right?

[3:43] But now temper means what? The guy, you know, you know, that's what it meant right? You know, And in other words they confuse the moderation of it with with the excess itself. See just like here they're confusing you know the end with the natural result of the end, right? Yeah. Okay.

[4:13] Does wretched connect with wreck. Yeah, yeah, it's connected with the idea of shipwreck, huh? Oh, See. And that's, you know, I mentioned that thing in Romeo, right? He speaks of himself as a sea captain, right? But you know, we often find that metaphor in the poets, you know, that the life is a voyage, right? Sure. And you're trying to reach port. Especially in those days, a lot of ships didn't reach port, right?

[4:38] So it's a good better metaphor. In those days, you know, when you would go off, you know, you heard about the insurance, right? They bet upon whether you come back or not. If you got back, you collect the money, right? If you didn't come back, then they'd get the money you put into the pot.

[4:54] So I bet you don't get back. See, you put a hundred dollars, you put a hundred dollars, and somebody keeps the two hundred dollars, right? If you get back alive, you get the two hundred dollars. If you don't get back alive, I collect the two hundred dollars. So I'm betting against your coming back. It's a

[5:15] dangerous thing, you know. in Those days. Dangerous. No. Much more dangerous than now Kind of a funny insurance thing, but. So Shakespeare often speaks of life's uncertain voyage, right? That's a good metaphor. It comes up a lot in church documents too, you know, the waves are a symbol of this world, right, And the certitude of this world. Mm-hmm.

[5:48] That's why in the Gospel of Saint John there, right, the fish are put up on the shore. Sit at the end when they're off. out of the tumult of the world?

[6:15] I don't know what to make of it. The other one makes it better. Try to talk to these animals, but it's kind of hard too. I'm gonna pull a bite. Crouching at zero. Thank you, Conrad Lorenz. He could do this. Sounds really good. Oh yeah. He knew what the different one meant. So he was on a boat, trying to make a documentary. So he was trying to get the ducks, I guess, or something.

[7:04] to come. And so he was talking and making the sound. And the man who was with him says, "No, these are ducks. You're talking goose. " Oh, sorry. wrong language They see cats, you know, got different meows for different things, you know, but we don't necessarily discriminate all their subtleties. Yeah, but Conrad Lorenz, because he could hear those other birds, he said some meant like, "Come on, birds, you know, never gonna come.

[7:35] " Some meant danger. He could hear and make all different things. All right, I didn't hear. I bet the Indians did that too. You know, the Indians used to use these sounds too to communicate, be known to other people.

[7:49] Father Groeschel mentioned how his his father used to kind of have an idea of insurance or something that would kind of help you. Father Groeschel would go on a plane and used to even take plane insurance or something. And his dad used to say, "Do you really feel safe flying without insurance? " Doesn't make any safer at all. If you were talking to a friend there. You know, had some interest in philosophy.

[8:24] You know, and just when you start with that idea, you know, I see you, you know, and I see your shape, you know. You don't see a difference in those things, you know. You know, in daily life, you know, you know it's it's confused, right? Let's see. The real, to really think out that distinction, right? The other person hasn't thought that distinction. You don't really distinguish between the way that they see you when they see your color or your shape.

[8:50] Between the way they see your color and the way they see your shape, we don't think about a lot of things. No, no, no.

[9:02] You know what? You know, I always quote those things there. the French. Actual and not potential. He's going to explain a bit what he means there by the transparent, and when the transparent is what actually transparent, and when it's only what able to be, Able to be, right? Okay. So when there's light in the transparent, right? Then the transparent is actually transparent. You can see through it. But when it's dark, right?

[9:42] Then you can't see through. Right? I can see the color of the bricks over there, right? And they move the what transparent here all the way to my eyes, but the transparent in act, the transparent that has been illuminated by the lights of the sun or by the artificial lights here. Okay.

[10:07] And this, he says, is the nature of it. This is the nature of what color, right? The fuscis. Okay. So because it's a mover of the transparent in act, this is the reason why he goes on to say that the visible is not without what light, right? But every color of each thing is seen in light. So therefore, we got to take up what light is and what the transparent is to understand better what color is, right?

[10:45] It's the nature of color to move the transparent in act, and the transparent is in act through what light, he says. Okay. Hence, one must say first about light what it is. Okay. But at the same time, he's going to be talking about the transparent.

[11:11] Now, sometimes Thomas and himself, especially, but maybe even Aristotle, sometimes will speak a little differently than he does here about light and color. And Thomas, in many places, if you go through the different places where he talks about light, he sees light sometimes, or rather color, as being a kind of a partaking of light. Okay. But here he's not emphasizing that if he thinks that, so neither Aristotle's not.

[11:44] He's seeing light as what makes the transparent actually transparent, so that the color can get to your eyes, so to speak, right, through the transparent. Yeah.

[12:02] So one ninety, he begins to speak a bit about the transparent. There is then something transparent. I call the transparent what is visible, not in virtue of itself visible, as if speaking simply, but through an extraneous color.

[12:27] Myself, I often speak of the transparent as what you can see through, right? Okay. And in that regard, sometimes we speak of color as being the end or the limit of the transparent,

[12:47] because the colors that we see, like the red there in the bricks or the black in your gown, is at the end of the transparent air between my eye and what your cloth, right? Or between my eye and the bricks, huh? Okay.

[13:14] I have a colleague, you know, who's taken up with the modern doubts about the senses and so on, and you know how the moderns want to say that we don't see or sense anything outside of ourselves, right? We're only sensing the what effect of these things upon us, right? Maybe an effect that we in some magical way manipulate, right? And so sometimes I'll say to him, "Well, where is the color that you see?

[13:50] Say, is it up here the color that you see, or is it out there, right? " Of course, he wants to say that the color you see is up here. He really isn't out there at all. That's kind of a common thing with the modern philosophers, and some of the Greeks do that a little bit too, but not as, you know, chronically addicted to that way of thinking as the modern philosophers are.

[14:15] But isn't it a matter of our experience that the color you see is at the end of the transparent? There's always a transparent between your eye and the color that you see. So in that way, the color seems to be what outside the eye, right? Yeah, yeah.

[14:41] The thing that kind of convinces me that the color in a way is out there too is the fact that we know what the shapes of bodies through what color. So I know the shape of the of the bricks over there, right? Or the shape of the table over there, huh? Shape of the hat, huh? Through color, right? And it's pretty hard to deny that the shapes of what bodies are in the bodies outside of us, huh?

[15:17] Maybe you've seen these things that they have for children. I know we had one for my children when they were little. It's kind of a plastic box, a cube, the shape of a cube, and it's got six sides the cube has, but they're plastic. And there are holes cut in all six sides, and some holes are round, and some are triangular, and so on. Some are more square, and so on.

[15:50] And one of these six sides opens up like a lid. You can close it or open it up, and you have these little blocks inside there, like a circular one and maybe a triangular one, and so on. And I suppose it's kind of a learning toy for the child because they they want to take these things out and put them through the side walls. They've got to put the the round bit, so to speak, through the round hole, and the and the triangular one through that one.

[16:15] I always joke about my my colleague who's taken up with the moderns. There he had a great illumination one time, you know, that that the senses, you know, are deceiving us and so on. But I was going to buy one of these things, right?

[16:34] Yeah, as Charles De Koninck says, a man who's never worked with his hands, you know, he he won't understand philosophy. And if you have to, you know, if you try to put the the round one into the triangular hole, it won't go through, right? It's pretty hard to deny that the the shapes are really in these these objects, huh? And

[16:56] so he points out how the transparent is a is found in many things, right? It's not one kind of thing. And so he says, air and water, right? In many of the solids that we'd say the glass now would be transparent, huh? Air is more transparent than the water,

[17:24] but it's not as air that is transparent or water because as air was the reason why something is transparent, then water would not be transparent, huh? So it seems to be a more common property, right, of these, huh? But they are transparent because there is some nature present, the same in both of these and in the eternal body above, huh? He's referring above to the stars, right?

[17:52] But not the stars themselves, but the what? What's carrying the stars, right? Okay, the spheres that the ancients thought, huh? That you can see through, right? To see the stars. So the transparent is something found in air and water and glass and even in these more what heavenly things, right? Okay.

[18:20] Now, how does Aristotle think of light in comparison to the transparent? Well, he's imagining the transparent to be, as it were, the subject of light,

[18:42] as that in which, right, either light or its contrary. But really, he goes on to say, contrary in the sense of the lack, right? Okay. Like form is in what matter, right? Okay. Just like a piece of clay, let's say, is shaped in the shape of a sphere, you can mold it into the shape of a cube, right? So, as were the transparent is that in which there can be light, or there can be lack of light, and then it is what dark, okay?

[19:21] So he's speaking of light as if it were the act or the form. Transparent, huh? It makes the transparent to be what? Actually transparent, right? Just as health makes your body to be actually what? Healthy, okay?

[19:49] And you're kind of showing this by its opposite. In that in which this is darkness, also is right in potency, huh? So you could say that the transparent is able to be what? Enlightened, or it's able to be what? Dark, right? Huh? And darkness is the lack of light in the transparent, huh?

[20:18] Light, however, is like the color of the transparent, huh? Whenever the transparent is in actuality due to fire or something of the sort, like the body above. For even in this something one and the same is present, huh?

[20:40] Now one ninety two, huh? Having said what the transparent is a bit and what light is, or what he thinks there anyway, right? He now rejects the view of some of the what? Ancient philosophers, which, as you may know, have come back in modern scientists, huh? That light is really what? Some kind of subtle bodies, huh? Okay. Going through space and maybe you know bouncing off things and reverberating and so on, huh?

[21:17] Okay. But notice how the modern scientist has come back to that idea with the let's say the photon, for example, right, huh? So when Einstein was explaining the so-called photoelectric effect, right? Okay. You may know in modern times, if you go back to Sir Isaac Newton and to Huygens, they had two theories about light,

[21:50] and one was that light was a wave-like phenomenon, and Huygens was proposing that, and the other was that light was like little particles, huh? Okay. And using either hypothesis, they were able to explain what they saw light doing, huh?

[22:18] But Newton had perhaps more authority, huh? Than Huygens, huh? But then, in the 19th century, lo and behold, there was an experiment performed which seemed to indicate that Huygens was right—an experiment that made sense if you assumed that light was a wave, but didn't make sense if you assumed light was a shower of particles. And so, after two or three hundred years, it seemed that Huygens had what—come out on top.

[22:56] Very great scientists huh Huygens. Then, 1905, in this annus mirabilis of Einstein, right? In one year, he published three papers, all three of which are considered worthy of the Nobel Prize.

[23:20] In one of them was the explanation of the photoelectric effect. One was explanation of Brownian movement, and the third was the special relativity theories that's now called. Well, no one could understand the special relativity theory for many years. So, and now that they climatic, but they finally understood it. But I mean, suddenly this is worthy of the Nobel Prize. He actually got the Nobel Prize for his explanation of the photoelectric effect.

[23:47] But this was a an effect, an experiment where light is shown, right, upon certain materials, and it ejects electrons and so on. And Einstein showed this made sense if you assumed that light is a shower of particles. Called later on, he called light quanta because he was influenced already by Planck, and he saw a connection between the quanta and these. But later on, they were given the title photon.

[24:16] That's taken from the Greek word for light, photos We get the word photography. Photography means literally to draw with light. Photography, draw with light. Okay. Well, now this is the beginning of this so-called wave-particle duality, and the physicists, in other words, had experiments that contradict each other, seem to contradict each other. And some experiments, light seemed to be a wave, like being kind of spread out. Others, it seemed to be a shower of particles, pinpointed.

[24:52] And so, used to joke, you know, on Monday, you know, Wednesday and Friday, we teach that it's a wave, and on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, we teach that it's a particle. And

[25:06] then a little bit later, than in the 1920s, there Louis de Broglie there, and an influence of that, said, "Well, gee, maybe these things that we knew as particles, like electrons and protons, maybe they also, in some cases, behave like waves." And so they performed experiments like they had done with light, and all of a sudden they saw this wave-like aspect. So now they had experiments that seemed to contradict each other, and this is one of the greatest contradictions that had to be tried to resolve.

[25:41] And Newtonian, not Newtonian, but quantum physics attempted to resolve that contradiction. I mention that apropos of this because, in a way, the position that Aristotle is rejecting here is certainly closer to what we would know from modern science. Okay.

[26:07] But it's interesting to see the reasons why Aristotle rejects this idea that light is some kind of very subtle bodies or very small particles, you know, shooting through space. Huh?

[26:25] See the starting in one ninety three. What the transparent is therefore, and what light is, has been said. Okay. That is neither fire nor any body nor a stream from any body, right? For thus it would be some body, but the presence of fire or some such thing in the transparent. It's really like a a quality or a habit or a form of the transparent, according to Aristotle's thinking.

[26:49] Okay. Rather than a body there that is what. If you look at the light is filling the room here in some sense, right? Then you're going to have two bodies. What? In the same space. Yeah, yeah, that doesn't make any sense. That's a very good reason he gives there in one ninety three, for two bodies are not able to be together in the same what? Place. Huh?

[27:13] Okay. And it seems that light is contrary to darkness, and darkness is not a body, is it? Right. But darkness seems to be the lack of something. Huh? So light seems to be like a form. However darkness is the privation, or to use the English word, the lack of such a state for the transparent. Whence, it is clear that the presence of this is light.

[27:46] Now, in one ninety five, he's arguing against Empedocles, who speaks of light as if it's some kind of subtle body spreading out through space, right? In the way the moderns think of the photon, right? Huh? Okay. And Empedocles did not speak correctly, nor someone else who spoke thus, speaking as if light is born and spreads out at any time between the earth and the containing body, though escaping our notice.

[28:16] Huh? For this is beside the clarity of reason, beside appearances. What is Aristotle's reason for saying that the illumination of the room is not the locomotion of some subtle bodies making up light, spreading out through the room? Right. See. Well, his argument is that any locomotion takes time, right? But illumination takes no time. Okay. And Thomas, you know, in his commentary, follows Aristotle in that. Aristotle says he might, you know, say that you know moves a short distance so fast we can't follow it, right?

[29:06] Like the magic trick, you know, the hand is thicker than the eye. Okay. For it might escape us, he says, the bottom of page twenty. For it might escape us in a small distance, but not noticing this from the extreme east to the extreme west is a very great departure, huh?

[29:26] No. No, in other words, it seems incredible to Aristotle and to Thomas Aquinas, again, that the light could go from the east to the west, right, and take no time at all. It'd have to be, you know, so fast compared to anything that we have been experiencing.

[29:46] I mean, the sun. I mean, you know, goes long distance around the earth, but doesn't go whoop like that, right? Huh? You see? Now, notice you could put this in the form of a what? If-then syllogism, right? Okay.

[30:13] If illumination, right, is as Empedocles says, right, a locomotion, right, huh? Okay. It's spreading out some very fine bodily particles, right? If illumination is a locomotion,

[30:39] okay, to clear it up, you see what I mean, right? Illumination is the spreading out in space, right, in place, right, of some very fine bodies, right? If that's true, what he says, then

[30:59] illumination takes time. Okay. But illumination takes no time. Therefore, illumination is not a locomotion. Notice this is the form of argument we met long time ago, right? You're saying if A is so, then B is so. B is not so.

[31:58] A is not so. Okay. You could often argue that way, doesn't he? Huh? Socrates argues that way, you mean, huh? So is the form of argument good?

[32:16] Yeah. In other words, if it's true that if A is so, then B is so, and it's true that B is not so, it must be that A is not so, right? But now, what about the matter? Are the statements in the argument necessary, or is one of them or both of them probable? Well, the if-then statement I think is necessary. If illumination is a locomotion, then illumination takes what time, right?

[32:49] Okay. But the second premise here, the simple statement, illumination takes no time. That's only a probable statement, right? Okay. It is necessarily what true, right? And in fact, with very subtle experiments like the Michelson-Morley experiment, they can actually measure the what time it takes for light to spread, huh? Which is approximately what 186, 000 miles per second. That's incredible speed, right? Okay. So Aristotle's argument has got a false statement here in the second premise here, huh?

[33:38] Okay. Okay. Now you can compare that a bit to Aristotle's discussion there of the stars, huh? Okay. And it seemed Aristotle that the stars were in no way what changing, right? And as far back as men could remember, right, the stars were always the same, huh?

[34:20] And therefore he concluded that the stars are what incorruptible. Yeah, they're unchanging as far as their substance, as far as their qualities are concerned, right? They change only in what place, right? Okay. But they they don't change in their substance or in their inward what qualities, right? Okay. Now when Thomas Aquinas comments on that, and this is Aristotle takes it up most formally in the second book of Natural Philosophy, the book on the universe, huh?

[34:58] Which is usually called in Latin De Caelo et Mundo, right? I think the Greek title is actually on the universe. The Greek word for caelum or the heavens and the universe is the same word. Aristotle's book is actually what to be understood as being about the universe, and they translate in the Latin De Celo, but Celo meant not the universe but the heavens, right? And so Aristotle talks about the whole universe, so they say De Celo et Mundo, okay.

[35:32] No, it's a different word. Ouranos, I think it is. Ouranos yeah, yeah. But anyway, that's beside the point in a sense. That's what he's talking about, the universe as a whole, right? And there he talks about the, you know, more formally, more copiously about the heavenly bodies. Well, Thomas, in his commentary on the De Caelo et Mundo, on the book on the universe, he says he points out this argument is not necessary, right?

[36:00] See, because maybe the time it takes for the stars to change, right, is not only greater than the life of one man, but greater than the life of many generations of men, right? Okay.

[36:16] Nevertheless, there is some probability, right, to this argument, right? See, now I think if you, you know, pin down Thomas and even Aristotle himself, I guess he would say, well, you can say that the the light moves so fast that we just can't see it, right? But that it does so from east to west. Oh, that's hard to swallow, right? But nevertheless, it seems to me that you could,

[36:47] certainly Thomas and Aristotle himself would see, right, that same weakness, you might say, in the argument, that there is in the argument for the eternity of the stars and so on, right? Okay.

[37:08] In one case, the weakness would be that what it takes too little time, waits a little time to be noticed by us, right? And the other, maybe it takes longer time than what? Yeah. See.

[37:27] Or. Yeah. Okay. Now there are certain what you know, maybe if you observe carefully the stars, you might see supernova or something, you know, super new stars and so on, exploding stars, and you might see some evidence there, right?

[37:47] Aristotle, in the beginning of the the biological works, there, right, when he's turning now from the talking about the sun, moon, and the stars to talking about the animals, huh? He says that we're in much better position is to understand the animals, and you can examine them closely by the sun, moon, and stars. He can't, right? So he's aware of the fact, you know, the distance between him, right, and the things he's talking about.

[38:18] Huh? We talks about the sun, moon, and the stars, and so he talks about the animals, right? He's kind of a beginner in many ways of anatomy, huh? And even Charles Darwin, you know, when he first read the parts of animals of Aristotle, when Oglethorpe, I guess it was, translated them into English from the Greek there, and we have the letter there from Darwin, Oglethorpe says, Linnaeus and Cuvier, you know, these famous biologists have been his heroes, right?

[38:52] But they were mere schoolboys, he says, compared to Aristotle. Kind of strong thing, right? But you could say that Aristotle is a much better biologist, maybe, than an astronomer, in the sense that he is able to what observe and examine more closely the animals than he could the sun, the moon, and the what stars. Okay.

[39:20] So, so we're starting to get in here, I think, in chapter seven. Chapter seven to things that really depend upon what we called in the beginning of our actual studies, private experience, right? That common or ordinary experience is not maybe what sufficient to talk about the nature of light in particular, right? Okay. I mentioned before how

[39:53] the Greek philosophers tried to get further than you can really, right, on the basis of what common experience, okay? And if they have any deficiency, it's that, right? But the moderns, it's kind of the reverse that you can't get anywhere on the basis of what common experience, right? So to to show kind of the absurdity of that, it's like saying you know we can't really know that a whole is more than one of its parts until we know that a molecule of water is more than an atom of hydrogen.

[40:39] But you really have to know that, huh? In order to know that a whole is more than one of its parts, huh? And you could say you know in some sense the Greeks are more reasonable than the moderns because no one could know beforehand how far you can get on the basis of what common experience, right? I mean if earth, air, fire, and water, for example, to go back to Empedocles, if earth, air, fire, and water were the first forms of matter, if there's no forms of matter before earth, air, fire, and water, then common or ordinary experience would be enough to recognize the first forms of matter, right?

[41:28] But if there is forms of matter before earth, air, fire, and water, they wouldn't be knowable except in some roundabout way by some ingenious experiment, right? They would somehow bring them to light or bring something that would indicate that there's something before them, right? So one would know ahead of time, right, whether common ordinary experience was sufficient or not, huh? And in a way you can you can say with the moderns, you know they insist at least the the physical scientists do upon the principle of simplicity, right?

[42:10] The one should not multiply causes out unnecessarily, and you can see the same thing here: the one should not what demand more experience is necessary to know something, right? Chemistry is not necessary. The experience in the chemical lab is necessary to know that water is H two O. If that's what it is, but it's not necessary the chemical lab to know that a whole is more than a part.

[42:44] It's like the the business there with the sociologists, you know, which people are making fun of. You know, they they go and make these long surveys and so on, and end up with the conclusion that men and women are really different.

[43:02] Our boys and girls, you know, really have different interests. My favorite story, which is apparently a true story, you know, was you know some some woman liberationist there. She was going to not let her daughter be typed, you know. So instead of buying her daughter a doll, she brought her a what toy truck, huh? And she discovered one day that the daughter was what putting the toy truck trucky into bed there, yeah.

[43:33] Just like these kids won't buy the little boy a toy gun or stuff like that, and the kid he'll he'll get something, maybe the state of Texas, you know, from the from the yeah yeah bang bang bang, you know, they'll get something, you know, they use our finger, you know, they they're just going to do that, you know. Thomas Aquinas talks about that, you know, in the commentary and on Matthew there, right?

[43:59] A boy's always, you know, want to bring something military, right? Swords or things that sort, huh? Okay. So you see, the Greeks can be, you can say

[44:27] that they're less culpable, let's say, right? In trying to get as far as they could on the basis of common experience, Aristotle knew himself, right? That for his work in biology, you had to have private experience. So Aristotle did all kinds of anatomy And when Aristotle, Alexander the Great Aristotle's pupil was currently the Near East. He had men who would send animals and plants from that area back to Aristotle, so he could get a broader view of the kingdom.

[45:04] In the same way, before Aristotle wrote the famous fifth book of the Politics, the book on revolution, he made a study of one hundred and fifty Greek city states, huh? And the history of their governments and how they changed and so on. So he was aware of the need for private experience, huh? But it's not clear in advance exactly where the line is to be drawn, right?

[45:31] And how far, right? You can go, right, on the basis of common experience. But it's reasonable to see, try to go as far as you can, right? And you see it breaks down, and you start this.

[45:47] By the moderns, in a sense, more irrational. In a sense, they don't think you know anything on the basis of common experience. Everything requires a what? Private experience. It can look very severe to something too that you find in the moderns.

[46:17] Two things invented by the moderns. One is called the telescope, and the other is called the what? Microscope. Yeah. You know, the idea of inventing some kind of a telescope. Other men were doing that. Now,

[46:47] telescope enables you to see something at a what distance that the unaided eye could not see, right? The scope comes from the Greek word for what? Look. Yeah. Yeah. Tele is the one for what? Distance, right? Okay. I remember in high school there, in Latin class, there one of the readings there was entitled "television,"

[47:17] and all the kids are saying, you know, what's that about? I mean, didn't they have television? But you know, they had to work, right? Televisio, right? You know, seeing at a distance, okay. So, telescope enables you to see at a distance, right?

[47:39] So you train the telescope on the moon and the universe and so on, and bigger and bigger, greater telescopes, right? You see more and more things, right? Okay. And might change your view about what the moon is, right? What the stars are, and so on. It microscope enables you to what?

[48:03] See small things. Yeah, see small things, and it kind of blows up, you might say. See small things. Of course, "see" here is taken from the the eye, huh? The first. Since you're talking about here right now, okay. Now, now

[48:30] the Greeks didn't have the telescope or microscope, right? But I think if they had had one, they would have what looked through them. They were a very wondrous people, right? Okay. But in logic, you have two tools that are in a way like the telescope and microscope. But they're for seeing by reason, right? What are those two tools?

[49:00] Definition. Definition, and definition is analogous to what? Telescope. Microscope. Microscope, yeah. In other words, what a definition does in a way is to blow something up, so you see it more distinctly. See, this is a square. This is an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral. I'm kind of expanding the thing, right? You see? expanding the thing, right? You see it more clearly and what distinctly in the nuclei, right? Okay. Isn't that like a microscope, too?

[49:39] Yeah. The def. Yeah. The definition is like a microscope, right? Okay. Um. Now Socrates in the Republic does something like that too. In the Republic, if you know the the dialogue, in the first book of the Republic, Socrates in his conversation, he reasons out, right, that the just man is more happy than the unjust man, right, and so on. And it seems like the conversation is is concluded and over.

[50:23] But then in the second book, one of the speakers with Socrates says, Socrates, he says, do you want to just seem to have convinced us? Mm. Or do you want really to have convinced us? Socrates, says, well, I'd like to really convince you that the just man is more happy than the unjust man.

[50:47] Well, how does Socrates go about trying to really convince them, right? See. Well, he says I'm going to blow up the soul of man, right? So you see exactly what the condition is of the just soul and what the condition is of the unjust soul. Now, how is he going to do that?

[51:12] See. Well. Yeah. I'll take a stain. Yeah. City. Yeah. He sees a likeness of proportion, or a likeness of ratios, a proportion between the parts of the what soul, right, and the parts of what the city.

[51:33] And so, in the city, you can see, as it were, something of the structure of the soul, but blown up, what so big that you can hardly miss. Okay.

[51:49] Now, in a lesser stage, Plato does that sometimes in other dialogues, like he'll say, you know, reason is to the emotions, like a man is to what the horse, right? Okay. And it's easier to see the man and horse than to see reason and emotions. But some people are led by their emotions, huh? Which I compare to a man, you know, who's riding a horse, and the horse gets away from him, you know, and the man is just flung in the in the yeah, and the horse goes riding off like that to the man, you know, being bumped on the rocks or anything like that, you know.

[52:29] That's in a way what it is to have your emotions eating your what. The reason, right? Whereas I was saying, you know, should reason rule the emotions, like a man rules the slave, the master rules the slave, or should reason rule the emotions like a father should rule his children? See, and he's going to point out that reason should rule the emotions like a father rules his children, rather than like the master rules the what slave.

[53:03] You develop that, but in a way, they're doing something like what the microscope does to the eye. They're doing something like that for reason, right? Okay. The definition is the more common way that they do this, son. Okay. The definition, what kind of blows up and lets you see more distinctly, huh? What the thing is, son. Okay. But these proportions in a way enable you to magnify that.

[53:32] Well, the moderns completely neglect the definition in the true sense, the definition of a thing, and they neglect very often those proportions that you have in the dialogues, huh? But they should know about that, right? Because that's been around for some time, right? The Greeks had no way of even knowing about the microscope, right? But you know, if he did this sort of thing, right? Well, then suddenly they'll get a picture of that, right?

[53:58] It aids the eye like it aids the reason, right? Now, syllogism and especially the kind of syllogism called demonstration is a bit like the what telescope, right? Okay. What you realize, for example, is that our reason is not to every statement we would like to know whether it's true or false. It's not like the center of the circle is to the points on the circumference.

[54:38] Did you know the center of the circle is equally distant from all the points on the what circumference? Huh? Is that the way our mind or reason is to all the statements we would like to know? Just think of your studies there, Book One of Euclid, right? Say.

[54:56] No, it's more like a straight line, huh? Used to all those points down the line, huh? You know from your study Euclid there how you have to prove one statement before you can prove some other statement, and so the conclusion of one syllogism, of one demonstration, is the premise for the next demonstration, and then the conclusion of that is the premise for the next one, right? And so you get down to say the end of Book One of Euclid, which is just mixed to the end there, the forty-seventh theorem.

[55:31] You get to the Pythagorean theorem, right? Huh? Which had to go through many proofs, right? Huh? So you could say that the Pythagorean theorem is at some distance from our mind, right? Other statements are closer to our mind. Some are so close, like quantities equal to the same to each other, they're obvious, right? Reason sees them almost right away. Other ones need some kind of manifestation, right?

[55:55] Others need really a proof. Others need the conclusion of other proofs, and some need the conclusion of proof or proof or proof or proof, right? So, in a sense, syllogism or demonstration, reasoning does for reason something like what the telescope does for the what, eye, right? Okay.

[56:19] So the syllogism and definition are neglected a lot by the moderns. John Stuart Mill says there's no definitions of things at all. My brother Richard is translating the Post Analytics, and of course, some people in the modern writers there on these subjects they don't admit there's a definition, there's any syllogisms, right? And it's kind of funny because Richard said sometimes they reasoned by syllogism if there are no syllogisms.

[56:51] He said one guy, I think the name of the guy was, but he reasons, you know, every argument is from part to part, but no syllogism is from part to part. Therefore, syllogism is an argument? right? But you've got a syllogism here in the second figure, right? To prove, that there are no syllogisms. So you know, so. So

[57:26] we need, huh? Reason needs these tools like definition and demonstration, huh? As Thomas says, talking about logic, it supplies reason the tools that it needs. But the senses also need certain what? Tools, right? Okay. And so the moderns, not having definition and demonstration, often miss out on many things, right? Because of that. But the Greeks, not having the telescope and microscope, would, remain ignorant, right, of many things, huh?

[58:08] Because of that, huh? But again, they're more excusable than the moderns. But going back to when we were with Empedocles not speaking correctly. Yeah. That's his third reason, right? For. Well, basically there are two reasons there, huh? Because 194 is kind of just recalling what has been said before and emphasizing his position, right? Okay. So the first is about the two bodies not being in the same place.

[58:42] Yeah, and the second is that if illumination was some kind of fine bodies, like we call them today, photons, spreading through space, right? Then it would take some time, but apparently takes no time. In particular they'll talk about you know the reaction to a single photon and something in the eye, huh? Oh So, but you have to go into you know discussion of the photoelectric effect huh Oh Among other things.

[59:21] Okay. And 196, huh? He's coming back to the idea that the transparent doesn't have a color of its own. That's why it's can be receptive, right? And be the vehicle for conveying color.

[59:44] He says the uncolored is receptive of color. You can't receive a color that you already what have, right? You have to be lacking in that color. But it's without sound of sound, huh? Now when they look inside the eye, there the liquid there in the eye seems to be what colorless, right? But if you had you know a red liquid there in the center of your eye, huh?

[1:00:09] And everything would look kind of what red or at least pink, huh? If my tongue was made out of something what sugary, right? I wouldn't be able to taste my dry wine, so, one thing. You see? So the sense powers have to be in their medium have to be lacking in the object they're going to what receive, huh? But there's a problem as we'll see a little bit with the sense of what touch, right?

[1:00:41] Because the organ of touch is not able to be completely denuded of its object, like hot and cold, or hard and soft, huh? But we'll see that in the little passages that are translated as translating when we get there. Now 197 is talking about the other kind of visible that he mentioned in 188 that is unnamed.

[1:01:06] However, not all visible things are in light that don't need the proper color of each thing. For some things are not seen in the light, while in darkness they bring about sensation, like what appears fiery and shining, huh? Like fungi, huh? They seem to what glow in the dark, huh? Horns, head scales, and eyes of fish, huh? Okay. In the eyes of the cat, huh?

[1:01:35] But if none of these is the proper color seen, huh? Due to what cause these are seen, therefore is another story, huh? Aristotle does have following the the anima a book called the about sense and the sensible where he goes more into the senses, huh? And into them. In fact, I'm going to give you a little passage here from Thomas's commentary there on the the De Sensu et Sensato there.

[1:02:03] Now Democritus, as you may recall from our study, okay, let's look at one ninety-eight, which is kind of a summary here. No ever so much as apparent that what is seen in light is color, whence color is not seen without light, for this was being color for it, being motive of the transparent and act. However, the actuality, the transparent is light. This is the summary of things we've seen before.

[1:02:33] A sign of this is apparent, for should someone place what is color upon his eye, he will not see. Got to have it seems the transparent in between, right? But the color moves the transparent, such as the air. By this being continuous, however, the sense organ is is moved.

[1:02:58] Now there's a little criticism here of Democritus. Democritus is the man who thought that the universe is composed of what atoms and the empty. And so he thought that if between us and the moon or something like that, if it was really empty, we'd see much better. We could see a mouse up there, right? And Aristopoulos, you wouldn't see at all if there was not that transparent medium that the light would move.

[1:03:31] In the same way, you know, sometimes we have our time hearing a sound, but if you really had a vacuum, a void, an empty, would you hear any sound at all?

[1:03:45] Okay. Because it's got to move that what medium, right? Okay. For Democritus does not say this well, believing that if what is in between should come to be void, one would see more exactly, even if an ant should be in the heavens, huh? You'd see the ant.

[1:04:08] But this is impossible, for seeing comes to be by the sensitive what suffering or undergoing something. It is impossible, therefore, that it be by the color itself being seen. What he's saying is that the color has to what have between it and the eye the transparent, and the color is what moves the transparent and act. So if we didn't have that transparent air, that transparent water, the color would not what act upon the eye.

[1:04:55] It remains then that it be by what is in between. Whence, it is necessary for there to be something between. There being a void, it follows not that it will be seen more exactly, but that nothing at all will be seen. Although in some way the idea of the void seems to fit the idea that it's a shower of particles, which he's already rejected, I

[1:05:18] know. It has been said therefore, due to what cause it is necessary to see color and light. Fire, however, is seen in both, in darkness and in light, and this by necessity, because in a way the light of the what fire is strong enough that it makes to some extent the transparent to be actually transparent. Okay. Okay. Now, 201, he's making kind of a aside there that the same thing seems to be true about some of the other organs that they require a medium, right, in between them and their object.

[1:06:00] This doesn't seem to be true in the case of touch, but Aristotle, while maintaining in the case of touch that the skin is the medium, right, and the sense of touch is more within, but we don't have to get too much involved in that.

[1:06:19] 202 is getting into more details that he's going to take up more in the open sense and sensation. Now, since we've