De Anima (On the Soul)
37. Part 1: Put Together, Whole and Part: Number, Matter and Form, Composed and Universal Wholes
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[0:02] Is a rubber ball put together from rubber and a certain shape? In a sense, if we say a rubber ball is composed of a rubber and a what

[0:21] shape, right? We're saying what it's put together from these, right? But if you stop and think about the original meaning of the word "put together," it's tied up with the what continuous, huh? Okay. And we could also speak, you know, in logic, you know, another sense of part. We could speak of when you define something, you put together the what genus with the differences, huh? So when I define square as an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral, I I put the genus of what square, which is quadrilateral, together with the differences, right?

[1:03] Okay. And notice that you know when they define the syllogism, they put positio in the definition, don't they? Yeah. It's speech in which some statements laid down, huh? Placed and other follows necessarily because those laid down. When I was you know running reading Thomas's commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul, right, huh? It happens to explain the word what placed, right, huh? In there, and borrow that, huh?

[1:37] Okay. Now, you know how in geometry you get a parallelogram. You get what divided into what? Yeah. You could say you also, if you wanted to, you could put together two triangles and make what?

[2:05] Yeah. And sometimes you divide a circle into two semicircles, right? But you would put two semicircles together and make one what? Yeah. Um. But then she could also have these semicircles by themselves, right? Yeah, the triangles by themselves. And matter and form is not like that, right? So I put them together, right? Okay.

[2:36] Now, that's what she asked about. Now, if I put three and four together, what do you get? Seven. Seven, yeah. Okay. But now, what does "put together" mean here, right? See. Is it more like putting together? To continuous things, right? Or is it more like putting together matter and form, or genus and difference? Which is it more like?

[3:29] It's more like matter and form. Yeah, this is important now to see. So let's take a simple example. Let's take two here, right? Okay. Now, in two, you get two ones, right? Okay. Just like here, you get two what semicircles, right? Now, you put these two together. What do you do?

[3:54] You put their what Boundaries here, right? Together, right? Yeah, you mean in a sense become one boundary, right? Put them together, okay? But as you know, number is not continuous, right? So you couldn't put the two ones together in the way you put together the two semicircles, could you?

[4:17] So they had no common boundary, right? They have no boundary, no limit, right? It's like with we saw back in our study of points and continuous, right? And you put two points together, and they remain two points. No, you put two points together; they would coincide, just just one point, right? Right. But you can't put two semicircles together. You still have the two semicircles, but you have also this one what circle we talk about as being one thing, one circle, right?

[4:47] But here, the two ones, if you try to see them as coming together in this way, they never gonna become one, are they? All they're gonna be is what two ones. They never be one two, but always two ones. The comic is I don't know if you've ever seen his McMaster lectures. They're called because he gave a master university one of these Canadian universities, but there's a Howard University, isn't that?

[5:15] You know, but one of them is about numbers, right? There, you know, and as you call for the rocket, you can't make one out of two and so on. But there's a way you can make one out of two, right? It's matter and form, or what?

[5:30] But if you imagine, the only way of what putting together things of becoming one of two becoming one is this way here. Well, then these could never become one, could they? They always remain two ones, and never one two. See. And they say the computer, right, and the calculating machines are based upon regarding two as two ones, and never one two. Just so many units, right? Okay.

[6:11] But if you look upon the one as something able to be two, right? Yeah. But it becomes actually two through the addition of one, right? Yeah. Then that one is like what? Act to ability. Yeah. Like form to matter, right? And Plato, before Aristotle, Aristotle in the eighth book of wisdom, he assimilates definitions to numbers. Remember that? We saw an example of that in Shakespeare, huh? He says, "What is a man?

[6:54] " Right? If his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed, a beast, no more. Well, more or less, it's said first in what? Number, right? Okay. And so Aristotle in the eighth book, there, following the great Plato, his teacher, twenty years.

[7:21] I was looking at this passage in the Sophist just this morning because I was thinking about this opinion, this idea that imagining is opinion with sensation. And they say, "Well, Plato says in the Sophist. " I was looking at the passage in the Sophist, and but Plato's talking about how a logos that is true or false as a noun and a verb, right? The basic things Aristotle's saying in the Peri Hermeneias, right?

[7:48] You realize how much Aristotle learned from Plato, right? Okay. But the connection that's made in the eighth book is that just as if you add or subtract one from a number, you have a different number, right? So the natures of things are like that a bit. So a body plus life equals a what? A plant, right? And if you add to body and life sensation, you now have a what?

[8:26] Animal Animal. And if you add to body and life and sensation reason, now you have a man, right? And take away from a man reason, and you're nothing more than a what? Animal. What is a man if his chief good and mark of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more, right? See back here. And you might say, "What is an animal if it has no sensation?

[8:56] If it doesn't sense, a plant, no more, right? What is a plant if it has no life? A body, no more. See, so it's like body was what? One and this was two and this was three and this was what four. They say the natures of things, which are expressed by their definitions, are like numbers. Right? You add or subtract one. Right. I say this to the students, you know, to make it clearer than I say.

[9:29] The way Shakespeare is reasoning in a sense is saying, "What is a four if it be half of six? A three no more. Right? What is a three if it be half of four? A two no more. Right? If they have reason, or to use reason? it's something that is either what man is or it's a property of man. Right? So if man has no good greater than the beast, right?

[9:57] Then he's no more than the beast. Huh? Okay. And so it's based upon proportion. Half of eight is to four as half of six is to three. So if you switch that and say, well, what is four if it be half of six? No more than three? So say the chief good of man is to man as the chief good of the beast is to the beast, right?

[10:24] So if man is nothing more than the chief good of the beast, to sleep and feed like a mopping back home, then man is no more than a what, beast, right? Okay. So you're looking at the idea that one is able to be a two by the addition of one, and that ability is made actual by the addition of one. So that's like matter and form, right?

[10:54] Rubber is able to be a rubber ball, but you have to add what? That's the word add. You have to add a form of a certain kind to it, and then it becomes actually a what? Rubber ball, right? Huh?

[11:13] See that? So in that sense, you're understanding the order there in number, right? Rather than just being a collection of ones that are independent of each other.

[11:34] Therefore, you're seeing the the one that's added to two as actualizing what one is able to be, right? And once you have a two, then the two is able to be a what? Three, right? And three is able to be four. And but it but it's actually four through receiving what? That next one, right? Okay. Then you start to think of number as something which is what?

[12:03] One thing, right? Okay. Rather than simply what? Number. Kind of a bringing together of many things, right? Which can't you know be put together because they don't have any in common But boundaries or limits or surfaces.

[12:39] So it's a real species of what? Quantity, how much, huh? How many? Species, huh? Number. But apparently, in the computer or in these calculating machines, number is treated simply as what? A bunch of ones. That's all it is. You know, you wouldn't think of numbers. I remember, Brother Mark saying that you know, if that's all the number was, you know, they wouldn't see any significance in three or seven or ten or twelve or whatever it might be, right?

[13:14] Or hundred or something, right? You kind of see that, you know, the way we we get numbers by counting, right? Because t here is an order there, right? So not seeing these ones as what all on the same level, right? Just just a collection of ones, right? You are seeing the next one as what actualizing something in the previous one, huh?

[13:54] But here, you see, I'm kind of reversing the the the analogy there of Plato and Aristotle, right? huh? But? The natures of things are like numbers, huh? And the addition or subtraction of one gives you a different number, right? And the addition or subtraction of life or sensation or reason or subtraction of these things give you a different kind of what a thing, huh?

[14:26] It still seems that I am not saying a number has as much unity as you know matter and form, right? But there is that idea of ability and act there, and you have to think of the idea that that in a strict sense, when is something able, you know, to be something, right? And when Aristotle talks about ability and act, he says that in a strict sense, you are able to be something when you are one step away from it, huh?

[15:01] Okay. So if I am climbing up the stairs and I can only climb one step at a time, it's it's a tall step, right? Huh? Well, I am not able to be on the second step until I am already on the first step, right? I am not able to be on the third step until I am on the second one, right? The same way reasoning, right? Huh?

[15:22] You know, if in reasoning, let's say A is obvious, but to A you can prove B, right? Okay. And to B you can prove C, and to C you can prove D. When are you able to know C?

[15:40] When you know A, well, in some remote way you might say this, right? But strictly speaking, I am not able to know C until I know what B, right? When am I able to know D? Not strictly speaking, until I know what C, right? Okay. So you know, is a student who's never studied any geometry. Is he able to know solid geometry?

[16:07] Not strictly speaking, right? I say. So we're going to make plane geometry a prerequisite, they'd say in college, for the solid geometry course. Okay.

[16:20] So, is two able to be four? Well, not in the strict sense, right? Two is able to be three. Okay. And three is able to be four, right? Okay. So, two is in one step away from being three.

[16:46] Able to be three, but be actually three, that one. So that one is like the form, making it to be actually what three. But you have to see these. This in a certain what order, right? You see that there's a order there of ability and what act, right? And

[17:08] then you see the numbers having more unity than would have if it's just a clutching of things in a room, so to speak, now. Together.

[17:27] But in thinking of it that way, it seems you could say the triangle triangle is able to be the parallelogram by the addition of the other triangle. Therefore, you'd say the other triangle is like the form.

[17:49] It seems that there's a different. Couldn't you say you could? I mean, you could say it's like the form in that way. Yeah, but see, you see, in the case of the two triangles, there they can come together, right? In the first sense of coming together, and

[18:11] the first sense of coming together is where they their extremities touch, right, or become one. And the numbers don't have any, anything like that, right? So, but the same reason, though, for the same matter, or for that matter, I should say, matter and form can't come together in that way either. But within our matter, remember the question Aristotle raised back when we talked about the unity of the body and soul, right?

[18:44] It's not a problem for Aristotle in the way it is for the others. The others see the body and the soul. They see them as distinct at all. They see them as two different substances, right? Like a man and his car, right? If there's no reason why man can't go in the car or leave the car, right? You get this idea of the transmigration of souls, right?

[19:07] But if the soul is to the body as form is to matter, you can understand both the unity of man and why this transmigration of one soul to another body does make sense really, you know? because this soul is the act of this body, so on and this kind of soul, right, is the act of this kind of body. So,

[19:36] but Plato can't really understand the unity of man if he thinks of the soul as a complete substance in itself and the body's complete substance in itself, then the man would be like the modern say, the ghost in the machine, right? That's their expression, huh? You see? It's like you know they say about Plato's position it's like the sailor in the boat, huh? We could say the man in the car, but he's not really one thing,

[20:09] and that, as I say, contradicts our experience that the man who's feeling pain in his foot or hand or whatever it is is the one who's thinking about what to do about it. How do you leave that pain? You see, so they can't really understand the unity of man

[20:35] because they're thinking of body and soul as two complete substances. But we might say that that the soul man is put together from what a body and a soul, Right? So but the, but that first meaning of put together goes back to the continuous. This seems to be very fundamental in our thinking. It kind of struck me. You know, I was, you know, one time I was just thinking my own mind of

[21:12] that question in Thomas that that God is not composed in any way, and is that something different than saying God has no parts? Well, they're not exactly the same, but they're very much alike.

[21:29] But then, when you start to think of the first meaning of parts as something what quantitative, and first the quantitative in the sense of continuous. If you think of the first meaning of composed or put together, you're thinking of something that is kind of

[21:47] quantitative, and as Aristotle says, when he defines quantity, the continuous in the fifth book of Wisdom, he says that the continuous, that which is divisible into things that are each can be a this something, right? Each can be an individual substance, huh? Okay, so if I broke this piece of chalk in half, this half would just all by itself over there, this one over there, right? But I can't take the chalk and its shape and put the chalk here and the shape here, so it's not divisible in that way, right?

[22:19] And there's a real distinction between them because we could change the shape of the chalk, so the chalk and its shape are not the same thing, but they're not things that can exist individually by themselves. But the continuous seems to be that sort. But the other side of it is, you put these things together, right? If you're thinking of, you know, you put together something, you this thing here just by itself, this thing by itself, and you put the nut and the bolt together, right, or you know, insert this, you know, screw them together or something, right?

[22:58] You glue them together, right? You can just put them together alongside each other, right? How do you make a brick wall? You know, put together bricks like this. Needs a cement or something. What's that? They put together. You see these stones You know where they just fit the stones in see these stones. You know where they just fit the stones in. You know, kind of, you know, these kind of artists can do this sort of thing, right?

[23:21] But bodies put together can both exist. You know, founding one or the other. As I said the old materialist you know who says I've been cutting open bodies for years, dissecting bodies. I never, you know, I have the liver here and the, and the stomach here and the eyes there. But I never had the soul there. But it's not a part like that. So you could have this here and that there.

[23:55] So is it the sense of that part as a as a kind of some sort of composition of parts? So composition would be more general and something with parts. I'm trying to get the difference between well, not composed without parts. You see, Aristotle in in the in the fifth book of wisdom, there fifth book of metaphysics, he gives four meanings of the word part. Okay. And

[24:33] you could say three of these meanings are of what we call a composed whole. Okay. And one of them is what we call the universal whole. Now, if you go back, if you go back to the beginning of natural philosophy, there, the first book of natural hearing, now, first book of the so-called physics, Aristotle says we should go from the general to particular, right? Okay. And the reason why we should consider things in general before in particular is because we naturally know things in a confused way before distinctly.

[25:14] And he wants to manifest, right? He gives a reason for that, but that now so difficult. But he wants to manifest that in fact, we do know things in a confused way before distinctly, huh? And the first kind of example he gives is that of a what sensible composed whole. That's really a what something continuous, huh? Or something whose is put together from things that are either continuous or at least touching, right?

[25:50] Okay. So you take the example, you know, of a salad dressing or something of this sort. You know, a painting as parts and so on parts and so on. And then the second kind example he gives is that of the understandable composed whole. How we name a thing before we what define it, right? Okay. And those are two of the meanings of whole and part that are found in the fifth book of wisdom.

[26:21] Okay. Um. Then he gives something very much like the general in particular. But that's another sense of whole and part, what you call universal whole, which is not put together from its parts, but it's what set of its parts, okay? And Aristotle directly compares those two wholes, and he says the general is to the particular something like the what whole is to the parts, right? Well, there he's thinking of whole and parts in the first sense of a composed whole, right?

[27:04] Now, in English, you know the words themselves are kind of significant. I think I mentioned this in the talk, but in English we say the general is to the particular

[27:21] as the whole particular as the whole is to the parts. Okay. Aristotle says, well, if the whole is known before the parts are distinguished, right, then the general would be known before the what particulars, right? Okay. But notice how the word particular is taken from the word what part, right? That's not by chance. Now the Greek word Aristotle uses there is not taken from part. Echosthenes in Greek, right?

[27:57] Although in the later Greek commentaries sometimes you'll see the word merikon, right, for particular, which is taken from the word for part in Greek. But the Greek word for general there is what katholou and it's taken from what? It's a like there kata holou, right? According to the what whole, right? So you'd see the Greek word, the word whole, the Greek word for general whole, just like in English or Latin, right, word particular, right?

[28:35] You see the word part, right? So it kind of helps you to see that there's a likeness there. See? Now why did I mention that, right? Well, the two kinds of the first two kinds of examples Aristotle gives are taken are examples of composed wholes, and two of the meanings of whole and part in the fifth book, the quantitative whole and its parts, right? Which is the sensible whole, and then the what composition of genus and difference, right?

[29:09] The definition, which is another sense that he gives in the fifth book, and he compares the universal whole and its parts, right? So, if you wanted to say that God has no parts, right, and you wanted to show the universality, you'd show that God has what? No quantitative parts. He's not a body, which is the first sense. He's not composed in that sense. Secondly, he has no parts.

[29:40] This is another meaning given in the fifth book, in the sense of matter and form, right? That's the second thing shown in the Summa, right? Now, the other senses, the third and the fourth senses,

[29:55] are not found in the fifth book, right? But they would be led. Back to matter and form, because in similarity. So when you say that Socrates and what a man is are not identical, but what a man is is to Socrates something like form is to matter. That's why we call it a species, huh? From form, right?

[30:21] And then there's no composition in God of what substance and existence. That's like matter and form, ability and act, right? Okay. You can see it very clearly in the second book of the Summa Contra Gentiles Thomas shows you know there's some composition of the angels, not a composition of matter and form, but a composition of substance and existence. Why in God there's no such composition? But then he has another chapter to point out that the composition of substance and existence is not the composition of matter and form, but there's in similarity, right?

[30:58] Okay. So the second, third, and fourth articles in the Summa and question three would take one of the senses of part, that's the central sense, and two ones that would be attached to it, right? Okay. Then the fifth article would be denying what genus and difference, which is another sense of whole and part, right? But if you wanted to say that God has no parts completely, you'd want to eliminate this kind of parts too, and then you'd be saying that God, what?

[31:37] There aren't many particular kinds of gods, but even many particular gods, there's only one God, so he has no parts in that sense, right? You see? Okay. So in that sense, you have something that you don't have, because the only kind of whole that you're excluding from God is a composed whole, right? And so,

[32:05] in addition to that, you'd want to conclude that God is not a universal whole either. Now that's a problem in sacra doctrina but maybe it didn't come out when you show the unity of God or something of that sort, right? Or it's easily deduced from the fact that what God is and God are identical. Okay. You can you know reason from there from God being his own existence.

[32:28] You can reason from both of those that there can only be one God, right? And therefore he has no parts in the sense of what subject parts.

[32:39] But explicitly, if you wanted to eliminate every sense of whole and part in the, you'd have to have another article there, right? Okay. Because when I divide, let's say, triangle into quadrilateral, if I divide quadrilateral into square and oblong and rhombus and rhomboid and trapezium. You wouldn't say that quadrilateral was put together from those. Four or five, or if I divide a triangle into what equilateral and isosceles and scalene, you wouldn't say triangle is put together from those.

[33:17] You know, unless you're a John Locke or somebody, right? It's all none of these. I mentioned that before, right? Yeah. Sometimes in metaphysics, they give them that little passage, you know, from Locke there, which and Barclay, because Barclay quotes Locke and says, "and I can't make any sense out of either, so they give up." But yeah, so this is a different kind of whole, right? It's said of its parts rather than what put together from them.

[33:50] Remember how I was giving you that that sophistical argument of the students to deny the axiom that the whole is more than the part. So I get the students to admit that man is an animal, right? But he's not just an animal; he's an animal with reason, right? Okay, and so animal is only a part of what man is. And then I say, but animal includes besides man, dog, cat, horse, elephant, right?

[34:18] So here is a part including more than the whole. Gee, you could say, you know, gee. Sometimes the part is more than the whole. Well, and this is obviously a sophistical argument based upon mixing up right the senses of the word whole and part. Because when you say that animal is a what part of man, you mean it's a part of the definition of man. It's a composing part of the definition.

[34:50] When you say that animal is includes more than man, you're taking animal as a universal whole, set of man, dog, cat, and horse, right? Well, the universal whole is always said of more than any one of its parts, right? The composed whole is always composed of more than one of its parts, right? Which makes me have the two senses. You see how these guys being deceived, right?

[35:16] So it's very important, huh? But unless you know that chapter, you could be deceived. Like my students are deceived. I'm being being deceived when I first take the argument. They, oh yeah, yeah, it seems like, right?

[35:34] But it's like you know you could do it. You know, all these words that are in the axioms are equivocal by reason, huh? You know, if I say to you, for example, if A is before B and B is before C, you could conclude that A is before what C, okay? Now. Now we have an axiom about before after. Nothing is before or after itself, right? Okay.

[36:08] Now, Chaucer came before Shakespeare, right? In English literature, okay. But all the critics put Shakespeare before what? Chaucer, right? So therefore, Chaucer is before Chaucer, right? Therefore, I've contradicted the axiom that nothing is before itself.

[36:29] Obviously, I'm mixing up, right? Two senses, right? Because Chaucer is before Shakespeare, in the first sense, in time. Shakespeare is before Chaucer, in the what? Fourth sense, he's better, right? Now, if you have one sense, if I said that Chaucer is better than Shakespeare, and Shakespeare is better than Chaucer, and Chaucer is better than himself, right? See.

[37:03] If if yesterday is before today, and today is before tomorrow, then yesterday is before what? Tomorrow. But if I say, you know, today was much better than yesterday, that's another sense of being before, right? And so, in some sense, today might be before yesterday.

[37:32] Yesterday is before today, and today would be before today, right? See, that's obviously mixing up different senses, right? So this is this is something, not the only thing, but the wise man, right?

[37:49] And Aristotle was really, you know, the first man to fully understand the words he uses everywhere, and nobody before him fully understood the words they used everywhere. You see, you know, Plato, you know, you know, saying, "Until we know this, we won't know understand this word." But he can't quite do these things. And hardly Aristotle was only the first man, but almost the last man. Yeah. You know, the only man after him, maybe, you know, would be somebody like like Thomas.

[38:20] But but most people, you know, they never learn these things. But you don't understand distinctly, right? The axioms, right? And you can't defend them from the sophistical objections that are based upon mixing up the senses of these words, right? It's the most common mistake, made. Unless you know this, huh? So, as I say, you know, to people,

[38:53] these two statements: if you know the meanings of the words you use, are you wise, then you are wise? True or false? Yeah, but if you don't know the meanings of words you use, then you're not wise. I think that's true, right? Isn't it? And this is not the greatest thing Aristotle did, but it was an essential thing, right? You know, see, and

[39:24] so it's another sense of before and after, right? You could perhaps know the meanings of words you use without being wise, but you certainly can't be wise without knowing the meanings of words you use, right? Yeah, see, see, so it's before, and it's kind of hard to see that, you know, you know, the the moderns when they they come across Aristotle's metaphysics, they don't know what the hell he's doing in Book Five.

[39:50] It's some kind of a dictionary or something, you know. You can stick it for us anywhere, you know, like a dictionary you might have on your shelf there, you know. But no, this is presupposed to what? In wisdom, you especially use those common words, right? And the defense of the axioms presupposes this in a way, and but all philosophy presupposes this because we use these words everywhere.