Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
2. The First Road in Our Knowledge: From Sensation and Memory to Experience and Art
Class of 2004-12-16
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/002-the-first-road-in-our-knowledge-from-sensation-and-memory/

[0:00] paragraph? Huh? Well, I think that's a very good thing man always begins with a kind of confused, indistinct knowledge of things, huh? And so, if I came into an introduction to philosophy class and asked a bunch of college freshmen or sophomores what is wisdom, I wouldn't get a very clear answer to this.

[0:30] But is there some kind of hazy notion about wisdom that even the freshman or sophomore might have somehow in his mind? Well, sometimes to bring out a little bit that hazy understanding that they have of wisdom, I say to them, I ask this question: Do you think wisdom comes in the beginning of our knowledge, or do you think it comes in the middle of our knowledge,

[1:08] or do you think it comes at the end of our knowledge? All. All. Yeah, but if you got to choose between one of those three, yeah. I mean, do you think of a newborn baby as wise? No. No.

[1:27] I think of wisdom coming sort of towards the end of our knowledge, right? Okay. Down the road, right? If it comes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

[1:41] And I when I first was in Worcester, there I used to go to a barber shop there on Pleasant Street, and old barber there, and he had a plaque on the wall. You know, you get too soon old and too late, but yeah, he's a smart. My dad just quoted it to me. He called it an old German proverb. Oh, yeah. I think it was German. This guy, too, too, too soon.

[2:05] I'm old. Too late. I'm wise. Yeah, yeah. And the fool there, who's got more wisdom in some sense than King Lear, right? The fool says, you know, to King Lear, "You're old before your time." And King Lear says, "What do you mean? You're old before you're wise." So we tend to think of wisdom as coming with what, Age. age? Yeah. So again, the wisdom comes not in the beginning or even in the middle of our knowledge, but towards the end.

[2:39] That's kind of a hazy notion that students will say if you ask them that question that they'll they have to choose between those three, right? They'll see it as being more towards the end.

[2:52] Shakespeare has a nice metaphor. One of the plays there, he says, "In love, which graybeards call divine." What does he mean by that? Who are the graybeards? The wise, yeah. But you know, being a poet, he wants to say it in a poetic way, right? And so instead of saying "love," which the wise say is divine, "Love," which graybeards call divine. But. Again, you're thinking of you know graybeard, age, right?

[3:33] As the time, if ever, you'd be wise, huh? Okay. I don't know if you've seen this in Greek, like Greek, in English fiction and so on. It's an old saying, you know, to play the young man. Oh. And it's the way of saying to play the what the fool. You see, that's a contrast, right? Okay.

[4:08] So notice what my question says: beginning, the middle, the end, right? Okay. Kind of saying it's not the beginning of our knowledge in the middle, but towards the end. You've got to talk about kind of the the road our knowledge takes, right? And in what direction is our knowledge going? And seeing if you can kind of anticipate a little bit what wisdom might be. If wisdom comes at the end of our knowledge.

[4:42] What direction is our knowledge going? Right, central. Yeah, yeah. And so, what Aristotle is going to talk about here is another thing that is first, right? He's talked about the first desire here, at least as far as the philosophers concerned, and come back to that in the fifth, in the third reading.

[5:03] But you're going to talk now about what we could say, and elsewhere he does call, in fact, what you could call the first road in our knowledge.

[5:44] And in Greek, the word for road is what hodos huh? So it's so hodos huh? And maybe as a child there is on a bicycle, you have a thing called a, what? an odometer? Oh, yeah. You see, what does an odometer do? Number of miles or something? Yeah, measures the road, right? It's a number of miles. It measures hodas the road, okay? And as a Christian, huh?

[6:18] The word hodas there is very important in the Gospel say of Saint John, right? And usually we translate English. We say Christ says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," right? Now the Greek word there that's translated by way in English sometimes is hodos. It's a much more concrete word than way, right? Christ is saying, "I am the road." Okay.

[6:49] I am the road. I am the truth. I am the life. Now, when Thomas explains that the words of Christ, he says, "As God, He's truth itself and life itself.

[7:08] As man, He's the road, right? So as man, He's the road to Himself as God. That's interesting. The order in which our Lord speaks there, right? Because He ascends from what pertains to Himself as man to what pertains to Himself as what God, right? And this is the same thing that you find in the profession of faith that the Church is built on, right? Because in Peter, in sixteenth chapter of Matthew, makes his profession of faith.

[7:49] He says, "Thou art the Christ, right, the Son of Living God." Of course, as man, he's Christ or anointed. Okay, so he goes from the human to the what? Divine. If you look at the beginning of the third part of the Summa Theologiae, where Thomas is going to talk now about the incarnation and Christ as man, right? And he says, "This part now is about Christ, who as man is the what?

[8:21] He's the Latin word for Hodas, the via, you know, but he's the way tending towards God, right? Okay. So as a Christian, we're very respectful with Hodas, right? Okay. But if you go back and read Plato and Aristotle and even the philosophers before them, they will talk about a Hodas in our what? Knowledge, right? A road in our knowledge, huh? And Empedocles, for example, speaks of the broadest road that leads into our mind, right?

[8:56] From the eyes and the hands and so on, right? He talks about the difficulty of knowing God, you know, along this road. So, the word "road," of course, first of all, means what's out here that I drove in on today, right?

[9:17] And that word "road" has been carried over, you know, applied to something up here inside of us. I remember asking my son Paul when he was a little tiny tot. Paul, what do you think of the basic road in our knowledge? I said to him one day. He says there are trucks and cars on it. He says.

[9:43] So he's stuck on the first menial road, right? huh? Now, why do we carry the word "road" over from that asphalt or cement or bricks, wherever it's made out of, out there? You know, is because of the asphalt or the cement or the bricks that we speak of a road in our knowledge or a road even in our mind.

[10:09] Is it by chance we carry the word "road" over, or is there some likeness of something up here inside of us in our knowledge to that road that I drove down or walked down in getting here? It's because it's because of the likeness that there's a progression in each. Yeah, and so there's an order. Yeah, there's an order. So basically, you mean there's an order made before and after in our knowledge, huh?

[10:46] And that's where the likeness, where the likeness consists of, right? When you speak of an order in our knowledge, you mean that one thing is known before another, right? Or one thing is considered before another, And so on. huh? Okay? Now,

[11:12] what is the first road in our knowledge? Senses and intellect. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes I use a syllogism here to bring that out. You've seen that syllogism before, I think, maybe here, but let's give it again here. So.

[11:46] The first road in our knowledge is the natural road in our knowledge. Nature, as you know, is the cause of many orders, right? The natural road in our knowledge

[12:33] is the road from the senses into reason. I don't know if you can read my writing here but. Natural road in our knowledge is the road from the senses

[12:54] into reason, huh? And you can syllogize, right, that the first road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into reason, huh? Okay. That's a basic syllogism that I give to syllogize that the first road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into reason, huh? In order to understand this syllogism, you've got to see the connection of the middle term, which is the natural road in our knowledge, with the minor and the major term, right?

[13:42] Okay. Now, why is it the first road in our knowledge is going to be the natural road in our knowledge? It's going to be the road which is made by nature, as distinguished from, say, the roads made by reason itself. Why? Because reason would presuppose nature. Okay. We're taking nature here, perhaps, in the sense of what a thing is, right? Okay. Now, what's first in a thing?

[14:21] What it is, right? A thing must be what it is before it can be anything else. Kind of obvious, right? Okay. So, if you know that by nature we mean here what a thing is. And then a thing must be what it is before anything else. Then you can see that nature is what is first in a thing,

[14:47] and therefore it makes sense to say the first road in our knowledge would be the natural road in our knowledge, because nature is what is first in a thing. Do you see that? Okay.

[15:05] Now, why would the natural road in our knowledge be the road from the senses into reason? Well, what's the nature of man? It's to be an animal, right? With reason, huh? That's the nature of man. It's even Shakespeare talks, huh? An animal

[15:25] has reason. I told you my conversation with my mother, huh? I said man is an animal. My mother didn't like that, so I came back and said, "I don't mean he's just an animal. He's an animal that has reason." Okay, that's better, she said. My mother never went to college, but she had some common sense, right? Okay.

[15:52] So that's the nature of man to be an animal with reason. Now, animal is defined by having what senses? This is a distinction between an animal and a plant, right? And so, because man is an animal, he obviously has senses. But man is not just an animal; he's an animal that has what reason? But now, in the development of something, what comes first and what appears first is the general rather than the what particular, right?

[16:28] And you can see that, for example, in the generation of a man, because a fertilized egg a fertilized egg, right? What appears next? What we have that distinguishes us from the animals? No, not even what distinguishes us from plants. What seems to come first is cell division, right? Grow, right? Something we have in common with the what plants, right? And then you begin to see eventually the senses, right?

[17:00] Okay. Now, it's a little, easier to say seven is the age of reason. I don't know what they meant by that exactly, but okay. But what's more specific in man, right? And generally, development of anything comes what later, right? Okay. So, since man is an animal with reason, what is animal-like in man, right? Develops before what specific to man, right? So you go from the senses then into what reason, right?

[17:33] And so we naturally think at first about what we sense, not anything else, really. In the beginning, right? Do you see that? Okay. So, because the nature of man is to be an animal with reason, then the natural road in our knowledge is a road from the senses into reason.

[17:55] And because nature is what is first in a thing, a thing must be what it is before it can be anything else. Then the first road in our knowledge must be the natural road, and therefore the first road in our knowledge is a road from the senses into reason. You couldn't say. You couldn't say. Do you see that? Okay. So Aristotle is going to begin here to talk about this first road, in our knowledge, or about this natural road in our knowledge.

[18:26] And as he starts to talk about it, you'll see that this first road is in fact going in the direction of wisdom. That As you go further along this road, you seem to be moving in the direction of wisdom, getting something more like wisdom. Or that What comes later along the Road seems wiser than what was limited to what came before, okay. So, if this road from the senses into reason is also in a way a road to wisdom, wisdom being the highest or the greatest perfection of what reason, right?

[19:08] Okay. You know how the scientists tend to use the word reason, you know, in kind of a loose way. So even the apes have reason, right? But nevertheless, they call man the homo what sapiens, the wise ape. It means, huh? You see, because people think of wisdom as not the perfection of seeing or hearing or smelling or tasting, right? You know, I get you know the dog can smell things I can't smell.

[19:34] He's wiser than me. Nobody thinks that that you know acuteness of sensing is is is wisdom. Or because you know the the little child doesn't need glasses or something, right? You know, and sees better. You know, you know how grandma or somebody comes with things a child to read, you know, because she can't read the small print or something. You've seen that in your own grandmother or grandfather or somebody, you know, or some older person.

[19:58] I can't, you know, you know, ask you a you know person to make that out. So everybody thinks of what wisdom as the highest perfection of reason. So as you go from the senses into reason, you're going towards perfection of reason. You're going towards the direction of wisdom, but as you go along this road, you'll see that in fact, the further we go, the more we seem to have something like wisdom.

[20:26] You know, and so we're going to eventually get some idea what this goal might be, huh? But notice, Aristotle, like a good wise man, he often kills many birds with one stone, right? So he's not taking up the natural road here to give us a complete knowledge of the natural road or to unfold that. He's taking up the natural road here for the sake of getting some idea of what wisdom is aiming at, right?

[21:01] What the goal of our knowledge in a sense is. But at the same time, he does teach us some very valuable things to know about the natural road, huh? And you'll find that, as you go through most of Aristotle's work, some that the reason why he takes up something here at this place, right, is not the only benefit you get from knowing what he takes up here at this place, right?

[21:30] See, it's kind of marvelous to see what he does, huh? Okay. Yeah. Take a little brain Yeah. take a little brain Okay. Make sure you lose it. Yeah.

[21:51] By heart. Can't you live your trip? You know. Okay. Now, as far as the first road is concerned, Aristotle is going to bring out a number of what kinds of knowing along this road, right? And so, kind of the first thing he's going to bring out on this road is sensing, right? Okay.

[22:22] And then he's going to go from sensing to memory of what you sensed, right? And then he's going to go towards experience, huh? And then he's going to go towards what we usually translate as art or science, right? Huh? And using them kind of interchangeably, what they have in common. These are like the main steps.

[22:59] Okay. But there's other things you bring out too as he goes along. And you'll see as you go along here that you're getting towards something that becomes more and more like what wisdom.

[23:15] Now, animals, he says in the beginning, the second paragraph, are born having sensation by nature. Now, as we said before, that distinguishes the animals from the what plants, right? But even if you compare the animals to the plants, does an animal seem wiser than a plant? Now, I go in the backyard, and I start to saw a limb off the tree, you know, and the tree doesn't even know what's happening to it.

[23:48] If I try to saw, you know, one of these arms or legs off the cat, they'd be very much aware, you know. So the animal, in a sense, is aware of what's going on around it to some extent, right? And the through the senses, but the the tree is not even aware of the fact that it's being mutilated. You see? And I'm sure if you get an artificial limb, you'd know it, but a tree, you know, you insert a limb sometimes, you know, you graft it on, and the tree seems to not know what's going on.

[24:19] Now, and from this, huh, from sensing, memory does not arise in some of them, while it does arise in others. Now, perhaps Aristotle is thinking of these lowly forms of life that are in the floor of the ocean. When Aristotle left Athens after the death of Plato, he went and did marine biology among other things. And there are some forms of. Animal life that are attached to the floor of the ocean, and they don't seem to be much different from a plant, because they don't move from place to place, right?

[24:54] But if you stick them, they, you know, react as in pain, huh? And so things come to them in the water, because the water is always in motion, there, right? And they will, you know, grab things that come to them, right, when they come in contact with them. But their food comes to them, so they don't have to move from place to place. So all they seem to have is sensation of what comes in contact with them.

[25:16] They don't seem to have any memory, right? Well, with the cats, say, huh? and the higher animals, they all have memory, huh? And so, you know, we put the the cat dish here, and the cat comes right up the stair in the morning and around the corner, right? She remembers where the thing was. And Tabitha, who's passed on now, Tabitha, you know, after breakfast in the morning, she would always go out to her favorite hunting grounds, huh?

[25:45] There was a vacant lot down the three, four doors down from us, which now has got a house on it, but then there was just two woods there, you know, and that was one of her favorite places to go down and see what she could, you know, find out, huh? That's memory, right, huh?

[25:59] Now, as you go from having sensation but no memory to memory, doesn't that represent an advance in knowing? To remember something, right? If you had sensation but no memory, would you be any wiser today than yesterday? No, the old thing, you know, we say in one ear out the other, but that's the way it would be with no memory, right?

[26:26] My mother used to say to the salesman when he's trying to sell her something she doesn't want or that price she doesn't want to pay, "I wasn't born yesterday," she'd say. You know, which is the way I say I'm a little bit wiser than you think, you know, or don't try to pull a wool over my eyes and so on. But if you had no memory, would you be any wiser than someone born yesterday or even today?

[26:50] No, you might be inferior to them because their eyes or their ears might be more acute than yours are now, huh? So as you go from sensing to memory, that represents a step in the direction of what? Wisdom, right? When I was little, we had a cat, and the cat smelled something cooking on the stove that was delicious, and he decided to jump on the stove, and his paws hit the electric stove, and he fell to the ground.

[27:22] He's got it singed a bit, but he never tried to do that again. Never touch up the stove again. He was wiser after that, right? But if he had no memory, he'd do the same dumb thing again, right? You see the idea? So as you go from sensing to memory, you are in a sense going in the direction of being a little bit smart, a little bit wiser, okay.

[27:47] Now, he goes into a kind of a subtle point here. It's kind of interesting that animals that have memory, some of them, in addition, have the sense of hearing, right? And they can be more what taught. The ones that don't have the sense of hearing.

[28:16] Now he says that those who have memory, though, are. He actually uses the word prudent, right? There's something like prudence, right? So you can say that the cat is more prudent about the stove after being singed, right? Than it was before, because of memory, right? And Thomas in, his commentary, if you see it sometime, you know he'll quote Cicero. You know that the memory and of the past, right, and foresight of the future are integral parts of prudence, huh?

[28:45] So something like prudence in the animals, huh? Those that have memory, right? Okay, and then he goes on to those who have ears, huh? And they can be what taught, right? Now perhaps it's a lesson for us too, right? Huh? We have to have ears in order to be what taught, huh? And that's why Plutarch says we have two ears and one mouth. Yeah. Okay.

[29:17] Now he gets to the third paragraph. He starts to talk about the differences between men and other animals. We have sensation and memory and even hearing, right? But we begin to differ from the other animals by experience. They don't have experience much. He says the other animals live by images, right? Like the lowest animals that just have this temporary image, right, of things, and the more advanced animals that live by memories, right?

[29:48] But they share a little in experience. And he's going to go on to explain what he means by experience, huh? That's kind of the first place they start to differ. But then the race of men lives by art and reasoning, huh? Okay. Now it comes back to experience, which is a next step he talks about. And now he uses the word experience. You got to be careful there, huh?

[30:17] Because sometimes people use the word experience even for sensation and memory of a sensation, right? Now, if you broke a leg or had some very striking sensation, right? And you remember that, you know, you know, people say, "Well, that was quite an experience," right? But that's not what Aristotle means by experience here. A memory or a sensation that made a big impression upon you, huh? What he means by experience here is a collection of many memories, right?

[30:47] Of the same sort of thing, huh? Okay, so experience involves many memories of the same sort of thing, and then bringing together these, right? And that's why the other animals don't share much in experience because they don't have this ability to bring things together. And this is something, you know, showing already the influence of reason, right? That we can bring together these memories.

[31:13] Experience comes to be from memory in man. For many memories of the same thing perfect the power of one experience. Now let's stop there, right?

[31:28] Obviously, experience in this sense comes after memory, right? You can be a man of one memory without experience, right? But you can have be a man of experience without many memories of the same sort of thing that have been brought together in your head, huh? Now, does the man of experience seem to be wiser than the man of one memory? I say to the students, you know, if you had one date with one girl in your life, right?

[31:58] Do you seem to be as wise about a woman as a man who's had many dates, you know? Or if a girl has had one date with one man in her life, does she seem to be as wise about men and how wicked they are as a woman who's had, you know, dated many men and so on? Okay. You know, sometimes you have parents, you know, who think that their their son or daughter, either one, is getting involved too much with someone, you know,

[32:26] and they haven't really dated enough. You hear that expression quite often, right? As if they're not maybe wise enough about men and women and what to expect and what to avoid and and so on, right? Um. So don't we all think of the man of experience and whatever it might be, if a man's you know been in one political campaign, right? Does he seem to be as wise about this as a man who's been in twenty campaigns?

[32:58] See, or a soldier who's been in his first battle? Does he seem as wise as a soldier who's been in in ten wars? See, we all think of the man of experience as wiser than the man of one memory, and whatever it might be, right?

[33:18] There might be baseball, right? I've played one game of baseball. I've been up to bat once. But a man who's been up to bat, you know, millions of times, right? He seems much wiser about baseball than I do. Do you see that? So, in fact, as you go from the animals that have only sensing and no memory, right, to the animals that have memory, that seems to be a real advance in knowledge, right?

[33:42] But as you go from the man of one memory to the man of experience, don't you seem to have a person who's wiser about these things? See, so this road is going in the direction of wisdom, right?

[34:02] Now he's going to bring out, and he's going to take much more time doing it. He's going to bring out the difference here between what he's called experience here and what he's going to call art or science in a kind of general way, right? He's going to bring out a couple of differences eventually between experience and art or science,

[34:31] and in terms of the first difference between experience and art or science, he's going to reason. Actually, to a certain superiority of experience to art or science,

[34:49] that experience can be superior to art or science sometimes in doing. But then he's going to bring out a second difference between art or science and experience, from which he's going to reason that in terms of knowing, in being wise, the man of art or science seems to be wiser than the man of experience.

[35:18] And that's going to be in terms of the man of art or science, as his art or science is perfected, that he knows why he knows the cause of things, and he's going to, you know, stop and elaborate that very carefully, right? Okay.

[35:35] So he says in the fourth paragraph on page one, experience seems comes to be from memory in men. For many memories of the same thing perfect the power of one experience. You need many memories of the same sort of thing, and you could add that they have to be brought together. There's a colatio, bringing together these things, and experience seems to be very much like science and art.

[36:02] For science and art come to men through experience. For experience makes art, as Polus says, and he's a character in one of Plato's dialogues. Plato, as you know, was the master of Aristotle, the teacher, right? Twenty years. For experience makes art, as Polus says, speaking rightly, but inexperience chance, beginner's luck. Now, how does art or science? He's using them as I say loosely, you know, interchangeably, for another stage of knowing.

[36:37] And that is that we start to know the what universal. That's the beginning of art or science. He says art comes to be whenever one universal understanding about like things comes to be from the many things kept in mind by experience.

[36:58] So when you begin to separate out what these many similar memories have in common, you begin to understand what's common to many. You begin to understand the universal. That's the beginning of art or science as distinguished from what experience, and that's the first difference, huh? Experience, like memory, like sensing, is a knowledge of the singular. Maybe of many singulars, but it's still a knowledge of the singulars, huh?

[37:26] By art or science, is the beginning of knowing the universal. Meaning by universal, not necessarily universal everything in the world. But but common to many things, huh? Okay, the universal is something that is common to many and instead of many, huh? And he gives an example. And Aristotle, you know, is the son of a medical doctor, so he gives examples. For they have in mind that this benefited Callias when suffering this disease, and Callias is one individual, and Socrates, and in each case, thus too many, belongs to experience, huh?

[38:05] But that it benefits all such as are marked by one condition and suffer this disease, such as a phlegmatic or choleric suffering the brain fever belongs to art, right? Huh? You had a headache, my friend, huh? And you took an aspirin, and headache went away, right? And you had a headache the other day and you took an aspirin, you know, and so I remember that they benefited you, and it benefited you, and it benefited you too.

[38:31] Your headache, didn't it, huh? And this is a matter now of experience, right? Many memories, right, brought together, memory of you and your headache and how it was relieved, and your headache and your headache and everyone else's headache gone. And and now in summary, what they have in common, right? You all had a headache, yeah, and you all took an aspirin, right? Okay, so now we're going to put down a rule of primitive medical art Aspirin relieves headaches, right?

[38:59] This is the beginning of the medical art, right? It's something universal. Do you see that? Okay. Now, in terms of his first difference between experience and art of science, he's going to compare them as far as doing is concerned, right? And shows you how Aristotle is not naive at all about how the man of art of science may sometimes fail, right? And he's going to give a reason for that, huh?

[39:31] As far as doing is concerned, experience does not seem to differ at all from art, but we see sometimes experience succeeding more than those having reason without experience. And now he's going to give a reason for this in terms of the difference he's already said, right? That experience is a knowledge of the singular, art of science is a knowledge universal. But when you do something, it's always in the singular.

[39:58] So I don't cure man. I cure this man with this particular illness, right? So in some sense, experience is closer to what you do, and you might succeed, right?

[40:15] The cause is that experience is knowledge of singulars, while art or science of universals. But all doings and makings are about singulars. For the doctor does not cure man except accidentally, because Callias or Socrates is a man, right? But it's really Callias or Socrates that he cures. If someone has reason without experience and knows universal. But does not know the singular, and this he many times makes a mistake in medical treatment.

[40:44] For it is more the singular that is what is treated, huh? Okay. So let's give a simple example. There, my wife was giving birth to the first child. There, after giving birth, the often the hospital would give them. I think it's Demerol, or something like that. And there's a standard dose they give every woman who, you know, the nurse will bring in the dose for you, right?

[41:12] Now, they gave the dose to my wife. It gave her headache. In other words, didn't relieve her, make her more comfortable. It made her worse, right? So the second time she had a baby, they brought in the usual dose of that, and she said, "Just give me half of that, right?" See, and that she could take and it relieved her pain and discomfort, right? So she was a better what physician, you might say, of herself than the nurse, right?

[41:40] Because the nurse is kind of universal. You give this dose. To the person in this condition, and it actually, as far as my wife is concerned, this individual that you're trying to relieve the discomfort of, it made her actually worse, right? You see, but her having an experience of herself, right, was better able to cure herself than the what doctor, right? Okay. And I know myself. You know, take something.

[42:10] You know, mine of like getting nauseated or something. You know, you talk to different people what they do when they feel you know nauseated, and what one person does, they know from experience, relieve their nausea. And someone else, oh, I did that. It's going to be worse, you know. I mean, and but you know yourself, right? Huh? Okay. Okay. Um. When I was a freshman in college, you know, I remember a kind of general psychology course, kind of those kind of general requirements, you know.

[42:41] But the psychologist who taught the course worked in in the mental home in the you know in the afternoon, huh? And he was remarking, being very honest, I think, is saying there really aren't enough psychologists to get to know the patients well. So he says, what happens is that when a patient comes in, they have a board meeting and they classify them, and then you get the treatment for that kind of ailment you're classified in.

[43:10] And he says it often makes them worse. he thinks. That's because you're what going by art or science and the universal rather than what's individual to this person, huh?

[43:24] Or to expand upon that, or take another example, if say your child or your friend is depressed, right? The psychologist who knows the various kinds of mental ailment, right, knows the universals might not be as quick as you would be to get your friend or your child out of that what depression, right? Because you know your friend, you know your child, you know what to suggest that might perk them up or get them out of this state of mind, huh?

[43:58] Quicker than the what psychologist who knows all the universal, you know, the subdivisions of all the different kinds of mental ailment, because they don't have the same experience of your child or your friend, huh? You see? Okay. If I'm depressed, well, you show you a nice picture of my grandchildren, right? Or you put some Mozart on or something, right? You see? But if you know me, you know what to do.

[44:22] So you get me a bottle of wine or something, you know? You see? But so you might be a better you know psychologist, so to speak, for your child or your friend than would be what the psychologist who knows the who has the universals, but doesn't know your what friend, huh? Okay. Um.

[44:48] Take a different art or a science here. When I was a student in Quebec, some of the indigent American students, right, would get a job teaching conversational English, and all kinds of secretaries and other people who had to learn some English, right, in order to qualify or hold on to their job or to be able to function in their job because of the contact in English and the French.

[45:17] And so they'd be teaching, you know, kind of an informal course in English for for people of this sort. But sometimes you get kind of more technical question, right? And they'd be asking about the the rule of English grammar, huh? And then sometimes the Americans do realize that although they speak English quite well and they have a long experience of English, right, they don't know the what?

[45:49] Yeah, they don't know the universal rule, you see. And then you see the difference between experience and art, right? Through my experience of English, I might speak better than someone who knows the rules, you know, of English grammar. Maybe a Frenchman's learned the rules English grammar might be able to recite them better than me, but he can't speak English as well as me because he doesn't have the experience of English that I have.

[46:16] You see the difference between the two, and how the man of experience might succeed better in speaking that language than the man who knows the the the rules, huh? Is it? Or you know, I think sometimes you know, in college, there in the politics department or political science department, they'll teach you know, a course in comparative government, right? And so, Professor X there, he can explain the difference between, say, the American government and the British government, right, and the difference in a prime minister and his dependence upon Parliament and the president's independence, somewhat of comparison, so on, right?

[46:55] And so on, but if it came to getting a piece of legislation through the U. S. Congress, right, this guy who's been down Washington for twenty years, there, he's the guy who knows how to promise you and how to twist your arm and what to say to you, you know, and so on, in order to get a piece of legislation through. So he might succeed better in getting a piece of legislation through the U.

[47:15] S. House Representatives than the professor who knows all the universals about government, huh? Because you don't get a piece of legislation through legislature in general or Parliament in general, but through this legislature with these particular people with their particular needs and foibles and all the rest of it, right? You see the idea. So the man of experience, as far as doing, may succeed better, he says, than the man of art or science, and that's in terms of the difference that it's a knowledge of the singular and the fact that what you do.

[47:47] Is something what? In the singular. Singular, yeah. But now, in the first complete paragraph in page two, he brings out a second difference, right, between the man of art or science or his knowledge and the man of experience. And the second difference is that the man of art or science, when his knowledge is perfected, anyway, he knows why things are the way they are, right? The man of experience knows merely what.

[48:23] That. So he says. Nevertheless, we think, and this is not the editorial way; he means men in general, we think that knowing and understanding belong more to art than experience. And we hold that the artists are wiser than experience, so that wisdom is more a matter of knowing than of doing, as he says, right? And this is because they know the cause while the others do not.

[48:52] The experience merely know that it is so, but do not know why it is so. But these know why it is so and the cause, which answers the question why it is so, right? Now, if you ask people who's wiser, the man who knows the way things are but doesn't know why they are the way they are, or the man who knows why they are the way they are, well, everybody would answer.

[49:20] Yeah, the man who knows why, right? But this is so important a point that in the next three paragraphs, which we'll be looking at next time, Aristotle is going to use, you might say, three kinds of examples or signs, right, to show that the man who knows why, right, is thought by all of us to be wiser than the man who merely knows that it is so, right?

[49:44] Okay. I'm a tea drinker, huh? And I know from experience that if you leave the water in contact with the tea leaves beyond, let's say, four or five minutes, let's make it even there, ten, twelve minutes, you're going to get a bad taste. tasting cup of tea. Okay.

[50:06] Why is it so? See, I mean, a dummy like me might say, you know, well, it gets too strong. But if that was the only problem. You could, you know, add more water, and you see me. No, the taste is different. You see. Well, chemist was explaining to me that chemicals are released at different what times. See, so it's actually different. He says chemicals in the tea leaf that are released the first, say, four or five minutes, and those that are start being released around, I don't know, seven, eight, nine, ten minutes, right?

[50:46] You see, so he knows why. Better than I do from experience. Why he knows why I get a bad taste in cup of tea if I don't put the buzzer on, or if I get distracted by philosophy or something, you know. And but I know that it is so, right, from experience. He seems wiser than me, right? Do you see? Yeah. That part of science you're referring to, is that also what in the past you've also referred to as reasoned out knowledge?

[51:19] Yeah, yeah. I do translate episteme, yeah. And he's going to say he's not talking here about the difference between episteme and techne, between science and art. He's explained that in the sixth book of Nicomachean Ethics, but he's just using them kind of interchangeably here for a knowledge of the universal and why it is so, right, as distinguished from the knowledge of the singulars and only that is so, right?

[51:49] Okay. So we should just stop here. Yes. What's the thing? Do you want to meet next week, or is there a problem next week? Probably a problem because father wants to be in there.