Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
3. Metaphysics I.1 (end): Why Knowing the Cause Is Wiser Than Experience
Class of 2005-01-05
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/003-metaphysics-i-1-end-why-knowing-the-cause-is-wiser-than-experience/

[0:00] Okay, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. God our enlightenment. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand what you have written. In the. Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.

[0:26] Aristotle is comparing art or science, which is a knowledge of the universal, with experience, which is still a knowledge of the singular or singular. And we saw last time how, as far as doing is concerned, right, the man of experience might succeed, huh, better than the man of art or science. From that very difference, huh, that he has a knowledge of the singular, and what you do is always in the singular.

[1:15] You don't cure a man; you cure this man with his individual conditions. But then he brings out a second difference between art and science on the one hand and experience, and that is that experience, as such, only tells you that something is so. It doesn't tell you why it is so, right? But art or science, as it's perfected, is a knowledge of the cause—a knowledge why it is so.

[1:52] Now, right on the surface of it, if you ask somebody to say, "Who's wiser and more knowing?" the man who knows that something is so, but doesn't know why it's so, or the man who knows why it is so, what everyone would answer, right? The man who knows why. So, because the man of art or science knows why, he knows the cause. He seems to be wiser than the man of mere experience, and this also indicates that wisdom consists more in knowing than in doing, right?

[2:37] Which is a consolation to us lazy fellows. Okay, my old professor Kasurik used to always quote Saint Thomas: "The man sitting becomes wise." Okay. Except he translated Homo sedens fit sapiens. The man sitting makes wisdom. I think I think the Latin is becomes wise. Rather than the man running around doing things, right? He gets things done, perhaps, but he doesn't become wise. So

[3:12] now this is a very key thing for Aristotle. This particular difference and this particular awareness now that wisdom consists more in knowing the cause, right? So in the second complete paragraph on page two, and in the third and in the fourth paragraphs, he's going to manifest and kind of elaborate, huh, by some kinds of examples or signs the truth of that, right? That we would think the man who knows why in the cause is wiser and more knowing.

[3:53] And the first way he does this is by using the distinction between what we call the chief artist in Greek, the architectonic, the architect, which comes from the Greek words for chief or principal and an artist, and the subordinate artist, right? The man who what commands others, right? And those who carry out his instructions. Now we talked about that distinction between the chief artist and the subordinate art that obeys in the beginning of Nicomachean Ethics, right?

[4:36] Okay, and we gave examples of that, right? So he took the example of the medical doctor, right, and the pharmacist. Now, probably in our society, who's got a great reputation or is admired more, the pharmacist or the medical doctor? Yeah, and we see that the medical doctor gives. A command to the pharmacist that we call a prescription. He prescribes what the pharmacist shall give you, right? Now, does the pharmacist, as such, know why you should have this medicine?

[5:17] That's not what qualifies him to be a pharmacist, huh? It'll qualify him to be a doctor, right? But as a pharmacist, all he has to be able to do is to carry out the instruction that the prescription gives him from the doctor. So we'd all think of the medical doctor as wiser than the what pharmacist, right? But the medical doctor knows why you need this, right? And so the medical doctor, if he's wiser than the pharmacist, this is a sign that wisdom consists in knowing why, knowing the cause.

[6:00] In the same way, if you took the the general and the subordinate officer, even who obeys the general, right? So if I'm Napoleon and you're the head of the cavalry, you might have instructions to not charge or lead the cavalry charge until I give you the signal. Now, as head of the cavalry, you have to know how to lead a charge, but you have to know why you're not going to charge until this moment.

[6:36] No, but I'm Napoleon, right? And I've got a plan to win the battle, and I know why it's better for the cavalry to charge at that moment than earlier or later. Why wouldn't do the same good towards the victory? So who seems wiser?

[6:57] Napoleon seems wiser, right? The general who knows why, huh? Okay. Did I take that simple example? I remember when my kids were in kindergarten or first grade, I guess it was, about how when the kid begins to print first, huh? How they teach him to write the letter C. Thank you. The example one time. So just give it again here. The kid is learning how to print as they do before they learn how to write.

[7:27] And let's say you're going to learn how to print cat. Now, when you form the letter C, you'll find that some kids will begin up here and write C like that. Other kids will begin down there and write the C like that. Now, if you're the assistant there in the in the classroom and the more knowing teacher, right, tells you now make sure that they write the C starting from up here rather than from down there.

[8:05] Why? Well, you're not paid to think, right? Just paid to make sure that they do that, right? Okay. Now, is there a reason why you want to begin up here rather than down there? Well, you're going to go on from printing to what they call cursive writing, and when I try to write the word cat, if I begin up here, it's very smooth, right? If I begin down here, now I got to interrupt and go over here and try to form my T, and you know, you see.

[8:38] But if it's starting here, so there is a reason why you need to do that, right? But the assistant there, as such, doesn't have to know that, right? The teacher can't be watching every kid in the classroom if it's twenty, thirty kids, right? And so the assistant there, or maybe the mother who's volunteered, whoever it is, merely knows that they should start up there, but she doesn't know why.

[9:08] See, that's a very simple example, right? I tell you the example when I was a freshman in college, and my brother Richard made sure that I had a good advisor, Dr. Kasurik, there in the philosophy department. And Kasurik looked at my scheduled courses, right? He says, "Duane, where's your Greek?" I said, "My Greek? Because I studied philosophy, says you take Greek. He didn't tell me why. And now I realize, you know, whatever knowledge I do have of Greek was because he twisted my arm.

[9:42] And now I know why it was so valuable for me to know some Greek. All the doors that are opened up for me, right? It would have been closed.

[9:54] The same way, when I started with Euclid, right? I said, "Duane, go get Euclid." I said, "Why? Go get it."But then, after a while, you begin to realize why this is so important, and then you're wiser, aren't you? Okay.

[10:17] So he says, whence also we think, we does not is not the editorial we. Doesn't mean we Aristotle think. It's not even the we we the philosophers think this right. But men in general would think that Napoleon is wiser than the man he commands, right? That the medical doctor is wiser, right? That the grand chef is wiser than the guy who peels the potatoes and is told to cut them in this way rather than that way, but doesn't know why that should be done, huh?

[10:52] So he says, whence also we, meaning even men in general, think that the chief artists about each thing are more honorable, respect them more, right? And no more and are wiser than the handicraftsmen, because they know the causes of the things made. For the latter are a bit like inanimate things. They make, but they do not know what they make, as fire burns, huh? So it's like in that famous charge of light brigade, you know, that was celebrated in the famous poem of Tennyson, was it?

[11:26] There is not the question why. There is but to do and die, right? And I told you when I was working under my brother Marcus there in the factory, and I'd ask the question why when he told me to do something a certain way, and he'd say, you know, you're not paid to think, he says, you're just paid to do something. That's but this is allusion to this, right?

[11:48] You're not paid to think about why you should do this or shouldn't do it. You're just paid to do it. Inanimate things make each of these by a certain what nature, huh? So they're like the fire, right, which burns, right, huh? I skipped a sentence there, but they do not know what they make as fire burns, huh? Inanimate things make each of these by a certain nature, so it's the nature of the fire to burn, right?

[12:18] While the handicraftsmen do through through custom, and custom is like a second what nature we call it. Used to be a guy down my father's factory, you know, and he would always be in on the start of any new job. And he'd go over and he'd get the guys working on a new procedure or a new product or where it was, and once they got the knack of it, then he'd move on into another department.

[12:46] My father said, I got to pay this guy more than anybody else, right? Because he was the guy who knew why it should be done this way, that way, right? And he just gets the other guys into the knack, which means kind of the custom of doing it, and then that's it.

[13:02] I wonder sometimes when I think back upon how we learned how to—at least in my day—we did. We learned how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and yes, in a way of, you know, using the numbers, right? And I wonder if we really knew why it worked that way, or whether we just knew that was the way to add up, or that was the way to divide, and what column to put it in.

[13:25] So I'm not sure I really know why these things work. Hence, the chief artists are wiser not by doing, but by having a reason and knowing the causes. Now, though the main thing he's trying to show here is that it's in terms of knowing the cause, right? At the same time, he's touching upon the fact that wisdom consists more in knowing than in the actual what—doing of something.

[13:58] Sometimes you had in history some famous scientists who were physically handicapped and couldn't therefore physically carry on the experiment that would be used to test their own theory, right? So they tell somebody else what to do, and they observe the results of it, right? But he seems wiser than the guy who's just carrying out his instructions. But it's in terms of his knowing, not in terms of his doing, then that he's wise.

[14:29] So that's the second thing, though not the main thing he's trying to show at this point—that wisdom consists more in knowing than in doing, huh? In being Mary rather than Martha.

[14:45] Now the second sign is taken from the teacher. He says, on the whole, the sign of knowing is the ability to teach. So we think the teacher is wiser than the person who is taught, right? And

[15:11] is the man of art or science more able to teach the man of experience? Well, you ask the man of experience why should I do it this way, and he just says, "Look, kid, when you get to be my age, you'll see." And maybe you should listen to him because he does have the experience, right? But is that teaching in the fullest sense? Take my word for it.

[15:33] Twenty years from now, you'll see this. So the man who can give the reason why is more able to what teach fully. And if to teach is a sign of your knowing, then the man who knows the cause, right, being more able to teach, must be more knowing than the man who's not so able to teach. because He doesn't know the cause. So this is the second way he shows this, huh?

[16:06] For the artists, the scientists are able to teach, while the others are not able. Notice when you believe the teacher, that's only the beginning of learning, right? And until you see the reasons why yourself, you're not fully what taught, huh? You haven't fully learned it, huh? But the man of art or science can give you that fuller learning because he can explain why this should be that way.

[16:55] Remember a student when I was first teaching at St. Mary's College in California, and he'd ask these moral questions of even the priests, you know, and they'd give him the correct answer, but they couldn't explain why this was wrong to do, right? So he'd come to me, and I explained why. So he thought I was wiser than the priests, huh? But that's in terms of what, in a sense of teaching, right?

[17:15] You can give the reason why this is so, right? So that's the second way Aristotle shows this. Now the third way is kind of a reduction to the what? Indirectly proving, kind of reduction to the absurd or the impossible, right? And in a way, you could stake this third argument by saying, "Does wisdom consist more in a knowledge

[17:55] of the singular, and that it is so?" Or does wisdom consist more in a knowledge of the universal and why it is so? Okay.

[18:17] Which of these is more like wisdom, right? Because it's got to be one or the other, right? And then he's going to show something absurd or unreasonable that follows if you say wisdom consists chiefly in a knowledge of the singular, and that it is so.

[18:38] And that consequence of saying this really would be to say that wisdom is sensing. I mean, if you take, let's say, memory and sensing, which is more trustworthy?

[19:02] Yeah. And sometimes I remember a building or I remember something, right? And I go back and look at that building again or that thing again, and I correct my memory. I know myself, you know, often memorize a little passage in Shakespeare or somebody else, right? And after sort of period of time, even if I memorize it correctly, it gets a little bit messed up in my head, and I'll be quoting it with a slight variation of the original passage, right?

[19:41] And then I go back and I look at the printed text there of Shakespeare, wherever it is, and then I realize that oh, gee whiz, how could I have what? Yeah. So as far as the knowledge of the singular is concerned, sensing is more authoritative. Right,

[20:03] then even memory, right? And as to whether it is or is not so, right? Sensing is more, right? Okay. I see you're sitting, right? Now I don't see you anymore, but I can remember you're sitting, right?

[20:21] Is that as sure as my looking at you? I see. Okay. So, as far as the knowledge of the singular and that is so, sensing is more authoritative than even memory. And experience, as we saw, is just a collection of memories, right? So if wisdom consists chiefly in knowing the singular and that is so, then sensing would be what? Wisdom, right? And the newborn baby doesn't need glasses, and therefore sees better than I do, right?

[20:56] Would be wiser than me. But Aristotle says nobody thinks that sensing is what? Wisdom, do they? Because the dog can sniff out something, he's wiser than us. Do you see that? Okay. So that's what he's doing. That's a little bit like, the way Euclid reasons there? Where he says, you know, the sixth theorem of the first book there.

[21:26] In a triangle, if these angles are equal, these sides will be equal, right? Or they'll be unequal. But if they're unequal, then he shows what follows from that. That the part is equal to the whole, he'll show eventually. So something unreasonable or absurd follows from saying that these sides are unequal. Well, since they must either be equal or unequal, and something absurd follows from saying they're unequal.

[21:55] Then they must be what? Equal, right? So wisdom is either a knowledge of the singular and that it is so, or a knowledge more of the universal and why it is so. But if it was that first one, then it would follow that sensing is wisdom. But nobody thinks sensing is wisdom, huh? As I said before, when I asked a class of freshmen, you know, do you think wisdom comes in the beginning of our knowledge, or in the middle, or at the end?

[22:25] They'll invariably say at the end, huh? But certainly never at the very beginning, huh? And that's why you think experience comes with time, and it comes at all, right?

[22:43] You see the way he's arguing there, right? Okay. I notice something that you can see in the order of our knowledge as you go from sensing to memory to experience, and now to art or science, huh? That our knowledge is moving from the singular, and that it is so

[23:14] towards a knowledge universal, and why it is so, which means the knowledge of the cause, right? So that's the direction which our knowledge is moving, right? Now, although Aristotle is not going to try to show this in the first reading fully. You could almost anticipate, right? That that's the direction which our knowledge is moving. Then, at the end of our knowledge, you'd have the knowledge that is most universal, right?

[23:54] And goes as far as you can in knowing the cause, which would be to know not only the cause of the cause, but the very what first cause, huh? Okay. But in the second reading, as we'll see, he wants to bring out more slowly, right? But you'd anticipate already from the way that you're going, right? That wisdom will be the most universal knowledge, and the knowledge that goes the furthest of all in knowing the what causes, huh?

[24:31] Okay. Superficially said, as you as you go north towards the North Pole, things get colder, right? For The most part. And so, anticipate then the North Pole would be like really very cold, right? Okay. But then Aristotle is going to be very careful to give some extra reasons to think that is very cold up there, in addition to, you know, what you're saying. See what Aristotle is doing, right?

[24:58] He's enabling us to kind of. Anticipate what wisdom would be a knowledge of in the very premium here, right? He's kind of paving the way, right? We're kind of seeing that's a knowledge more of the universal and the cause than a knowledge of the effector, the singular, right? If you go all the way, wouldn't this be the most universal knowledge, huh? And go as far as you can in knowing the cause.

[25:32] But you want to emphasize more it's knowing the cause than it's knowing universal. And certainly, in terms of the excellence that wisdom is the the best knowledge there is, it's going to be in terms of the cause than of the universal.

[25:49] Now, in the next paragraph, he begins to distinguish a bit among the arts or sciences. It is probable that the first one finding any art beyond the senses common to all was admired by men, right? Not only because some of the things found were useful, but also as wise and distinguished from others, right? Now we're so accustomed to the what telephone and things of that sort, right?

[26:25] But you know, I talk to people up in Canada. I talk to people, you know, I talk to people in Europe even, right? And the first man to invent the telephone would be what?

[26:38] Yeah, not because it was a thing was so useful, although it is very useful, but because it's what? Yeah, yeah, okay. But now he says many arts having been found, some being for necessities, and some for passing the time. What pleasantly, right?

[27:03] Always the finers of the latter were considered wiser because their sciences were not for practical use. Now Aristotle is making a distinction here between the arts or sciences that serve the necessities of life, like the art of farming, right, or the art of

[27:26] digging wells or something, right? The arts of cooking, right, preparing food. The art of the tailor, right, making clothing. Art of the shoemaker and so on, right? Now, but now when you have the necessities of life, and you got your clothes on, and you got your shoes on, and you've had a good meal and so on, now what do you do for the rest of the evening?

[27:53] Well, in the Odyssey, you see that Demodocus, you know, is brought in, huh? He takes his harp off the wall and he plucks the strings, and now he sings of what. The fall of Troy, right? And so on. Who's considered wiser, right, Demodocus or the cook? Demodocus. Yeah. Even in Plato, you find the common saying of the Greeks: "You know, Homer, he's a teacher of all the Greeks."

[28:26] Would they say that about a cook or about a shoemaker? He's a teacher of all the Greeks. And sometimes you hear Shakespeare said to be a teacher of all the English-speaking people, right? If not, other nations too that have had him translated, right? Okay. So we think of the great poets, huh, like Homer or Shakespeare, right, as being wiser than the great cook or the great shoemaker.

[29:01] Okay, but the shoemaker or the cook are more concerned with the necessities of life, right? While Homer is trying to please us, you know, Shakespeare says at the end of his plays, "and we'll strive to please you every day." Okay, but again, the fact that we think of Shakespeare as being wiser seems to be more something that just want to what hear, right? See the plays of Shakespeare, huh?

[29:32] You're not going to go out and make dinner with Hamlet, huh, or make a shoe with Macbeth or something, right? Would you? And then he seems to speak of a third kind of art or science, huh? Which is not for necessity or for pleasure, but simply for what knowing, whence. All these sciences, having been built up, those sciences were found that are neither for pleasure nor for necessities, and first in those places where men had what leisure, right?

[30:14] Hence, the mathematical sciences first began around Egypt, for there the priestly class was allowed leisure, right? When he speaks of mathematics, you got to be careful because in modern times we think of mathematics in terms of algebra, calculus, and we think of math as a kind of what tool, right? Huh?

[30:38] But if you go back to the Greek word mathematician, which is a Greek word originally, what does that mean? If you look up in a Greek dictionary, mathematikos the Greek word, and you say here, mathematikos usually the first meaning they'll give is one who is fond of learning. Okay, it's almost like a synonym of the other Greek word philomathes, which means philo, lover, mathes, learning, right? So the philomathes is a little bit like the philosopher, isn't he?

[31:28] And Plato says in the dialogues, a philosopher must be a philomathes. But notice, a lover of learning is not as focused as a lover of wisdom, right? Because wisdom is the end of all learning, huh? And you're zeroing in on that, right? But you can see that a philosophos would have to be a philomathes, right? Okay.

[31:56] I mention that because in that sense, the mathematician, in the Greek sense of the word, right, the actual meaning of the word, and philosopher are very similar, aren't they? And some people are surprised when they hear that Pythagoras, right, seems to be the man who coined the word philosopher.

[32:26] Pythagoras made some wonderful discoveries, especially in geometry, right, and some wonderful discoveries about numbers, and so men wanted to call him what wise, huh? And he said, "Don't call me wise. Why not? Well, God alone is wise, you know. Only God is wise, really fully, in the full sense. Well, what am I going to call you that? Don't call you wise. Well, call me a lover of wisdom, right?

[32:56] Now, notice in that origin of the term, lover of wisdom, is not only the love of wisdom, which the word etymologically has in it, right? But also in the origin of the word, there is the humility of the true philosopher, right? That the true philosopher is humble. That is to say, he doesn't think he's wise or can be wise in the way God is, right? And as you go through the greatest of the Greek philosophers, all the way down to including Plato and Aristotle, they all say that same thing, right?

[33:30] The great Heraclitus said that as an ape is to a man, so is man to God, right? And as the ape is ugly in comparison to a man, and ignorant in comparison to a man, right? So man is like an ape in comparison to God. Or he has another proportion: as a child is to a man, so is man to God, right?

[34:01] And when you read about Socrates there in this autobiographical sketch in the Apology, right? What did the Oracle Delphi mean, saying that no one is wiser than Socrates? Huh? I'm so ignorant, you know. I call me wise, huh? And maybe in some human sense I'm wise, but certainly not in any full sense of the word, right? And so you find and Aristotle will say here at the end, you know, either God owes you to be said to be wise, right, or only God in the full sense.

[34:34] So you find that humility in the origin of the word philosopher. But going back again, you see, if Pythagoras is a Mathematikos in the Greek sense of the word, a lover of learning, a Philomathes, it's very much like what we mean by what philosopher. They're both being named not. Their love of money, or their love of shoes, their love of dinner, or their love of doing something, right?

[35:07] But simply from their wanting to what know, right? You see, the guy wants to know how to make money. We wouldn't call him a lover of learning, would we? No, we'd call him a lover of money, right? Okay. But if we call him a lover of learning, he seems to want to know for its own sake. So you got to realize that Greek meaning there, because what we call mathematics in modern times, or things that were invented more in later times, like algebra, calculus, and other more things.

[35:48] Certainly, the way they're taught in our schools, they're taught as a what practical tool, right? But certainly not as something that's wonderful in itself. I know myself as a freshman in high school. I think what we had was algebra, right? And then we had some geometry that was very poorly taught in a sense. But it's not until I got Euclid and started reading him, and I said, "Gee, was these are really interesting just to be what known?"

[36:21] And I like the old word you find in sometimes you know books where you call these things a theorem, right? Well, theorem and theoretical,

[36:35] they come from the Greek word to look at, right? So, kind of the meaning of theorem is something to look at. Not doing about it; it's just something very interesting to what to look at.

[36:53] When in democracy in America, when Alexis de Tocqueville talks about the ancient mathematicians like Archimedes and so on, they didn't want to do anything practical with this, you know. They wanted to just take consider things that are really beautiful in simplicity and so on, wonderful to be what known.

[37:15] So you got to compare that in mind here, because if you think of mathematics the way algebra was, or something like that, the way these things were taught us perhaps in school, you wouldn't see this, right?

[37:30] Of course, in our modern science, experimental science is kind of a mixed thing because it's a union of natural science and technical science, union of science and technology. They call it sometimes. Thomas would call it probably a union of natural philosophy and mechanical arts, right? And the oldest part of modern science is a witness to that because it's called what mechanics, the first part of physics, the oldest part.

[38:02] Well, physics comes to the big word for nature. Mechanics from the mechanical servile arts, but yet who do we think is is wiser, even in the modern sciences? Well, they make Einstein the what man of the century, right? I don't say he is, but but he got that that thing on Time Magazine within two thousand, right? Okay, so Einstein is admired, right? You see books on him, you know, but he admired for doing or for knowing.

[38:34] Yeah, yeah, and even the popular books, you know, Lincoln Barnett, the universe and Doctor Einstein, right? Here is a man who apparently understands universe, or more than other people understand it anyway, right? You see, but he can't do anything about the universe as a whole, right? So

[38:53] it's in terms of knowing that we admire Einstein, right? Okay, some of the physicists see, and while we end up making it out of bomb, not exactly knowing what it's going to lead to, but we kind of lost our reputation of being wise in some of the things we made, maybe. So it's not in terms of doing that they are considered to be wise. Okay.

[39:23] So Aristotle there has developed a little bit the idea that was touched upon there when he talked about the chief artists being what thought wiser, not because he does, but because he knows, right? But he was developing a little bit more.

[39:49] Now he's been using the word art and science or techne and episteme and so on, kind of interchangeably for a knowledge of the universal and knowledge. Why things are so, but he's spoken more precisely about these things in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, right?

[40:12] So, lest you think that he doesn't see any difference between them, he says, "What the difference is between art and science and other things of the same kind has been said in the Ethics, in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics." Now, he goes to kind of the grand conclusion of this first reading, which is the end of the first half of the first half of the our first part of the proemium.

[40:38] But that, for the sake of which we have now made a discourse, is this: that all hold what is called wisdom to be about the first causes and beginnings. Here, Aristotle is kind of anticipating, right? Actually, what he's shown so far is that the man who knows the cause is wiser than the man who merely knows that it is so, right? But kind of follow from that that the man who knows the cause of the cause would be what?

[41:09] What? Wiser. Yeah, and therefore the man who knows the first cause would be the wisest of all, right? So he's kind of anticipating what's going to show, right? Okay.

[41:23] That all hold what is called wisdom to be about the first causes and beginnings. So, as has been said before, the experienced man, the man of experience, seems to be wiser than any of those having what sensing, right? And he's kind of contracting there, right? You could say the man or the animal, for that matter, that has memory, right, is wiser than the animal that merely has sensing but no memory.

[41:50] But the man of experience is wiser than the man of what memory or sensation, right? The artist, the man who knows universal and why it is so, than the man of experience, right? The chief artist, then the handicrafts man. And incidentally, he's going to bring out later on that the wise man orders or directs others, right? And you see that already anticipated that the chief artist is directing others, right?

[42:24] So, if the chief artist is wiser, right, that man will be wisest of all who directs others and is directed by nobody else. And see, that's why God is being wise, okay? And the looking sciences, right, more than the what making? It's interesting how the

[42:53] Shakespeare's works are called what his major works. No. What do we call in English? Don't call them dramas, but we call them what? Oh, plays. Yeah, yeah. If you look at Thomas, there I think it's his premium to the De Hebdomadibus there of Boethius, and he quotes one of the sapiential books: "Run into your house and play with your thoughts." And Thomas compares the philosophical life to play, right?

[43:21] It's a kind of serious play, but it's like play. And why did Scripture make that comparison? Well, because play is pleasant and philosophy is pleasant, and because play seems to be kind of for its own sake, and philosophy is for its own sake, right? So it's kind of anticipation there, the philosophical life in the plays of what Shakespeare.

[43:49] But notice in the very last sentence, he kind of what draws back, right? At least we can say it is clear that wisdom is about beginnings and causes. As if we could clarify more that it's about the cause of the cause, and most of all about the first cause. Okay, you see that? You see what Aristotle is doing here? He's trying to develop a agreement about what wisdom is from what we all know.

[44:23] We all know that the animal that has memory is wiser than the animal that has only sensing, and we all know that the man of experience is wiser than the man of one memory. It's a little more difficult to see that the man of art or science is wiser, but we saw even evidence for that in our common thinking that the medical doctor is wiser than the pharmacist, and the general than the man who merely obeys him, right?

[44:59] And so. He's trying to bring out a common understanding of what wisdom is. He's clarifying some of the thoughts that you have scattered in your head about who's wiser, right, or who's more knowing.

[45:22] He's not, in other words, trying to bring out, what... it's a private thought of Aristotle about what wisdom is, right? Like everybody's got his own thought about what wisdom is. Now he's trying to bring out from things that we all kind of know, right? We can all reflect upon knowing that this must be what wisdom is. huh It must be knowledge about causes. Notice he ends up in that note, right?

[45:51] Rather than it's about the universal, right? Okay, although that's been brought out too, and we brought out again. Do you see? You're going to be idiots. huh? Living in a private... There are many exceptions out there. Do what? In this thing that you're telling us, the experience is second. The one who knows is first. So, for example,

[46:25] a grandparent has a sense about children, and then there's a person who may be an expert on how children should be raised. So they they give all this information. They write these things down. They and and the one who has raised a generation and maybe saw a second generation raised a, I don't think this is going to work. Or even like say, for example, I know this this story.

[46:57] The engineers were putting in Route 80 across the states. I know somebody lived in Wyoming, and the farmer was watching these people And the experts, and the experts. Maybe I'm not putting this in the right context here, but the farmers went over to the experts and said, "What are you doing?" They said, "Well, we're we're going to put in a highway." The guy said, "You go what?"

[47:21] I mean, he challenged him. So I don't know if this is the right if if it's right to put this. No, you think it's a point that Aristotle makes that the man of experience, as far as making or doing is concerned, right, may be superior to the man of art or science. Yeah, now as Aristotle is more nuanced, right? You see, he's not saying that the man of art or science is in every way superior to the man of experience.

[47:50] In fact, in terms of the first difference between them, that the one knows the singular, right, or singulars, and the other knows universal. From that difference, he reasons that at least as far as doing is concerned. The man of experience may be better, and often is better. You see, okay. But as far as knowing, right, and being wise, he's saying that the man of art or science is more so.

[48:17] Not so much because he knows universal; that may have something to do with it, but primarily he's reasoning from the fact that he knows the cause. He knows why.

[48:26] Okay. And so, in terms of of of doing and in terms of life, the man of experience may succeed, but much better, right, than the man of art or science. And so Aristotle would say, especially when he gets into practical philosophy, right? he would talk about the importance of listening to the man of what experience, yeah.

[48:56] So, so the husband may know that this is going to upset the woman, or she'll be upset if this happens. Why should she be upset? He doesn't know, but as far as avoiding upsetting her or so on, he can should see see better, right? Okay, and he can kind of from knowing, or even for knowing this woman, because not every woman is upset equally by the same things, right?

[49:23] He knows that he better take care of that, or she will be upset, right? And a man who who might know all kinds of universal things about women, right, would not know as well as a husband what this woman that he's married to is going to get upset about, huh? You see, yeah.

[49:49] The same way, you know, even like in in my experience in the academic world, right? Huh? I kind of know the way things are going to go. I don't know why they should go that way. Because they're crazy, A lot of the things. I know they're going to go. that way. Right, you see, and I know people's feelings and what they're going to be like, you know, what to expect,

[50:13] you see. Okay. So, no, Aristotle was was fairly brief as showing that the animal who has memory is superior to the animal that merely has sense, or that the man of experience is superior to the man of one memory, right? See, because there there isn't really much but reason to contest, right? When you get to experience and art or science, well then.

[50:46] What was a famous remark of Buckley about Lord Bertrand Russell, right? And I guess he set up a school in England, and the principal of the school was liberty. Oh. Of course, the kids wrecked the school physically, right? And so he

[51:07] said that someone said afterwards that Bertrand Russell is living proof that all the symbolic logic in the world is no substitute for common sense. Which

[51:19] you might say is no substitute for experience either, right? No, you know, as far as doing is concerned, right? All the theory in the world is no substitute for experience.

[51:32] Okay. Can you drop that? You made the distinction that it was an important point that he Aristotle concludes with saying wisdom is about beginnings and c causes as opposed to universals. I didn't quite catch the importance of that He's not denying; it; it's about the universal too. Right, but why would he makes a special point beginnings and causes instead of? Well, you'll see this more clearly maybe when you get to the to the third reading.

[51:59] You know, where he's going to talk about the excellence of this knowledge. Okay. He's going to see the excellence of man in being about God, right? And God is not a universal set of all things. He's not there'll be a pantheistic notion of God, but God is the first what cause. So the for one reason is the excellence of wisdom consists in its knowing the cause more than its knowing universal.

[52:25] And we saw it even anticipated in that the excellence of art or science over experience, right, is not in terms so much of its knowing the universal. In fact, from that difference, he reasoned to its inferiority in some respect, right? But he reasoned to its superiority as far as knowing and being wise in terms of the cause, okay.

[52:51] Now, later on, when you get to what I call the great turnaround in the physics, huh? You'll see more clearly. That Aristotle was right to emphasize that, huh? Okay.

[53:13] But just, just a little bit from with him. If someone said to you that at the end of all our knowledge, the last reasoned-out understanding there is, after you have geometry and arithmetic and natural philosophy and ethics and political philosophy, then there comes this most universal knowledge, right? This most general, right? Some might say that doesn't seem to me to be wisdom, you know. You know, if someone says, you know, let's be very general.

[53:52] This is something, right? Couldn't be more general than that, could you? Because something is of everything, right? This is something. Is that make me wiser than the guy who said this is paper? Maybe knows what paper is.

[54:12] At first sight, to say that you're knowing the most universal. You know, oh, this is something. This is something. That's the end and goal of our knowledge. Haven't I advanced more when I know that this is water and this is paper, right?

[54:33] Isn't our knowledge perfected as you know these things in particular what they are? Just something. See, but if I know you're an animal, I'm much closer to you than if I say you're something, right? I know you better, right? I know you're a man, an animal with reason. That's even closer, right?

[54:53] So at first sight, it would seem that the man who knows the most universal is the weakest. In knowledge, right? You see, okay. But if someone says, you know, someone knows the first cause of all things, somebody might be skeptical as whether you could know the first cause of all things, right? But that such a man would be wise, who would what deny that, right? So it seems, in some way, more known to us that the end of our knowledge would be to know the first cause than the end of our knowledge would be a knowledge of the most universal.

[55:43] That might seem to be contradicted by the fact that in knowing this in front of me and this in front of me, my knowledge is advancing when I know that it's paper and that's water. Then I just know that there is something. Do you see that?

[56:08] And so you'll see when you look at the beginning of the fourth book of wisdom, for example, that Aristotle reasons from wisdom being about the first causes to its being also about what is said of all, right?

[56:29] As if it's more known that it's about the first cause than it's about what's said of all. Okay. Now, yes, something like that on a lesser scale,

[56:44] wisdom in a kind of qualified sense, this wisdom about human things, right? When Aristotle begins or began the Nicomachean Ethics, which is kind of the beginning of practical philosophy, right? What is the ethics about?

[57:04] Well, it's chiefly about happiness, right? Okay. When Shakespeare has someone studying philosophy there in the Taming of the Shrew, right? He applies that part of philosophy that treats of happiness by virtue especially to be achieved. Okay. But then later on, we find that practical philosophy is about all of the goods of man in general, right?

[57:45] And the distinction of all the goods of man into the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, and exterior goods. It's about the order of those three, right? The goods of the soul are better than the goods of the body, and the goods of the body are better than the outside goods, right?

[58:04] And there is a reason why. The practical philosopher considers, in general, all of the goods of man. Right? Why? Because he considers the end or purpose of human life. And all of these goods, in some way, what? Some more, some less, contribute to that end or goal. Right. So, because ethics and practical philosophy is about the end of man, the end and purpose of human life, because it's about happiness, you can see it's got to look at human life to some extent as a whole.

[58:39] Right. In the same way that because political philosophy is about the common good of the city, it's got to talk to some extent about the whole city. Right. And all the arts and sciences must be therein. Right. Okay.

[58:59] But ethics gets its its its excellence because it's about happiness. So what it really is, what the purpose of man is. Do you see? And so you might reason from its being about the purpose of man, the end of the whole human life, to its being also about these general things, the distinction of all the goods of man. Right. Aristotle reasoned something like that in the fourth book.

[59:27] He reasoned because wisdom is about the first cause, that's going to also talk about all things in some general way. Do you see that? Okay. Just like we might say in theology, that in theology you talk about the creator, mainly God, and talk about all creatures,

[59:59] but not in a particular way that the botanist. Talks about the tree, right? But you're going to talk about all creatures in some general way, aren't you? Do you see that?

[1:00:12] But the excellence of theology is because it's about the creator, not because it's about the creature in general, right? But there's going to be about the creator. creature in general is a consequence of its being about the creator. Do you see that?

[1:00:29] So there's a good reason why Aristotle proceeds the way he does, huh? And why emphasizes that, right? But you see, it kind of anticipated in the discussion that we're talking about today of the comparison of experience and art or science. He's going to argue that art or science is closer to wisdom than experience, right? But not from its being about the universalism.

[1:01:00] In fact, from its being about the universal, he merely points out that it could be inferior; it often is to experience as far as doing, right? And it's only from the its being about the cause that he tries to reason that it's what superior and more wise. Do you see that?

[1:01:22] As if it's not so clear from the other difference, right? If at all that it's superior, right? Did you see that a little bit? Yes. We'll come back there when we get to the great turnaround, book four. Book four. The great turnaround at God. In my little course description at school about the great turnaround, let them guess what it's going to be.

[1:02:02] Okay.