Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
8. The Four Causes and the First Philosophers: Thales and Anaximander
Class of 2005-01-20
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/008-the-four-causes-and-the-first-philosophers-thales-and-anaximander/

[0:00] Prayer, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment guardian angel, 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 all that you have written. Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. I have a tenth grandchild now, and I think her name is going to be Sophia, which is appropriate for us after wisdom.

[0:34] So when was she born? Um, about Tuesday class. I mean, yeah, Tuesday, Tuesday. Didn't quite. Today's Thursday. No, no, earlier than that, I guess. Earlier than that, Rosen. I'm getting confused now. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, yeah. I spoke to you, during the other day on the last time The fifteenth. Oh, you did? It was well last Saturday before class. Yeah, because I Wednesday was Tuesday. Yeah, yeah. So it's good.

[1:07] We're going to go out there, and my wife and I came in February there, so we'll be out there a couple weeks. Now, Aristotle does in the rest of Book One of Wisdom is to recall what his predecessors said about the causes and the reasons they gave, and then he, secondly, he gives a kind of critique, you know, the sufficiency of what they said. But in recalling what they said and why they said it, he also recalls the distinction of the four kinds of cause, which were worked out in natural philosophy, and he's going to look at what they said not only as a preparation for the critique of it, for examination of its sufficiency or insufficiency, but also to see if they touched upon

[1:58] any kind of cause other than the four kinds that he designates. And so one comes away with a confirmation that there are in fact four kinds of what causes, and so before I look at these fragments, let's just recall those four kinds of causes and talk a little bit about the name of each of them, and then the the definition of each kind of cause, and exemplify it a bit here.

[2:31] I might begin by saying, in kind of a general way, what is a cause? What do you mean by a cause? How would you sort of define what you mean by cause? This.

[2:55] Like a decisive factor in bringing something to be. Okay, okay. Now, the Greek word for cause, cause, of course, is derived from the Latin word, but the Greek word for cause is aitia, right? Which is tied up with the Greek word for responsible, right? So you might say a cause is what is responsible for the being or the becoming of another, right?

[3:36] And there's got to be different ways that they can be responsible for something. Was responsible for the being or becoming of another. And of course, that other could be called the what? Effect. Yeah. Now, perhaps he has something there in the Latin word to cause, at least it's the word. I accuse you, right? Okay. I'm going to accuse you of something that you are responsible for, right?

[4:20] If I accuse you of the murder of so and so, it's because I hold you in some way responsible for the death of so and so. Okay.

[4:32] Now, the first kind of cause that Aristotle talks about, both in the second book of Natural Hearing, the so-called Physics, and in the fifth book of Wisdom, when he talks about the word cause, the first kind of cause could be called matter. Okay.

[4:55] And the definition that Aristotle gives of this kind of cause has two parts. Matter is that from which something comes to be, existing within it. Okay,

[5:13] that from which something comes to be. That's the first part of the definition, but the second part is essential. Existing within it. So this chair maybe came to be from wood, right? And the wood is in it, right? Okay. Now we might say that something came to be from maybe the chair from the carpenter in some way too, right? Mm-hmm. But to the best of my knowledge, he's not in here, right?

[5:54] Mm-hmm. So the carpenter is not a cause in the sense of what matter. He may be a cause in another sense of maker or something, right? But not of matter because of this second part, right? Okay. And sometimes we say that something comes to be from its opposite, huh? Like day comes to be from night, right? But is night in day? No. Or we say that the hard comes to be from the soft, right?

[6:25] Or the soft becomes hard, right? But is soft in the hard? No. So the second part here, the definition of matter, separates matter from the mover or maker, and also from the opposite, huh? Okay. As students, you should go from ignorance to knowledge, right? So knowledge comes to be from ignorance, but is ignorance in the knowledge that's opposed to it? No. So this second part is very essential to the definition of this kind of cause, huh?

[7:04] Now you can see that most easily in artificial things, huh? But you could also say that you and I come to be from flesh and blood and bone, right? Maybe they come from something even more fundamental. So this is the first kind of cause. Now the second kind of cause is called form.

[7:32] Aristotle says this is the definition of what was to be. So what was to be in the case of this coming to be was a chair, right, huh? And the chair is defined. Or its definition, at least, is completed by its what form, by its shape. What makes it to be a what chair? Okay. Now sometimes they attach to form here what they call the model or exemplar, which is a kind of extrinsic form that you copy or imitate.

[8:21] Okay. Now the third kind of cause is called the mover or maker. Of course, later on we add the creator to this, right? Okay. But as you define it in terms of first one here, whence first

[8:50] there is a beginning of motion. The motion in the broad sense here, not just change of place, but any kind of change. Whence first there is a beginning of motion. Be nice to me a little bit. Okay.

[9:14] So the carpenter begins to move the wood, right? To change the wood. Aristotle when he talks about this, he gives as an example the father, right? And he gives an example the advisor, right? Because the father is a mover maker more by nature, and the advisor more by reason. And reason and nature seem to be the main what makers in our daily experience. Everything we see seems to be made either by art, by reason in some sense, or out there in the woods made by nature, right?

[9:57] Okay. These are made by art. This is Made by by nature. Now the last kind of cause Aristotle talks about is called the end, and he defines that as that for the sake of which we see that before in our study of ethics. That for the sake of which.

[10:34] And if you want to, you could add something is or is done, but this is the basic definition. That for the sake of which, right? Something is

[10:47] or is done. Okay. So these are the four kinds of causes that Aristotle distinguishes, huh? And so in the rest of Book One, he recalls the distinction of the four kinds of causes and says that when we go through what they said and why they said it, we're going to not only set the stage for an examination of sufficiency of what they're saying, but also to see did they touch upon any kind of cause other than these four?

[11:21] Of course, the conclusion for that is that they didn't touch upon any kind of cause other than these four, which is kind of confirmation that this is what all there is.

[11:39] Now this distinction of the four kinds of causes is followed in Aristotle's text by a what three corollaries, huh? And the first corollary is that there can be many causes as such of the very same thing.

[12:08] So the cause of the what chair in one way is wood, right? In another way, it's the form or shape of the wood, right? In another way, the carpenter is a cause of it, and even sitting is in some way responsible, right? Because the carpenter made it for the sake of what sitting, right? So because there are different kinds of causes, there can be many causes as such, right?

[12:37] So we've got to avoid trying to choose sometimes between these causes, right? Is wood responsible for the wooden chair in some way? Yeah, so it wouldn't be a wooden chair without wood, right? But is the shape of the wood in another way responsible for it too? And isn't the carpenter even more responsible because he shaped the wood? But he shaped the wood that way because of what?

[13:08] Sitting, right? For the sake of sitting, that he gave it the shape that he did, because he could have given it other shapes too, right?

[13:19] But he gave it shape he did because of sitting. Now, it doesn't mean that everything has these four causes, right? Because in a science say like geometry, maybe the only cause you talk about would be what? Form, right? Okay. And Aristotle, after he gets through with these causes, he will ask in natural things how many of these causes should look for, right? Okay.

[13:51] But some things involve as many as all four of these, right? The second corollary Aristotle gives is that two things he says can be causes of each other, but by different kinds of cause, right? So, is exercise the cause of health, or is health the cause of exercise? Okay. Well, you say, Why is he healthy? Because he exercises, right? " Well, then you're giving exercise as a cause of health, right?

[14:30] But you might ask the reverse question: Why do exercise for the sake of health, right? So, health is a cause of exercise, but notice not by the same kind of cause. Exercise is a maker or producer of health, right? And health is a cause of exercise in the sense of a what? End. Okay.

[15:00] So. You don't want to, in that case, say which is the cause of which. They're both causes of each other, but by different what kinds of cause, right? Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Huh? Well, is she full of grace because the Lord is with her, or is the Lord with her because she's full of grace?

[15:25] Or are both true, but by different kinds of cause? Her being full of grace is a disposition that makes her suitable, right, for, the Lord to dwell with her, right? And disposition is reduced to matter in the broad sense. That's on the side of the subject, huh? Oh yeah. But vice versa, you could say the Lord being with her is a cause of her being full of grace in the sense of the mover or the what maker, huh?

[15:56] Okay. Is putting the premises together the cause you see in the conclusion? Yeah. But why do you put the premises together? For the sake of the conclusion, right? So the conclusion is the cause of the premises being put together in the sense of that for the sake of which you put statements together. But putting them together is what

[16:24] a cause of the conclusion, the sense of the maker, the producer of it, huh? Okay. If I multiply two numbers, I get another number, right? So my multiplying those two numbers is a cause of my knowing the other number, right? In the sense it produces the knowledge of that, right? Okay. Let me buy you all a fifty cent coke, okay? And I take the number, you guys, five, ten, right?

[16:53] Ten times fifty is what? Five dollars. What it costs me to do this, right? Okay. But why did I multiply ten by fifty? For the sake of knowing how much it would cost me, right? So they're causes of each other, but for what? Different, ways. In different ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now the third corollary he gives is not as closely related to the kinds of cause, but he points out how the same thing is sometimes held responsible for contraries by its presence and by its what absence, right?

[17:35] So the captain is responsible for the safety of the ship or the destruction of the ship by his attention or inattention. And I tell the student is responsible for his knowledge or his ignorance, by his paying attention or not paying attention by applying himself or not applying himself.

[17:57] So this distinction, if it is complete, is useful in any part of our knowledge. We're looking for causes, not that necessarily we look for all four causes, but you have to see which causes are good to look for here, right?

[18:18] So I mentioned in a science like geometry, maybe form would be the only cause that's really relevant, huh? But when I define marriage, huh, I use all four causes, huh? It's a stable union of a man and woman by mutual choice for the sake of children, okay? When we speak of God as a cause, and how many of these four kinds of cause has God a cause?

[18:49] Two, two and a half. Two and a half. Yeah. I am the beginning, the end of all things. But we're made in His image and likeness, right? So He's the extrinsic form, the model, right? But not the intrinsic form, right? Okay. So not the matter at all, and He's not the intrinsic form of things, but we, but the model imitate Him model imitate Him, be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect, right?

[19:13] He's kind of the model there, the exemplar, and He's the beginning and the end of all things, the Alpha and the Omega. So you have to see what kind of cause is relevant in talking about something, huh?

[19:30] Now, Thales is usually regarded as the first what philosopher, and he appears in all the lists of the seven wise men of Greece, huh? But he's a man who really begins natural philosophy. He's supposed to have also made some contributions to geometry and even to political philosophy. He proposed a federal form of government for the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor,

[19:59] and the tribute to scientists. Proof of some theorems of geometry to Thales huh. But in natural philosophy, this famous statement is attributed to him: water is the beginning of all things. Okay.

[20:17] Now, when you read these fragments, you should realize something, and that is that our reason guesses before it knows. Okay. But what's important when you guess before you know is to try to make a what reasonable guess, So the central thinker there, Heraclitus says, in a fragment, "Let us not guess," he says, "at random about the greatest things."

[20:48] Now, as he's saying, don't guess. If he meant don't guess, period, then the words at random would be what superfluous, right? He says, "Let us not guess at random about the greatest things, huh? Let us guess by reason, right?

[21:11] By art, if that's possible, right? The dialectic is a art of making reasonable guesses. Um. Now, if you can get beyond the reasonable guess, that's even better, right? But let's at least try to make a reasonable guess, and a reasonable guess is more apt to contain a part of the truth, right? And advance us towards the truth more than a wild guess or Completely uneducated guess, huh?

[21:41] Okay. So for these first philosophers, the philosophers before Plato and Aristotle, we don't have any book of theirs. All we have is fragments, huh? that have been preserved in the later writers, and then sometimes you have discussion of of their position in the later writers. And the German scholars, right, especially, but some other scholars too, will gather these little fragments, huh? and that's what this DK after most of these means, right?

[22:18] That's the number in the Diels Kranz. Diels is the first guy, Kranz, the continuator, edition of the Greek fragments, huh? Okay. But they have no significance, not in the region at all. You know, they're just a way of being referring. You know, okay. But the arrangement of these can be quite different, huh? And Thales, they don't even give us a DK, but that is what's attributed to him, huh?

[22:43] Okay. Now, is that a reasonable guess? Water is the beginning of all things, huh? Okay. Well. To do justice to Thales, huh? I usually descend from the general to the particular, right? Since this is the very first guess, you might say this guess is the beginning of philosophy, the beginning of natural philosophy.

[23:24] First of all, is it reasonable to look for the beginning of all things? Is it reasonable to look for the beginning of things? Huh? Well, maybe before I I try to go into that question, I come back to that phrase I used: a reasonable guess, right? And I think this phrase, a reasonable guess,

[24:04] has two meanings. That a guess can be called reasonable for two different meanings of the word reason. Now you know there are two meanings of the word reason out there.

[24:24] Okay, and I could play on them and say, you know, our reason might give a reason for something, right? Okay. Okay, so one way that a guess could be called reasonable is that there is a reason for it. There is a reason for thinking this, right?

[24:48] Of course, good, not a necessary reason. There's a good reason for it. Okay, a reason that doesn't maybe show that it must be so. Right, because that would be knowledge and not just a guess, right? But a reason that makes probable, right? At least this guess, right? Okay.

[25:14] Now the other sense of reason, of course, is the ability that Hamlet is defining for us, right? And there you could speak of our reason is naturally what inclined towards this, right? Okay.

[25:45] So a guess could be called reasonable because there's a a reason, especially a good reason for it, right? Or because our reason seems to be inclined in that direction without even having a reason, right? And perhaps something could be a reasonable guess in both of these senses, huh? Okay. Okay.

[26:15] Now, is it reasonable to look for the beginning of things? Sure. Okay. And which sense is it reasonable? Actually, both. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now maybe Thales had a reason why he should look for the beginning of things, right? But even if he didn't, is our reason naturally inclined to look for the beginning of things? Mm-hmm. Sure. And as Aristotle says in the Politics, that the man who considers something from its beginning will best understand it, huh?

[27:03] Mm-hmm. And so if I'm writing the biography of Winston Churchill or some other famous man, I'm trying to understand this man a bit. I'd go back to his what? Youth. Yeah, it's got the meaning. of a biography there of William Shakespeare. And of course you go back to his origin there in Warwickshire and so on, right? Stratford-on-Avon and what the city was and what his family was and so on, right?

[27:33] Mm-hmm. And so I get a little bit of understanding of Shakespeare, right? Whatever author you're writing about, if you go back to his what? Mm-hmm. His origin, right? Huh? Where he came from, right? Okay.

[27:48] Um, if you're writing the history of a country, right? You go back to the origin of that country, huh? Mm-hmm. Why do we speak English down here and up in Quebec they speak French, huh? Mm-hmm. Well, it's more understandable if you go back to the origin of. Quebec, right, and the origin of New England and so on, right? New France, New England. I mean, you see,

[28:14] if you're in charge of kids there, and there's a fight and so on, and you've got to decide where justice lies, right? What do you do? Why it started? Yeah, how to start? Yeah, why he hit me? Yeah, but he called me such and such. You go back. You try to work your way back to what is the starting point, right? Okay. Why are the Palestinians and the Israelites in such unhappy

[28:41] confrontation? There, we got to go back, you know, to some events which this thing what started, and then someone did something, and then someone else did something in return and, and it went on. But you go back to the to the origin of these things, huh?

[28:55] Um. So it's reasonable that you look for the beginning of things, right? Okay. Now, second step, right? Is it reasonable to look for one beginning of things, huh?

[29:22] I mean, apart from you know being water, the one beginning, right? Is it reasonable to look for one beginning? I mean, after all, you have two parents, right? You have one parent, did you?

[29:44] Um. Now, maybe you can give right a reason why there's one beginning of all things, but that'd be kind of hard to do, right? At least in the beginning, huh? But in the absence of a reason why there is one beginning rather than two or three or some other number, right? In the absence of any reason, one way or the other, what would our mind be inclined to do?

[30:16] To look for one or for many? For one. For one. Yeah. Yeah. Now perhaps a way of seeing how this is kind of natural is that our reason always looks for some kind of order in things. That's why every scientist talks about laws, right? We always couple law and order, right? So Shakespeare says reason looks before and after, right? It looks for order.

[30:47] Well, now is order based on many or on something one? Yeah. Yeah. The order of the army requires there to be one what? Leader. Yeah. Yeah. And the country, if you didn't have one, a supreme government there, right? You'd have a kind of what chaos, right? Okay. Even the first sense of order, which is chronological order, right? When we arrange events in history,

[31:22] Shakespeare was born in what 1564, right? I was born in 1936, right? Okay. Um. Sofia was born in 2005, right? These events are being arranged in order, aren't they? But in reference to one or to many things.

[31:50] Yeah. We take the birth of Christ, right? And we order all other events before or after that one, right? And notice if I ordered arranged events before and after the birth of Duane Berquist, and you use your mother's birthday or something, right? We we couldn't what see any connection between the numbers you give and I give, right? Okay, we'd have to translate them, right? Like the Mohammedans use the flight of of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, right, as their thing around 6 622 in our calendar, right?

[32:27] We've got to go back to one event to order all the other events, huh? So if you're if reason naturally looks for order and order is based upon something one, then reason naturally inclines to something one, right? Okay. So that's very important, huh? And you find the same thing if you read the great scientists of the 20th century, like Einstein or the father of modern physics, Max Planck, and so on.

[32:56] Heisenberg, so on, Louis de Broglie—they're all looking for unity, huh? You see, and as Einstein says, "Whatever gives up, right?" And but there you see the natural inclination of the reason, right? And later on, you get to theology, and we discover there's one God, right, huh? Again, that's in harmony with the natural inclination of our mind. An order is based upon something one.

[33:32] Now you might add, you wanted to at this point too. He's looking for something kind of simple, right? And water, at least to our senses, appears as something kind of what. Simple. Simple, yeah. Now, does it make sense to look for something one that is simple rather than something that's composed of different things as the beginning of things? Yeah, because obviously, what's composed has something before it that's the beginning of it, right?

[34:02] So if I said the word "cat" is the beginning of all things, you'd say, "Well, just a minute now. Isn't there something that 'cat' comes to be from? The letter C, the letter A, the letter T, right? Okay. So you want to take something simple, right, huh? And water seems to be all the same sort of appearance to our senses, right? Okay. And these are two attributes of God.

[34:25] Later on, right? He's the one and simple, right? Okay. Now, now I kind of like to contrast the beginning of the Bible, right, with the beginning of Greek philosophy, huh? Beginning of philosophy. The Bible begins with the statement, "In the beginning, right, God made heaven and earth, right."So it begins with the one maker of all things, right? Now, is water a beginning in the sense of a maker, or is the water a beginning in the sense of what matter?

[35:14] Matter. Yeah. Okay. Now contrast the beginning of the Bible with this beginning here. Is it reasonable, right? If you're looking for one simple beginning of all things, is it reasonable to look for one matter

[35:34] before looking for one maker? Well, contrast that the Bible again, right? Which is more known to us, right? The dependence of things upon matter or upon a what maker?

[36:04] Yeah. And someone comes in here after I leave, and he sees the word one on the board there, right? He doesn't see the writer of the word, does he? Okay. But even if that word one had always been there on the board, if no one had written the word, right, it was always there. It would still depend upon the letters O N and E, but it's made out of right.

[36:31] Even if this chair, I don't see any carpenter to you, you know. Um, I can call upon my experience saying there's a carpenter for this thing, you know. But if you know we didn't make these things ourselves, what's more known and more undeniable that this depends upon wood or it depends upon a carpenter? Wood. Yeah. So it's more known to us that things depend upon matter than they depend upon what maker?

[37:04] Yeah. Now the Bible is the word of God, right? Huh? And if God is the one maker of heaven and earth, he can speak right away about that to us, right? But philosophy is not the word of God. It's the word of man using his reason, starting from his senses, right? And therefore, starting from what is more known to us, okay, what's more known to us is dependence of things upon matter than upon a maker, right?

[37:41] I'm not saying it would be necessarily reasonable to stop with matter, right? But to begin there, right? Okay. Do you see that? Okay. I was interested in the contrast there between philosophy and the Bible, right? Okay.

[38:04] Now, so we're getting more particular as we go along, right? Looking for a beginning, looking for one simple beginning, right? One simple beginning, the sense of one matter, right? Okay. Now one more step before we get to water in particular as a guess, right? If you're looking for one matter out of which all things are made, right? Would you want to take a matter that has definite qualities, or would you want to take a matter like water, not necessarily water, right?

[38:39] But like water in being kind of shapeless, colorless, tasteless, right? But able to take on all kinds of colors, shapes, and tastes, right? Yeah. But if you said, you know, that red wine is the beginning of all things, I'd say, huh? Then everything would be made out of red wine, and everything would be what? Red. Red. Yeah. You see? And then the other colors would be excluded from the universe, right?

[39:08] If I said sugar is the beginning of all things, right? Everything would be sweet in this world, right? And nothing would be bitter or sour, right?

[39:21] And so, if that one simple matter has any definite color or any definite taste and so on, right? Then you would eliminate the contrary colors or the contrary tastes from the universe, which would contradict our what experience in the universe, whether it's hot and cold, sweet and sour, or sweet and bitter, and hard and soft and so on, right? Okay.

[39:51] So, water is a good guess insofar as it's kind of formless, colorless, tasteless, right? Okay. Now, that's the next step there right You're. Looking for one formless matter. By formless, I mean not only shapeless, but with no definite quality, right? Now, how about taking water then as that one formless matter that is the beginning of all things, huh?

[40:31] Well, Aristotle, when he talks a little bit about the opinion here of Thales he says that Thales was influenced by living things, huh? Because he saw that the seeds of things did not germinate without what water, and you know that the grass and things don't grow without what water, right, huh?

[40:56] So, in terms of living things, water would be a very good guess for that one matter, right? But even in terms, say, of the non-living world, you might say the non-living world. You have gases and liquids and solids, right? Is anything in your daily experience that becomes a gas, a liquid, and a solid? Yeah, it's the only thing, and you got ice there, which is solid, and you got steam, which is an air-like thing, right, and water.

[41:31] So, whatever is the beginning of all things must be capable of becoming a gas, a liquid, and a solid. If water is the only thing in my experience that becomes those three, right? Maybe in the lab you get something else to do this, but just in our ordinary experience, water is the only thing, right? So, water definitely must be that one simple formless matter that is the beginning of all things, right?

[41:56] You all convinced now? Right. Okay. It's not a bad beginning, is it? Right. This is a reasonable guess, huh? Okay. Now, just a little scientific and theological footnote, okay? Okay.

[42:17] As you know, the modern scientist, as a result of certain experiments, says that water is what H2O, right? Hmm. Ah. So it's more hydrogen than oxygen, right? And hydrogen, among the atoms, though, for even the modern scientist, is the what? Yeah, yeah. So even there, it's not too far off, is it? Right. You know. Okay.

[42:44] Ah, so that's what maybe the modern scientists might say about this, right? Huh? Now, the theologian would say, "Well, no, water is not the beginning of all things. God is beginning of all things, right? Okay. But

[43:00] the Bible speaks metaphorically at times, right? And metaphorically, God is spoken of as water. Oh God, you are my God, and I seek. For you, my flesh pines, and my soul thirsts like the earth parched. Life is without water. That's how I gaze towards you in the sanctuary. You know Augustine, in his commentary in the last psalm, there suggests a division of the psalms into three groups of fifty, right?

[43:30] And Thomas adopts that, right, in his own commentary on the psalms. But if you go through the 150 psalms, you'll find in each of the three 50s, right, there's a psalm of thirst, right, as the hind longs for running water. That's the 40, 41, something like that. There's one in each of the three groups, right? Now,

[43:56] that's said metaphorically, right? That God is water, right? But even a metaphor is based on some kind of likeness, right? So why is God metaphorically called water in those psalms? Why is the soul thirsting for God like the hind thirsting for the the water? A need between a need between the creature and God. Yeah, yeah. But going back to what Aristotle, you know, saying about Thales that he was especially influenced by living things, right?

[44:29] So water is seen as a source of life, right? So God is seen as kind of a fountain of life. So the thirsting, the soul for the life of God, is metaphorically called a thirsting for water. That's very interesting, right? Okay.

[44:49] The second thing the theologian would say about water is that this is the matter of the sacrament of what? Baptism. Yeah, yeah. And usually, you know, we talk about water being the matter of the sacrament. Sacrament of Baptism. We do so in terms of water being used to wash the body, right? Huh? And therefore, it's cleansing us of original sin and even actual sin. Um, but maybe you could also say that baptism is the beginning of a new life, right?

[45:18] And so, water is appropriately the matter of baptism, not only because it cleanses the soul, but because it begins the life of what? Of grace, huh? Okay. So, something we learned, right? Even there, from from that.

[45:39] Now, Thales. Just give you a little bit of geography and numbers, right? You know. Um. A little, very brief here. Um, Greek philosophy, or philosophy period, it didn't begin in what today we call Greece. What today we call Greece, the Greek tribes, you might say, Dorians, they came down. They conquered what we today call Greece. They settled down and they intermarried and so on, reproduced and so on.

[46:17] And Greece is a kind of poor land, and so they colonized to the east and to the west, right? So they colonized on the coast of Asia Minor, but today we call Turkey, right? And the islands there, right? And they colonized over in Sicily, and in the lower part of what of Italy, right? And the first philosophers were in these originally colonial cities, but now independent cities on the coast of Asia Minor, and later on in Sicily and in what?

[46:56] Southern Italy, right? Okay. So you have all kinds of ruins, Greek temples there, right? In fact, actually, the Greek temples in Sicily are better preserved than the ones that are left in Greece. Huh? You can actually see better what they were. And you've read the Peloponnesian War, maybe you know the the the disastrous Athenian thing attacking some of the cities over there in Sicily, right? Syracuse and so on.

[47:22] So the city of Miletus was a city of which Thales was a what? Citizen, right? And that was on the coast of Turkey, Asia Minor, called today, right? Um, and these next two thinkers, Anaximander and Anaximenes, were also citizens of Miletus, huh? So sometimes they're called the Milesians in in the book. These cities were eventually picked off by the advancing Persians, right? Huh? And so I mentioned how Thales had proposed a federal form of government.

[47:59] To resist the Persians, but they didn't listen to him, right? But they didn't want to go up to independence, but they really needed a federal federation of some sort to resist the Persians.

[48:12] Um, now, about what time was this, right? Okay, well, with the fictitious sharpness of historical dates, right? We can say it's around 600 B. C. Okay. The only date we have in Thales' life is that he predicted there would be an eclipse of the sun in the year 585 B. C. So, if he could predict an eclipse of the sun that took place in 585 B. C., then roughly, sharp as they say, we'll see around 600 B.

[48:54] C. you could say his mind was active, right? Okay. Now, when did Socrates die? You know, well, it's about 399 B. C., right? Okay, so there's about 200 years, you might say, right, of Greek philosophy before the death of Socrates. Aristotle dies in what 322 B. C. Right? As he sees what 388 something like that, 84 to 322 B. C. Right? Plato, I think, is 427 B.

[49:21] C. to 347 B. C. Right? Okay, just roughly, you know, roughly where these guys are. Right? You'll be sure of the dates, but that's where about the time it began.

[49:42] Now, the second thinker is Anaximander, right? Anaximander, if not a student of Thales, he knew the thought of Thales, right? And apparently, he proposed interesting consequence of Thales' thinking, right? If water is the beginning of all things, but especially of living things, then life should be found in water before it's found on land. So that's a nice deduction from the thought of Thales, right? But Anaximander is said to have pointed as a confirmation of that deduction: the frog that begins its life as a fish-like thing, they call a newt, I guess, and then becomes a kind of semi-land animal, right?

[50:30] And of course, the modern biologist might say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, that life did begin probably in the water, right? " And you can see the reason for that, right? That water is so essential to life, right? You know, you hang a dishcloth out on the line, and it dries out, right? Well, why don't you dry up when you walk around? I suppose you would if you do it long enough, right?

[50:52] But you have to have some means of preserving your moisture, right? Better than the dishcloth can, otherwise you would very soon die, right? And that's not a problem, right? I remember the listening to a scientific paper by some student years ago at Assumption, you know, and he said, desiccation is a greater problem with land animals than with water animals. But a big word desiccation you know makes it sound very scientific, but you see, drying up or drying out is a greater problem with land animals than water animals is kind of obvious, right?

[51:26] So that's to say that Anaximander was influenced by the thinking of Thales, right? And like a good student, he took the thought that water is the beginning, especially of living things, right? And deduced interesting consequence, but confirmed it with this observation of the frog, right?

[51:43] But as you can see in this first fragment, instead of saying water is the beginning of all things, he makes a very puzzling statement that the unlimited is the beginning of existing things, right? Okay, and this is very puzzling because unlimited, of course, is negative in meaning, right? It means not limited, right? And it's not not that water is that sensible, but that's not sensible at all, right?

[52:17] Okay, so how do you come up with this idea that the unlimited is the beginning of existing things, right? Well, let's go back a bit.

[52:43] Greek would be what apeiron right? That negative prefix and thing means in a sense not limited. But there's two ways you could speak of. something as not being limited, not limited in quantity,

[53:07] or not limited in what quality. Quality, okay. Well, now you see a connection between Anaximander's thought and Thales, right? Because Thales was thinking that first matter along the lines of water, which is not limited to any shape or any color or any taste, right? Okay. But is water in the natural environment out there in the lake or the pond is water without any qualities? It has certain definite qualities.

[53:47] Yeah, it's wet and it's what cool. So, in a way, Thales hasn't gone all the way to eliminate qualities, right? To make formless that first matter, he's left with it wet and coolness. Now, if the beginning of all things was wet and cool, how would you get hot things

[54:18] and dry things, right? If everything is made out of water, everything should be wet and cool. And you know how you throw water on fire; it goes out, right? How do you even get fire to go in the first place, right? You know, it's hard to get the the logs burning if they're if they're you know moist, right? You got to get them dried out, right? But if everything's made out of water, there'll be no drying, right?

[54:48] So, what he's doing, in a sense, is going all the way, right? And he's still developing the thought of Thales, right? He's saying that you have to remove not only shape and color and taste from that first matter. But also cold and wet, right?

[55:09] Well, now if you remove all qualities from that first matter, you have to describe it negatively. It's the unlimited, right? You can't describe it positively, because then you'd be giving it a definite quality, and then you'd be excluding the opposite quality, right? Okay.

[55:29] So, there's some reason to think that the beginning of all things is the unlimited, in the sense of what is not limited to any quality. Okay. But Darren, could you couldn't you apply it to both, finally? Because we will, we will. Okay. I'm just saying here his connection with Thales, right? Okay. Connection with Thales. Then the way he's taking the thought of Thales and going all the way, right?

[55:54] Thales is looking for a formless first matter, and water seems more or less formless, but it's not entirely so, right? He's going all the way, right? Now, is there also something in our experience that would lead us to think that the beginning of things is unlimited in some kind of a quantitative sense, huh? In the sense of the word unlimited you can have unlimited chairs. Yeah. And the fact that in the natural world, every spring new things spring up, right?

[56:33] Things keep on coming to be forever in this world, right? So, therefore, the source of them must be in some quantitative sense. It seems what unlimited, right?

[56:45] So, and maybe even in both senses, right? It makes sense. It's a reasonable guess, right? There's a reason to think this, right? So that even though you can't sense the unlimited, right? You can reason from what you sense, right? You can reason from the fact that there is dry things as well as wet things, right? And hot things as well as cold things, right? That that beginning of all things cannot have any qualities, right?

[57:18] And you can reason from things coming to be forever that the source of them, in some quantitative sense, must be unlimited. Keep on getting things out of it forever, right? Do you see? So this is a reasonable, huh? Yes, right. But it's kind of difficult, right? Because you're not taking something that's sensible, but he's still a natural philosopher because he's reasoning from what can be sensed, right?

[57:52] Um, what's that cloud chamber. they they they studied the motion of elementary particles, right? But you don't see the elementary particle. When it shoots through there, it leaves what? Water droplets, as it were, huh? So, so even the modern biologist or modern physicist, rather, will talk about things he doesn't sense, but he has to talk about them through what he does sense, right? Yeah.

[58:20] So that's the first thing he says, right? Instead of saying water is the beginning of all things, he says unlimited, but he has a reason to say that. Okay.

[58:31] Now, Thomas in the Summa Contra Gentiles, right? My favorite book there, in chapter forty-three of the first book, right? That's the chapter about God is unlimited, right? Now, chapter forty-two is about God being what? One. Okay. And of course, earlier, in chapter eighteen, he talks about God being simple, right? God being simple, God being one, and now in forty-three, the God is unlimited. Now, not in the same sense which this guy is thinking of unlimited, but he he refers back to the Greeks, right?

[59:11] Thinking of the beginning as being what unlimited, right? As it were, being coerced by the truth, their mind naturally thinking of the beginning of all things unlimited in some way, right? Maybe not understanding the way that's that God is unlimited, but nevertheless, their mind climbing a certain way.

[59:35] Um, that's very interesting, huh? The way our mind is moving there, huh? Of course, you see that in modern science too, where the equation is unlimited in some way, right? You can deduce an infinity of things from it, right? So, even a simple equation like F equals M A, force equals mass times acceleration, how many forces can you plug in there? And calculate masses and accelerations are by Anaximander infinity, then right?

[1:00:07] There's something infinite about these things. The second thing that Anaximander says, I think, is even more interesting. He says that from which existing things come to be, and is in them as Aristotle would say, right, is also that into which they are corrupted by necessity. Now, is that a reasonable guess, right? That whatever is the beginning of all things, right, out of which everything else is made, when you break these things down or knock them down, you end up with what you begin with.

[1:00:45] Is that reasonable? Yeah. Yeah. I take a very simple example in class. Sometimes they say if you buy your little son or nephew or somebody a bag of blocks, right, and he can build all kinds of things out of this bag of blocks, right, towers and ships and so on, right. Now, when he knocks down the tower and knocks down the ships, do you expect him to have a Lego set?

[1:01:10] Huh? Well, not if you start out with big wooden blocks, right, you expect him to get back to the wooden blocks, right? But if you bought your little son or nephew a Lego box of Lego pieces, right, and he built all kinds of things out of those, right, now if you knock those down, would you expect him to end up with a set of wooden wooden blocks.

[1:01:36] No, see. Okay. If you bought him an Erector set, you know, you got the steel or something like that, right? You make all kinds of things out of that too, right? When he breaks these things down, do you have a set of wooden blocks or a Lego set? See. Now you can maybe develop. You know, but that doesn't make much sense, huh? Because

[1:02:02] what's happened in this case is something's gone out of existence, right? If I made some out of wooden blocks and knocked it down, I end up with a Lego set, what happens with wooden blocks. Hmm. See.

[1:02:15] And can something just become nothing? Okay. And then what about a Lego set? Where did that come from? It's not made out of wooden blocks, right? So you're getting something out of nothing, right? Hmm. So it makes very good sense, right? To say the reality is a circle, that what is the beginning of things is also their what. End. Yeah. Now, notice, this again anticipates theology, right?

[1:02:45] Where God is the beginning and the end of things, not in the way matter is, though, right? See, matter is the beginning and the end in one way in God, in the sense of like the maker and the end or purpose, right? Okay. But notice how on Ash Wednesday, which isn't too far away, I guess, you know, they would say sometimes "Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return," right?

[1:03:11] But there you're talking about matter, right? What you're made out of is what you're broken down to again. So you see, it's kind of a circle there, right? Except end, in this sense, is your what destruction, right? So it's better to have a beginning and end to the way God is beginning and end, because end there means not your destruction, but that for the sake of which you are, right?

[1:03:34] But notice how this anticipates again theology, right? That what is the beginning of things will be also their end, but not in the way in which matter is in getting into things. And that's the way you know basically theology is divided, right? You consider God, right, by himself or in himself, and then God is the beginning, the maker of things, right, and then God is the what end, right?

[1:04:07] Okay, it's very clear in the Summa Contra Gentiles that's the way it's divided. One of the Book One of the Summa Contra Gentiles is God in Himself, and then two is God as a maker, and then three is God as the end, right? Okay, but that's really followed in the Summa Theologiae, but it's not as easy to see as first because he he goes into so many much more details of the return of man to God, right?

[1:04:32] But second and third part are all devoted to that. See how interesting the idea is, right? How reasonable it is, right? Yeah. Of course, that reappears also in modern physics when you have the conservation laws, right? See, the same thing remains there, right?

[1:04:56] Now, if you look at the next two fragments, which are saying more or less the same thing. They are a consequence of the second sentence in the first fragment, huh? The nature of the unlimited is everlasting and does not grow old. If you begin with that and you still have it when you break things down, right? Then that unlimited is everlasting and does not grow old. It's immortal and indestructible, right?

[1:05:25] Now you say in modern science that comes out as a conservation law, but in theology we say God is what unchanging, right? And God is eternal, right? Which follows upon its being unchanging, but it's already here in a somewhat different meaning, right? It's in anticipation.

[1:05:47] Now you'll notice that Thomas takes up the substance of God in both the Summa Theologiae and the Summa De Gentiles. The consideration of the substance of God is divided into five parts,

[1:06:02] and the five parts are that God is what one simple unlimited, unchanging, eternal. Well, that's attached to his being unchanging, right? Okay. And then the extra one is he's perfect. Yeah. Okay. Now notice, four of the five are in this anticipation, right? Because with Parmenides we talked about something one and simple, right? And now we're talking about something that is what unchanging, that's eternal in some way, right?

[1:06:42] And that's unlimited, right? So four of the five already, right? So our mind is tending towards something one, simple, unchanging, and unlimited in some way. What's left out is the fifth one, which is perfect, which doesn't really fit matter, right? Okay. Now the other things we talked about the substance are attached to one or another of these. Yeah. So attached to the consideration of perfection of God is his goodness, right?

[1:07:11] Attached to his being unchangeable, as being eternal. Attached to his being unlimited, as being everywhere. Okay. Um. But it's kind of beautiful to see the way the mind is working there, huh? Okay. Let me

[1:07:27] take a break. Time, I take a break. Sure. Let's just finish the next Democritus, and then we'll. Then we'll take a little break. Okay. Now the last sentence in DK 1 there might seem a little bit poetic, but we forget that we also speak that way, huh? Um. You see, man is by nature a political animal, citizen, right? And so a sign of this is language, right?

[1:07:56] So language goes up so we can communicate together in the city, huh? And so we have names for things in the city, right? Well, then these guys like Parmenides go and start studying the. Natural world, we don't have any names for these things, right? But when they find something out there that is like what you have in the human world, right? We borrow words from the human things, not that they have exactly the same meaning when they get out there, right?

[1:08:22] But there's some likeness, right? Now the most common example in in modern times, of course, is the word law, right? The word law first is used in human society. You can see that that word like lawyer, you know, is only regard to human law, right? We don't generally call a chemist or physicist a lawyer, do we? Even though he's talking about the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry all the time, right?

[1:08:53] Or we use the term the legal profession, right? We don't say a chemist is in the legal profession, even though he's talking about laws, right? But why do we carry the word law over from the world? Well, the law, let's say, the law to drive on the right side of the street, produces a certain regularity in our behavior, right? And so when we find a regularity in the behavior of nature, what should we call it?

[1:09:20] Well, we borrow the word law and call it a law of what nature, right? And in fact, we even borrow the word obey, right? So you'll find a physicist will say that in free space, the the the electron, let's say, obeys the laws of Newtonian physics. But it gets inside the atom; it doesn't obey the laws of Newtonian physics, and now obeys the laws of quantum physics or something, right?

[1:09:50] You see. Well, we don't. We're so familiar those words that we don't notice, you know, how anthropomorphic they might sound, right? But it's not really anthropomorphic; they don't mean the same thing, right? Sometimes a third word we use is the word debt, right? So if I'm running, you know, the biologist might say I built up a what? Oxygen debt, right? And if I haven't been getting enough sleep for a number of days, I built up a what?

[1:10:21] Sleep debt. I owe myself some sleep, right? I owe myself in other cases some error, right? See? So he uses the word justice, right? Okay. But that's borrowing, right? Words like we borrow ourselves from the world of man, right? And apply them to the natural world, right? By a kind of what? Of likeness, huh? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So we'll take a little break, and then we'll go look at the third and last of the great philosophers of Miletus.