Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 10: The Central Question of Philosophy and Knowledge

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It's everything that is, in some ways, a being, right? He takes the being which is said of all things, and he explicitly identifies that with the one who says, I am, who am. He looked at Ewa, he said explicitly. Now, I think I mentioned before how in the Summa Contra Gentilas, you know, Thomas actually shows that God is I am, who am, and so on. He has a whole chapter to do it just to show that he's not the same thing. That the being which is said of all is not the being which is God. There's many reasons for that. But notice, he goes in the sense of following in the footsteps of Spinoza, that the order in our ideas is the order in things. Now, since, as you know, we know things in a confused way before distinctly, then the most confused idea of our mind corresponds to the beginning of all things. It's an outrageous conclusion. But it follows from, what? Saying that we're truly knowing, in the way we know, and saying, what? That when we truly know, these are the same. Well, then the order in ideas has to be the order in things, that's what Spinoza said, huh? And then the first thought in our mind has to correspond to the first thing in reality. So the being said of all things, the most confused and imperfect notion in some way in our mind corresponds to what? To God. Horrible confusion. This is the pantheism that runs through German thought. As Hegel, as Alexander Tockel says, now you can see pantheism all the way through German philosophy. If you look at the Ingeridian symbolorum, you know, the official pronouncements of the church and so on, all through the 19th century, they're always correcting some professor, even some Catholic professor, for the German universities for his pantheism. Just like, you know, Kuhn in the 20th century has certain aspects of pantheism, and even Karl Rahner had that, huh? It kind of dominates the modern thought. You see what he's doing there, right? And this is the most confused notion in our mind. In fact, in Hegel's system, being passes over to what? None-being, right? Because it has the determination. And you have to come in the Ingeridian system. So that's the most confused notion of our mind, the most indistinct, huh? He's definitely not that. But because it takes order from Spinoza, that the order in our ideas is the order in what? Things. When we truly know, and he does things, he truly knows, huh? So you get these extremely strange conclusions in Hegel and Spinoza and other people, and Hegel himself, because they convince they truly know something, and they do truly know something, but they think that when they truly know something, these have to be the same, therefore they reach these strange conclusions. Then you have all these other thinkers who are, who, what, realize there's something wrong here, right? That things are not really the way we know them, but because they implicitly answer yes, then they say, we don't know anything. And that's people like Kant, for that sort, huh? William Wacken and so on, and Tracys. So it's quite a history, and they reach quite different final conclusions because of the different premises, right? They're all followed up in one way or another because they've answered yes to this, what, question, huh? Whereas Dallas kind of stands like a little man, you know, he says, just a minute now. We can know things in a different way than they are without being false. It's what we say about things that has to be with them, huh? See? But if I understand in separation things that can be understood in separation, even though they don't exist in separation, I'm not false. The falsity would come if I say that because I truly understand them in separation, therefore they truly exist in separation, huh? I can truly know things even in the contrary order in which they came. I can truly know you in some way before I know your parents. But I'm not, what, mistakenly doing that, huh? Mistake would come as if I said, hey, because I truly knew you before I know your parents. before your parents, then you must truly have come before your parents. That's really some very strange, strange conclusions, huh? You see? Or someone else would say, you know, hey, really, their parents came before them, didn't you know that? So you're not really knowing the way you know is not really the way things are. If you don't really know either them or their parents, right? Yeah, very strange conclusions. See? For me to truly know you and your parents, I have to know you and your parents in the way you are, in the order of which you are. So I have to really know your parents before you, otherwise I wouldn't truly know you or your parents. So as long as I'm knowing you before your parents, I know neither you nor your parents. And the other guy is saying, hey, no, you obviously came before, because I truly know you. In fact, I truly know your parents. Therefore, you truly did come before your parents. Strange as it may seem, we're forced to say that because I truly do know you. I truly do know your parents. I think it's in Augustine, too. Thinking there is coming before being, right? But in reality, being is before thinking. Is he false? No, no, no. He can truly come to know that if something is thinking, it must be, right? There's nothing wrong with that way of reasoning, huh? But because thinking is known before the being, therefore, the thinking is in reality before the being, no, no. So, I think that little simple example is kind of interesting. Sometimes we talk about the past, right? You might meet an old buddy that you went to high school with or something. And so you talk about the past, huh? And now the past is, what, present to you again in your memory. Now, is there any falsity in the past being present to you in your memory? See? But, I mean, the past can't be, you know, present. But notice, huh? The falsity that comes is because I remembered the past now, then to think that the past is now. But I can remember the past now. Is there any falsity in remembering the past now? But it is not now, but I'm remembering it now. See that? Now, one of the first great thinkers who followed Aristotle, that stands out in my mind, is Boethius, huh? Okay? Now, if you read the great work of Boethius, one of the great works, The Consolation of Philosophy, huh? In the beginning of The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius says that he's a member of the Academy, huh? Of the School of Plato. And his reasoning, certainly in the first books, is somewhat Britannica, the way he reasons. Now, he's trying to understand what's happened to him, how a just man has been imprisoned and so on, falsely and so on. But he's trying to understand, you know, evil and divine providence and so on. And in fact, the definition of divine providence comes from Boethius. But he's also trying to understand God's knowledge of the world. And, of course, God's knowledge is eternal. There's no past and no future in God's knowledge. It's all at once. And God knows the past and the future in the eternal now. So the past, you could say, is present to God, and the future is also present to God. So the past, you could say, is present to God's knowledge. So the past, you could say, is present to God's knowledge. So the past, you could say, is present to God's knowledge. So the past, you could say, is present to God's knowledge. So the past, you could say, is present to God's knowledge. So the past, you could say, is present to God's knowledge. So the past, you could say, is present to God's knowledge. This is very hard to understand, huh? And it's in that fifth book that the great Boethius works out the definition of eternity, which we'll look at later on the course after we look at the definition of time. The definition of eternity in the Summa Theology is Boethius' definition. And Thomas, you know, spends some time there defending the definition of it. But what's interesting is that in order to understand so far as we can the divine knowledge, you have to realize that the way he knows and the way things are are not the same. He knows what? Eternally, past, present, and future. His knowledge is not in time. And so it's an amazing thing to think that the future is present to God in his knowledge with no falsity. But if truth required that the way we know be the way things are, then this couldn't be possible, huh? See? So as Boethius is trying to understand the eternal knowledge of the future and the past and so on, in that fifth book, when the fifth book, if you read the dialogue, it's in the form of a dialogue, as you expect a place to do, huh? But in the dialogue, the dialogue is between Boethius, who's in prison, falsely accused, and Lady Wisdom, she comes down to console him, huh? And Sapiencia is feminine, right, and enlightened. So Lady Wisdom comes down to console him, and she, you know, argues him out of his despair and out of his, you know, chagrin and so on. But when you get to the fifth book, Lady Wisdom announces Aristobo as her true follower. And I think it's kind of subtle, because Boethius, in a sense, is going to now follow what? Aristobo, and not Plato, he has to, he can't understand the divine eternity. And so Boethius is probably one of the, you know, man who stands out in my mind, huh? As the first very great thinker to follow what? Aristobo, huh? Now, of course, Thomas Aquinas has the benefit of both Aristotle and, what, Boethius, huh? So Thomas Aquinas then follows these two great thinkers. It's kind of beautiful to see Boethius do that. There is, in some of those, in the Parmitish, I think it is, Thomas' works of commentary on the consolation of philosophy, but nobody thinks it's authentic Thomas, but it's a rather good commentary, huh? I read the thing sometimes. My brother Mark always thought it was a good commentary, too. I don't know if it's Biden. There's a guy known as Thomas the Englishman, Thomas Anglicus, who's always being confused with Thomas Aquinas, huh? Thomas Anglicus, or something like that. But it's kind of a good commentary, but it, but there's so many things in the consolation of philosophy that become proverbial, almost, in medieval philosophy. They're quoted, and quoted again, and again, and again, huh? It's really kind of a marvelous work, huh? The first three books are more concerned with happiness, huh? What true happiness is and false happiness is. And Boethius wants to talk about true happiness and false happiness. But he's still going to talk about false happiness first, because that's more known to us. And then he works his way from false happiness into what true happiness is. He does that. But then he gets into these other things about, well, you know, what about evil in the world and God and so on. And then he gets into these questions about divine providence and the problem of evil and God's knowledge of the world and so on. And that's where he gets into defining providence and defining eternity. But then he gets into this problem, huh? You have to admire Boethius and that work. Mancid Dian, as they say, you know, used to teach a lot this other work of Boethius, the De Trinitatia, which Thomas commented on. I think I mentioned what he said, you know. They say it's the same guy, you know. They wrote the commentaries on logic, but I don't think so. So this is just such a great, not to be really seriously, I think doubted it was the same man. I just, you know, somehow talking about these great things, you know, summons all the powers of Boethius. I think Boethius is really the greatest mind that there is in the church between Augustine and Thomas. Augustine and Thomas are probably the greatest minds, but in between those two, you know, sits Boethius. But anyway. It's interesting in regard to this central question of philosophy. Is that somewhat synonymous with the critical question? Is it like this central question of the critical question? I call it the central question because it brings together the two matters about which a philosopher talks, right? If you listen to philosophers, they talk either about the way we know, like they do, especially in logic and other places, especially in logic, or they talk about the way things are, right? And this question involves everything he talks about in some general way, but also it brings in the inner purpose that he has in mind. So this is a very, what? In another sense, a critical question. Yeah, I really call it a central question. I don't know what critical means. Critical means just to judge, right? Okay. I'm calling it simple because it touches upon everything. If you answer yes to this, you're going to have, you know, it's all these strange things that come out of answering yes, depending upon the other premises that you add to that. Another aspect of it here in regards to natural things, Plato was a student of Cratchelus, and Cratchelus was a student of Heraclitus in the school of Heraclitus. And Heraclitus was emphasizing, as we'll see when we study the fragments, the fact that everything in the natural world seems to be changing. Well then, this had tremendous negative influence upon Plato. How can you have a knowledge in a strict sense? How can you have something unchanging of changing things? And if you answer yes to this question, it's impossible to have an unchanging knowledge of what? Changing things. In which case, you have to, to know anything, you have to find some things outside of the natural world that are unchanging, and of which you could have a real what? Knowledge. Well, Aristotle's saying, no. You can know changing things in an unchanging way. And we'll see that as we get in here. But he's answering what? No to this question, huh? Sometimes we play at this a little bit and say, is the definition of stupidity stupid? Is the definition of folly or foolishness foolish? Does the definition of ignorance keep us ignorant? How can we know what ignorance is? How can we have a wise understanding of the fool? The way we know, not the way the thing is. But we can, can we? So we can have an unchanging knowledge of the changing, huh? Let's see. But for Plato, it's not possible. So Plato, in a sense, is seeking knowledge elsewhere than through studying the world around him. Okay, now, I gave you the natural fragrance, didn't I, last time? Yes. Now we're going to set aside Aristotle for a while, and we're going to go back now to the very beginning of philosophy, and the beginning of natural philosophy in particular. And we're going to go back to what is considered also to be the beginning of science. Okay? Right back to the beginning. And I think, as I mentioned before, that for the philosophers before Plato and Aristotle, there is no, what, complete work to survive. Socrates, of course, didn't write anything at all. He just taught. Socrates is like Christ, huh? Christ didn't write anything down. He just taught. And Socrates just did that. You know, of course, Thomas. You know, of course, Thomas. says why did christ use the spoken word not the written word the spoken word is more perfect than the written word and so christ used the more perfect but then the apostles and others wrote down and socrates wrote nothing but plato wrote things so plato or socrates wrote nothing and the philosophers before wrote things but all we have is what fragments uh um more or less direct quotes uh in the later thinkers or later writers and the german scholars who have nothing better to do um they go and they gather up these fragments and others have done this too and the most famous one is the one made by deals uh and kranz is if i continue the work of deals so if you look at i could bring in my greek edition of deals kranz but it would have the fragments and the number of the fragments just as a way of referring to them but the numbers had nothing to do with the original work right so uh you'll see after some of these uh the dk1 or dk2 or dk3 or something like that and those are the what deals kranz number to my addition of deals kranz but the numbers have no particular significance uh just a way of referring to them and sometimes people number them otherwise and they certainly arrange them differently huh um what you're going to see in these fragments is the seeds of philosophy and to some extent even the seeds of science but certainly the seeds of philosophy and then when you go to the dialogues of plato you see those seeds what developing growing and then in aristotle to some extent you see the the grown plant huh so that's kind of the way these three um can be ordered of the kind of botanic uh similitude or likeness there now what i've done here is to collect what i call the natural fragments the fragments in natural philosophy now one can also make a collection of the ethical and domestic and political fragments and you could also make a collection of the uh uh fragments and method that they have we'll refer to those a bit and i also made a collection of the the natural theology fragments um so here we've got the natural fragments and we're going to be reading these now not as the truth but as reasonable guesses and there are two ways in which you can call a guess reasonable and let me um specify it in the beginning you know a guess is not certain but a guess can be wild or to be educated now reasonable guess a guess can be called reasonable for one of two reasons one is there's a reason for it it's a good reason anyway there's a reason for it and that reason is not such as to say that it must be true well which is some basis for thinking this okay now some people may have a better guess than others i don't know better reason but still there's a good reason enough instead of being one thing or the other the other way you can call a guess reasonable is that reason is naturally inclined to it our faculty reason okay reason is naturally inclined towards one thing that the scientists the great scientists of the 20th century found interesting in the greeks was this natural inclination because they have it in themselves too and we'll see some you know witnesses i've got a few things here to that effect so as we read these fragments i don't want to say they're fragmentary so we don't have it In most cases, the reasons explicitly stated are those sometimes later authors give us hints. We want to see, is there a reason to think this, huh? Or is there something here about the reason we're actually inclined to kind of think this, huh? Okay? So we want to try to appreciate these as reasonable guesses, and sometimes the later thinkers are making more reasonable guesses than the earlier thinkers, and want to see why that's so right. Okay? But we're starting now on a good example, a fundamental example, really, of the second road in our knowledge, which is not the natural road, it presupposes the natural road, but the second road is the road of reason as reason, as Shakespeare defined it, huh? And this is the road from reasonable guesses towards reasoned out and out. Now, I say from reasonable guesses towards reasoned out and out, rather than to. One, to insinuate the difficulty of getting from reasonable guesses to reasoned out and out of knowledge. And secondly, to indicate that often the human mind fails to get to reasoned out and out of knowledge and reasonable guesses. A reasonable guess is as far as it gets in many cases. And, but third, huh, to indicate that this second road is not sufficient to get reasoned out and out. And the reason why I say that is that each reasoned out knowledge has its own matter, its own subject. And to some extent, then, the road you have to follow in each reasoned out of knowledge is appropriate to that matter, that subject. And that's going to be the third road, what you might call the private road of each reasoned out of knowledge, the road that is tied to that matter. So in logic, when we study dialectic, you're learning about making reasonable guesses and so on. But in the prior and posterior analytics, you're learning about the common road of reasoned out knowledge. We're going to see it concrete to here. We're going to see how we go from the reasonable guesses of these men to the beginning of reasoned out of knowledge when we go back to Aristotle. That's kind of striking, huh? Because when we go back to Aristotle, we'll start with the text of Aristotle where he logically divides up everything that these men have said. And then we'll see how he goes forward from that to find the starting points or reasoned out of knowledge of things. So this is what we have in mind on these two senses, huh? Okay, now, the first thinker here is Thales. He's considered to be the first natural philosopher. In fact, the first philosopher. And in some ways, the beginning of natural science, too. So since Thales is at the very beginning here, we have to answer the four W's, right? Okay? You can ask, where did philosophy begin? When did it begin? Who began it? And none of these questions are of any importance compared to the last question. Why? Okay? Thales, huh? Thales is the beginning of philosophy. But now, let's ask where and when, just so we can get a little bit of perspective here. Greek philosophy doesn't begin in what we call Greece today. The Greek tribes came down and they conquered what we call Greece today. They settled down and they intermarried with the local people. And Greece was a, what? They multiplied and so on. Greece is a poor land, huh? And so they colonized to the, what? East and the West. They colonized on the coast of Asia Minor, what today we call the Turkey now, the Eastern Mediterranean. And they colonized in Sicily and in, what? Southern Italy. So there are Greek colonial cities, which later on became independent cities, in, on the coast of Asia Minor, in ancient times, and in Sicily and southern Italy. And the first philosophers are in these cities. And the first philosophers are in these cities. And the first philosophers are in these cities. And the first philosophers are in these cities. And the first philosophers are in these cities. First, the cities on the coast of Asia Minor, and then later on in Sicily and southern Italy. It's not so much better to associate philosophy with Athens. And I say, he's one of the late thinkers we'll meet here. He's supposed to have brought philosophy to Athens. And Plato talks a bit about this. In particular, the first three philosophers we'll meet, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes. They were all in the city on the coast of Asia Minor called Maletus. So sometimes they're called Maletus, but that just means they're citizens of the city of Maletus. Now I might mention that before the philosophers came the great poets, especially Homer. And we think Homer was also in that coast of Asia Minor, down from where Troy is. Now, when about did this begin? Well, with the fictitious sharpness of historical dates, to use the phrase, the world of the story, we could say, Chirka, 600 BC. Now you'll see in some of these books, you don't like to give dates to these guys, but nobody knows what dates are. But the only real important date that we have in David's life is that he predicted an eclipse of the sun would take place in the year 585 BC. And he was admired around Greece for having predicted this. Nobody knows what I did. They predicted there would be an eclipse of the sun this year. So you could say, if he could predict an eclipse of the sun near 585 BC, we could say, around 600 BC, his mind must have been somewhat active, huh? So if you want a nice, you know, good round number to remember, with the fictitious sharpness of these historical divisions, around 600 BC, okay? Now, to put that in a little bit of perspective, the death of Socrates, the trial of Socrates, The Apology of Socrates is perhaps the most famous work in philosophy. In Introductions to Philosophy on the Country, that's the most commonly read work, The Apology, Socrates' defense in the court. Well, the death of Socrates is 399 BC. Socrates' death. So, roughly speaking, you could say there's 200 years of Greek philosophy before the death of, what, Socrates, huh? Now, Plato dies in, what, 347 BC. Aristotle dies in, what, 322 BC. So, 322 BC. Alexander the Great, the pupil of Aristotle, died in, what, 323 BC, the year before. I let Aristotle to be afterwards, because there's going to be a reaction now. So, I think it's a little bit of historical orbit there. In this period of Greek philosophy from 600 BC to the death of Aristotle, this is sometimes called the Golden Age of Greek philosophy. There is philosophy in Greek and later on other languages afterwards, but this is known as the Golden Age of Greek philosophy. It begins with Thales and comes from the end with the death of Aristotle in 322 BC. Okay? Now, not this stuff is important, really, but the question why is important. I think I've given you the answer to that before with Plato and Aristotle. Both Plato and Aristotle say exactly the same thing of how it all began. It began because of, what, wonder, in one word, huh? Wonder was the beginning of philosophy. And wonder, if you recall, is this natural desire to know what and why, as Plato teaches us, or this natural desire to know the cause. So, I think it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know what and why it's a natural desire to know because the cause answers the question of what and why. And you can see that, you'll see that in all of these philosophers, they're looking for causes, and indeed for the first cause of things. And as far as they knew, the only things that were, in the beginning, would be sensible things around us. And they could see that the artificial things depended upon the natural things. So looking for the first cause of natural things, or looking for the first cause of what? All things, huh? It's not until the end they realize that there are things besides, these material things, huh? And then they realize that Plato and Aristotle, that wisdom is metta-tafusika, after the books of natural philosophy, but until that, natural philosophy would be wisdom, huh? So you'll see in their words how they're looking for causes, huh? We also have a fragment from Democritus expressing that one, and I gave that to you earlier tonight. I would rather discover one cause than be master of the kingdom of the Persians. And as I explained, the kingdom of the Persians would be the greatest kingdom known to be Greeks. So if I was master of the kingdom of the Persians, I would be the most powerful man in the world, apparently. I'd be the richest man in the world, huh? I read that the Persian kings had a thousand chefs to prepare an excellent dinner every night. It was an excellent dinner. A haram, right? The haram of the kingdom of Egypt, huh? So everything that most men want, you know, you'd be worshiped by the God, huh? Oh, so everything men want, power, wealth, honor, right, huh? Pleasure of the table, of the bed, and so on. All of these things the master of the kingdom of the Persians would have for abundance, right? And Democritus, huh, that fool, huh? I'd rather discover one cause than be master of the Persians, huh? That intense desire to know the cause, I mean, for it's yours, I can know the first cause of the future. So that's what's important now, that begin and wonder, huh? So let's look now at the first thinker, Thales, huh? Now, Thales, I might mention, was acted not only in natural philosophy, but in geometry. And they attribute to Thales the rigorous proof that the angle inscribed in the semicircle is always the right angle. You may have run across that theorem. And he's supposed to have manifested to you, and the diameter really does bisect the circle, which Euclid just takes for kind of granted, huh? But he manifests that in a way like Euclid manifests the fourth theorem, huh? Just flip this, the, what, one side over the other one, and if it doesn't coincide, then they really aren't all equal. So it contradicts the definition of the circle. So Thales, and we think others, these men too, they were geometers as well as, what, natural philosophers. And Thales was also something of a political philosopher. He is said to have proposed a, from the city of Miletus and the other cities on the coast of Asia Minor, a federal form of government. And the reason for this federal form of government would be to be able to withstand the Persian Empire. But they didn't follow the advice of the wise man. And so the Persian Empire picked them off one by one. And they weren't stopped until they got to Athens, huh, and Sparta, huh? Okay. And that's the end of the first period of world history, huh? Again, the second period of world history. And the Greeks stopped the Persians. But we're concerned now with Thales as a natural philosopher, not as a geometer or a political philosopher in this particular course, huh? And the Thales attributed this statement, this marvelous statement, as Heisenberg calls it, that water is the beginning of all things. Now, since this is the first statement, I think it's good to approach it following what we learned from Aristotle, going from the general to the, what, particular, huh? Now, let's start with the most general here. Is it reasonable to look for... the beginning of all things. I ask in the form of a questionnaire, is it reasonable to look for the beginning? Is there a reason for doing so, or is reason naturally inclined to do so, or maybe both in some cases, right? What would you say? Is it reasonable to look for the beginning? Yeah. In what sense is it reasonable now? To know the causes. Yeah, yeah. Is it reasonable in the sense that there's a reason to do so, or is reason naturally inclined to it, or both of these, or neither of these? We're naturally inclined to wonder. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Reason naturally tries to understand things, and it naturally looks for the beginning when it tries to understand things. And it's I'll take the simple examples there in Shakespeare's play, you know. Who started this, right, with the fighting woman Juliet? But if you're in charge of some young people, and there's a squabble, you know, you've got to adjust it in the matter. And you say, now, okay, now, what happened? Well, he hit me, you know. But he called me a such and such. Yeah, but he... And you keep on trying to, what? Work your way back to how did this all begin. It's like the Duke comes on the scene there, where Romeo and Mercutio are the people who've been some murderers and things, right? And how did this begin, right? And Ben Willey is trying to explain how it began. It didn't begin with... Romeo would begin with what? Tybalt drawing his sword, and Mercutio was starting to fight, and then Romeo came in to try to stop that, and then when he tried to stop it, Tybalt, you know, stuck the blade in Mercutio, right? And then Romeo got upset that he attacked Tybalt and killed him, huh? So it didn't start with Romeo, it started with Tybalt, the fiery Tybalt, the one that, you know, gets Romeo at the house of the Montagues there, I mean the Capulets, where he was visiting. So, if you wanted to understand a man, you can write a biography of a man, what do you do? You can actually go back to his origin and trace him from there, huh? If you wanted to understand the United States of America and why we speak English here, why I think Quebec can speak French and so on, and all those other differences, you can go back to the origin of the United States and follow it up, huh? So Aristotle in politics says, the man who follows things in their beginning will get the best understanding of it. So reason in seeking to understand things naturally looks for their, what, beginning, huh? In that respect, what he's doing is reasonable, huh? Now, the more particular, is it reasonable to look for one beginning? Is it reasonable to look for one? See, the first sense of beginning is a thing, but now we're getting more particular. Is it reasonable to look for one beginning? Reasonable now in the sense that you have a reason to think there's one beginning, or that reason is naturally inclined to look for one beginning? Well, you might have had a reason, but it's, after answering that first question, now it seems, beginning, well, you don't have multiple beginnings coming and joining up with that. It might be very hard to give a good reason to say there's only one beginning for all things, given the multiplicity of things in the world and so on, huh? Let's say you can't give a reason, right? And eventually I think we do give a reason, huh? But to think in the very beginning here that they had so much, a reason to say there's got to be one beginning rather than many. And after all, you have a father and a mother, right? You have two beginnings, right? Not one, huh? So what would make a man think that there's got to be just one beginning? ...beginning, I hope. Would it be more the inclination of reason, or a reason you had, do you think? It's the inclination. I think so, yeah. Yeah. Let's say you can't do a reason, right? I think it would be very difficult in the beginning to figure out a reason why it has to be one. But I say, leave it apart from that, huh? In the absence of a reason to say there's one beginning, and in the absence of a reason to say there's many, and in the absence of either one, would our mind more inclined to one or many? Yeah. Yeah. Now, I'll give you a sign of that, huh? From something more known. We know that the reason when it tries to understand something, it naturally looks for order in those things, huh? That's tied up with the idea at the beginning, too, huh? There's an order there, huh? Now, is order based more upon something one or upon many things? You know, order is defined by before and after, so just go back, starting with the first meaning of before. I think that the order would be hierarchical. Yeah, yeah. If you're talking about an army or something, right? Yeah. Okay. An army, everything's got to come back to one man, huh? The commander-in-chief. If you take the executive branch of the United States government, all these department heads, but they all come under, what? The president, right? Goes back to one man, huh? If you take the very first meaning of order, which is before in time, when we order these events, like we're ordering the birth of, I mean, the death of Aristotle and Socrates and leading them to when Thales was active and so on, right? All those numbers that are putting these events or these people in some kind of order, chromatical order, is based on one or many events. We have many events, but are they being ordered by many events or by one event? No, by one event. Yeah, yeah. And we take the birth of Christ, huh? And we order all other events before or after that. Now, if I ordered some events by the birth of Christ and some by the birth of myself and some by the birth of Mozart and so on, we have chaos, huh? You see? We have to refer them all back to one event in order to order them all. And even the Mohammedans there, right, they take the Hegira, the fight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, right, and they order events by that one event, huh? So it's not because we're Christians that we order them by one event. Reason naturally has to take one event and order other ones, what, before or after that one event. And then you can compare them all. But just as if you had two supreme heads of government in a country, like you might have in Afghanistan before long, you're going to have a kind of a chaos in that country, huh? And like we'd get chaos if we had, what, we didn't refer all events back to one event, huh? Do you see that? So order is based upon something one. So if reason naturally looks for order, it naturally looks for unity, huh? And you'll see that in the scientists, huh? That same tendency to look for some kind of unity, huh? As Max Boren says, huh, the great physicist in the 20th century, the genuine physicist believes obstinately in the unity and simplicity of nature, despite any appearance of the contrary. It's that natural inclination, right? Looking for unity and simplicity. Sometimes I go to another step. Maybe I'll stick that one in for you people here. Is it reasonable if you're looking for one beginning for all things? Would you look for something simple or something that is composed? Simple. Yeah. Because if it's composed, then it's what? There's many beginnings. Yeah, there's something before it, right? Okay. So, you might say that, um, I'm asking more of a question, and you can turn these apprehensions into the statement, right? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Is it reasonable to look for one simple beginning of all things? Now, you'll see that the first thinkers, like Thales, are looking for one simple beginning of all things in the sense of one matter, right? Out of which all things are made, huh? Okay? Now, I often contrast the beginning of Greek philosophy at the beginning of the Bible, right? So you pick up the Bible, and the first sentence is, In the beginning, God made heaven and earth, huh? So the Bible begins talking about one maker, huh? We find out later on it's all getting simple. Okay? But Greek philosophy begins looking for one simple matter out of which all things are made, huh? Okay? Now, I contrast those two, right? There's a difference there, huh? And the way they begin. But then I ask this question, Is it reasonable, huh, to look for one simple matter out of which these natural things are made before you look for a mover? To look for one simple matter before looking for a maker or mover? What would you say? Yes. Now, again, I'm asking, why do you say it? Is it reasonable to look for one matter before one maker? Why is it reasonable that they look for one matter before they look for a maker? Later on they will talk about the mover maker. I'm not saying it's reasonable to stop with the one matter or with matter in general, but why is it reasonable to begin by looking for one matter in which things are made rather than the way the Bible begins with one maker? Is that natural or other senses? Yeah, yeah. Isn't it more known that these things depend upon the matter in which they're made than they depend upon a maker? See, if you come into this room and you see the wooden chair over there, right? You don't see the maker at all of the chair, right? Well, if you examine the chair, you see it's made out of wood and so on. And if you took the wood out of the chair, there wasn't any chair left, right? So it's more known to us that the chair depends upon wood than it depends upon the carpenter, right? The same way if you come into class and you see this word on the board, right? Which is more indeniable that it depends upon the letters C, A, and T or it depends upon some writer? Well, I don't see any writer. For I know that word cat might have always been there, right? But even if the word cat is always on the board, it would always depend upon what? C, A, and T. Now, somebody said it doesn't depend upon C, A, and T. Let's take C away then. Let's take A away. Let's take T away. But it's very obvious that it depends upon C, A, and T. There's nothing left, huh? You see? So it's more undeniable that it depends upon C, A, and T than it depends upon writer. You see that? Even if you suppose it's always there, you know. Don't wrote it ever. It would still depend upon C, A, and T. So in terms of what is more known to us, we start with our senses, huh? It's more known to us that these things depend upon the matter in which they are made than they depend upon a, what? Maker, huh? And we ought to start with what is more known to us. That's the basic rule, right? Now, going back to the Bible, huh? The Bible is the word of God, huh? And he's the maker. So he can begin by talking about the maker, right? But philosophy is not the word of God. It's the word of man, right? Thinking about what he can sense and so on, huh? So it's reasonable that the philosophy... Looked first for one matter, right? Because it's more known to them that things depend upon that, huh? Now, I just would like to stop and dwell upon this a little bit more, some interesting things. Before the philosophers, you had, in a sense, an anticipation of them a bit in the poets. And that's why I say, you know, fictitious sharpness, or philosophy, and it's time to see what they do. So, okay, you want to figure out a date? That's as good as one as any, huh? But there are a few, actually, again, that kind of history, right? Now, the poets would talk about not water, but about Mother, what? Mother Earth, huh? Okay? And Mother Earth is interesting to think about. Shakespeare talks about Mother Earth like a good poet. He has, in Timon of Athens, huh? When Timon is digging in the ground, and he's looking for roots and so on, and he dresses the earth, and he says, Common Mother Thou, whose womb immeasurable, and infinite breast, teems, huh? And feeds all. So he's speaking there, Mother Earth is the beginning of all things, huh? Now, it's interesting, huh, that in Latin, the word for matter, materia, comes from the word mater, huh? So if you look even in Gisela's, you know, small dictionary, they will refer you to get the word materia back to mater, mother, huh? Because the mother is like the matter out of which the child is made, huh? Okay? So it's very interesting that the poet should have thought of Mother Earth before Thaddeus thought of water, huh? But Mother Earth is more like a mother, huh? I'm going to develop that, that little bit of significance to that. What's interesting, in English, huh, what is the English word, the native English word for cause? Ground, yeah, yeah. And ground is very similar to Earth, right? It's interesting that the English word for cause is taken from Mother Earth, huh? Which is kind of where matter is taken from, it says too, right? It was like a mother, huh? So it's very significant, huh? And I think I mentioned before, maybe, how Shakespeare, who's the master of English language, he puns, says he can't avoid doing, and this piece of weakness there. He puns on the meaning of ground, huh? So like in Romeo and Juliet, at the end there, when the night guard comes upon the scene there, and here's Juliet, who's supposed to have been dead, freshly dying or freshly bleeding there on the ground, huh? And Romeo, who's in exile, is lying dead on the ground, and the county Paris who's supposed to have married her is lying dead on the ground, right? What the heck is going on, huh? And the night guard says, we see the ground where on these woes do lie, but the true ground of all this we cannot without further circumstance decry, huh? So he sees the ground, I mean, Mother Earth, the lie of which the bodies lie, but the true ground of the cause of all this havoc, and what the heck is going on here, you know? You see, in other words, he puns upon those two meanings of ground, huh? But it's kind of interesting, and the very English word for cause is tied up with the ground, with Mother Earth, and definitely tied up with the cause called, what, matter, huh? Okay? Another thing that's interesting about that, too, is that the oldest jokes, kind of in the book, are about mother and father, and you see it in Homer, huh? He's talking about this, and Athena comes down in the Odyssey to the son of Odysseus, and she says, are you the son of Odysseus? He says, my mother always said I was. And that's a standard joke, huh? And you find it all the way down in the other great poet, Shakespeare. It's a wise son that knows his own father, and so on, but like the son of Odysseus says, well, but son we never know,