Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 25: Anaxagoras, Mind as Mover, and the Common Ground of Change

Transcript
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That's kind of good for them to see, you know, that the human reason can, to some extent, know God without faith, right? Okay, we're all set to go away. Yeah, well, I guess you might be having to work on something. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, pray for us. And help us to understand all that you have written. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Before taking up these readings from Aristotle, just a few more words about Anaxagoras and the greater mind and his position on that. One thing that one might want to consider is, which is a better guess as to the mover? For love and hate in Empedocles, or the greater mind in what? Anaxagoras, huh? Well, notice, love and hate, hate is what separates things, huh? And love brings them together, huh? Now, which is the better separator, hate or the mind? Which separates things more? Yeah, yeah. And so I always say to the students, you know, is it hate that split the atom? Right? Now, it's the mind that figures out how to separate things, huh? You might hate dirt on your clothes, but the mind figures out how to dry clean something, or how to separate the dirt from the material, right? And of course, when you get into logic, and you talk about definition and division, distinction, you see the mind is always separating things. When you get to mathematics, you know, the mind separates sphere and cube from matter and so on. So it separates much more than the mind, than hate does. So you might say that mind is a better guess as a separator than hate, huh? Okay. Now, as far as bringing things together, one might argue that love unites things more than hate, than mind does. But if you take Empedocry's own position, that earth, air, fire, and water come together in different ratios to form flesh and blood and bones, which is more a cause of ratio, mind or love? Well, of course, the word ratio indicates it has a connection with ratio, huh? So in Latin, the word ratio and the word ratio is the same word, huh? Because it's reason that knows ratios. It's reason that knows the order of the relation of one thing to another. And in Greek, you know, the Greek word for ratio is logos, huh? The same, again, as the word for what? Reason, huh? Okay? So it kind of shows that, at least as far as bringing things together in some kind of ratio, and a fortiori in some kind of order, this would be more, what? Reason would, right? And I always take the example there, too, of the guy making a Manhattan, huh? Is it the love of Manhattans that enables him to combine them in a ratio of two to one? No. Some people like Manhattans, but they don't make them. They make them already made up, you know, huh? Those bottles you buy already made up. And it's very simple to make Manhattan, really. But the guy doesn't have to love Manhattans to make them, right? All he has to know is what the ratio is, huh? And, you know, these little bookists they have on how to make drinks? They call it mixology. But no, it's logos, right? Logos, huh? So, as far as bringing things together in ratio and in order, mind would be a better cause than love, huh? Although love does unite things more than the mind, right? But there may be an element of truth in both, huh? In this respect that, as Socrates and Plato and Aristotle all emphasize very much, there is the same knowledge of opposites. And the same knowledge enables you to do opposites, huh? So, for example, if the cook knows how much to cook the meat, he knows what is too much to cook it to, doesn't he? If the doctor knows what normal blood pressure is, he also knows what abnormal blood pressure is. If the moral philosopher knows what virtue is, he also knows what vice is, huh? And if the magician knows how to reason correctly, he knows how to reason incorrectly. And if I know grammar, by grammar I can speak correctly, or I can say, I use you, professor, and you are my students, and so on. And so it's the same knowledge of opposites, huh? That's why Socrates at the end of the symposium is saying to the comic and the tragic poet Aristophanes and Agathon that if you knew what you were doing, you could write both tragedy and comedy. It's the same knowledge of opposites, huh? So, that's why in the ninth book of wisdom, Aristotle points out that reason or art, since it's capable of doing contrary things, because it knows opposites, it needs the, what, desire or the will to determine that it does one rather than the, what, other, right? So, the fact that the doctor has a medical art, does that mean he's going to cure you and make you well? Well, that's the purpose of the art, but the art also enables him to, what, to kill you, right? And sometimes doctors have used their art, you know, to kill people, like they do an abortion and so on. So, the good use of the medical art depends upon what? The will, right? So, the mind without the will, where love is in, right, is not sufficient to explain, even God's making, right? Because if you just consider the knowledge, well, my knowledge of logic, for example, would enable me to deceive you as well as to teach you, right? See? So, unless my will is good, and I desire to teach you, I will misuse the art of logic, right, to deceive you. You see that? So, although there's no hate in God, there is love, there is will in God, huh? And there has to be, right? So, the whole truth is not that God is a mind, but he is a mind with, what, will, right? But nevertheless, it seems, if you just look at what they're attributing to the two, that the mind can separate things better than hate, and the mind can bring things together better than love, at least it can bring them together in a certain ratio or in a certain order, huh? And so you're doing what Empedocles takes two clauses to do, with just one clause, and that's better, right? Well, fewer clauses are better if they are enough, huh? The principle of fewness or simplicity, fewness in truth, as Shakespeare said. But as Einstein says, that's the underlying principle of all natural philosophy and natural science from the Greeks all through his own work, huh? Now, a second thing that's interesting about Antioch's greater mind, and the question that arises for us as theologians, as Christians, is this greater mind that he has arrived at, what mind is that? Is that the human mind, or the angelic mind, or the divine mind? Well, it's obviously not the human mind, right, that he's talking about there. Well, which is it? The angelic mind or the divine mind that he's arrived at? The angelic mind could be the more immediate of the human nature. And the reason why we say that is that the divine mind is responsible for the existence of matter. But the greater mind of Anxagoras is not responsible for the existence of matter, is it? But it moves matter by change of place, and that's what the angels can do, see? The angels can move matter in place, but they cannot... create matter, huh? Okay. So he's arrived then at a mind that is independent of matter, as he points out, and there are reasons too, right? A mind that can act upon matter by locomotion, but not a mind that is responsible for the very existence of matter. As far as we can see from the fragments that we have of Annex Agnes, matter and mind are, what, two independent realities. Mind might be superior so far as it acts upon matter and orders it, right? But it's not really, what, responsible for the very existence of matter. You see that? Okay. And you have a somewhat similar position there in the tomatoes of Plato, where the demi-ergos, the greater mind, if you wish, is trying to order matter, which is left to itself kind of chaotic, but he doesn't attribute to the demi-ergos the creation of matter. Okay. So he's arrived at more of the angelic mind than the divine mind, huh? Although he might, you know, think of it as divine, because that's obviously something in which he knows nothing greater, really, huh? Now, the third thing is, apropos of this, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, they make an interesting division of all thinkers. And that division they give is into two. He says, there are those who say that matter is the beginning of all things, even of the mind, huh? And then there are those who say that the mind, or thought, is the beginning of all things, huh? Now, the early Greek philosophers, huh, speak that some kind of matter is the beginning of all things, huh? And even think of the mind as something kind of material, right? And many of the modern scientists think this way, that matter is the beginning of all things. And of course, the Marxists think this too, as Comrade Lennon says, mind is the highest product of matter, he says. Okay? But that's one position, right? That the matter is the beginning of all things, even of mind, right? And they say then the other group of thinkers, whom they call idealists, you know, because of Hegel and so on. They think that mind or thought is the beginning of all things, even of what? Matter, right? So Hegel in his kind of crazy system there, he starts off with his so-called logic, right? And then all of a sudden, boom, he gets matter, I'll get to the mouth, rather. He took clear away, right? But he'd be classified in the second group, right? And I suppose St. John, in the beginning of his Gospel, right? His beginning was the word, meaning the thought. The thought was before God, the thought was God, and all things are made through the Logos, right? Well, that would be the position that mind or thought is beginning of all things, even of matter, right? That's very interesting division, right? Okay? But the question I ask students is, from a logical point of view, is this a good division, right? Does it exhaust all the, what? Possibilities, right? See? And then I say, well, where would you put Anaxagra, right? Because, in a sense, he's a dualist there, he's got matter and mind, the greater mind, anyway, one independent of the other, as far as their existence is concerned, even though the greater mind might be superior in, since he can act upon matter and so on, no? In that face or so. So he's leaving out the middle position, isn't he? And he had that same middle position somewhat in the tomatoes, huh? And I think there's something diabolical in leaving out the middle position, and that is that reason, starting with the senses, naturally thinks of matter as the beginning of things first, huh? Yeah. And I think it's impossible by reason alone to go from that first position to the position that there's a mind, not only independent of matter, but responsible if this is a matter, right? You have to see, before you got to that point, that mind is something immaterial that's not dependent upon matter, right? And only after you recognize that mind is something immaterial and not dependent upon matter, would you ever, you know, go further and find out, is there a mind that only is independent of matter, but even responsible if this is a matter, right? Yeah. You see? So in a sense, to eliminate that middle position is to eliminate the bridge from one side of the river to the other, right? Yeah. And there's no way, it's just too large a jump for mind, so that if you forget about the middle position, whether intentionally or not, I'm sure it's intentional with the devil, but whether Marx and Engels know what they're doing, but then you make impossible, for a reason, right, to go from the first position to what, in fact, is the truth. Now, Thomas Aquinas thinks that Aristotle's arrived at the idea of creation, you know? So it's not, you know, it's spelled out, as some people might like it to be spelled out, right? But there's evidence that Aristotle's arrived at that, but maybe not Plato, right? But that's after Anaxagoras and after Plato and so on, it seemed that mind is something understanding, mind in the sense of the ability to understand the universal, right? And that's something independent of matter, not something material. So you have to see it, first of all, in the case of your own understanding, and then open the door to the angels, and then eventually to God, right? So I remember De Connick saying one time in passing, it's easier to know the existence of angels than of God, and he never unfolded what he meant by that, or why he meant that, but in thinking about this, and it said, right, you can kind of see, right? There's some reason for saying that. Okay? Yeah. So I've heard people say, even Catholics, that you can't prove the existence of angels, that's just a matter of faith. Yeah, yeah. Actually come to it first, see? Yeah. Yeah. I was in class one time, and there was a, actually an assumptionist seminarian at the time, you know, and these people are really confused about angels, right? But just one day in class, you know, I must have made some allusion to angels in the class where it was, and he kind of kind of goes like, you know, do angels really exist? He says, you know, something like that. Yeah. And every time I said, they're more real than you are. Yeah. They are, they're much more actual, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because Eric there used to say, you know, when you call it your guardian angel after death, you know, you're going to say, oh, this is God, you know, and this would be something, I mean, what would be greater than this, you know? And your guardian is like, no, no, I'm not God. I'm not God. I'm not God. The angel wouldn't have any hair to tear out, but he'd be like, no, no, but he used to, you know, shock when I was, you know, about to worship him as my God. But there's something, right? You know, if you take all the human minds that have ever been, you know, except Christ's sake, you see, and roll it into one mind, you know, you want to have the equal of an angel. So I like my, like I said, he used to say, the angel watching you make a decision like you're watching an angle or decide where to go. Very much awareness of the situation. So let's come back now to the readings. You had the readings from Aristotle here. And I think we looked already at reading two, right? Did we? Aristotle makes a division, kind of a logical division of those who said that there was, or what his predecessor said, huh? Some said there was one matter, some said there was many. That's a disagreement, isn't it? Those who said there was one thing, some said it was mobile, some said it was immobile. They can't agree, right? Those who said it was immobile, like Hermenides and Molysis, one had it finite and the other had it infinite. They couldn't agree. Those who said it was one but mobile, one guy said water and the guy said air, the other guy said fire and so on. They couldn't agree, right? Those who said it was many, some made it infinite and some made it what? Finite, right? So they couldn't agree. And those who made it infinite, some made it all the same kind and some different kind. They couldn't agree, right? So you got all these boxes, positions, and one thinker in each box and no two thinkers having the same thought, right? And this is not an uncommon situation, human thinking, right? That everybody disagrees and as many thinkers, as many opinions they say, huh? You know, I forget the exact thing. So many philosophers, so many, you know, opinions, right? Okay? Now, let's stop in that situation, right? And we say, now, this is first of all a sign of the extreme weakness of the human mind, huh? Because maybe all of these men are mistaken, and it could possibly be more than one man who's right, because they're all opposed, right? Nobody has the same position, right? Okay? So, it shows, secondly, that to be mistaken is the usual state of the human mind. I think I mentioned how Aristotle, in the second book about the soul, when he's discussing the opinions of his predecessors, he said they tried to assign the cause for knowledge, huh? The man and the other animals, what was the cause of our knowing? But they didn't assign the cause of our being sieved and mistaken. And he says, if you're going to talk about what takes place in man and other animals, you ought to talk about that, because that's more common. So, now this can have the effect of obviously discouraging somebody, right? And it can actually, what, people can fall into a kind of despair about the human mind, huh? And think that it's unable to know the what truth, right? Well, I can probably assume that most of our opinions are wrong. Something like that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And one time I took my sabbatical and I used it just to talk about error, right? You know, I used to investigate the cause of error. And I compare myself to this one guy who got a medical degree, they went to psychiatry, right? And they study all these mental ailments, right? And they come back among us normal people. And they think, you know, just about everybody out there is about ready to go off. You know, that's the impression they have, right? You know, they're so sensitive, right, to all these, you know, mental schizophrenia or whatever it might be, that they see everybody, you know, just kind of, you know, tottering, you know? Well, I wasn't in that position exactly, but I mean, when you see how many causes and how many ways men can make a mistake, huh? You know, then you're kind of almost, you know, thinking we're going to get a very fragile mental world, huh? So I think we mentioned last time how many people, what, despair, right? And that goes against our, what, natural desire to know, huh? But nevertheless, many people have gone to the point of despairing and either giving up, therefore, altogether the life of the mind, right? Or just playing games, as we say, for the rest of their so-called academic career, huh? Like the thinkers at Columbia, whom Whitaker Chambers, right, when you went back there, said they regard ideas as, what, ping-pong balls. You know, Whitaker Chambers was a famous communist, right? You know, you heard about him. I don't know if you ever read his book, Witness, very interesting book, huh? Witness. He's the one guy who put the non-algae hits, huh? And very interesting, really, he learned it to his children at the beginning of the Witness, huh? But I guess when he finished his education at Columbia, he saw there's only two alternatives. One was to commit suicide, and the other was to become a communist. His brother committed suicide, he became a communist, okay? But you get to think he got very serious about things, right? I mean, and then he came back, you know, to convince his friends to join the communist party, and he realized they weren't serious about ideas, but they treated ideas like ping-pong balls, right? So, but whether you despair and simply give up and don't pursue the academic life anymore, or you just play with ideas for the rest of your life, but don't take them too seriously. In any case, this goes against our natural desire to know, huh? And so it's not enough for the philosopher to have a desire to know the truth, to some extent that's natural to all of us, but he has to have that hope of, what, overcoming the difficulties, right? He has to have that perseverance in the pursuit of truth. And that's why, as I was mentioning in the Phaedo, right, Socrates leads them out of their discouragement, their kind of despair, and gives them enough encouragement to go on, right? Now, the second reaction is the one that we find in Descartes, where Descartes, as I said, he first fell into a kind of despair, if you read his biographical sketch in The Discourse on Method, and it's because of all the disagreement among those he read, huh? But then his desire to know was not crushed, and revived, you might say. He says, well, if they can't agree, they must not have found the truth. If they had found the truth, they would have agreed. So, let's set them aside, and I'll do it myself, right? Okay? Now, is there something wrong about that, huh? Well, that's not opposed, really, to the desire to know, or the hope of knowing the truth, but maybe it's opposed to something else you need, and that is the, what? Humility. Yeah? And the fear of, what? Being wrong yourself. Yeah, and make another mistake, huh? And that you might just do nothing other than add another opinion to an already overlong list, huh? You see? In other words, there's a kind of audacity or boldness there, huh? Which precedes from a lack of that fear that Socrates is talking about. I think I mentioned how Warren Murray said, Monsignor Dion's principle of passion is fear. And so he came up with no idea. His first reaction was to reject it, right? And you'd have to really, you know? But it's kind of good in that respect, right? He couldn't pull anything over on the man, really. And I mentioned how in the Phaedo, then, after Socrates revised them and they take up the objections of Simius and Sibes, he disposes of Simius fairly quickly, right? Bang, bang, bang. Three arguments. Three strikes, you're out. And then they start to get kind of, what? Bold, right, huh? Okay. I think I mentioned that same thing in the history of quantum theory. You know, it's very hard to try to understand these things. And Heisenberg describes how he'd go through these long conversations with Warren and they're trying to understand quantum phenomena and they'd end almost in despair. He'd go out for a walk in the park. How can nature be as absurd as it seems to us in these experiments, huh? And then all of a sudden they had a, what? A breakthrough, right, huh? And Heisenberg came through with his solution to the problem, right? And then all of the things started to fall into place, right? And then they thought they were going to go in and, what, clear up biology now on the basis of quantum physics and so on. They're getting kind of bold, right? So our mind tends to go sometimes from a kind of despair to a kind of, what? Boldness, huh? You know? And it may be even the same thinker sometimes. Other times it's in one thinker and then another thinker. You go from Kant to Hegel, you have to cut that out. Because Kant, you can't know things in themselves at all. And Hegel, you know, is going to know everything, right? Everything's opened up to the Hegelian mind. And so what you need in the life of the mind, then, is hope and fear. The hope of knowing the truth, the hope of overcoming the difficulties, which are very great in knowing the truth, but the fear of being mistaken or of making a mistake. And, of course, it's hard to have a good balance of those two, but if you have a master like, like Socrates, right, maybe he can encourage you when you need to be encouraged, right? And, whoa, it's causing you when you need to be slowed down, huh? And I can mention that, you know, with Dion one time, did I mention that one time? This time, isn't that? Karsaryk with Dion one time, where Karsaryk was in class, right? And Dion had given the class, and then Karsaryk had some questions about these things. He went in the office to see Dion after class, and Dion talked much differently in the office, right? Yeah, uh-huh. And Karsaryk just kind of puzzled, and he said, why did you speak the other way in class? Well, he says, it's a duty of the teacher to encourage a student. But here, he had a student who was not in need of being encouraged, a student to in need of, but, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I told you to tell him about my outline for my doctoral thesis, and he suggested the change, and I, oh, yeah, it's not good the way it is. Where's the evidence? You're like, and the phrase, you're like, shocked that I agreed with it so quickly, you know, like, you know, but I mean, I said, obviously, once he had said it, you know, that this was it, you know, and, uh, where have the evidence here? Yeah, it's kind of funny, I would say. But, uh, um, but as I mentioned, huh, in other life, this is important, huh? I think in the life of the Christian, for example, it's another hope and another fear, but you need the hope of the divine mercy, otherwise you would despair of your own salvation. But you need the fear of the divine justice, otherwise you become presumptuous, right? And, uh, Thomas, I think it's, it may be Psalm 32, but I'm not sure. In the commentary on the Psalms there, you know, hope and fear are mentioned in the same Psalm, huh? And that's where Thomas, you know, there's the occasion where Thomas to illuminate that, right? He says, hope without, what, fear becomes presumptuous, it sounds proud, and fear, he says, without hope would lead to, what, despair. And so, um, but again, there's a need of a master there, like, like a confessor, right, huh, who knows when, when the penitent needs to be encouraged, right? And, uh, I always take the example there, you know, when we had an abortion, right? I mean, when she finally realized what she's done, this could lead to despair, it seems to me, you know? So she might be in need to be encouraged and to rely upon the divine mercy. But then, on the other hand, there's some people out there who need to be, uh, straightened out a bit, right? And, uh, and, uh, who hear nothing but, you know, God loves you the way you are, you know, you've got to be careful about that. That is the whole truth, you know? And, uh, you know, if you look warm, he's going to spit you out, right? He's kind of tough about some of those things, right? So, uh, and I was mentioning, you know, the, when you read, um, I read kind of the autobiography of St. Richard, you know? St. Richard the Grape. And then you read the autobiography of St. Margaret Mary Alcock, and, uh, with St. Richard, you get, you know, very much a sense of the sweetness of the Lord, and the mercy of the Lord, and so on, and by St. Margaret Mary Alcock, you get a sense of his severity, and it's kind of frightening, you know, but you kind of need a sense of the balance of these two, you see? And, uh, but again, if you had a spiritual director, you know, professor, then he can maybe to some extent balance these things, and he can see where you need to be, to, uh, rely on the divine mercy, and then where you need to be, be, uh, frightened a bit. Um, okay? But then, in other aspects of life, this is true, too. I was mentioning the politician, right? The politician didn't have hope of getting elected. He's not going to run a good campaign. But if he doesn't run a bit scared, he's going to run a bad campaign, too. And sometimes he needs more of one than the other, but, you know? The elder Bush might have lost the last election because he thought he was kind of a shoo-in after the great success of the Gulf War, right? But then, you know, the other guy was making progress with, uh, you know, the economy being slow or something, right? You know? And he seemed to be kind of neglecting, you know, the economy and so on, and people, you know, eventually they're turning their attention to that, and all of a sudden you've got this bad situation where you've got this incapable of like that. It's only bad. Now, is there another way of going forward, is there a way of going forward that doesn't have that presumption of Descartes, that audacity of Descartes, okay, but still going forward and not despairing and giving up? Like the first group of people who were reacting to this and just saying, well, men can't know the truth, right? I mean, you know, who will always disagree and that sort of thing, right? And people can very easily get into that position of saying that, huh? I think I mentioned that there are two fragments, huh? One of, uh, the great Empedocles, and the other of the great Heraclitus, that suggests two possible ways out of this terrible dilemma. And Empedocles points out that men don't live very long, and they've seen a part of life, but they boast of having seen the whole one. So out of pride, they think that they understood the whole, and they understood the part, huh? And a lot of the disagreement among people arises because people, what, each of them seizes upon some part of the truth, and they insist upon this being the whole thing, right? And they can't see the element of truth in what the other person says. And, uh, and that's the commentator on the, uh, the pseudo-Thomas. There's a commentary attributed to Thomas, but nobody thinks it's by him now. But on, on the, uh, the, uh, constellation of philosophy, right? And brief is represented... Lady Wisdom is coming in kind of torn garments, right? And the symbolism of that is that in grabbing for Wisdom or Truth, people have what? Torn it and dismembered it, huh? So one way of going forward, not by yourself, but going forward to help with these who disagree, would be to try to gather the, what, points that are divided amongst them. And in order to do this, you have to, you know, compare them and let them clash to some extent, because the stronger points on each side will, what, emerge in that way and the weaker ones will go down. And I compared it to the Greek army, the Kayan army, and the Trojan army meeting, right? Where in the first clash of the two armies, it's the weak guys that go down, right? The guy who's opposite Hector, he goes down. The guy who's opposite Achilles, he's going down, and so on. But you could say, okay, now stop, let's gather up. The guys who remain and make one army that had both Hector and Achilles in it and Ajax and so on. That would be the invincible army, right? You see? So that's one way of going forward, right? Now the other way is suggested by some fragments, which I call sometimes the royal fragments, of Heraclitus. As a group of those, sometimes I begin with this fragment. It says, We should not act and speak like those asleep. When you first hear that fragment, does it seem on the surface something kind of reasonable? We should not act and speak like those asleep. Of course, you know many times St. Paul speaks of this or that person as being asleep, right? Now's the time to wake up. So in daily life, we often use something like that, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay. But now if you look at the statement, we should not act and speak like those asleep. Look at it in kind of a narrow way. What is the condition of those who are asleep? Well, first of all, they're cut off from their, what? Senses, right? Maybe that affects their thinking because they're cut off from their senses. So that would be a first very particular meaning to see in that particular phrase, huh? We should not act and speak like those without senses. Those who follow their, what? Imagination rather than the, what? Senses, huh? Of course, this, you know, can be applied even to daily situations. They say that when an accident takes place and there are witnesses to it, to get what the witnesses saw on paper as soon as possible because they'll have more agreement with what they saw than a month later if you have them write down what they saw. There'll be more disagreement. That seems to be a fact of life that they've discovered. What means a month later, your imagination is starting to, what? Things will take them out. Yeah, yeah. And you're falsifying, right? The thing, right? Okay. But then in a subsequent fragment, Heraclitus says, for the waking, he says, there is one world and it is common. But when they fall asleep, each one retires into his own, what? Private world, huh? It's contrasting the one common world that they have when they're awake with the many, what? Private worlds, huh? That they have when they fall asleep. And that one common world is the true world, isn't it? And the many private ones are all, what? False worlds, huh? Okay? So this is kind of hinting at the idea that the true is something one and common. But the false can be many and private, huh? So two plus two is what? Four, huh? And everybody who knows the truth will have one answer to what two plus two is. It'll be common to all those who know the truth about two plus two, right? If I want to imagine my own answer to it, well, I'll say five, and you can imagine yours, six, and you take seven, you take eight, right? The idea that falsehood is what? Many, right? And private. And truth is something one and common. That's what I get you there. And he goes on to another fragment. Therefore we ought to follow what is common, he says. But the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own. Now, sometimes he develops this idea of the common using just the word common. Other times he seems to touch upon something that is common, huh? Now there's a fragment that I use a lot to indicate what Ernst Allen and the Way is doing here, where Clive says, those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all. as much, he says, as the city is strong in its law. And then he says, and even more so, because the law of the city is fed by, what? One divine law that is more than sufficient for all. Okay? Now I think it's kind of interesting comparison between the life of the mind and the life of the city. The life of the city is not possible. I mean, you can't live the life of the city well without a common law that you're following. And I always take the example there of the common law here is to drive on the right side of the street. I wouldn't go out there with someone else following his own law on which side of the street he drives on, huh? Okay? But no, sometimes the law of the city is contradicted by the law of another city. And sometimes it's in different matters, you know, driving on the right or the left. Maybe with the Nazis, maybe there's something we think, you know, intrinsically wrong with our laws, right? But can we say the laws of Nazi Germany are bad because they don't agree with the laws of the United States of America? And that's to repeat the thing and say, well, your laws are not good because they don't agree with our laws. So the only way you can resolve that is to go back to something like a divine law or a natural law, right? And then we can judge, right, whether the laws of the United States or the laws of Nazi Germany are more in harmony with the, what, natural law. But that's even more common, huh? Likewise, then, we say in the life of the mind, if you and I disagree and I say you're wrong on the basis of what we disagree about and what we disagree about, and then you can just return the same observation, right? Or the same thing that says anything about me. we have to really go back to something we both have in common, huh? And then we can try to use that to decide between us where we disagree, huh? You see that? Okay? And so I mentioned how two scientists who have different hypotheses, they might try to think in an experiment where their two hypotheses would predict different consequences, right? An experiment they could both perform or both observe that would decide in between them, huh? But even when one man is teaching another man, huh? He's helping the other man to come to see something that the teacher knows that the student doesn't know, but he's helping the student to... come to know it through things the student knows already. And so the teacher has to know those things, right, himself. So if you follow Euclid logically, step by step, you come to a new theorem, right, it's going to lead you to something you didn't know before, but he makes use of things you know already, which he has to know himself, right, in order to lead you from them, right? So it's not really possible to have the life of the mind between the teacher and the student without some kind of common, what, basis, right, which the teacher uses to lead the student to something that the teacher sees as to it, doesn't yet see. Is that possible for us to have a conversation with more or less equals without going back to something common? Because we disagree, what do we do? Okay. Now Heraclitus sometimes will say, it is wise listening not to me, but to reason, right, to agree that all things are one, right? So he says, listen not to me, but to reason. And we say, what does that mean? To listen to reason. What reason is there besides your reason, my reason, and the next man's reason? What does it mean to listen to reason? What it means to listen to what is common to your reason, my reason, and the next man's reason. That's what it means. And that's what reason naturally knows, huh? And then we have another fragment of the great Heraclitus where he says, wisdom is to speak the truth and to act in accord with nature, giving ear thereto. What the natural is what is common, huh? So those are all connected, those fragments, huh? To listen to reason, to listen to nature, and to follow what is common, huh? They all fit together. With the truth, all things harmonize, as Aristotle says in the Necomachian Ethics. So we could go into those fragments more, but Aristotle, the other way you could proceed here, with the many, is to see, is there something which is common to all their thinking? And then become strong in that common element, huh? Okay? I think we got so far last time to say, what should you do first of those two? Should you try to gather the parts of truth that might be scattered amongst the many? Or should you try to see if there's something they all have in common despite the disagreement, and become strong in that? What should you do first? The second. Yeah. Now why the second before the first? The reason is the common is more known. Yeah, yeah. It's something that all men in some way see, right? That would tend to be something more known to us, huh? Right? But if there's a part of the truth that I see that other people don't see, and they see something I don't see, that would be something less, what, obvious, right, huh? So, going back to that inborn road, that natural road that we talked about in the beginning of the first spoken actual hearing, the first reading, that's inborn to go from what is more known to us, right, towards what is less known to us, to start with what is more known to us. And it makes sense to begin with what? Heraclitus, right? Okay? That's what Aristotle does now in reading 8 and reading what? 10, right? Okay? And 11. He's going to find a common basis among all of them, and then he's going to start to become what? Strong in that common basis, huh? Okay. Now before we start to look at how he does that, just look at the last paragraph in reading 2, huh? After he's divided up them logically, right? Okay? And he says, those seeking how many are the things that are, also sought in the same way. They sought from what first are the things that are, whether one or many, if many, limit or unlimited, and so on. So notice that the investigation of natural things and the investigation of the things that are was the same for the early Greeks, huh? Nobody's pointing out there, right? Okay? And you'll see that if you look at the fourth book of natural hearing, when Aristotle takes a place, and he quotes the common opinion of his predecessors, whatever exists must be somewhere. If it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist. But to be somewhere, to be in some place, is really a property of bodies, right? So identifying what is with bodies, huh? Okay? It's not really until Plato and Aristotle that what is, substance, basically, is not identified with bodies alone, but the only one kind of substance. The kind of substance that may be most known to us, but not the only kind of substance. That's why you can't begin with metaphysics, right? In the beginning, our mind is tied down here, right? Okay? Whatever it is, it must be somewhere. That's a common opinion even today, right? Okay. And we never think without imagining something, and so you think everything's a body. Okay? And even some Catholics, you know, they can't, you know, they kind of imagine God, they have a body, even though they're kind of told that he doesn't have a body, right? They just, you know, they can't rise above it, right? You see? Yeah. But if it's really someone who didn't have the faith at all and had no knowledge of God or the angels or the soul by faith, he would have a very hard time separating being from material being, huh? And sometimes, you know, when Thomas says being is the first thing understood by our mind, it's not the being of the wise man, huh? It's being considered in material things, as he says in one text, or as Kajetan says in his scholastic jargon, it's, ends concretum in quiditate sensibidae. But it's being concrete in a sensible, what? Nature, right? Whatever he is, it must be somewhere. Then somewhere it doesn't exist. Okay? So, you can't start with the most universal. You have to start here. Well, we are. Now, Aristotle doesn't, in one step, going from reading 2 to reading 10, he doesn't find a common basis among all of them in one step. But in reading 8, he finds a common basis among those who say there's many matters. And then he, what? In the 10th reading, we'll find a common basis among all of them, right? Okay? So, he's sitting aside, I mean, he's an alesis as not being natural philosophers, because they don't admit change or anything like that. He says, but as the natural philosophers speak, the ways are two. For those making one the underlying body, either one of the three, like water, or air, or fire, or something other denser than air, fire, but more rare than air, they generate other things by, what? Condensation and rarefaction, making many things. Now, this is made more clear to Aristotle than to us, because we don't have as much of the fragments, right? But if you have only one matter, like water, say, it needs to be one matter, what can you do with it? You can condense it, or spread it out. That's all you can do with it, right? Okay? And so when water turns into steam, it's what? Being rarefied, and when it gets, what? It denses back into water, right? Then it's becoming dense, right? That's why when you heat the water, it expands, right? Because it's the same matter, but spread out. Okay? And to music students, I sometimes add my opinion that beer is the beginning of all things, right? Okay? But even Burkus, he likes to play with his beer, and he pours it from up high, he gets a nice beer foam almost for an old glass, and that's what? Rarefied beer. And then as it starts to settle down with the yellow beer, it becomes dense, right? So even Burkus, with his crazy opinion, that beer is the beginning of all things, ...shares the idea of condensation or affection, right? So I share with the guy who says, why is the beginning of all things? The idea of condensed or rare, so... Now, we don't have to dwell too much on what Plato said there right now, but we'll come back to that later on. Now, in the second paragraph, he finds a common basis among people like Empedocles and Aixagris. To take the people that we had a lot of fragments from, and also Democritus and so on. And perhaps in Aixamanda, if you read, it was thinking of along these same lines. But let's take Empedocles and Aixagris so we have enough fragments from, right? Now, at first sight, when you look at the thinking of Empedocles and Aixagris, all you see is difference, right? Empedocles says, here are the four roots of all things, earth, air, fire, and water, right? So he has four elements, right? Aixagris, there's an infinity, infinitely small pieces of everything inside everything. Nothing in common to you. Quite different thinking, right? Now they come to the mover. Love and hate is greater mind. Nothing in common to you. Right? But now, as you think more about the fragments, in Empedocles, love mixes together earth, air, fire, and water, and hate segregates them, right? Sometimes they say separation, but segregate is a more accurate word because that implies there are different kinds of things that are being separated, right? Okay? Now, with Aixagris, everything is mixed together in the beginning, right? So nothing is clear, and then the greater mind begins to segregate them out. So what they have in common is mixture and what? Segregation, right? Although for Empedocles, there's a cycle of mixture and segregation, and for Aixagris, there's a kind of straight line motion from mixture to more and more segregation, but they never get completely segregated. Okay? Now, at this point, if one wanted to follow the advice of Empedocles, right? You see? No? Is mixture and segregation in the universe in a cycle? Or is it in a straight line? What would you say? Well, if you asked me, I'd say, on the basis of modern science anyway, there may be an element of truth in both, right? Because we're always recycling things down here, and nature's doing it apart from us, so there's truth in what Empedocles said, right? But since they saw that the universe was expanding, right? And maybe start with the Big Bang and they talk about it and so on, right? And they're not sure, but as far as they can see, there doesn't seem to be enough force to make the, what? Universe contract. So things are being, what? Segregated more and more and more and more and that'll go on. But they'll be in any, what? Micture anymore, right? So if you look at the universe as a whole and it's like, this is correct, you look at it in the smaller scale on the Earth here than Empedocles is, right? So there's an element of truth in both, right? But now we don't care about the element of truth in both, right? Now we're merely concerned with the fact, what do they have in common? They both make use of mixture and segregation. And apparently, that was in the fragments of Democritus, we don't, you know, in the works of Democritus, we don't have it explicitly, but the atoms, right, who get mixed together, right, and they get separated and knocked apart and so on, right? So they'd have mixture and what? Segregation, right? Okay. Now what does dense and rare, or use the abstract word condensation, rarefaction, and mixed and segregated, or use the abstract words mixture and segregation, what do they have in common? Well, that's the first sentence of the 10th reading, right? All make the beginnings contraries, huh? Okay. Now, no, if they all make the beginnings contraries, it's because they seem to share either the dense and the rare, or the mixed and the segregated, right? They share one of those two pairs of contraries, huh? Okay. But then as he goes on to explain, they often bring in other pairs of contraries besides one of those two. Like even Parmenides, when he condescends to talk about the natural world, which is the Luian, of course, he talks about the hot and the cold, huh? We talked about that when he talked about earth, air, fire, and water, too, didn't we? And Democritus talks about the full and the empty, okay? And Empedocles, I mean, Democritus also had contraries in position, figure, and order, before and behind, and so on. Okay, above and below, before and behind, straight and angular, and so on, right? And you can go on, you know? The Pethagrians talked about odd and even, right? And the Pethagrians have this whole world is based on contraries for them, you know? And one column is good and one is bad, right? The male could call the female in the bad column, so... But, you know, odd and even, right, and all these different contraries, you see? So the whole thought seems to be dominated that change is by contraries, huh? Or change is from contraries, right? Now, usually at this point I stop and I say, okay, Aristotle has found what is common to all the Greek philosophers, despite their disagreement, huh? They're all trying to understand change by contraries, right? Okay? But now, I say to them, what civilization was the furthest removed from the Greek civilization in the middle period of world history, huh? What the world historian calls the Eurasian cultural balance. Well, there are four major civilizations, right? Greece, and then, or Rome, right? And then the old Middle East, right? Which is specially revived in the moment. And then you have the civilization of India, and then the civilization of China. So you had four major civilizations, sometimes one is expanding more than the others, but no one dominates the whole world the way the Middle East dominated world history up until about 500 B.C. And the way the West has dominated world history since the Renaissance, huh? Okay? So those civilizations, which one is furthest from the Greeks with little or maybe no contact that we know of, huh? China. Yeah, yeah. Because Alexander the Great, he got into the Middle East, right? Conquering. India. And he got down to the north of India, but he never got to China, right? If he merely knew about China, okay? I mean, there was some of the worlds of Congress that he didn't know about. Okay? But unbeknownst to Aristotle, at this time, the Chinese, what, classic book on change is taking form, right? The I Ching, right? The Book of Changes, huh? And Confucius said if he could add ten years to his life, he'd spend it studying the I Ching, right? That's a classic, huh? Well, the I Ching is the Book of Changes, but it's based upon contraries, the yin and the yang, huh? The male and the female principle. And they represent them by what? The broken and the unbroken line, huh? The broken line that represent the female and the unbroken and the male, right? And they have these combinations of lines that's kind of not as scientific as the Greeks, right? So, unbeknownst to Aristotle, right, this common basis that he's found among all the Greek natural philosophers is shared even by the Chinese at the same time. And then I usually quote Rudyard Kipling's famous remark, East is East, West is West, and never the twain shall meet. There's a lot of truth to that, huh? See? But here they meet. Change is by contrast. Change is between countries, huh? Do you think? Okay? And then, you know, I say, okay, so we have a little wider perspective than Aristotle geographically there, right? We can see that China and Greece at the same time have this. Now let's go and look at the moderns, huh? Well, I remember Helmholtz there was trying to explain everything by attraction and repulsion. Remember that? Who was that? Helmholtz, the great, I'll give you the passage. Einstein quotes it there in the one from the passage, didn't he? From Einstein? Yeah. The name. He quotes Helmholtz who wanted to what? Reduce everything to attraction and repulsion. That sounds like contraries again,