Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 28: Modern Physics, Mathematics, and the Problem of Knowledge

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And he compares it to Plato's theory of matter in the Timaeus, right? Or the Pythagorean Timaeus, as a geometrical theory of earth, air, fire, and water. But there's no matter there, just geometrical figures. So when you study, when you have a mathematical, and I guess what he was as a witness, because he's the man who perfected the mathematics of wave mechanics, which is used in talking about the atom, right? And he showed the mathematical equivalence of wave mechanics, and quantum mechanics, which is also used in talking about the atom, right? So he's the man who most of all can speak about the mathematical, you know, picture of the atom, right? And he says there's no stuff there. That's why the communists, you see, were for a while getting nervous about modern physics, because matter seemed to be disappearing from the scientific picture of the world. Of course, Marxism is based on the idea that matter is the beginning of all things, right? But it's a very strange kind of now, because there's no matter in mathematics. So you study nature mathematically, there's no matter there. And so sometimes the physicists have some inkling of this, so they'll say that we're shadowing, but not containing, right? And that there's no motion there really either, no motion in modern math. There's no motion in math. So you're studying matter in motion with mathematics that contains neither matter nor emotions. They have a very strange kind of knowing. Very, very weird. Do you agree with Einstein then? Matter is condensed energy? I had always thought energy was not the same as... Well, you see, at first they had a conservation of mass as well as a conservation of energy, right? Uh-huh. But then they realized that mass is not always conserved, huh? Okay. And so if they accelerate particles, and you have a lot of kinetic energy, as they would call it, you could end up with particles that have to work with these collisions that have more mass than the original ones. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So mass is, it turns out to be something subordinate to energy, right? So Einstein's equation, E equals mc squared, you know, makes its equivalent, so... You have to be very careful, you know, that... These words like mass and force, you know, they seem to have some, you know, resemblance to matter and so on, but they're really not the same thing at all, huh? Because they're all defined by some way you measure things and so on. So then I really, you know, for the first time I said to Kasurik, you know, is this force that the physicist is talking about? Is that what we mean when we talk about the mover? He just laughed in my face, you know, like, I can be so naive. Kasurik is talking, you know. But I mean, the more you study these things, the more you realize that you have to be kind of careful, right, with these words, huh? Because they resemble the words we have in daily life or in philosophy, but they don't really correspond to the same thing, right? It's kind of a technical language, and it's a very, very kind of strange thing, huh? And you've got to be very kind of careful to make a transition between one and the other, huh? I tried to do what you talked about the other week, I spent two and a half hours and just going through all the notes I had from the beginning of natural philosophy and just thinking about it and thinking about it if I could teach you, you know, kind of. It really was fruitful. It really was good. That's all I did during my study period. I never read anything new and stuff. Is that a good approach? Yeah, I mean, even the physicist Heisenberg in his nuclear physics book there, which, you know, these lectures he gave, you know, to scientific people and technical people, right, you know, engineers and so on, and the first chapter is about the early Greeks, right? And he says, anybody who wants to understand nuclear physics should go all the way back to the Greeks and follow, you know, these ideas from the Greeks up, right? And, you know, even Einstein, you know, who's not so much into the Greeks, but he says, we reverence ancient Greece as the cradle of Western science, huh? Now, cradle might seem to be, you know, a diminutive thing, but he says, but the word reverence is a strong word, right? We reverence ancient Greece. And the Schrodinger that I was speaking of, he says, science is the Greek way of looking at things. And no one has ever had science, he said, who has not come in contact with the Greeks. Well, that's not a definition of science, but it's a compliment to the Greeks, right? But, you know, the point is, you know, with the Greeks, everything is Greek almost, huh? I mean, tragedy and geometry, I was going to give a little paper one time on tragedy and geometry, right? Geometry is very, what, rigorous, you know, and reasonable, and tragedy, you know, is imaginative like friction is. But they're the fathers of geometry and tragedy, right? It's kind of amazing to see that the Greeks, right? You could say tragedy is a Greek way of looking at things too, right? You know? Because they're the ones, you know, that the dumb Romans imitated, huh? You know, you have Shakespeare's Cogniverus, which is imitating a comedy of Plautus, which is imitating a comedy of Menander, I guess, right? And someone who learned it in grammar, or, you know, explained to me that the Romans couldn't understand their own language, so they tried to impose Greek grammar upon the Latin language, and that's how they got all followed up in their cases, see? When you learn the cases in Latin, right, you have, like, nomative, genitive, dative, accusative, and abative, right? And I see in Greek, you don't have the abative, you have these four cases, right? The Romans said, well, we have something like the Greek, nomative, genitive, and abative, so they took over those four, and then they put the abative, right? They didn't have anything like that in Greek, so they just added it on in fifth place, and then we also put it, right? Okay? Well, now, in Greek, you know, the genitive is used for what is imagined to be before the action of the verb. The accusative is what is after the action of the verb, and the dative is what is with the action of the verb, right? So the author wrote a trick of it, right? Genitive, dative, accusative, right? But the Latins actually, in their language, use the abative, where the Greeks would use the what? that genitive, huh? You know, when the Greek sometimes points it out in his commentaries, right? You know, when he's speaking in Latin, about a text in Greek. So abative doesn't belong down here, right? If it's had a similar function to genitive, say, so it's all followed up the order here. And the dative in Latin is actually after the accusative, because we say, I gave the book to you, right? So the book is closer to I gave than you are, right? I gave the book to you. So the dative should be down here in Latin. It doesn't have the same function as the dative in Greek, right? It's understood as being with the verb, before the verb, with the verb, after the verb. So they get all followed up, right? And then he says, in English grammar, it got even more followed up, because we tried to imitate the Roman grammar, which is based upon trying to impose the Greek grammar on the Roman language, right? Of course, the Roman language doesn't even have all the parts of speech. It doesn't have the article, right? The Greek language has all the parts of speech, but the Romans don't. When you read Thomas sometimes in Medieval Things, they realize there's, you know, there's no article there, so they start to invent an article, and see Thomas using it sometime, and they say it even more in Cashtan than it in Thomas, you know? That's the defective language there, missing a part of speech, you know? But I mean, the point was that the Romans couldn't figure out, right, from their own language, they couldn't reflect enough upon it what the grammar was of their language, you see? The Greeks were able to figure out the grammar of their own language, so, see? Well, then the Romans imitated, you know, so that's grammar, right? Then in tragedy and comedy, they tried to imitate the Greeks and either copied the, what? The, what do you call it, the plots and so on, the Greek comedies or tragedies, right? And so on. Part of the two is read Homer and Virgil, and you can see Homer is far superior, you know, to, to, to, to Virgil, much more poetic, much more interesting. And of course in philosophy, I mean, the Romans compared to the Greeks, you know? You know? Yeah. So, poetry, grammar, all these things. The Romans are good at law, you know, and good at, you know, they're more practical in some ways in the Greek cell. You see, we're copying the world, right, and so on, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All the other things are given to the Greeks. Thank you. Okay, we'll see you. Are you able to explain the experiment of the black body radiation? Why it didn't come out, according to Newtonian? Well, not really, I can't explain it, no. Because I was reading this. He doesn't really explain it. No, no, no, but apparently what happened was that they were getting into, you know, I've heard that infinite energies and things of that sort, strange consequences if you follow this according to Newtonian, the laws of physics up to that time, right? You end up with impossible consequences, huh? And it's easier to see, I think, you know, when you get into the atomic theory with Bohr, how it's getting into contradictions, huh? Because if an electron is changing its orbit, right, from a higher to a lower orbit, then it's losing maybe energy, right? And energy has to be emitted, right? According to the theories, right? That you had in classical physics. But since, if you look at that as a change of what place, right, then there should be a continuous loss of energy, and therefore a continuous, what, emission of energy that's being lost. But they've been studying the energy being emitted for some time, right? And it didn't have that continuous character. It was jump-like, see? And so that made them, you know, question, maybe, you know, should this really be imagined to be a, what, a change of place, right? Because a change of place is continuous, right? But the emission energy is not continuous. So it's here, and then it's here, but then it went through the middle, right? But then they began to wonder, you know, whether this is really a change of place anymore, right? And now it's starting to break down the idea that there's only, what, a change of place in the world, huh? When Heisenberg, you know, compares energy to matter, he'll say, we can only know matter through the forms of matter, which is very close to what Aristotle was saying in some ways. Because the first matter, it's only an ability, right? So you only know it by its forms. You don't know it by itself. He's saying something very much like Aristotle, right? But he had to be careful in his comparisons, right? Because modern science is kind of strange now, you know. You know, I've thought for years about that opening line of Bohr, and they say, you know, he really went over and over these essays and told you exactly what he wanted to say. But, you know, I always quote this thing, you know, that the, well, I quote it for you people, right? The task, you know, of science is to extend the range of our experience and reduce it to order, you know. I have to use that text in the philosophy of science, you know, to indicate the two parts of experimental science, right? The empirical part and the theoretical part, right? To extend the range of our experience and reduce it to order, right? Okay. But now, when I get to think more deeply about that passage, I say, look how strange that is. To extend the range of our experience and reduce it to order. What are you reducing to order? Well, if you take the words as they stand, it's our experience that we reduce to order. Okay. But in the philosophy of nature, in Aristotle there, he's trying to find order in the things that we have common experience of, huh? So he's looking for order in the things, huh? Aren't the scientists doing that? What are they doing? And so I said to Warren Murray one time, who's going to do these things like him, does Bore mean what he says? And Warren said, yeah. You know? Isn't that strange, right? And it's in a way a little bit like what Kant says, right? What Kant says, we don't know the thing in itself, right? All we know is the phenomena, right? And the phenomena takes on a certain, you know, form in our experience, right? And so really what we're ordering in Kant is, what? Our experience of the world. But we're not knowing the order of the world, right? The order we're knowing is the order in our experience of the world. But it's not an order in reality, you see? That's kind of strange, right? But I'm still not altogether sure that's exactly what they're doing or owning what they're doing, you know? But that's exactly the way Warren speaks about it, you know? And I said, does he know what he's doing? Or is that what he's doing? You know? You see? I see, you know, similar statements in other scientists, huh? So I say, you know, that's something very strange, right, huh? Actually, the natural philosopher, you know, what Aristotle's doing here, he's trying to talk about an order in things, huh? Not an order in our experience of things. Isn't that kind of strange? Huh? Isn't it? I'm very strange myself, huh? And the student struck me about that, huh? It's to extend the range of our experience and reduce it. It must be for a bad experience, right? And reduce it to order, right? So we're not finding the order. When Aristotle is looking at this, what's going on in change here, right? He's seeing an order, right, in change, right? He's finding, right, or recognizing an order in change, huh? He's dry before it becomes wet, right? That's a before in things, isn't it? See? You're sick before you become healthy. You're healthy before, see? But before is order, right? This is an order in things, right? And again, well, the thing I gave you last time, you know, from your, what? You want to say, your father there, right? The thing about the major sources, yeah. Well, I mean, you look at those passages from Weizsacher, you know, and if you look at my context, I would have said, you know, gee, that sounds just like Karl Marx. And Weizsacher's not a Marxist at all, right? He's speaking as a scientist, huh? You know, I think about it, the phrase there was, you know, listen to these quotes in page five of the other thing, or in text, or in this. The thinking of our science, what's in Weizsacher, the world view of physics, right? The thinking of our experience proves itself only in action in a successful experiment. To experiment means to exert power upon nature. The possession of power is then the ultimate proof of the correctness of scientific thought. You see how much that is, the extension of bacon and so on, but even more radical, right? He says, the limits of the applicability of certain concepts or laws appear to us only in the form of the impracticability of certain experiments. For instance, the determination of an absolute speed, right? That's referring back to relativity theories, huh? Or in the form of the mutual incompatibility of precision impulse and electron. Concepts like relativity, complementarity, which you have in Niels Bohr and invariance, under transformation groups, take account even in abstract theory of this operative character of our science, huh? Exponents of an older ideal science are often surprised at the seeming naivete, which we quote, which we quote, Confused, right? The non-demonstrability of a situation with its non-existence. In truth, our sciences may adapt to its conceptual form at one more degree to the fact existing since Galileo that its ultimate criterion of truth is the experiment. We have only to inquire rigorously whether an experiment is impracticable for us because of inadequate technical means or ideas or for every and any experimenter because of conflicts with the positive law of nature. Now, in the second reading here, but as we try to penetrate to the last foundations of nature and infinitely small, which is what Heisenberg and those scientists are trying to do, right? Or to our outermost borders and infinitely distant, like Einstein was trying to do, right? We grow aware that our plain picture of the world was only an aspect of the immediate background. In those remotest reaches of nature, only that is still comprehensible to us, which is of our making, or which at least could be of our making. Isn't that strange, eh? But, you know, Marx was saying something like that, right, huh? There's a question of the decidedness of our thought is a practical question, right? It's only by making something that we know it. We only know what we make, right? You see, the consequence of saying that is then that man is entirely enclosed in a world of his own making. He knows only what he makes. And if you go back, you know, that text I gave Thomas here on the order comparison to reason, right? It's only in the natural order that reason is knowing an order not made by itself, right? But here and now, in natural science, you know nothing that you have not made. You only know what you make. Well, of course, man is the beginning and the end of all that he makes. Until he knows anything what he makes, he's the beginning and the end of all he knows. So he is God. Right? 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just take the semicircle and you draw a line like that, right, now you've got two triangles, so you've got what, four right angles, right, okay, but here you have two, so in these four angles you've got what, the equivalent of two right angles, left, right, okay, and since these are already the same circle, four of this equals this and this equals that, so these two are exactly half of these four, therefore it must be right angle, right, see, but you've got to draw that line, you've got to, you know, you've got to do something, right, you see, and Aristotle, you know, Aristotle points out, you know, Aristotle points out, you know, Aristotle points out the necessity of drawing the line, and he's showing that something is, is understandable, what's an act, right, the line is only an ability, it's only able to be understood, but when you make it actual, right, and you actually understand it, so he's showing the connection between understanding something and being something and being actual, but Kant, he takes this as a, as a sign that you have to make in order to know, see, and you know what you're making, see, and then he said, well then, when, when Torsali, you know, and Stahl, he gives these famous examples, Galileo, they're rolling balls, and so on, then they, when they experimented, they suddenly doubted upon them, that the only way we can really know these things is to, what, make them, right, and a whole light doubted upon them, and now they're on the, the sheer way of science, and, like the geometries were, right, you see, so, um, for, for, for Kant there, the thing to be learned from geometry, and to be imitated in natural science, is that we have to make something to know it, right, and, and, and, in a way, in geometry, it does go back to a kind of making, doesn't it, because, um, you know, I, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I 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You have to break these things all the way down to the point. and construct them from the point upwards, right, to really know them. So the motion of a point makes a line, as Plato said, right? Well, then it has no width, the line, because the point has no width, right? It's length, right? You see what I mean? And then there's a line rotating, it's a circle, and you go on from there, right? And you make the equal triangle with these two circles, and you go on, right? So you have to make these things to know them, huh? So there's some truth to that, right? And that's partly what we call a liberal art, because there's a making there, right? Natural philosophy is not a liberal art, but geometry is, right? So in a way, you know how much you're making there. So Kant sees that the success of geometry is, in a way, and involves our kind of making what we know there, right? Okay? And then we know what we made, right? And then he said that when they started to experiment, huh? And he gives three famous experiments, I guess. One in Galileo's, and one in Taurus's, and one in Stahl, and so on. And then he says, a whole light dawned upon them, right? That this is the way we can know the natural world, right? But we have to make what we're going to know, huh? Because experiment, in a sense, is made by us, right? And so we only know what we make. Well, then Marx deduces the consequence of that, right? If man knows only what he makes, then man knows himself as the beginning and the end of all he knows, right? And we don't even talk about something that we haven't made, because you're talking about something you don't even know about. You get no knowledge, right? You couldn't know about it, right? You couldn't know about anything that man is not the beginning and the end of, right? So it becomes practically, you know, kind of practical, you know, pigmatic atheism, right? Not really, it can be a very serious consequence, right? But Marx, in a way, you know, he's very close to what Weizsacra is saying there, right? Or Weizsacra is saying that, right? And if you look at the texts, the key texts of Marx and of Weizsacra, you know, he's saying the same thing, although Weizsacra is in no way a Marxist, or, you know, he's a Lutheran, right? But he's in no way a Marxist. Yeah. So, I mean, it's true. I don't know if he's a believer or not, but, you know, he's saying that a Marxist, right? But, I mean, it cleanses himself to that Marxist interpretation, or conclusion. Especially to say this is the only knowledge, right? Even in the knowledge of experimental science, like when I read Kant, it always impressed me that he was exaggerating or making. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you're a scientist, right, huh, you know, and, uh, if that's the only kind of knowledge you're accustomed to, right, then you're closed, your mind is closed, right? Mm-hmm. Closed in the world of our own making, huh? I went to have a conversation Warren and I were having, a number of years ago, you know, and, uh, you know, the, the kind of, the source of the, of the mental anguish of the, I don't call it the anxiety of the modern mind, is that they're trying to live in a world entirely of their own making. They try to do that. See? And once they do that, they're living in a world that can never satisfy them. See? A world that's inferior to them, right? You know, they don't, they don't see any way out of it, but they can't possibly be satisfied with such a world, huh? So, it makes them crazy in the end, you know? They, they, they, they're going out of their mind, right? Because they can't get out of this world, you know? It's like, it's like solitary confinement, kind of a, kind of a solitary confinement human race. You know, I mean, they, I don't, you know, I haven't read French, but I mean, I hear, you know, that solitary confinement is, you know, they can't be a man in solitary confinement too long in the prison system, because they go, what? Singing. They go in singing, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, the modern man is trying to, to live in solitary confinement, no wonder he's, he's getting crazier and crazier, you know, this postmodernism and stuff, right, you know? Someone gave me a copy of a recent, not, a pretty recent article there, by Riley there. I don't, is he, is he the music critic for, for, what was it, Catholic Magazine, so on this, it might have been the same guy, but anyway, he's talking about, you know, sharing with other people who started these crazy things, you know, completely, uh, won't deny anything natural about music and so on, and they would have been crazy, you know, these guys, and, and, but it's kind of a good article, you know, on, uh, on their, their, their madness, you know, but I mean, it's, it's a deflection of the, of the modern mind, uh, I heard something of them that was on the radio there where they, they're, I guess they're, they're accepting now into some of the museums, the, um, the, uh, uh, Norman Rockwell paintings, right, which are kind of, you know, they used to frown down upon, right, you see, not the most profound painting, but they're, they're, they're kind of, you know, true to human nature, you know, you've seen the, the Norman Rockwell, they used to be on covers of these things and so on, and, uh, people kind of like them because they, they speak to us of, you know, of American values, so-called, right, and people want to be confirmed in these, right, because modern art doesn't confirm you on American values, it doesn't mean anything, right, and, um, and, uh, but the art critic was saying, you know, that people like this stuff, actually, you know, and, and, you know, modern art is, you know, he was speaking, you know, modern art is, is unpopular art, right, but you have to be initiated into the light, because my dancing don't like it at all, right, because, you know, it's like this crazy music, you know, and, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, beyond, you know, like Marcus, remember the Marcus, these things, they're beyond sent there, because they're just so, so asinine, but, but, uh, one of these pieces of music they had was where, you know, they come on stage, right, and they sit down for, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes, you don't play a single sound, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come, and they come. It is before or after something else. Even though when they talk about their making in experimental science, their making is, it's not even like the demiurge that has matter and makes everything else. There's a lot that they're not making when they're doing experiments. And the results are because of the nature of the things that we're doing right now. Would you say that's right? Like these statements, even with experimental science? Yeah, that's what you brought, where they speak of this order, right? In some way, in fact, an order that's in things, right? You know? But still, it's an order that is what? Lee Boyd speaks of that, right, sometimes, huh? But still, the order that we're knowing is not the order in things, right? We're knowing an order that may, in some not quite understood way, reflect an order that's outside, right? Right. But, and sometimes take that seriously, you know, but it does, right? You know? But it's still not a knowledge directly of the other order, or anything, so. Then, like, it seems there's every different kind of experiments, maybe. Like, I don't know if you've heard of that experiment of Timberdeen, where he's trying to find how the wasps find their hole. Mm-hmm. So he put a circle of pine cones around the hole. Mm-hmm. And the wasps came in and out, and when the wasp was gone, he took the circle and moved it over here. Mm-hmm. And then the wasp went, but there was no hole there. Mm-hmm. So he realized the wasp kind of sees like a pattern or something. Yeah. So he's making something and doing an experiment that you don't have in nature. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But he's, it seems he's not just knowing a reflection. No. By that it comes to knowing nature itself. No, no, no, no, no. Let's say there's some exaggeration to this, right? But you do see them saying this, you know, so. See, notice what Heisenberg says in this particular one here, the physicist on page 4 there, the bottom paragraph. It has become clear that the desired objective reality of the elementary particles is too crude an oversimplification of what really happens, right? For if we wish to form a picture of the nature of these elementary particles, we can no longer ignore the physical processes to which we obtain our knowledge of them, right? While in observing everyday objects, the physical process involved in making the observation plays a subsimilar role only, right? And that's really what philosophy is more closely related to, right? Mm-hmm. In the case of the smallest building particles of matter, every process of observation produces a large disturbance. We can no longer speak of the behavior of the particle independently of the process of observation. Well, there's some truth to that, huh? The atomic physicist has had to resign himself to the fact that his science is but a link in the infinite chain of man's argument with nature, and that it cannot simply speak of nature in itself. Science always presupposes the existence of man, and as Bohr has said, we must become conscious of the fact that we are not merely observers, but also actors on the stage of life, right? Or in this other facet in the top of page 5 there, Science no longer confronts nature as an objective observer, but sees itself as an actor in this interplay between man and nature. The scientific method of analyzing, explaining, and classifying has become conscious of its limitations, which arise out of the fact that by its intervention science alters and refashions the object of investigation. Now, I mean, to some extent you can go back to the principle we saw Aristotle during the central question of philosophy, right? This truth required that the way we know be the way things are, right? And there may be some confusion of that in the modern scientists, right? And certainly in Marx, right? But you say, if we know only by making, right, then we know only what we make. That's in a sense saying, right? That we can't, by the experiment, know something that we didn't make, right? That might be not only true, right? An experiment might help you know something about what's there apart from your experiment, right? But if you're thinking like most people think, that the way we know must be the way things are, right? And if the way we know is by making, all we can possibly know is what we make. We can possibly know things themselves because we have to make in order to know. We don't know what we've made. We've made anything yet, right? We didn't know what we were talking about because you helped me know what we make anyways. And also, we get that idea. That way madness lies, of course. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Father, enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds. Order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider them more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Praise God. And help us to understand all the true return. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. So last time, we saw how Aristotle found a common basis among all the Greek natural philosophers. That they all tried to explain change by, what? Contraries. And unbeknownst to Aristotle, we noted that the Chinese at the same time spoke of contraries in the I Ching. In the modern scientists, like Helmholtz, for example, that Einstein quotes, right? He was explaining everything by attraction and repulsion between multiple particles. So, this seems to be a very solid, common understanding. The change somehow is by contraries or by opposites. Then Aristotle, again, following the advice of the central thinker in human thought, Heraclitus, he starts out to become strong on that common basis. And he, first of all, gave a reason, right? For what everybody is saying without giving a reason, huh? So that was becoming stronger. And then he observed that this beginning was, and their thought was forced on their mind by truth itself, rather than something freely imagined, as I contrast it with Einstein, huh? Mm-hmm. And then, well, what else did he do? Mm-hmm. We showed that they all tried to take, what? The first contrary. Yeah. Although some judge this more by the senses, and some more by the, what? Reason, huh? Okay. And then he showed that they're all saying the same thing, what? In general and proportional. Yeah, yeah. Of course, if they all agree in general, but disagree in particular as a confirmation, it's a sign, in the sense of the truth, of what we learned before, that the general is more known to us than the particular. Okay? But he also points out that they're all saying the same proportionally. So that the full is to the empty, as love is to hate, huh? As the dense is to the rare, and so on. And then he noticed that one of the two members of the ratio is imperfect or lacking in something compared to the other one. As the empty very, obviously, when your glass is empty or your plate is empty, it's lacking something that the full plate or glass has. But even hate would seem to be lacking something in comparison to love. Or even think of the cold as kind of involving a lack of heat, like privation of heat and so on. And later on, we'll see, when you get to the 13th reading, the importance of lack, you'll develop that more. Okay? It's kind of interesting.