Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 29: The Third Principle: Resolving Contradiction in Change

Transcript
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I've hinted that when he says, and better in words, right? And Thomas takes that as referring to the fact that one of the two contraries seems to be good and the other bad, of course. Pathetic means they've made a long list of contraries, the good on one side and the bad on the other side, huh? And it's interesting to see what they put in the good with the bad side, but anyway. Okay. Now, in reading 11, he continues now, but he is going to make the major step forward, right, in becoming strong in this common understanding. What he's going to show in the middle here that these two contraries are not enough. There must be a third thing, huh? Okay. And he's going to show that with three arguments, but we're going to emphasize the first one because it exemplifies the role of contradiction in coming to know. I'm going to stop on that and talk about that, huh? But the first major example of how the human mind, ever since Sarah Cletus and Aristotle, has gone forward, huh? In its major steps. By a time, sometimes a contradiction in our own thinking, huh? Sometimes an apparent contradiction in the things, right? Or a contradiction between our thinking and things, right? And we are an example of that already in the apparent contradiction there in the great fragment on the mind of Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras, where on the one hand he said that the mind is self-ruling, and that seems to be true as the existence of logic shows. On the other hand, he said the ruler must be separated from the rule, as you can see in the army, where those who command and those who obey are separated. And how do you reconcile that, right? And that apparent contradiction there, the untying of that apparent contradiction is the discovery of how the mind does in fact rule itself, and what is necessary for the mind to rule itself. That the mind, when it rules itself, there still is, in a way, a distinction between the ruled and the ruled. But not that you have two minds. But that the one mind knows some things and doesn't know other things. And it's ruled in what it doesn't know by what it does know. Or some things are more known to it and some things are less known to it. And it's ruled in what is less known to it by what is more known to it. But you have to be able to separate what you know from what you don't know. And that's no easy thing to do, as Socrates showed. But notice, when Socrates shows somebody like the slave boy, that he doesn't know, in the meaning of there, how to double a square. Socrates shows he doesn't know what he thinks he knows by showing the slave boy that he's in a contradiction. And again, you have the, what, contradiction there being used to make a person aware of the fact that they've mixed up what they know what they don't know. And so it helps to separate the two, right? Okay. But the, um, that major step forward is put in a broader context here in the eleventh reading where he asks, how many beginnings? How many causes are there, right? The next to be said is whether there are two or three or more beginnings. He raises that question. Now what he does is to eliminate the extremes first. He's going to eliminate the idea if there's just one beginning. And he's going to be very quick about that, we'll see, because from the previous reading we know beginnings are contraries, right? Contraries means at least, what, two, right? Okay. So he's going to, check that idea to be just one, huh? And then he's going to eliminate the other extreme that there's a infinite, I want to use the Latin, or unlimited multitude of beginnings. This is all about how many beginnings, huh? And so here he's going to be more expansive, he's going to give four arguments, but they're stated very briefly with the brevity of wit, huh? Okay. Incidentally, I was reading Thomas' commentary on the epistle to the Ephesians, right? And of course in the Latin, the Greek is in oligo, right? He's going to say in few. But you know I'm wise when I say this in few. But of course in the Latin it comes out with the word brevity, right? Really. And then Thomas stops, you know. St. Paul is what? He had to get his wisdom right by touching upon many and great things in just a few words. So it's another example of that, huh? Asian, British, Texan, sometimes it's not interesting that way. It's kind of striking, you know, Shakespeare is closer to the Latin in Greek and so he'll use the word brevity as a sole wit. But I think I mentioned how in the commentary here in metaphysics, the Latin text of Aristotle, Aristotle says, well that's a brevity. And Thomas says, he means, this is something very small in size, but great in his power. And Aristotle, just such a familiar thought to him, you know, that's a shark, you say. That's a brevity. But syntomos is in Greek, you see. But in Latin, you might say Shakespeare because you have the word brevity. And the same way in this particular text, I think the Greek was in oligo, in few, right? Okay. But you also find Shakespeare saying fewness and truth. I think we had that passage there in the readings I gave you. It's kind of interesting, huh? The St. Paul, in few words, is manifesting his wisdom. It's kind of a tricky thing. So he's going to eliminate, as it were, the two extremes and then come back, huh? And say, well then, if there can't be one or an infinitive, there's got to be at least two, right? And then he's going to say, but is that enough? See? And then, in the argument starting at the bottom of the page there, the last few paragraphs, he's going to say, two is not enough, you need a third, what? Beginning. You're going to be forced to go from two to three and especially by the first argument because unless you go from two to three, you're going to end up in a contradiction and that apparent contradiction that Heraclitus has been pointing out. Okay? But then he'll say, but that's enough. And then he'll stop, right? And give a couple of reasons to say we don't have to go beyond three. Now, as I say, the main thing is what is it that forces reason to go from two to three? He's going to get three arguments, but the second and the third are to some extent dialectical because they're based on opinions that his predecessors would have in mind. But the first one, I think, has got more necessity. But nothing forces us to go for more than three. And so it's a beautiful example of that principle that we said of fewness, as they call it sometimes. Some people call it the principle of simplicity, right? But Einstein says this underlies the whole of natural science, the whole of natural philosophy, he said, from the Greeks all the way through my own work and beyond. That fewer causes are better if they are enough. We saw that before a little bit. And we'll see it several times here. That's the underlying principle. That's the first rule of reasoning for Sir Isaac Newton if you look at the Principia, right? But it also underlies Kepler's work and Galileo's work as we saw. And he's finding the same thing all the way down to and including the great physicists of the 20th century. And this particular thing, though, that three is enough, is something that takes place often enough that it's worthy to note, huh? Okay, but we'll talk about that again when we get to why you have to have a third thing, huh? Okay? So in the first sentence of the 11th reading, he raises the question, right? And then he eliminates very quickly that it's just one on the basis of the previous reading, right? Everybody seems to agree that change is by contraries and contraries or opposites are two. Now, in the next four little paragraphs, some of which are just a sentence, he touches upon four reasons for saying they're not unlimited, huh? Okay? But we might, you know, put the first and the third together because they both, in a way, are connected with the principle of what? Fewness, huh? Okay? And the second and the fourth are based more upon something peculiar to Kantarayati, huh? Okay. Let's look at the third argument first because there it's more obvious that he's reasoning from the principle of fewness, huh? And because it is possible from the limited, it is better from the limited as Empedocles does. As Empedocles. For he is thought to explain all things as much as Anaxagoras from the limited. What Aristotle is thinking of in particular is something that was a kind of common thought among the Greeks and it seems probable from our experience. Things keep on coming to be in this world, right? Every spring, as the word indicates, new things spring into existence, huh? So the source of them, right, has got to explain the fact that things keep on coming to be forever. Now the way Empedocles explains this is with a limited multitude of beginnings. He has earth, air, fire, and water, the four elements, and love unites them, and then hate separates them, and love unites them, and can go on forever, huh? But that's kind of a cycle, huh? Okay? But Anaxagoras doesn't have a cycle. He has a straight line coming to be. He has the mixture of everything inside of everything, and then the greater mind begins to separate things out, and it keeps on separating things out. But in order to keep on separating things out, there has to be, what, an infinity of things in there, right? Okay? So isn't it better, if you can explain how things keep on coming to be, having a limited multitude of things, huh, than if you have to use an infinite multitude? Okay? Fewer are better if enough, right? And obviously, a limited multitude, like the four elements, and earth, and love and hate, six is fewer than an infinite. Okay? Do you see that? Yeah. Okay? And sometimes, you know, in elaborating on that, I use kind of a simple example there, right, about the superiority of the circle, right? If I'm a rich man, I want to get my exercise. I want to run forever, right? Okay? Now, if I want to run forever on a straight road, straight forward, how long does that road have to be so I can run forever on a road? Forever. Yeah, I'm going to have to lay down an infinite road, right, so I can run forever. Now, someone comes along and says, do you ever think, Berkowitz, of making your road a circle? Yeah? Let's imagine that. You can keep it running forward forever, but you can do it with a finite road instead of an inner road. Hey! I can see that. Right. You see? And the other example is to give, you know, I'd lecture in this maybe around this time, and they say, now when you go home and buy a present for that nephew or niece or something, or when you get to be a parent, you buy it for the kids, huh? It's better to buy them a bag of blocks than to buy them a finished toy, huh? Because they can make something out of the bag of blocks, knock it down, build something else out of it, and it can go on forever, huh? Buy the finished toy, it gets broken in a week or so, right? If you want to always have something to play with, you've got to buy them another one, another one, another one. So I say, this is the Empedocleian principle of buying Christmas gifts, huh? Thank you. And that's, you know, why I suppose we try to recycle a bit too, right? People say, huh? You know, he's going and exhausting your resources, right? Go on, recycling things. You see how that involves, then, the principle of fewness, or fewness in truth, if Shakespeare says, huh? And as I say to students, our mind naturally inclines to fewer, huh? So we try to explain 365 days a year with 365 suns. Well, if the sun is extinguished, as it used to say, in the ocean there at the end of the day, well, you might need a new sun every day, right? But if the sun can go around the earth in a circle again, right, maybe you can explain 365 days with one, what? Sun. Yeah, yeah. You don't even think. You see, there's an old controversy as to whether the day and night is caused by the sun going around the earth, right? Or whether the earth is turning on its axis, right? And now we're inclined to think it's the earth turning on its axis, huh? But notice in those two disagreeing hypotheses, neither one thinks of using more than one sun, do they? See? So in the absence of a reason to say to need, you know, 365 or 10 suns, or, you know, we will try to explain with just one sun, huh? The example I give is, you know, how do you know I don't have a twin brother? Comes in here on Thursdays, and I teach on Tuesdays, you know? And they don't even bother me, do you really? You know, I do have brothers that teach philosophy, I tell them, you know? And how do you know that we don't have a deal that way, you know? And, but notice, in the absence of a reason to think there's two people teaching this course, which is kind of complicated, they have to look very much alike, and they have to have a, what, similar background and so on. And if there's any reason to think there's more than one person, you will actually assume there's one, right? But if you got out of class today and someone says, you know, I was talking to Berkwist about Tfasya Day trip in the cafeteria or something, you know, what time was that? You say, well, at 2.30, yeah. Well, no, no, it's a minute. He was in class here. Then you might begin to suspect, huh? Like the English during the Second World War when they found that actor that resembled, uh... Montgomery. Yeah, yeah, and he had told that story, you know? But they found an actor that resembled Montgomery, and they dressed him up like Montgomery, was a very big general, and being a good actor, he can imitate, you know, the way of speaking of Montgomery. And they'd send him down to Africa so the Germans would think Montgomery's down in Africa when he's actually planning the Normandy invasion there in England. And so, um, the Germans are deceived, right? Right. And you might think, you know, they're going to come up to the, you know, soft underbelly, as they call, you know, utility or something. But if the Germans were getting reports, you know, at the same time that Montgomery was in Algeria and in England, right, then they would, what? Then they have a reason to think there might be two guys and that would be the same guy. But in the absence of some reason, right, you just assume it's one man, don't you? Okay? Now, the first reason Aristotle gives is actually based upon this principle of fewness because, um, as Sir Isaac Newton states when he brings out the principle, nature affects not the pomp, he says, of superfluous causes, if you recall that, right? And, uh, and more is in vain when less will serve, right? So, what's underlying this argument of Aristotle's is that we have a natural desire to, what? Know the causes, huh? And if the causes were unlimited, it would be impossible to know them, right? And therefore, our natural desire would be in vain. And nature would be doing, what? More than is necessary. And you see in the case of the other natural desires like hunger and thirst and so on. People don't always get food, right? They don't always get water to drink. But it's not in practice, in principle, impossible to get food, right? Say, nature wouldn't give animals hunger and thirst if there was no food possible in the world. It wouldn't serve any purpose, right? So, if there was an infinity of beginnings, of causes, it would be like knowing a word with an infinity of letters. Well, not even the winner of the spelling bee could know such a word, could he? So, you see how that, in a way, you know, some of you might say, what's wrong with this? The unlimited is not possible because what is would not be knowable, right? But he's assuming there, right, that our reason is able in some way to know the causes. Now, how can he assume that? Because it's a natural desire to know the causes. And nature does nothing in vain. See? So, it must be in some way possible for us to know the causes of these things, but it would be impossible if there was an infinity of causes. So, you see how that first argument could also be said in a way to be based on the principle of fewness. Nature doing nothing to excess or nothing to be in vain. As Shakespeare says and Hamlet says, or strip not the modesty of nature. See, nature is modest because it doesn't do more than is, what? Necessary, huh? Okay? So, so, Put the first and the third argument kind of together because they do have some common connection there with the principle of, what, fewness, right? And notice that those two arguments are not so much zeroing in on the idea of, what, the beginnings being contraries, right? But they're not being, what, infinite, right? Okay? But now, in the second and the fourth argument, he takes it's probable that the principles are contraries, and then if you see that the contraries are the principles and the principle is infinite, you're going to have a certain difficulty following from that. And one difficulty is in the fourth argument and one in the second. Now, let's take the, so in a way it's more particular than the first and the third. He's saying that in any one genus, there's one pair of contraries. Now, what do we mean by contraries? Now, contraries are sometimes defined as the species, or one of these English word or forms, furthest apart in the same genus, the same general kind of thing, right? So, for example, in the genus of color, the contraries are white and black, not, let's say, blue and, like, yellow, right? All these ones that are in between, right? We wouldn't think of yellow and black as being contraries, but white and black, the ones that are furthest apart, right? Or in the genus of habit, you know, in ethics, you distinguish four. You have virtue, and then you have vice, and then you have confidence, and incompetence, okay? In other words, the virtuous man, right, he chooses to do what is good, and his passion and so on don't resist him much at all, right? So, in a sense, the whole man is good. The confident man, he chooses to do good, but he has a struggle, right? Against his passion, like the alcoholic, let's say, right? He's joined, you know, alcoholic anonymous, right? But he can't, what? He's still got a struggle, right? He doesn't give in, right? The incontent person, he has a struggle, but he gives in, right, to his passions, and then he has, what? Sadness or repentance, you know? Because he couldn't, you know, control himself, right? The vicious man, that's no problem, right? Because not only, his passion is disordered, but his will is disordered now, too, right? And so, he's like Don and John, right? He's chosen, right? So, he doesn't have any conflict, because it's totally bad. So, Richard Weiss are the contraries, huh? They're the ones that are, what? Furthest apart in the same genus, huh? So, in any one kind of thing, it seems there's only one, what? Contrariety. And, sometimes, Thomas will do in the commentary, he'll say, like, on a straight line, huh? You can have many points that are equally distant, right? But how many points can you have that are furthest apart? Just one pair, I think, two end points that are furthest apart. It's like in the spectrum of colors, right? You can have only one pair of contraries. That's part of, what he's going to reason from here, huh? Okay? And then, the second thing he has is that substance, huh? He has one genus, huh? Now, if you've studied logic, you might know that substance is one of the ten genera. But substance is the genus that is, what? More fundamental than all other, what, genera. Because all the other genera are accidents, things that exist only in substance. Okay? So, if you're looking for the beginnings of all things, you'd have to look for them in, what, substance, right? And if the beginnings are contraries and substance is one genus, there can only be one pair of contraries, rather than an infinity of pairs, huh? So, that's... Notice that Aram is a little more particular because it assumes that the principles are contraries that we saw before, right? And then, that couldn't be an infinity of them in the genus of substance, huh? Of course, in the beginning, substance and body to us seems to be almost the same thing, but actually, substance is... broader than body. Well, you know, they're immaterial substances. Okay? So, there's incompatibility in the second argument there between the principles being, what, contraries and it being infinite, right? Given that there's only one pair of contraries. Now, in the fourth argument, huh? This is based upon the difficulty that if you make the principles contraries, and you make the principles infinite, how many pairs of contraries will be the first beginnings of things? Yeah. But does every pair of contraries come first? We saw in our study of Empedicase, huh? That hot and cold, for example, are causes of hard and soft, and black and white, and so on, right? So, some pairs of contraries will be for other ones. So, not every pair of contraries can be the first beginnings of things. There could be only a couple pairs. I'm saying not all of them, because some pairs are causes of other ones. But if you make the principles contraries and infinite, you have to have an infinite pair pairs of contraries among the first beginnings. Do you see that? So, in a sense, reducing the ideas here to something, what? Absurda, I'll say. You're saying the contraries are the principles, and the principle is infinite. Therefore, you have infinite pairs of contraries as your beginnings. And therefore, you seem to have to bring in all of these different pairs of contraries and make them starting points. But some are before others, right? Okay. Do you see that? So, these are the four arguments Aristotle does give here to eliminate the other extreme, right? So, you've got to have at least two because of contraries, but they're not unlimited. Now, does anything force us to go beyond two, right? Now, notice the principle of fewness is not that fewer are better, period. Fewer are better if not. And that is getting kind of hard to find it. Two is fewer than three. He's going to argue that two is not enough. You need a third, right? Okay. It concludes what we've just seen there, the third from the bottom, that sentence. Hence, it is clear from these things that they're neither one nor unlimited, right? Okay. Now, he gives the first argument, which is the one we want to emphasize. Seeing that they are limited, there is some reason for making them not only two. Now, that's said with philosophical modesty, as Thomas sometimes says, huh? There's much reason, right? In fact, a very necessary reason, huh? For someone might ask how either density is apt by its nature to make rareness something or this density, likewise in any other contrariety. For love does not bring together hate and make something from the same nor hate from that, but both some third thing, huh? Okay. Now, notice what he's pointing out there, huh? Notice the apparent contradiction in our speaking about change, huh? We say sometimes the day becomes night, don't we? We say the healthy becomes sick, right? We say that the hard becomes soft, huh? And generally, we do say the one contrary becomes the other, right? And it seems we're necessitated to do that. Because if we say, if we deny that the healthy can become sick, then we'd have to say that if you're healthy, you'll always be healthy, right? And if we deny that the sick can become healthy, then if you're sick, you're going to be always sick. Tough luck. And if the heart doesn't become soft, right, don't... Think of, you know, of the hard becoming soft, right? By the other hand, there seems to be a contradiction there, right? Because the word becomes means comes to be, right? Now, if the hard came to be soft, then the hard would be soft, and then the same thing would be hard and soft, and both be hard, because it's hard, and not be hard, because it's soft, and both be soft, because it is soft, and not soft, because it is hard, and that's impossible, right? Okay? And if the healthy became sick, and becomes means comes to be, right? Then the healthy would be sick, and the same thing would be healthy and sick, and therefore would be healthy and not healthy, because it's healthy, because it's healthy, but because it's sick, it's not healthy, so it's healthy and not healthy, and because it's sick, it's sick, but because it's healthy, it's not sick, so it's both sick and not sick, and that's impossible, right? And that's why Parmenides reacted to her clients and people who speak like that, and said, only a two-headed mortal could think this. Because one head would think that it is, and one head would think that it's not, right? But one of the same head couldn't think both, huh? And as I joke, you know, in this example, two heads is not better than one, huh? Two heads is something monstrous, something unnatural, you're going against something naturally understood, but something cannot both be and, what, not be, huh? So Aristotle says this is the natural beginning of all the axioms, which are the most basic of all the statements, okay? So, now likewise, if density, huh? If density made rareness, what, dense, right? You again have a contradiction there, right? Because rareness, that by which things are rare, would be itself dense. And if hardness made softness hard, right? Then that by which things are soft, namely softness, would be itself hard, huh? Okay? So there must be a, what, third thing, right? Apart from the hardness and softness that is made hard or softer, okay? Otherwise, change would involve a, what? Contradiction, yeah. Now, you can describe this way of going forward with Aristotle actually in another way, too. Now, let's put some examples here. Four examples, or simple examples. You have this change between the hard and the soft, okay? Well, he's saying, it's not the softness, huh? That is being made hard. It's not the hardness that is being made soft, right? But it's a third thing, right? And that's just for the sake of being concrete. Okay, the third thing might be, what, butter, right? Okay? And so, notice, it's not the hard as such that becomes soft. It's the third thing, the butter, right? As such that becomes soft, huh? If the hard as hard became soft, then the hard would be soft. And then you'd have a contradiction, right? But it's that third thing to which hard happens to belong. But it's not the same thing to be butter and to be hard, is it? And it's not the same thing to be butter and to be soft, huh? So notice the kind of distinction here that's important. Distinction between as such and by what? Happening, right? That's a very important distinction, a very important kind of distinction in philosophy. You can't do philosophy without seeing that distinction. And here's one place where it comes in, huh? Okay? Someone asked somebody, I'll take a simple example of the accidental. What do carpenters do? Would you say carpenters play violins? Well, I might know a carpenter who does play the violin, right? But still, I wouldn't say that's what carpenters do. Although this carpentry does it, right? But it's accidental to his being a carpenter, right? It's not as carpentry that he plays the violin, right? And so when the little child asks, Mommy, what do carpenters do? Mommy should answer what carpenters, as carpenters do, right? Otherwise the child's going to get very confused, right? Because a carpenter could happen to be a violinist, he could happen to be a cook, he could happen to be a million or other things, right? But that would not be what the carpenter as such does, huh? So that's a very, you know, common distinction, but we don't stop and think about it. And when I talk to the students there about the good, and as Socrates touches upon in the Mino, but Aristotle more explicitly at the beginning of the Nicomachian Ethics, he gives a little induction there, and then he concludes that the good is what all aim at, huh? The good is what all want, huh? And he says, therefore they define well the good is what all want, huh? And you say, well, gee, how can that be a good definition of good? Because sometimes people want what is bad, right? But in order to understand that, you have to understand that Aristotle is speaking as such there, right? The good as such, the good as good is what is wanted. The bad is sometimes wanted, but not as bad. The bad is wanted because it appears to be good, right? See? So my stock example in class is the last drink, right? Want another drink? And you say yes. And if you take that last drink, you don't feel so good, right? And you recognize that this last drink was bad for you, in fact, huh? Okay? That was a drink that made you have to... Well, excuse yourself. But, did you desire to drink that to what? Get sick. No, no, no, see? You wanted that last drink because it appeared to be a way of continuing the good time, or increasing the good time, when in fact it was a way of ending the good time, right? Okay? You see? But I didn't desire it as bad as to make me sick, right? If I had no idea I'd do that, I wouldn't have done it, huh? It's as, apparently, you know, keeping me in this state of false happiness, right? Okay? Or, you know, if I drink a delicious poison, I don't drink it because it's poisonous, but because it's, what? Delicious, yeah, yeah. So the good, as such, is what is desired, huh? And so if you don't see that distinction, you can't, you know, see that this is a good definition of good. It's a definition by effect, of course, but it's a good definition, right? And it's convertible with the good, huh? So that, and it's actually in the book on Cisic refutations, you know, when Aristotle distinguishes the fallacies, and the causes of them, common reasoning, and it is 13 ways that we're deceived, right? And six of them are from language, and seven are outside of language. And the first one on language is the fallacy of equivocation, which he notes is the most common mistake made, huh? And then the first one outside of language is the fallacy of the accident, okay? And there he says that this deceives even the wise. And we'll come back to that later on when we get to the 15th reading. But even Plato was deceived by this, not to mention much lesser mind. So you can hardly state more strongly how, you know, that can sometimes deceive people, right? So, that distinction is involved here, right? We don't realize that when we say the hard becomes soft, or the sick becomes healthy, or the good become bad, or any contrary, becomes the other, day becomes night, right? We're speaking in a way, as you say, a lack of improteness, right? But you're not speaking as such, right? It's not really the hard becomes butter. It's not, you know, really, if, say, the carpenter happens to be a musician, right? Well, I can say the musician built my house, but it wouldn't be true as such, right? But you can say the musician built my house in some way, because to be a musician is something that happens to the carpenter, to the cause as such in my house. You see that? And because to be hard is something that happens to butter, right? We can say gradually that the heart becomes soft, right? But if we made it as such, it'd have a contradiction. It's really the butter as such that it becomes soft, not the heart at all. Now, that third thing, how is it related to the two contraries? Well, we say sometimes it's the subject of the line, too. But you're also starting to be introduced a bit here to the idea of potency or ability. Because the butter is able to be hard and to be soft, but it's not able to be both at the same time. And when it's actually one, it's able to be the, what? Other, right? But if it actually became the other, it would cease to be the, what? Former, okay? They could also say that Aristotle's going forward, not only from two to three, right? He's also going forward from a confused or indistinct knowledge of the contraries, right? To more distinctly. Because in the heart, unless there was a distinction between the hardness and what the hardness is in, unless there was a real distinction between the butter and the hardness, that although the hardness is in the butter, the hardness is not the same thing as what butter is. And over here, the soft, unless there was a real distinction between the butter and the softness of the butter, right? So that even though the softness is in the butter, that's not what the butter is, right? Unless you read it as a distinction, would there be any change possible between hard and soft? Soft. If hardness and butter were really the same thing, and softness and butter were the same thing, you have a condition to be in it, right? But if all there was in the hard then was hardness and all in soft, softness, could there be any change between hard and soft? No. Because then hardness itself would become softness, right? Okay? In the same way, if any two, let's say this changed from day to night, because we sometimes say there are night to day, you know what? Okay? Now, Aristotle would say, well, does darkness become light now? Or light become darkness? Okay? No. But that would involve a contradiction, right? The light becomes darkness, because darkness is the lack of light, and how can light be the lack of light now? Okay? So there must be a third thing involved, right? In which the light of the darkness exists, right? And we might call that the air, right? And the air is able to be illuminated. The air is able to be dark, right? So you introduce the idea again of potency or ability. And when the air is actually illuminated, it's still able to be dark, right? But if it becomes actually dark, it will cease to be this, right? So the dark is never illuminated. So he's going forward again from two to a third thing, which is a subject that is an ability that's capable of both opposites, but not at the same time, right? But you'd also say he's going forward from a confused knowledge of the commentaries, right? It's a more distinct one. So you'd say, in the day, there is both light and air. And in the night, there's both darkness and air. And there's a real distinction in the day between, what? The air itself and the light. Or between the air and the, what? Darkness at night time. Okay? And you go and multiply these examples until you see the point, see? So when the wet becomes dry, or vice versa, does wetness become dry? Does that make sense? Does dryness itself, is that wet? No, dryness is that by which the dry is dry. So how could dryness itself be wet? So there must be a third thing that is made wet or dry, other than the wetness and the dryness. And that might be a cloth, right? Okay? And the cloth is able to be wet, the cloth is able to be dry, but not at the same time. And when it's actually one, it's capable of the other, right? But if it were to become actually the other, it would cease to be the former, right? So the wetness is never dryness, and the wetness is never dry. But the third thing, you see how you're being forced to avoid a contradiction, or you could say it, or precisely, to untie the apparent contradiction that Heraclitus pointed out in change, huh? I mean, Heraclitus really thinks the sleeping and the waking are the same, day and night are the same, because he makes fun of Essiad, you know, everybody thought Essiad was wise. He didn't even understand day and night. He thought they were two different things, right? Is Heraclitus really so stupid, he doesn't know that day and night are something different? See? And I point to a fragment we have in another collection there about the sleeping and the waking, which he says are the same, where he says, we should not act and speak like those asleep, right? He very much knows the difference between being awake and being asleep. So why does he say that the sleeping and the waking? Because one becomes the other, right? If he's not trying to point out that there's an apparent contradiction in the way we all speak, huh? And the average person would say, well, I'm speaking in prejudice, I don't even know what those words mean, let alone be able to, you know, unfold exactly in what sense he can defend that, huh? Now, if you go back to the first reading we had in Book 1, where Aristotle showed that we know things in a confused way before distinctly by three kinds of examples, right? Like we know the sensible whole before we distinguish those parts. But the second kind of example he gave was the name before the, what, definition, right? Well, this is like that, isn't it, huh? In this other way of looking at this, because when I say hard, I don't distinguish between the hardness and what the hardness is in. But unless there was in the hard a real distinction between those two, in no way could the hard becomes soft, right? Because there'd be nothing in the hard that could be soft. Because the hardness itself can't be soft. So there must be something in there besides the hardness. In the same way in the day, something in there besides light, right? And in the wet, something in there besides wetness. Do you see? So, just like I was saying in an earlier reading, you know, he points out two things, they're all saying the same in general, they're all saying the same proportionally, right? But here you could say that he's going forward from two to a third thing, that's one way of expressing it, right? He's also going forward from a confused knowledge, in the corresponding to the one word, hard or soft, right? To a distinct knowledge of the real distinction in the hard, between the hardness and the butter, whatever the hardness is in. Do you follow me? Okay? So you could say that in order to untie, or put it even more exactly, the untying of the apparent contradiction can all change, which is between contraries. The untying of the apparent contradiction that Heraclitus, the central thinker in human thought, was the first to really point out, the untying of that is the discovery that there's a third thing besides the contraries, right? Especially if you take the contraries purely in the abstract way, hardness and softness, okay? But it's also a discovery of the composite nature of the contraries, right? Between which there is change. That they're composed of the contrary in a strict sense, and the subject underlying that contrary, in which that contrary exists, right? Without being the same, right? Now sometimes I say this is the first major example, not the most difficult one, but it's the first major example in our learning of how we go forward by untying contradictions. The reason why I say this is the first one, in a way, is going back to what Shakespeare points out there in Toys and Chesida, Ulysses points out there, Ulysses there, but Odysseus, and things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stir it, son. It's motion or... change that grabs the attention of our senses. And since the natural rose from the senses into reason, in a way, emotional change is what first absorbs our mind's attention. But all change seems to be between contraries or opposites. And therefore there seems to be a parent contradiction in all change, right? Or what opposites become in the other. So the way in which contradictions lead to the development of our knowledge when we, what, untie them or break them down. So that's why it's appropriate to stop, as we will, look at those secondary readings, talk about the role of contradiction in development of our knowledge. This is the first major example. Never sensed this, right? The great philosophers and the great scientists and the great theologians have gone forward in the same way. And perhaps it was Heraclitus who first saw something of this, huh? And therefore I sometimes call Heraclitus the father of the progress of the human life. It's quite a title, right? But it's hard to exaggerate to know, you know, the greatness of what Heraclitus is at least anticipating as you'll see in some of the fragments, huh? And there's reason to think, you know, to read the fragments that maybe he doesn't really think day is night and is sleeping and awaking, but he wants to emphasize that apparent contradiction, so you're going to be forced to, what, think more deeply about this? And we have fragments of Heraclitus in the fragments on method. They remind one a little bit of Socrates, right? Where he says, men do not understand the things they meet every day, even though they think they do, he says. And that's in a way what Socrates is saying, huh? But the way you make men aware of the fact they don't understand what they think they understand is by showing that they are in what seems to be a contradiction at least in their thinking. And if they're reading a contradiction, that's even worse, of course, but even the appearance of contradiction in their thinking is a sign that they really haven't, what, understood fully what they're talking about. You can't solve that contradiction that we had in our parent contradiction, DK-12 here, Anne Xavier's, right? You don't really understand what's required for the mind to direct itself, to move itself, right? And I tell you that I, you know, at all these graduations, I go to Nazian graduations, you know, and there's always some, you know, valedictorian or somebody up there, you know, saying, yeah, the professors taught us to think for ourselves, right? But that means that you can, in a way, direct your own mind, right? And that's not an easy thing to do, right? Did they really succeed at doing that? Well, you better be sure that the professors succeeded in getting you to separate what you really know and what you don't know. They separated what was more known and what is less known? I'm not sure that they've done their own. Now, it's an illusion, right? They really haven't learned that thing for themselves yet. You know, one of the greatest compliments when she was beyond, as they were paid me, you know, is, you know, that I'm able to move myself, he says. He doesn't say I like it, you know? But practice is a witness to the fact that it's not easy, right, to move yourself, right? Yeah? See? Because you've got to really know what you know and what you don't know. And use what you do know to move yourself to what you don't know. Or what's more known to you to move yourself to what's less known to you. Okay? But, you know, you know, dark, they carry on what they step about to confuse them to distinct, right? He doesn't know what's more known and what's less known. So his mind is all out of order, right? Okay? Now, we should stop and look at this, a little bit, you know, because we don't want to lose the, you know, the high point here, right? Okay? But before I do that, one good example of this, and one reason why I emphasize this as well is this, right? What you see here is that what changes is composed. Unless there's a real proposition between things that are identical, change would be, what, impossible, right? So we take the proposition that we learn here, and we say, what changes is composed. Okay? This is from Lectio 11, right? 11th reading. Now, in theology, before we take up what the God changes, in fact, the first thing we take up about God after the existence of God, in the Summa Theologiae, is that God is what? Simple. Simple, right? Okay? In Summa Theologiae, in the Prima Parsia, the first question is on the nature of theology, and so on. The second question is on the existence of God, and the third question is on the simplicity of God. But when he goes through the eight articles there, if you look at the eight articles, what he's proving is God is not composed in this way, he's not composed in that way, etc., etc., etc. finding he's not composed anyway. So, God is not composed. Now you've got a syllogism in the second, what, figure, right? Where you're affirming something of what changes and denying that of God, right? So you can syllogize, then, that God is what? Does not change. God is not changing. What's an example of how the philosophy of nature, in this fundamental proposition we learn here, is used in theology, right? Now, that God is not composed, I mean, you'll see the philosophy of nature is important to learn that too, but here I'm just showing, you know, how after you learn that, you would take this proposition and syllogize that God is unchanging, huh? At least in the syllogology you do that, huh? Because you show that God is simple before you show or take up with it, you can change, huh? That's a very important thing, then, huh? But it's also an example of what we said in talking about the importance of the knowledge of the general, right, in theology, because in theology we know more what God is not than what he is, huh? It's in the beatific vision of St. John tells us that we will see him as he is, right? That we'll see him face to face. So, when you're knowing something negatively, the more general thing that you can negate, the closer you are to that thing, as opposed to affirmative knowledge, right? If I say you're a body, I'm not as close to what you are as if I say you're a living body. And that's not as close as, say, you're an animal. And that's not as close as to, say, you're a man, right? But if I'm knowing you negatively, which is closer to you, you're not a dog, or you're not a quadruped, four-footed animal, which is closer to you? Neither. Well, you're not a dog. No. You're not a four-footed animal, right? But when I say you're not a dog, I'm separating you from the dogs. But you might be a cat, or a horse, or an elephant, right? See? When I say you're not a quadruped, you're not four-footed, I separated you from... More. Yeah, yeah. If I say, you know, that a seven is a number, I'm not as close to seven as if I say it's, what, an odd number, right? If I say it's a prime odd number, I'm getting even closer, and so on. But if I say it's not four, I'm not as close to it, as if I say it's not even, you see? So, in order to understand the negation of the general, you have to understand distinctly the general. So if you have a distinct knowledge of change in general, which is what we're getting here, namely that what changes is always composed, right? Of the contrary, the strict sense, and the underlying subject. Then you can syllogize, after you know that God is not composed, you can syllogize that God does not change, right? So you don't bother to show in theology, God does not walk, he doesn't run, he doesn't crawl, he doesn't grow, he doesn't, right? He doesn't change. That's what we show, right? See? Because we can negate that through these propositions that are very general about change. That's a very important thing there. And notice, this helps you to understand something, too, about almost all the other things shown about God. For example, we demonstrate in theology that God is good.