Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 54: Nature Acting for an End: Three Major Objections and Replies

Transcript
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A lot of people drive to work and not even aware of the fact that they're thinking about something else. They call right turns and everything. It's like they're programmed, right? For this sort of thing, huh? So, you see the reply to that argument, right? The weakness is not in saying that nature doesn't have a mind, right? Because that may be true. Or in saying that action for an end in some sense requires a mind, right? But not always in what is immediately doing something, right? So the thermostat, because it's been designed by a mind, right? Acts for an end that that mind had in mind. And without itself having a mind, huh? Now, again, perhaps there's a certain in caution or lack of caution in the way we speak of nature acting for an end. Because maybe in the strict sense, that phrase, acting for an end, seems to imply that you have in mind an end and that you're acting for that end, right? Okay? Sometimes you like to phrase even the question we're asking here. And I say, whether the action of nature is for the sake of something. And that is not implying so much that nature necessarily has a mind, right? If you say something's acting for an end, you almost imply that it sees the end, that it's directing its actions towards that, right? When you say, you know, that the action of nature is for the sake of something, you're not implying necessarily that nature, what? Has a mind and has in mind and is aiming, right? In the sense of the way a thing that had a mind would be aiming at it, right? Okay? But nevertheless, what it does could be for the sake of an end, just as what the thermostat does is for the sake of a, what? End, right, huh? When my brake light doesn't work or something, you know, or it's gone out, you know, a little red thing appears, you know, on my thing, right? That's for the sake of something that low light going on, right? To tell me that my brake light or my signal light or whatever it is, is no longer, what? Functioning, yeah. That's for the sake of something that light goes on, isn't it? Okay? And my computer is always telling me things I don't want to know. And even telling me what to do sometimes, which I'd rather annoyed at. But the point is, those things are for the sake of something, right? So perhaps that phrase, acting for an end, is almost too strong, right, to describe what a thermostat does and maybe even what nature does, right? Although you could maybe understand it in a way that would be unjectureable, right? But the man is attacking it is thinking that phrase almost means what? Thinking about the end. Yeah, yeah. So sometimes, as I said, I phrase it that way. Whether what nature does is for the sake of something. Just like we can say, you know, that a knife is for the sake of something or a ballpoint pin is for the sake of something. I wouldn't tend to say that the ballpoint pin acts for an end, would you? I'm acting for an end when I use the ballpoint pin. But even apart from me, you could say the ballpoint pin is for the sake of writing. And the same way the word organa, organ in Greek, forget the word, it means tool, right? So when you speak of the living body as an organic body, a body composed of tools, right? We're saying, well, the eye is for the sake of seeing and the ear is for the sake of hearing. And how we've got to have parts that are for the sake of something is a further question, right? But you don't ask that question until you realize that they are for the sake of something. I don't just happen to use my eyes for seeing. Like the caveman may have found a stone there in the thing, which I can use just to bash somebody's head, or I can use just to, you know, hit up the corn or something and make it into a paste or something, or crack the shell, the nut or something with it, right? Okay. Just happened to find that piece of rock there. The rock wasn't made for the sake of doing that, was it? No, it doesn't seem so. But I just, you know, came into this world and found these eyes here and I started, well, I think I'll use these to see. No, no, they seem too clearly to have been made for the sake of seeing. See? Now, who knew they were for the sake of seeing and designed them so that they would be suitable for seeing? That's another question, right? That's a question you ask only after you see that they are, obviously, for the sake of seeing, and they are designed for the sake of seeing. Do you see that? Okay. Some of the animals, like, I've seen monkeys take rocks and crack nuts. It seems like they're cracking it so they can eat it. Would you say, in some way, they're acting for... It's much closer to it, yeah. Yeah, because they know in some way, but they don't fully understand what an end is. Otherwise, they could, you know, do many other ends than they do, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. I heard about the psychologist. He trained, uh, kind of chimpanzee, one of these things, to, uh, get on a bus and put the money in and sit down with the newspaper. Because people are looking at this, you know, new customer and the thing and so on, and he's got newspaper and everything. He's put his money. And, uh, not too sure about him, but, you know, I mean, he's done everything he should do. But all of a sudden, he takes his newspaper and he fumbles it up and go ball. And then they're going to get the pity suspicious of him. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha And the second argument is based again upon a good statement that the end and the good are the same. And even the other side, Aristotle's side, Aristotle himself, when he talks about... about the end, he sees that end and good are the same, basically. Maybe in a secondary way, the means are good, but they're good because they lead to the end. Now, the second argument is saying, okay, end and good are the same, but nature produces something bad, like the defective baby, or there's an earthquake that destroys things, and so on, right? Or a tidal wave, or a hurricane, or whatever it might be, right? So, nature, in fact, is not producing the good. So, how can you say it's acting for an end, but the end and the good are the same, and nature's producing something bad, huh? Now, what's the defect in that argument, huh? Well, first of all, you have to point out that the bad is rarely what? Produced by nature, huh? So, take just the example of a defective baby. Most babies born are not defective, huh? If there's a string of bad babies, it's because something has interfered with nature, like the nomide, the nomide babies, and that sort of thing, okay? So, the defective baby, in the course of nature, is the rare one, and even in the defective baby, most of the organs have not come out defective, have they? So, if it's an essential organ, it can be very serious, obviously. But, even there, it's not that most are bad, right? Most are good, right? If you can remedy that bad one, then the low one will survive, right? Now, once you see that, then you go back to what is more known. We know that human art acts for an end, and therefore for something good, huh? But, does the cook ever burn the meat? Yeah, yeah. If he did it most of the time, of course, we'd fire him, right? But even the best of cooks, they, what? Sometimes burn the meat. They get distracted or something, okay? Or sometimes they put too much seasoning in there. For years, I was to joke about it. I ate some soup, and I put too much pepper in it. Oh! Nobody could eat the soup. Remember the time that daddy would come back and get it together? But even, you know, I've been in, you know, expensive restaurants, right? Where the food happened to get seasoned a little too much, huh? You see? So, even, you know, in a high-class restaurant, the cook sometimes, what? Makes a mistake, right? Does the pianist or the violinist, or whoever it might be, sometimes hit the wrong note? Yeah. Yeah. Now, are you going to say that that's reason, therefore, to say that the cook is not aiming at an end or a good? Because he fails sometimes? So, it's not really a good argument, then, to say that nature is not acting for an end when it only fails sometimes, huh? You might say even more so in the case of nature, because if we accept, as we did in our discussion, the first argument, that maybe nature doesn't have a mind, right? Why, the artist, so he does, the cook does have a mind, right? Well, that nature cannot take into account extenuating circumstances, as we would say, right? You know, when you cook a roast or something of this sort, or a big hammer or something like that, and often they give you directions on the package, and they say, oh, whatever it is, 15 or 20 minutes per pound, right? Then, usually, our ovens may differ, and so you'll discover, if you're cooked to some extent, that ovens do vary, right? And, you've got to check it before the time that the directions would say it's got to go to, right? And, that's been my experience, that it tends to get overcooked, you know, following the directions exactly, right? But, I've got a mind to take into account the fact that maybe my oven is, you know, stronger than other ovens, or whatever, right? You see? So, you'd say, a fortiori, right? Nature, which, according to the first argument, doesn't have a mind, right? Cannot take into account the fact that mother took thalidomide or something else, right? Okay? Do you see that? Or mother's on drugs, or whatever it might be. If nature not having that infinite mind, cannot compensate, if it's possible, for those things, right? So, if art, which, or the artist who has a mind, sometimes fails, and yet, that doesn't mean he's not acting for an end, well, the same thing could be said, then, the fact that nature fails sometimes, huh? And, furthermore, you could say that the fact that nature sometimes fails is really more a sign that it's acting for an end, than that it's, uh, not. Because failure means you don't achieve what you're, what? Trying to achieve, huh? Did I fail to teach you people German in this course? No. No. Did I teach you any German? No. But failure means more than I didn't do something, right? It meant I didn't achieve what I was trying to do. I wasn't trying to teach you any German, right? See? Now, I might have failed to teach you any philosophy, I don't know. Uh, then you speak of failure, right? Because I was trying to teach you some philosophy, right? But you can't accuse me of failing to teach you German. So the fact that nature sometimes fails, in fact, we speak of heart failure or what it might be, you know, failure of an organ. Um, or sometimes, you know, of course, it's born without an arm or something, you know, or missing something that it should have. The fact that nature fails sometimes is a sign that it is acting for an end. Just the reverse of what the argument is claiming, huh? Okay? You see how we answer the second argument, then, huh? Now, the third argument is a different kind of argument, again, from the first two. It's not arguing like the first one directly, that it's impossible for nature to be acting for an end. It's not arguing, um, like the second argument, that in fact it is not acting for an end, right? The third argument is saying that it's unnecessary to bring in this fourth kind of cause, huh? That the first three kinds of cause, matter, form, and mover, are enough to explain what you find in the natural world. And if they are enough, then you can invoke, what? Principle of fewness. Principle of fewness, huh? Or simplicity, as they call it sometimes, huh? Which, as Einstein has rightly pointed out, is the fundamental principle of natural science and natural philosophy. So, from the Greeks, through his own work, and beyond, huh? It's a fundamental principle for Newton. If you look at the rules that guided us thinking, that's the fundamental one. The fundamental one for Galileo, for Kepler, and for Heisenberg, huh? And for Einstein, huh? Well, we saw Aristotle using it in several places, huh? In our readings, huh? So, the question now is, are matter, form, and mover enough to explain the good in nature? And the way they tried to explain this was started by Empedocles. We saw some of the fragments of Empedocles. It pertained to his thinking, but Aristotle gives us a fuller account, huh? Than we can get from just the fragments. In Empedocles, if you recall, love and hate, right, were the movers, huh? But they were a mindless love, right? A mindless hate, huh? So, love brings together things in a mindless way. Hate separates them. Love brings them together again, and so on. Now, you'd expect that most of the time, this mindless love would bring things together in some crazy combination. And those fragments were describing some of those crazy combinations, huh? Well, Empedocles says no, but this keeps on happening again and again. again and eventually it happens to bring them together in a what good way right not that it was directed towards that good one right not that it intended that one but it just what happened right okay it might be one in a million it might be one in a billion it might be one in a billion billion but eventually it happens huh okay so you have that in a more sophisticated form in in modern scientists sometimes huh nature's trying all kinds of things huh and of course there is some evidence on that mathematical chance has something to do with the good in nature and two common examples are one is the huge number of seeds being produced right by plants that are blown hither thither kind of at random right but there's so many of them that what some manage to land in a place where they can grow into the original plant huh that's why you never get rid of dandelions etc right never get rid of poison ivy and so on right even these undesired plants they survive though man is trying to rip them out in some cases and then another example is that i suppose of what seems to be uh random mutations right huh and uh most of these mutations don't lead to something that's better adapted to the environment but maybe one of them is right okay and of course this is a problem that they have with medicines now huh that they get a medicine that kills off some particular germ and uh but that there are random mutations going on that germ and eventually um there's some strain that's resistant to that drug huh well all the ones that are not resistant they all get killed off and that's most of them but that resistance strain multiplies and now it's like the bible says the second state of that man is worse right the demons come back in okay and now we don't have anything to fight it huh we gotta try to figure out something to that's going to you know kill off this new strain huh so that's why they say you know they shouldn't be uh happy-go-lucky you know as far as giving you know medicine all the time when a person maybe doesn't require it right huh because you speed up this elimination and the development of strains that can survive in this hostile environment that man is produced in his medicines huh the main thing to consider now is mathematical chance enough right to explain the good in nature that's really the question now when i approach this sometimes i first of all point out a distinction and that is that mathematical chance could be right a means used to achieve an end okay now let me just write down the board a mathematical chance can be a means of achieving an end so the hunter right he wants to bring the bird down and so he has a shell in his gun that maybe got 15 pellets in it huh now he doesn't want to hit the bird 15 times because he wouldn't be able to find the bird afterwards right plus he'd have dental problems trying to eat the bird huh okay so what does he want to do with 15 shells huh well he's not perfectly good shot and the gun is not a perfectly adapted instrument right and his eyes are not perfect and the bird is flying and so on right but the 15 shells gives him a spread right such that he's not too bad a shot and so on he's more likely to what bring that bird down right one of the 15 right or two of the 15 will hit the bird right okay but usually one problem there he most likely misses right okay so that's an example example now of where the man is trying to achieve an end which is to bring down the bird right uh and he's using in a way mathematical chance right as a means of achieving that end huh okay now the same thing is true in the war let's say huh you know like in the second world war there when you had the the japanese snipers up in the trees there huh it might be in a bush or something right so when that branch moves or that bush moves what do you do and now he falls right yeah okay um most of your bullets have missed the man right so what are you doing you're giving a certain spread of bullets there right such that if he's behind that bush you'll probably hit him hit one of those books right and you need to do that because you don't know exactly where the bush moves or the branch exactly where the man is huh so you're not really wasting bullets but you're using mathematical chance as a means right now notice this is not pure mathematical chance because you're aiming the gun or you're aiming the tommy gun right at the bird or at the bush or something right okay but um and again the bullets are such that they will bring down the bird or bring down the sniper if they hit him right okay but you're using mathematical chance here as a means of achieving your hands huh okay now take another military example there huh suppose you get information that the enemy's ammunition dump is in that wooded area there concealed that wooded area over there so we're going to go over there we're going to like pepper that area right and that'll increase our chances of hitting the ammunition dump right now if we pepper with 50 or 20 these little bombs you want to call them that but small than a bomb right you know if one gets the ammunition dump the whole thing's gonna go and they're without ammunition to fight us so again i'm using mathematical chance as a means of achieving my end huh by not just peppering any area you know i've even suspect that they've got it concealed you know in the woody area right and i'm dropping my things on that area right and i just go back to achievement random now all these examples are taken from human art right but what they show is that mathematical chance can be a means of achieving an end so the mere fact that there may be some evidence like in the protection of seeds right that nature is achieving the good by what mathematical chance right that doesn't prove that nature is not what yeah see it could be using uh mathematical chance right as a means of achieving its end okay notice it's not pure chance because the tree is not just throwing up any kind of things in the air right it's throwing up seeds almost all of which will reproduce that planet if they land on the right soil okay now if you want to deny that nature is acting for an end that's doing what it's doing for an end you obviously will have to think of mathematical chance now not as a means of achieving an end because then you'd be admitting what you're denying right okay so as opposed to being a means of achieving an end you've got to have what we could call pure mathematical chance right okay pure mean by pure but wholly undirected right okay or another way in opposition to this idea of the means sir where mathematical chance becomes as it were not a a means but the means but the chief cause you might say huh of the good being achieved huh you So, in other words, we're not denying, huh, that there may be some truth in saying that nature does achieve the good by, what, mathematical chance, right, okay, but we're saying that this is not a pure mathematical chance, right, this is not the main thing, right, this is at best a means, huh, well, they're saying, oh, this is the main cause, right, this is pure. Now, you've got to be careful with the word chance there, right, when Aristotle is reasoning that nature does not produce the good by chance, huh, he's thinking of chance in the way he's defined it before, right, where chance is an accidental cause, huh, of what happens rarely as a result of an action done for an end, huh, okay, but they're speaking here of mathematical chance, which is actually a, what, ratio, okay, so, if I have a coin here and I flip the coin, what are the chances of me getting heads there before the Super Bowl game, huh, yeah, one and two, right, okay, if I'm flipping the die, what's the chance of getting a six, one and six, yeah, okay, so that's what you mean, a ratio, one to two, one to six, something of that sort, right, okay, I'm not talking about an accidental cause as defined before, right, now, if you're talking about pure mathematical chance, wholly undirected, right, what are the chances for good, and what are the chances for bad, huh, so the good is to the bad, as one to two, or one to six, or what is it, it's almost one to infinity, yeah, yeah, and I'm thinking of two numbers, what's their sum, well, if you use pure mathematical chance, how many answers would be right, and how many would be wrong, yeah, which is an infinity, right, so, the chances of the bad, to the good, is infinity to one, right, now, even, if you take my simple example there, of the leg of a chair, if the leg of the chair gets broken, huh, and we want to replace that leg, and so we take a piece of wood down to the wood shop, and at random, we cut a length, how many lengths would be the right one for that chair, just one length that is really either too long or too short, huh, but if it's one inch longer, or two inch longer, or half an inch longer, or half an inch shorter, or there's an infinity that continues and divisible forever, so there's actually an infinity of wrong lengths, and a, what, only one for the right, and that's a very simple thing compared to an eye, or an ear, or something like that, huh, where there are all kinds of things that have to be exactly right, huh, for the eye to, what, function, right, huh, okay, so, if nature is acting out of pure mathematical chance, in no way is directed towards the good, the chances that we think upon the good are almost, what, infinity to one, which is extremely rare, right, and even if you hit upon that good thing, you're living in a world where the odds are still against you, right, infinity to one for the survival, you see, so it's wholly unbelievable, really, there, to think that pure mathematical chance, that is in no way directed, could explain the good almost all the time in nature, because that's what the odds are, and if you hit that one out of infinity, you still face the future, right, and so the mathematical physicist, when he talks about pure mathematical chance, in the laws of thermodynamics, second law, I guess, he talks about energy going from a, what, organized state to a disorganized state, huh, as if that would be the, going actually from order to disorder, huh, and so you take the simple example, you know, of someone's desk during the course of the semester, where it gets more and more, what, messy, not because you're trying to mess up the desk, but not trying to order either, right, but just hither and dither, things get all misplaced, huh, and you see in the library sometimes, you know, sign, don't return the books, the library staff will return the books, well, apparently, if you just, you know, there's a hole, they put it in, right, well, if you put books like that, this way happens to be a hole, the whole collection's going to go from what, order to what, this order, right, okay, and now, so the army went into battle, right, using pure mathematical chance as opposed to this directed one where I saw the bush move, right, so there might be a jack in there, and I'm just going to spray the bush, right, but pure mathematical chance of going into battle like this, you know, I'd call 360 degrees, that's pure chance, right, an army going into battle that way would be more apt to eliminate what, itself, itself than the enemy, right, see, I say now, get up in the airplane, right, and every minute drop a bomb, that's where you are, just drop a bomb in a minute, whereas after it goes, right, as the enemy, right, you see what I mean, is that pure mathematical chance is not enough to explain the good in nature, far from it, and therefore you cannot invoke the principle of what? Fewness, right? Because the principle of fewness doesn't say fewer causes are better, period, it says fewer causes are better if they are enough, and it's remarkable that Aristotle did praise Empedocles in one way with respect to Anaxagoras, huh, in terms of his explaining how things would keep on coming to be in nature with a limited multitude of causes, right, why Anaxagoras took an infinity of them, right, yet he didn't go along with Anaxagoras as to the sufficiency of the first three kinds of causes, huh, so he can't say, you know, fewer, period, is better, right, but he saw that these few were not, what, enough, okay? Now there's a second thing that's kind of amusing about this argument, and that is if you go back to the original statement of the principle of fewness by Aristotle himself, or by even Sir Isaac Newton, right, the reason for the principle of fewness is that nature acts for an end, and Sir Isaac Newton says, more are in vain when less will Sir. Sir is no purpose, right, to use more than you need, right? So that's the original reason for the principle of simplicity or fewness, is that nature acts for an end. Do you see that? So it's kind of amusing that they try to use the principle of fewness to deny that nature acts for an end when the principle of fewness is based upon nature acting for an end. I don't give that as the main objection to their argument because I suppose they come back and say, well, okay, that was the original reason given for it, but we accept it because it's worked so often, right? You know, it's led to, you know, they could probably come back and say that, right? But nevertheless, it's kind of amusing to see that. They're basing themselves on something that was originally based on the thing they're denying. But the main objection has to be that, what, these three, even by mathematical chance, are not enough to explain the good in nature. And basically because the odds for the good under pure mathematical chance are like one, two, what? infinity, huh? So, you see the reply now to the three main objections that I've read anyway, to nature acting for an end. Isn't it when people say that all the good things came about by chance, aren't they also thinking of... the accidental that is the things that are good it's just an accident it just happened the eye just happened to start to be able to see isn't that also using the Aristotle's sense of chance you have to see exactly what the guy has in mind when he says that because in the strict sense luck or chance they're defined by inner purpose luck or chance is defined as an accidental cause of what happens rarely as a result of an action done for an end if it's done for an end by man then we call it luck or fortune as well as chance but if it's done by nature and something happens other than what the animal is trying to do then we say it's by chance the stock example is that the mother cat or whatever it is has lost her cubs and she's chasing some animal for her what? dinner, right? and that animal happens to run by where her little cubs are lost and so she finds her cubs so it's something that happens rarely as you solve an action done for an end hunting for dinner or chasing an animal for dinner so in that sense luck or chance really presupposes there's something like nature or man acting for an end you've got to be careful of that but if you're denying any end in nature at all they they they they It's really just, it's really absurd to say that everything is accidental. It's like saying there's only accidents. There's always got to be something as such before what is accidental. So the arguments for nature acting for an end, what kind of arguments are they? Would you say they're demonstrations or dialectical arguments? No, I think they're more dialectical. They enable you to see the truth of this, you know, from your sense experience. They're like monoduxios? Well, more than that. They're kind of monoduxia, yeah. But they do enable you to see it. It must be so. You had syllogisms and you backed up your syllogism, the second premise usually with another syllogism, I thought. At least on the first three. And then the other ones used induction and backed up your second premise. But it's self-evident to someone who understands all that it means, what nature means, what the end is, maybe that kind of... Yeah, it makes clear in your sense experience, right, that this is so. Okay? Well, in geometry, you know, you make clear that something is so in your imagination. But here you make clear in your sense experience that it is so. Okay? Okay. So, now notice, when you get down to experimental science or to biology, right, they consider these questions again in a more particular way. And biologists now are coming around a little bit back to Aristotle's position, huh? But it's kind of, not that intellectual history there goes in a circle, but in a, what, spiral, right? It goes back to the same spot, but at a different level of experience, huh? Well, if you read, you know, dent and people like that, it's amazing, you know, how much would be required to go right for the eye, right? And what's especially important about it is that all of these things have to happen at the same time. And that's the one thing that Darwin never explained, right? And you could have, you know, a bunch of insects, and, you know, they change their colors a little bit over the period of time, and one color fits into environment more, so that's, enables it to survive, right? But in the case of the eye, or in the case of the basic plan of different kinds of animals, everything's got to be in place at the same time. See? Darwin has it coming in piecemeal. Even before Denton, you know, people, I guess, were reattacking, you know, the Darwinian idea. I go back to Bertenlaufe, you know, it was clear to Bertenlaufe that the large plans of life, you know, can't come in piecemeal. They have to come in all at once, huh? Okay? And, incidentally, science imitates that, huh? Heisenberg is very clear about that. That, you know, some people think, you know, science can, what, go forward always by tinkering and modifying a little bit this here and there, right? Sometimes you have to replace the whole thing, you know? So, even science is like that, huh? It doesn't develop in that sense, huh? You go from Newtonian physics, say, to quantum physics or to relativity physics, huh? Heisenberg says, we don't have to get the attempt to understand, he says, but we have to learn a new meaning of the word understanding. Very strong way of putting it, huh? So, any questions about nature? I can run in, huh? Could you say again, you gave the, you gave a kind of division of the six arguments? Yeah, the first two arguments are looking at how nature produces the good, right? Or the way it produces the good, huh? In nature. And the first argument points out that nature is producing the good in animals and plants and their parts, for example, almost all the time, right? Okay? And that's a sign that it's directed towards the good, huh? If it's not directed towards the good, then it'd be 360, right? You know? You know, if I aim at the target there, you know, I may miss the target, right? But if I'm aiming in any one of 360 directions, the chances of the target are practically nil, aren't they? Plus 360 going this way, too. So, 360 times 360, not even getting smaller than the degree, right? You have a huge number, right, of misses compared to what he had done. Okay, now the second argument is pointing out that nature produces the good in animals and in plants. It started with a definite beginning, a definite kind of seed, right? And going through an ordered number of steps, huh? Such as to result in that good thing, huh? Okay? Now, both of those show that nature is directed towards the good. That it produces it most of the time, and that it produces it by going through an ordered number of steps, such as to lead to that good in. And that's where Aristotle compares, in the second argument theory, compares it to what takes place in the art of cooking or some other art, huh? If I follow the recipe for lemon meringue pie, right? Those are an ordered number of steps, such as to result in the lemon meringue pie, right? And most of the time it will. It won't result in a chocolate cream pie or a filet mignon or something. Okay? So the fact that nature produces the good most of the time, through an ordered number of steps, such as to result in that, shows it's acting for an end, huh? Then I multiplied the argument from art imitating nature into two. Okay? So I grouped those two together, right? They both proceed from the fact that we know human art acts for an end. But the first argument that I gave was from all human arts, right? And the second one was from the arts that help nature. And so in the first argument from human art acting for an end, we pointed out that human art, which we know acts for an end, cannot act for an end without imitating nature. Now what is it that nature does that human art imitates? Well, in general, as you go through your own body or the body of any other animal, you see that each part is made out of a matter suitable for its function. So the heart is not made out of bones, right? And the tongue is not made out of what the teeth are made out of, and so on, and vice versa. And secondly, we see that nature has given that part a shape, right? We create a form suitable for its what? Function, huh? Now it's impossible for human art to act for an end in making a chair, or a saw, or a pillow, or something else, right? Without doing exactly those same two things. Without selecting a material suitable, right? For the use of the thing, and giving that material a form suitable for its use. So we don't make the pillow out of what we make the saw out of. And we don't give the saw the shape of a pillow. Now if it just sometimes happened, right? If it just sometimes what human art did imitated nature, you might say, well, no. Coincidence, right? But the fact that it's impossible for human art to act for an end without imitating what nature's already doing is a very good sign that nature must be acting for an end, huh? And I was comparing that to something commonly done in teaching a philosophy where... The Apology is the most commonly used work in introductions to philosophy around the country. And it's because philosophers see Socrates as kind of a model, right? Now, if you can't be a philosopher without in some way imitating Socrates, you can make a good guess that Socrates is himself doing something like philosophy. Now, the other argument is taken from those arts that help nature, like the medical art that helps the woman give birth, or the art of gardening or farming that helps the seed grow into a healthy plant, right? Now, if these arts are acting for an end in helping nature do what it's trying to do anyway, well, you can't really act for an end in helping another if that other isn't trying to achieve something. So if these arts that help nature are acting for an end in helping nature, the one they're helping must, in fact, be trying to achieve something. Okay? Then Aristotle's fourth argument, but our fifth one, because we've divided the third into two, is an inductive argument, right? And so when you study in detail what the insects do, right, you see all kinds of things for the sake of something. It just jumps out at you. Or you see even that the body of an animal is an organic body, which means a body composed of tools. But what's more, obviously, for the sake of something than a tool? So the eye is clearly a tool for seeing, and the teeth in front, tools for biting, and the teeth in back, tools for chewing, and the heart a tool for pumping blood, and so on. Now, the last argument of Aristotle, or our sixth argument, is more abstract than based upon something we saw before, right? That matters for the sake of form. Form is the end of matter, and nature, in fact, is what? Always forming matter, right? And if it breaks down matter, like we do when we digest food, that's ultimately for the sake of building it up into some other form. So we don't, you know, chew and digest our food just for the sake of breaking this down, right? We put it through the grinders and all the else. Do it even faster, right? But it's for the sake of, what? Ultimately, getting that into a condition that we can rebuild it into, what? Human flesh, or blood, or bone, or fat, huh? Preserve us for the winter, you understand, right? Okay. So now this question is very important, as we said, for ethics later on, huh? Because if you answer yes, like we've answered yes, and as Socrates and Plato and Aristotle before us did so, then you might look and say, does man, who is by nature, right, and whose parts are by nature, does man and his parts have, by nature, a end or purpose, huh? And so in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle finds out what the natural purpose of man is. And the rest is how do we really achieve that end, huh? But those who answer no, either because they're convinced by these arguments against it, right, or because of custom, as we mentioned before, huh? Or because of this understanding of what is being said, everything's up for grabs. Use anything for any purpose you want to, you know? That's arbitrary, right? I could use you to fertilize my garden. Why not? Right? Because if you're made by nature, and nature didn't make you for anything, then nature didn't make you for anything higher than fertilizing my garden, did it? Huh? But people don't always tear out the fool. Yeah. But somebody does, you know, eventually, like that, you know the story there, where there's Karamazov, right? Where the university miseducated. He comes back and explains that everything's allowed, right? Well, if everything's allowed, let's kill the old man off and get the inheritance or what, right? Of course, he's shocked, you know, at the consequence of his own ideas, but that's it. It's interesting, you know, in Whitaker Chambers, I think I mentioned this, but Whitaker Chambers' book, The Witness, huh? And he was a communist for many years, and then he broke. But on occasion, he mentions there, in The Witness there, he was in the kitchen there, and his little daughter was there, and he happened to be kind of looking at her ear, you know? And gee, it's only struck him that that could not have happened by chance, that ear. Of course, the ear is not the most, but, you know, it's not as sophisticated as the eye, I don't think, you know, if it just didn't seem like that just happened, you know? But if I'd even a biologist, you know, who would deny, maybe, you know, if you pin them down, when nature acts for an end, but when they were thinking, they acted as if it did, right? And they find something, they say, what's that for? And, you know, what's his name, the guy you read out there, Harvey, right, huh? Harvey was very much taken up with a belief that nature does make for an end, huh? So this helped him define that eventually the circulation of the blood, right? Because sometimes you wonder, what is this for? And then, in a connection with the fact that blood is circulating, keeping blood from flowing back. So in practice, they often act as if they, you know? But in a sense, I mean, they kind of, you know, a little mental dishonesty there, in a sense, and it's like saying, you know, well, it is useful in research to act as if nature is acting for an end. Well, there's people out there, you know. Like my old professor, Kerseric, one time, he's down some philosophical meeting there in Chicago, and Kerseric's kind of a tough guy, you know, and he's putting the speaker of his down in the corner, you know, and he's got the guy in a contradiction now, right? Kerseric says, okay, he says, now you contradicted yourself, what are you going to do? And I said, well, that's a contradiction I've learned to live with. I was in the metaphysics this week there, in the beginning of the second book, right? And Aristotle's considering, you know, whether knowing truth is easy or difficult for man. He's going into that, right? And so I said to them, you know, Aristotle assumes that man is able to know the truth, huh? See? And so he goes to the question, you know, whether it's easy or difficult for him to know the truth, huh? See? Now shouldn't he have considered for his own for the man to be able to know the truth? Let's try to see if they could see why Aristotle doesn't do that, right? Well, Aristotle would say probably it's laughable, right, to ask that question, partly because we're sure that we do know some truth. One of my favorite recent examples is, you know, statements exist, true or false. And even the man who says statements do not exist, right, has made a statement. So, I mean, there's some things that obviously are true that we know, huh? Like the whole is more than a part and so on. And so, to try to prove what is obvious is laughable, huh? But likewise, you know, someone investigates now whether man is able to know the truth, isn't he assuming that man can know the truth about that question, right? Yeah. Okay? Or is he assuming at least that man is able to investigate the question that that's true? Either he can't know that he can know the truth or can't know that he can't know the truth is that he'd be knowing some truth, right? You know? It's like those people in ethics, you know, who want to reason out whether we should live by reason or by our emotions. Well, if they want to really enter into that conversation seriously, then they're accepting reason, right? Right? Right? I don't know the truth