Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 55: Nature, Motion, and the Study of Natural Philosophy

Transcript
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as having the right to decide whether we should live by reason or by our emotions. So you're already admitting in a way that reason, we should live by reason. It's like those who deny the axiom of contradiction because they think they found something that contradicts it. Okay, so any other questions? Actually, this question, it may just be, I think it's just that I missed this months ago, just a whole bit about, and I also understand you're fine, I'm not really covering this now, but you mentioned last time about the first argument against nature acting for an end. You mentioned that it breaks down because nature doesn't have a mind, because a mind, this is my question now, that mind is unlimited, as Anax, I think Anax Agro said. I missed the whole demonstration about mind is unlimited, I mean. It's something we took up when we were reading the fragments of... Is that right? Yeah, it's a whole fragment, D.K. 12 there, of Anax Agro, which is about mind, huh? And he says many different things about the mind, right? But the first thing he says about the mind is that it's unlimited, huh? Now, when he says the mind is unlimited, you want to first of all see that he doesn't mean the mind is unlimited in the way in which he and others had been saying matter is unlimited. For example, Anax Imenes thought that air went on and on and on and on, right? Up, up, up, up, and up, right? So you might think of unlimited in the sense of something that, you know, in every direction it goes on forever, right? Okay? Right. Now, later on he's going to say mind is the thinnest of things. So he's not obviously thinking of mind as being unlimited in the way in which a body would be that went on forever in every direction, right? Nor because he has one mind is he thinking of the mind as being an infinite or unlimited multitude, right? Okay. Which is a position Anax Imenes had about matter, right? The size of matter. There's infinity of infinitely small pieces of everything, right? Right. Okay? But again, if there were a multitude, it would be the thinnest of things, okay? But again, he's only positing one mind. So what does he mean then when he says the mind is unlimited, huh? I'm sorry, I've got to ask. What do you mean he's positing only one mind? Only one mind? The greater mind he's talking about. Okay. The greater mind, yeah. The greater mind. Okay. Okay. So, in what sense is he saying the mind's unlimited? Well, we have to approach it through our own mind, which is more known to us, huh? And as he says at the end of the fragment there, DK12, every mind is similar, right? The greater and the lesser, right? So, we start from our own mind, right? In what sense is our mind unlimited, right? Well, basically, what is the genus of the mind, right? The genus of the mind, what it is in general, is an ability we have. An ability to do something, okay? So, the mind is an ability to know. Know something, okay? Now, where do we see something unlimited in the ability of the mind to know? Well, you have to go to the object of the mind, right? What it knows, huh? Okay? And the mind is an ability to know the universal. Now, what is the universal? The universal is what is common to many and set of many, huh? And you can see that some universals, like, for example, odd number, right? Are common to how many things? Or set of how many things? An infinity of things, right? And so is even number, right? And number is set of even more, right? And if you understand that something is not nothing, you must understand something as well as nothing, right? And something is set of everything, yeah. So, because the mind is able to know the universal, right? Right. It's an ability to know the universal. And the universal covers an infinity of things. That's one way that the mind is clearly what? Unlimited, right? Okay. Now, they're also pointing to the mind's ability to go on forever with numbers, right? Okay? So, my children are amazed that I could count to a hundred to one age, right? And later on, they're amazed I could count to a thousand, right? But the mind can go on forever, right? Okay. And of course, there's outside signs of this, too, that our mind is always, what? Inventing a new thing, like an automobile or an airplane or an atom bomb or a computer, right? Or it's inventing these, what? Reinventing them, right? A new way. So, we design the airplane or we, you know, design that mobile or the, you know, computer. I mean, it's on a date before you buy it, right? Before you get home. Before you get home, they got a new one. It's more powerful or can do, you know, 20 things more or something, right? Or 100 things more or whatever it is. You see? So, if you compare man, say, with the bee, the bee makes these wonderful beehives and they notice the reasonableness of, you know, the hexagon there in combining these things. But the bees are making these beehives the same way they did when the Greeks described them. You see? So, there's kind of a limitation there, okay? Right. In the same way, you know, with the insects that we were talking about in the class a little bit. Insects do one or two things very intelligently, it seems, huh? But you get them out of that and they're lost, right? Again, a sign of the infinity of our mind is language, huh? As opposed to these natural signs, groans and grunts and screams. Oh! And groans and so on. But, you know, the cat, I guess there's a variety of meows to the cats, but they're limited, right? You see, but language has a kind of infinity about what you can express in language. There seems to be no end to that, huh? But the, you know, if you look inwardly, you really see the basis of the infinity of the mind. It's an ability to know the universal. And you can see that the mind, in a way, is open to everything. I mean, even if you say, I don't know everything, you understand in some way by the word everything. Everything, don't you? Maybe in a confused way, right? But it shows that your mind, in a sense, is open to everything. Even to say you don't know everything. If I say, I'm not open to everything, what do you mean, not open to it? What do you mean by everything? I actually mean some things? No, I mean everything. So it's a kind of infinity there that the mind has, huh? In its ability, right? Not in its size or multitude, huh? That's one way they reason later on, that the only thing that can satisfy the mind is what? Seeing God, huh? We need ultimately something unlimited, right? So in chapter, what, 43 of the first book of the Sumacare Gentiles, Thomas gives ten reasons why God is infinite. But later on, we see in the third book, right, that this unlimited ability can only be satisfied by an unlimited object, right? So God's the only thing that will satisfy our mind. Okay, so let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. Everybody got a copy of the third book of natural hearing. I put in parentheses, physics, because it's usually referred to and translated as physics, but it's not really a very good translation. So let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. So let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. So let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. So let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. So let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. So let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. So let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. So let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. So let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. So let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. So let's go on and look a little bit here at the beginning of the third book of natural hearing. Translate means to carry over, right? The Greek word fousis means nature. It would have been better if they'd called it nature than physics. It would be more clear in English, right? Because the word nature and its origin with birth is kind of, they're assigned to that in English, right? Prenatal, postnatal, nativity, and so on, right? By physics, you don't see that connection with birth. So I've completely lost the origin of the word with the word physics. Plus the fact that physics today is the name for experimental science, right? The actual Greek thing is proacellus, which is the word hearing. Fousikesa, natural hearing. The Greek word hearing could also have the sense of lectures, you know? But I like to keep the title natural hearing. And I see a lot in that title. The Eight Books of Natural Hearing. Why do you call it natural hearing? Well, one, because you're hearing about natural things. And two, you're listening to nature as a student, listening to his teacher. I think I mentioned how that Immanuel Kant, on the second preface, the particular pure reason, huh? He has two very interesting proportions, right? And he's talking about experimental science, Newtonian physics, which he was a Newtonian physicist. And he's saying that in physics, or in science there, our reason learns from nature, but not in the way that a student learns from his teacher. He says, our reason learns from nature in the way that the judge, or we could say the lawyer too, I suppose, learns from the witness. I think it's very interesting, those two proportions, huh? Newton, not Newton, Kant, huh? Kant thinks that that's the only way you should learn from nature, as a, what, judge or lawyer learns from the witness, huh? Now, I think, huh, that in the beginning of our study of the natural world, right, we should learn from nature as a student learns from his teacher. But later on, maybe we have to learn in that second way, as a judge or a lawyer learns from the, what, witness, huh? Okay. So, I see that the two proportions there of Kant is useful, but he's trying to choose one rather than the other, right? And I think we should learn from both, in both ways of nature, but first in the way that a student learns from his teacher. Now, the student listens to everything his teacher has to say, even though he may have a hard time absorbing it all. The judge or lawyer doesn't say the witness, you know, when he gets up in the thing. Let him say whatever he wants to say. See? The teacher comes into class, he's got an imprisoned audience in front of him there, as they say, and he can say more or less what he wants to say, right? For a while at the way. And the student, you know, listens to whatever the teacher has to say, huh? But the lawyer and the judge don't allow the witness to get on the stand there and see what he wants to say. No. He's, what? To answer only those questions that are put to him, right? And he's supposed to answer those questions. Well, I think there's some truth to what Kant said there, right? I think that's what we do, in fact, in experimental science, huh? When we perform an experiment, right, we have a particular question in mind, right? And we want to get an answer from nature, if possible, to that one particular question. Okay? As Louis de Broglie, the father of the way mechanic, says, if we had asked other questions, maybe our science would have gone another direction, right? Okay? And, you know, I was reading, you know, a book one time by one of these trial lawyers, right? He's saying, you don't go into court to him and ask the witness questions at random, he says. That's a very dangerous thing to do. You've got to go in with already a plan of exactly what you're going to ask that witness, huh? Because if you don't do that, you're as likely to get him to say something that's going to hurt your case. Yeah, that's the other, right? It's interesting, right? And that's why Schrademir, right, one of his essays says, is science the fashion of the times, right? And he's talking about the fact that we don't ask, and in fact, we can ask, right? All the questions we could ask, right? And so many of certain things are coming to light. The things that we decide to be enlightened on. But in the beginning here, we're listening to nature, in the philosophy of nature, in the eight books of actual hearing, we're listening to nature as a student listens to his teacher. And that's the importance of the word hearing, because as you know from the premium to wisdom we read before, that's the standard contrast between sight and hearing, huh? Sight is a sense more of discovery by yourself, and hearing is a sense of learning from your teacher. That's why, you know, Thomas is always quoting St. Paul there. Fides ex autitu, right? Faith is from hearing, right? And the fragment of Heraclitus here is very interesting, huh? I think I've quoted that before. Heraclitus is the central thinker in human thought. Heraclitus says, Wisdom is to speak the truth and to act in accord with nature, he says, giving ear thereto. See how concrete that is? Giving ear thereto, huh? In the experiment, you might almost say you're learning, you're more observing what nature does when you act upon in this way, right? Not simply sitting down and listening to nature, huh? So, that's another reason why I call it naturalistic, right? You're listening to nature, right? Okay? That's why, you know, we're not wanting to lose anything of this suggested by this very title, right? Books of across levels, huh? Which we're hearing. Fusikis, natural hearing, right? Now, the third thing that we've seen already in our reading of the first book and so on, huh? You're listening to things that are very close to what you naturally know. You're listening, so we say, with and through what is naturally known. I'll go back a moment to the tenth reading there in the first book. As you recall, huh, in the second reading, first of all, Aristotle gives a logical division of all his predecessors say. They're all saying something different, right? But then, in the eighth reading, he finds a common basis among those who said there was one matter and a common basis among those who said there were many matters, right? And then, in the beginning of the tenth reading, he finds a common basis and he finds a common basis The mind is a common basis shared by all of them, right? And he points out that this common basis, which is the change between contraries, change between opposites, right? That this thought seems to be forced on our mind, he says, by truth itself. It seems that anybody who thinks about change will come up with some pair of opposites. It doesn't seem to be an hypothesis, as Einstein understands hypothesis. Einstein says that hypothesis is freely imagined, right? Well, contrasts that now with the phrase that Erstal uses for his thought, the change is between contraries, right? Or opposites. It seems to be forced on our mind by truth itself. It's something you naturally almost think of, right? And of course, at that point, as you remember, I usually stop and pause and I say, now, what major civilization was the furthest removed from Greece at this time, that Erstal was writing these things? It was the Chinese civilization, right? The other two major civilizations, the old Middle East and India, there was a little bit of contact, right, with them and the Greeks. But China was, right? Now, there's an old saying that East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, right? And a lot of truth to that, obviously, you know, customs of the East and the West. But you go to the I Ching, right, which is the Book of Changes, the book that Confucius said, if you could add another ten years to his life, you could spend them studying I Ching. So it's kind of a Chinese classic about change, but it's all based upon contraries or opposites, the yin and the yang, right? Represented by the broken line and the unbroken line, huh? So unbeknownst to Aristotle, at the time that he's finding a common thought shared with all the Greeks that seems to be forced on their mind by truth itself, the Chinese have got the same thought. So you're East and West meet, right? Then you go to the moderns, right, huh? And you see, you know, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, as Newton says, huh? Of course, Einstein, the evolution of physics there, he quotes the great physicist Helmholtz, that we still read a lot. But he's trying to explain everything by traction and fortune, right? And the solar system is explained by centrifugal and centripetal forces, right? And the atom by, what, contrary forces, nuclear forces that are holding the protons together because they're trying to spread out, okay? So that's an example of how you're close to what we kind of actually know, right? And Aristotle speaks of them. It's all saying that without giving a reason. He goes on to give a reason for it. That's part of the way he's becoming strong in this, right? But he says, they all say it without giving a reason, as if being forced by the truth itself, something that you naturally think. Just like the idea that a whole is more than a part, huh? Everybody, East and West, ancient and modern, has that in its head, right? It seems to be something we either naturally know or naturally come to know, huh? An avoidable, right? So what characterizes the Eight Books of Natural Hearing is not that what you know there is all naturally known, right? And you have to think things out, right? And reason things out, right? But you're very close to what we, what? Naturally, what? Understand, huh? Okay? So that's three ways that our hearing is natural, right? We're hearing about the natural, right? We're hearing or listening to nature as a, but much more so than a scientist does, although he does too, right? But we're listening to nature, to use a proportion there, as a student listens to his teacher, right? In the way that the great hierarchical it is said we should listen to him, listen to nature. And then, what? We're listening to it with our natural understanding, right? So I had to keep the original words there in the Greek, you know? Each book's a natural hearing that's in the genital, I guess. Is there a different word in Greek for hearing and listening? It probably is, but I think across cells is really the word for hearing, right? I don't know if the Kostik is really there or not. In Thomas' commentary, sometimes he touches upon the Greek, I mean, the Latin equivalent of the Greek, right? It's howdy to us, huh? Howdy to us in English. So, especially in that first book, that's the foundation of it, right? Especially in that first book, though, you're very close to what you naturally understand, huh? You said when we went through, or at the beginning, that the definition of nature that Aristotle gave there was in encircling. Yeah. What is a strict definition? Well, you're getting closer to nature when you realize it's both matter and form, right? And you start to understand what matter and form are. Not that you understand them too well either, but you're getting more into what nature is, huh? As you go from that definition to matter and form. So, the reason why I sometimes do that definition of nature before we go into book one, right, even though it's later in Aristotle's thing, is because when we start to find out what's found in every change, right, like in 10 and 11 there, or in 12 and 13, what's found in every becoming, right, you see how that's relevant to natural science once you've seen the definition of nature. Aristotle's going to do the same thing here because he's going to begin now the investigation of the definition of motion, huh? But that's relevant to natural philosophy is seen from the very definition of nature. So he recalls, you know, part of the definition. Since nature, he says, is the beginning of motion and change, and the road we are following is about nature. What motion is ought not to be hidden from us, huh? For this being unknown, necessarily nature is unknown, see? Now, of course, in a confused way, we know what motion is, right? So he had some understanding when he heard the definition of nature, huh? But if we don't know, what, more distinctly what motion is, we don't know really distinctly, right? Nature is as much as we can know it, right? Okay? And, you know, yeah, something like that in other books of Aristotle, you know, like in the Nicomarckian Ethics, right? When you define happiness in the first book, you, Aristotle used to the Greek word perigraphic, right? You draw a line around happiness, huh? But in the very definition of happiness, you eventually have the word virtue. It's man's own act, huh? According to virtue throughout life. And then you say, well, we've got to investigate human virtue now, right? To see more clearly what happiness is. And so he spends, you know, many, many books going through the human virtues. And then in book 10, he comes back, right? And takes up the definition of happiness again, right? And sees in what virtues does it chiefly consist, huh? And then he distinguishes the two, what, kinds of happiness, right? The human happiness, which is based on, what? Virtue of foresight. And ultimately the foresight of Winston Churchill, right? The political leader. And then wisdom, right? More divine happiness. Okay? But he has to have gone through the virtues, right? The moral virtues and the virtues of reason, right? Before he can see more clearly. Man's own act according to virtue throughout life, definition of happiness, would you say? Yeah, we can take up ethics. I don't want to defend that right now, but just make a similar point, right? That sometimes we define something and one part of the definition we know in a confused way, right? Yeah. But after that definition, we see the importance of investigating that. Part of the definition of knowing distinctly what it is, huh? Yeah. When I was giving the students, you know, Shakespeare's exhortation to use reason, right? I tell them it's blank first. I know what blank first is? No. Okay? What's unrhymed Iambic pentameter. Now, you know what an I am is? You see? But I mean, you know, you wouldn't see the reason why I am is important for talking about the exhortation there, right? That's the way it's written, unless you had seen that, what? That's the definition of blank first, and the exhortation is written in a blank first. Okay? So that happens sometimes, huh? So when I come into class, the introduction of philosophy, the first day, say, anybody know what a philosopher is? But sometimes she has somebody who hears something, but he's a lover of wisdom. That's what the word means, right? That's the first definition of the introduction of philosophy class. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom. But that raises the question, well, what is wisdom, right? And then we go to the premium to wisdom to find out a little bit about what wisdom is, right? See? But strictly speaking, you'd say the definition of wisdom is before the definition of philosopher, in the sense that, you know, since a philosopher is a lover of wisdom, we don't know what a philosopher is, we don't know what wisdom is. Right? Since nature is the beginning cause of motion, we don't know what nature is, and we don't know what motion is. But again, you know, you can, you know, qualify that a bit and say, if you know in a confused way what motion is, you can know in some way what nature is, or you can know what nature is, right? But if you know in a more distinct way what motion is, you know more fully, right? So you've got a very easy idea of what wisdom is, you know, in a very easy way what a philosopher is. Don't you find out what it is? Okay? Sometimes I give them the paper, you know, does a philosopher love wisdom too much? Seven wise men met at the Oracle of Delphi, and they said, Medanagan, nothing too much. And a philosopher is loving wisdom for its own sake, more than anything else. He does his own sake, the very end of his life, the reason for his living. It reminds me of just flipping through a little book, you know, on marriage, right? One of these little books around the house there, some gave us. And it has all kinds of quotes of people on marriage, right? But it had one that purports to be from Socrates, I don't know. I've seen it in the early days. It says, By all means married, he says. If you marry a good woman, we'll be happy, he says. If you marry a bad woman, you'll become a philosopher. I've told my colleagues, I don't know. I've never seen this in there, you know. You know, some of these quotes, you can't trust them in these books, you know. These kind of popular books, but, you know. He's supposed to have been married to a shrew, you know, see, you know. But the question is, you know, whether he became a philosopher because she was a shrew, or she became a shrew because he was a philosopher, and not bringing the bacon home, you know. You know, his husband is walking around, you know, talking, not making any money, or bringing anything home, and eventually getting into trouble for all this talk he's doing. So, she might have. Okay. So, notice the emphasis here in the first paragraph then, right? That's why we've got to talk about motion now. Now, those determining about motion ought to try to go through, in the same way, the things which follow upon motion. For motion seems to be among the continuous things, and the unlimited first appears in the continuous, huh? Now, it's the sixth book of natural hearing. We have the whole philosophy of the continuous, okay? And later on, we're going to do a little bit from the sixth book. In fact, a lot from the book six, huh? Okay. But the definition of the continuous, huh? The definition of the continuous that you will meet in book six is that the continuous is what is divisible forever, okay? The continuous is what is divisible ever, infinitely. So, like a mathematical straight line, continuous in one direction, right? You can cut that in half, and you can cut the half in half, and you can go on forever. But that's going to be proven in book, what, six, right? So, there's something unlimited, right? Something infinite, if you wish, in the continuous, huh? And Aristotle is saying, motion is something, what, continuous, right? So, that's why in the second part of this third book, he takes up the unlimited, huh? Okay. But you really see the way that motion is unlimited or continuous more fully in book six, right? More appropriately. And Aristotle, there, will show that not only is the line, let's say, continuous, but the motion down the line is continuous, and the time it takes to go down the line, right, is divisible forever, huh? Okay. There's many ways, we'll see, of showing that, huh? But one way I just mentioned here, interesting way, where he shows that distance and time are divisible forever, huh? He says, we all know that some bodies are faster than others, okay? And, of course, the faster body covers the same distance in, what? Less time. And the slower body, in the same time, covers, what? Less distance. Now, just take those two truths that we all know, and you can reason from them that the distance must be divisible forever, and the, what? Time frame, right? So, let's say the slow body goes this distance, right, in this time, okay? Then the faster body is going to go this distance in, what? Less time. I don't care how much less, but in less time, right? Now, if the slower body, in this whole time, went this distance, in the lesser time, the faster body goes that same distance, it won't have gone the whole distance, will it? Well, that's got to be divided, right? Now, if the faster body, in this time here, went this whole distance, then this lesser distance, it must have gone in, what? Lesser time, right? Now, if the slower body went this distance, in that time, even lesser time, it can't go the same distance, otherwise it would be just as fast, wouldn't it? So, it's got to go even that lesser distance. You see how they're divisible, what? Forever, right? It's not that lesser distance. And so, you're just using those two things, huh? Okay? So, he says the unlimited first appears in the continuous. Hence, it takes place that those defined the continuous, that should be used, I guess, not used, used many times the notion of the unlimited, as the continuous is what is divisible without what limit, right? Now, in addition to these things, motion is impossible without place, huh? And the empty, now, when he says the empty, he doesn't think that you need the empty for motion. So, why does he say it here? Some other people. Yeah. Now, Thomas Aquinas, huh, who's the best student Aristotle ever had, and the best commentator, right, huh? He points out that before Aristotle takes up some subject, right, before he tries to determine the truth about some subject, right, he'll often speak according to the thinking. Thank you. of his what? His compatriots, right? Okay. So, in the fourth book of natural hearing, he takes a place, right, first, which he thinks there is such a thing, right? Then he takes up the empty and shows that it doesn't exist, right? And then he takes up time, right? Okay. One of the first places, remember, where Thomas was talking about that thing in Aristotle was in the mechanical machine ethics. Aristotle was saying, you know, that every art and every science and so on seems to aim at some good, you know, but different arts and different sciences aim at different goods and so on. And he gives a bunch of examples, right? Like the medical art aims at health, the household art aims at wealth. That was commonly said among the Greeks, right? Okay. But in the first book of the politics, when he takes up the house, he denies that and reasons against wealth being the end of the household art. That's a mirrored instrument, right? That's not the end or purpose of it, huh? You see? But you wouldn't know that from the other part, right? See? So it's not that Aristotle has changed his opinion, right? Right. But that he uses an example, not to prove something, right? But to illustrate something, but an example that his audience would be, what? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. See, they would see that as illustrating that sort of a thing, right? Okay. Now, he's giving a reason up to this point in the paragraph for considering not only motion, but for considering the, what, the unlimited or the continuous, and for considering place and time, right? Okay? Because they're all connected with motion. The most common kind of motion is change of place, right? But even for what? Alteration, right? If I want to, you know, blacken or darken my bread to toast, right? I've got to carry it over and put it in the thing, right? Okay? If I want to get warm, I've got to walk over to the fire, right? Okay? So alteration presupposes change of place, too. If I want to grow, you've got to eat. You've got to take the food and put it in your mouth. So place seems to be common, right? Any kind of change in some way, huh? And of course, motion would seem to take, what? Time, right? Huh? Okay? So notice what he's reasoning. He's reasoning that because philosophy of nature, or as Shakespeare calls it, the wisdom of nature, right? I like the amphibody of the wisdom of nature as I explained with that title, right? Because the wisdom of nature in the sense of the philosophy of nature is about the wisdom of nature in the sense of the wisdom that nature shows or reveals and what it does, right? Which is something of the divine wisdom, right? Okay? So in Heraclitus says, you know, wisdom is to speak the truth, meaning looking philosophy, and to act, which is practical philosophy, in accord with nature, right? Giving ear there, too, right? As if nature is wise and we have to learn from nature. And only a fool would think he's wiser than nature, which shows how many fools there are today, right? So because natural philosophy is about things that are by nature and nature is defined by motion, then you have to consider motion, right? But the continuous and place and time are all tied up with motion, right? So that we have to consider those things as well, right? And then he gives a second reason why we have to consider those things. He says, it is clear then that an account of these things, because they're all connected with motion, which is the definition of nature, right? You have to consider these things. And because they're also what? Common to all, right? Universal, right? We're considering natural things in general, aren't we? As we saw in the beginning of the book. And everything in the natural world is somewhere. Right? At some time, right? Of course, the Greeks had a common opinion that whatever it is must be somewhere, right? If it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist, right? But to be somewhere is really a property of what? Bodies, right? But they thought that all that was at first was bodies, right? But of course, we're a natural philosophy or an idea of wisdom, which is about all things. We're natural philosophy, it's about natural things. And the natural things all seem to be in some place, right? At some time, right? So place and time seem to be common to all these, what? Natural things. So if this knowledge is about natural things in general, these are common to all natural things, that's another reason to take them up, right? Okay? You see the two reasons, huh? One is that natural philosophy is about things that are by nature, and nature, of course, is defined by motion, therefore it's about motion, and these things are all connected with motion, right? Or natural philosophy is about what's common to all natural things, these are all common to natural things, therefore, right? Two very good reasons, right? You're taking these things up, huh? Kind of funny, huh? One time I had an advanced course in philosophy of nature, right? And I wasn't able to keep it in, because I didn't have enough students, but I entitled the course when I submitted it, Motion, Place, Time. It's actually the order of Aristotle does. Motion, book three, and then book four, it takes up place and time. Motion, place, time. On the course, it came out, space, time, motion. The modern station, right? You know? I don't know who did it, you know? It sounds bitter or something, you know? Computer translated it. See, but Maristal is very clear here, you know, at least the first reason he gives why we take up place, not space, but place, he says, right? The reason why we take up place and time is because they're connected with motion, right? And motion is taken up before them, so. Yeah. That's my name, my first motion, place, time. You guys saw how ingrained these customs are, huh? Uh-huh. You see? People can't, uh, well, Shakespeare says, custom is a tyrant, he calls it. Uh-huh. It is very much a tyrant, huh? You know? It rules your mind for its own good, not for the good of your mind, huh? Yeah. It's kind of funny, you know? People are always talking about having an open mind, you know? And they really, you know, how their mind is closed by customs so much, huh? Uh-huh. I was going down the hall there, something happened in his office door there. A closed mind is a good thing to lose. But, uh, I think the word conclusion, you know, comes in the word closed, right? So, if the mind is not closed at anything, it's never, what, come to any conclusions, huh? It's never really come to know anything. But, you know, it's what the mind is closed by that's the question, right? Uh-huh. If my mind is closed to this by custom, huh? That's bad, right? Yeah. See? Well, Aristotle, in the second book of Wisdom there, he talks about how men want you to speak in the way in which they are, what, accustomed, right? See? And in the other way it seems strange and foreign, right? And what you'll see, you know, is how, um, like, you're on a college committee of some sort and you have professors from different, what? Disciplines. Disciplines. And they, um, they approach the same thing in different ways because of their, what? Their customary way of proceeding, right? And, uh, you know, I mean, Heisenberg and the great physicists of the 20th century, they saw that even within physics you have to learn, maybe, well, as Heisenberg played very clearly, huh? You may have to learn a new way of understanding, right? Or a new meaning of the word understanding, you see? But a fortiori, I mean, even within physics, right? As you go from, from relativity, I mean, from, uh, uh, Newtonian physics to, to relativity theory, or... Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics, quantum physics, the way of understanding becomes so different, right, that it seems to be a new meaning of the word understand. But any fourth theory could go from that to trying to understand the poem or trying to understand the soul or trying to understand this, right? You know, just can't. Aristotle was something of an experimental scientist, right, and Charles Darwin, you know, admired him as a biologist, huh? And when Darwin read Aristotle, they made, you know, a new translation of him there in the 19th century there. And Darwin wrote the translator, right, and said, you know, that Linnaeus and Cuvier had been my heroes, he said, but they were mere schoolboys compared to old Aristotle. That's a strong thing, you know. But yeah, you know, Aristotle, at least my friend Warren Murray says, you know, Theophrastus, you know, who was the man who succeeded Aristotle in the school there, he says Theophrastus was not as good a philosopher as Aristotle, in fact, you know, but he was a better experimental scientist. I mean, the, you know, customary way of proceeding is so different, huh? So we could pledge into Aristotle here or we could stand back for a moment, right? Aristotle's going to work his way here now towards a definition of motion, huh? But, uh, the father of modern philosophy, so-called, huh? René Descartes, right? Um, he thinks it's impossible to define motion. And, and his, uh, one of his works there he quotes in a kind of garbled version the definition of motion. He says, who understands that? Well, not for me, including you. Um, and so he thinks that Aristotle is, is trying to, uh, define something that everybody knows what it is. Okay? Now perhaps part of Descartes' problem is something we saw earlier in the course, right? That he identifies, uh, certitude with clarity and what? Distinction, right? And perhaps by a third figure enthyme, right? Mathematics is more certain, right? Than the other sciences, which it is. And it's more precise than the other sciences, right? So this seems to be a sign that precision, distinction, and certitude go, what? Together, right? Okay? Well, as we saw before, Aristotle argues that the confused is, is, is more known to us, huh? Than the, um, distinct. And what's more known to us is something remorse about. So he has a syllogism, right? First figure to prove that. But you can see the weakness of, of Descartes' argument, huh? Because the third figure enthyme is not too strong, right? An example in Aristotle's rhetoric there of a third figure enthyme is that Socrates is just. Socrates is a philosopher. Before philosophers are just. Berquist is Swedish. Berquist is a philosopher. Therefore philosophers are just. I mean, are Swedish. You know? I mean, it's a weak argument, right? Though we use it sometimes, it doesn't mean it's. Well, Aristotle is a syllogism of what he's saying, huh? Now maybe Descartes too is, is, is confusing, um, what is clear to us with what is clear. So you gave me a glass of dry red wine to drink, right? It might be clear to me that I'm drinking a dry red wine, but not clear to me that I'm drinking Carbonet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, 1956. But that this is Carbonet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, 1956 is much more, what, clear than just it's a dry red wine, huh? But not it seems, uh, you know, if you stop and just consider that, um, one is in fact more sure of the confused than the distinct. Hmm? What's this table made out of? Okay, but, you know, I have a waste paper basket that looks like wood, but it's not really wood, you know? They have a lot of things now that kind of fool you, right? So the more precise you try to be, the less, what, certain you are, right? Hmm? Now, um, if Descartes has made a big mistake here, as we've mentioned before, there's two kinds of mistakes that he can get into because of that. He can think that if, um, he's very sure about something, he must know it clearly and distinctly because they go together, right? And, uh, the fact that he makes that kind of mistake is seen when he talks about thinking, right? And thought because he's very sure that he's thinking. I think, therefore, I am, right? The famous, I think of Descartes, which, you know, Guston had used before against the academics, right? I think, therefore, I was not original as Descartes, huh? Uh, St. Augustine used it against the later academics who were skeptics, huh? And, uh, uh, you know, some people attack Descartes and say, well, you stole that from, from Augustine, you know? And, uh, but Augustine didn't try to base all his thinking upon that, and Descartes tried to do that, right? Okay, but, but, okay, you're very sure that you're thinking, but does that mean you know clearly and distinctly what thinking is or what a thought is? No, see? And Descartes assumes that he knows clearly and distinctly what a thought is because he knows who he has thoughts. You see? Sometimes in class I say, you know, we're all sure there's a difference between men and women, right? When you try to say exactly what the difference is, then you get into, you know, somewhere doubtful, right? You see? But vice versa, when Descartes got into the mathematical science of nature, he started giving these mathematical hypotheses, they were so clear that he tended to think that they must be what? True, right? Okay? And that's part of the reason why these, these, uh, conspiratorial theories, right? You know? Often, uh, what? Um, persuade people because it's really remarkable how stupid people are sometimes, right? And even for their own interests, right? And, uh, it'd make much more sense, much more clear if they were purposely trying to betray the country, you know? Now, people muck through an awful lot and they do a lot of very inconsistent things and so on, right? huh? You see? Things are not as clear as they, what? Could be, right? Okay? So, um, Descartes, I think, is influenced again by his general position there. We're very sure that there's motion. We're very sure that there's motion. We're very sure that there's motion. We're very sure that there's a lot of motion. We're very sure that there's a lot of motion. We're very sure that there's We're very sure that there's a lot of motion. We're very sure that there's a lot of motion.