Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 83: Motion, Divisibility, and the Nature of the Now

Transcript
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I think there's a limit of something, right? Just like saying the point is the limit of the line, right? So the now is the limit of the past in this direction, right? And the limit of the now in the other direction. I mean the future in the other direction. Strange, that... Now. Now, I don't know, if we're going to this last paragraph, maybe we should stop right here, right? Let's look a little bit at this last one here, but we can maybe deal with some of the difficulties Thomas says about it, that they're on. Everything changing necessarily is divisible, for since every change is from something to something, and when it is in that to which it has been changed, it is no longer changing, right? And when itself and all its parts have not changed from that from which it changes, for what has itself and its parts in the same way has not changed, necessarily something that changing is in this and something else in the other, for it is not possible to be in both or in either. I say that which it has changed first by the change, so white into gray, not into black, for it is necessary that the changing be in either of the extremities. It is clear, then, that everything changes is divisible. Now, that seems most clearly the case of a, what, change of place, right? If you take the first place beyond, suppose you have this thing here, right? And we'll divide it into equal parts here, right? We'll call this first part AB, and the second part BC, right? Now, let's say there's a body that is equal to this first part, that rectangular body, right? Now, when that rectangular body is entirely in AB, right, it's not yet in motion, is it? When it's entirely in BC, which is also equal to it, the motion is over, right? It's not moving, right? So, it's moving from AB to BC, it must be what? Participating in both. Yeah, it must be partly in AB, right? And partly in what? BC. Because when it's wholly in AB, it's not yet starting to move, right? See? When it's wholly in BC, it's no longer moving, right? Okay? So, therefore, it must be in motion in the third possibility, when it's partly in AB, and partly in BC, right? See? Just like, you know, if you take, I'll make a little more real example here, maybe. You know, these trains, right? Okay? And, uh, you've got these various, you know, things, and you've got tiny here in the, the engine, right? Okay? And, you can see this, do this, like, it went by, it's occupying track at the same length as a train, right? Now, if you take the immediate, as it goes into the next, right? Okay? And if you take one, again, equal, if you wanted to, you have to make it equal, necessarily, but equal to the length of this train, huh? When the whole of this train is in this part of the track, it doesn't start to move yet, right? When it arrives at its final destination, right? Let's say it's over here, and the whole of it is in this part here, and the change is over, right? So, it must be in motion, then. Now, when the whole is here, the whole is there, when it turns to it, its part is here, and part is in there, right? And therefore, the thing that moves must be, what? Divisible. Divisible, right? Okay? This is the way you start to show that it's a body, right? It's divisible, right? And as Thomas says, he's going to argue later on, from the fact that motion is in time to its divisibility in one way, right? And from the fact that the thing that moves is divisible to its divisibility in another way, right? Okay? There's some very subtle problems, Thomas agrees, in the commentary, if you look at it, but we may be talking about it about those the next time again, but this argument is very clear as far as change of place at least is concerned, right? Okay? But the example he's touching upon there of the alteration, right? Mm-hmm. See? If the color which is next to white is, let's say, gray, right, huh? You know, to some fire example there, gray is in between white and what? Black. Black, yeah. So, when the thing, body is entirely white, it doesn't begin to alter yet, right? this thing. When it's entirely gray, the alteration is taking place, right? You mean entirely black? Yeah, it could be that too, it could be all the way. Oh, okay. Let's take the one that he says that's next, right? You see? Okay? And let's say gray is what's next to white, you know? Well, then, when it's somewhat white to partially black, and I'd say it's getting gray, then it's changing, right, huh? Well, it's entirely of new quality, and it's no longer changing, right? Okay? But it's not as clear there as with the change of place. So, when I'm growing, you know, from being five foot tall to being six feet tall, right, am I five foot tall or six foot tall? I'm being five foot tall to being six foot tall. in between, in between, in between, in between, Something, right? In between, yeah? So, he's bringing out this way to something divisible, right? But as Thomas says, it's seen most fully in the, what, change of place, right? And Thomas says in this book he's dealing with change as it's continuous, right? There's a way in which, what, change of place is the most perfectly continuous of any change, yeah? And most of all, change of place, what seems to be a circuit of motion in the sky around us, huh? It seems to be no break at all, right? Okay? So, this is all laying as the groundwork for discussing more particular divisibility of, what, motion, right? But it also does, as I say, cast light back upon that definition of motion and what a barely existing thing it is, right? First I'll, you know, raise that question at the end between us on time, you know, would there be time without the numbering soul, right? See? And he says, you can say more that there's a number of chairs in this room, even if they've not been numbered, than you can say there's a number of hours if they've never been numbered, huh? Because the number of chairs in this room, the multitude of chairs in this room, right, exists even without me here, right? Okay? The number of stones in the forest, right? See? But the, what, ten hours don't really exist together, do they? Without the soul, in a sense, numbering them together, right? So it's like something doesn't fully exist without us, right? But that's, but that's because in itself it barely is. How can it really be when it can't motion, when it can't be in the now and the past no longer is and the future is not yet, right? You know? Very strange existence, right? The same way with time, you know, in the confession that Augustine says, you know, if no one asks me what time is, I know what it is, but if someone asks me what it is, I don't know. It kind of sounds like the characters in the Bittanian Dialogues, you know, well, I knew what this was until I talked to you, Socrates, right? That's true. That's true. I distinctly remember that's when I stopped reading confessions when he started talking about time and I didn't understand any of it. Well, Eric Gussman talks about matter, right? And he says, you know, if I could see it's a something that is a nothing or a nothing that is a something, that's how I would say, you know, but it's just not exactly correct to say it's a something that is nothing. But you try to understand the potency, you know, that is matter, right? And that really is hard for us to understand, but it's difficult to understand because of what it is. It's not actually anything. And you can do some of this maybe next time you're appropriate, I don't know, or else at the end of the book, six, one, the two, you know, where the modern going to be going to be Physicists used to talk about the instantaneous velocity, and they're trying to unify straight line motion and circular motion, and a straight line is tangent to a circle at a point, so you speak of instantaneous velocity, well, as a result, partly in quantum theory and so on, they begin to wonder, isn't this after all fiction? Because there's really no motion there in the indivisible, yeah, it's not going to be velocity, right, which implies motion, right, maybe in 20 physics there was based upon a fiction, maybe a useful fiction, right, you know, but nevertheless, say, what, a fiction, yeah. When they talk about instantaneous velocity, don't they maybe talk about it in terms of, say, a limit, and say, so the velocity would be, the instantaneous velocity is this, and that's because if the thing stopped going around, say, in the circle and continued at that point, that's what it would have, so you can see it as a limit, sort of, it's not a contradiction. Yeah, but strictly speaking, there's any motion there at that point, but, well, I think it's shardivism, an interesting thing to say about that. And, you know, the development of quantum theory, you know, led them back to what, to the problems of Zeno, right? Oh, you know, and Louis Dubreuil, you know, talks about this, and one of the books he talks about there, and then Einstein, there's the preface of the book, you know, and these things I would have enjoyed most, you know. They don't know, they don't know, you know, too well, they don't know this stuff at all, really, but they realize there's some affinity between what they discovered, you see. And, in a sense, what's in quantum theory is that you can't, what, you can't pinpoint a body, right, and attribute to it these dynamic properties at the same time with the accuracy. That's in a sense that there's really no motion in the indivisible, right? So it's kind of a, kind of, the Bible's always coming back to these things from the particular, you know, to come back to the general from the particular, you know, so then we can meet them coming back, you know, because we're going forward. So. Do you have a ride back? Do you have a ride back? I think so. No, I don't know. Probably I don't know, thank you. Oh. Yeah. Save your monastery now, or what? St. Mary's, we're at the other end of Peter's, you know, just, uh, you know, and so on. And, uh, but, uh, St. Jacques, you know, when he'd have Moncea in the car, you know, he'd take advantage of having him in the car, you know. You know, about disgustingly things, you know, and so on. And he'd drive Moncea crazy because he'd always be drinking, you know. Oh, no. It's a fight, Moncea had to forbid him to talk philosophy when he's in the car. But, uh, you know, I used to, you know. It was fun when I was up at Laval, just like they would have postman's rights there every, uh, month, you could set your watch by them. Yeah. Uh, likewise, they had all sorts of bus strikes. Yeah. And when I first got there, there was a bus strike. Uh-huh. And I had a place to live. It was about three miles or so from the university. Yeah. Anyway, I just started hitchhiking. I could barely speak a word of French. Yeah. But, uh, so it was easy to say, Université Laval, and, uh, telling where my home was, that was another thing. But I, it was so easy to hitchhike up there, even when the busses were running, I just continued to hitchhike. Yeah. You don't find it hard in that. To be a philosopher, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. And it can be kind of a, um, kind of maybe a frustrating thing, you know, in a sense, right? Mm-hmm. That they can, uh, aspire to something, right? See? Now, the question is, when you talk about, um, in ethics, you're especially concerned eventually with the question of which is better, two things, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. And, um, you can show, let's say, that the contemplative life is better than the practical life, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? But does that mean it's better for every individual? See? You know, Thomas is always quoting the great Gregory the Great, who was a master of understanding of morality, right? And he says there are men, he says, of an active temperament, right, whom, being forced into contemplative life, would be harmful to them, right? And there are men of a contemplative, uh, temperament, right, forced into a practical life that looked kind of crazy, right? You see? And, uh, so, um, I remember my brother Richard, after he got married, you know, say, one time to me and to Marcus, I guess, was there too, you know? But, uh, you know, his wife would be frustrated, you know, sitting around while they're leading this kind of contemplative life that we three breakfast boys were used to, right? You know? In other words, this guy got to do things, you know? You know? Whether they need to be done or not, he got to do things, right? And, uh, and, uh, even, uh, uh, you know, Pete DeLuca used to, I mean, Pete DeLuca is saying to me, you know, that he needed a more active life, in a sense, you know? Um, that he couldn't simply be a professor, right? You know, he couldn't simply be a, a thinker, you know? And kind of, you know, realize his own, his own temperament, right? Uh-huh. So, uh... That's what you were explaining to me the other week. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, uh, when you go from ethics, let's say, to, to domestics, or from ethics to political philosophy, right? See? Well, it's a common point, you know, that we make, and sometimes, you know, St. Paul makes it too, when you compare the, the body politic with the human body, right? You know? The eye is a better thing than an ear, right? The eye is a better thing than an ear. Yeah. Yeah. And the eye is a better thing than a finger. Right? See? But would it be better for me to have, you know, ten eyes and no fingers? Right? See? Well, obviously, in the body, there, it's better that I have this diversity of parts, right? Well, it means some of my parts are more noble than others, right? My hand is really a more noble thing than my foot. You know? It's closer, associated with my reason, as my foot, huh? But would I be better with four hands and no feet? See? See? Okay? Mm-hmm. See? Now, sometimes, you know, when you're showing the student the excellence of the philosophical life, right? Well, here was a flaw, so nothing could done. Well, that's true, right? You see? We need farmers, right? And we need auto mechanics in our society, right? You see? We need cooks, right? We need violinists and pianists and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? You know? So, a society, a city, would not be better if everybody was a philosopher, right? Mm-hmm. See? In fact, we said about any occupation, in a sense, if everybody was an auto mechanic and nobody a farmer, that would be bad, too, right? If everybody was a farmer and nobody a cook or nobody a violinist, right? If everybody was a violinist, it wouldn't be any good either. I mean, so, it's no objection, it falls off with a, you know, you see? But that means that it's better for the city, right, that some people do things that are better, and some things do people that are lesser, right? I see things, huh? But nature seems to have what? You know? Cuts and people opposite things, right? See? So, I think, you know, that, you know, I follow Hegel in this respect, you know? I mean, Hegel puts fiction in the highest, right? And then next to fiction is music, right? And then comes painting and then sculpture, maybe at the bottom, right? You know? Among those arts, right? See? But would it be better for Mozart to have given his life to being a philosopher or something, right? Rather than music? See? Would it have been better for us if Euclid had done metaphysics instead of geometry? I don't think so. You know, you're better off that he feels so good at geometry. And if he did, you know, and Mozart did music, right? And someone else invented champagne. Tom Perignon, I don't know what it was. And so on, right? You know, someone else, you know, learned how to make... We're edible, so we need all these people, right? So, if you consider someone simply as a man, you know, a rational animal, right? You know, you might say, well, this is better to do than that, right? When you descend to a particular man, right? You descend to the city or the nation, where you need this diversity of things, right? And to some extent, people are, what, cut out, right? You know, they have to find their nature, what they can do right, huh? So, you see, if I hadn't gone into physical life, I wouldn't have got into that only to be a businessman, right? Well, I think I would have gone into the political life, you know? But I don't know if everything would be cut out for political life, you know? I'm busy working on that. So, one of the things I could have made a myoply good businessman, I don't know if I could have. Not terribly successful, but anyway, I could have, you know? You could have a great chauffeur in my life. You could really be a good chauffeur. Yeah, I know that. I was, you know, when I talk to people about hell, you know, I tell them that the punishment of hell is not so much physical pain, bodily pain. I mean, the punishment of hell is mainly boredom and loneliness, you see? In other words, whereby you sin, there you shall be punished, right? And really, the misuse of our mind, right? In not, you know, studying the important things and doing our things, knowing things, having things, is properly punished, not by bodily pain, but by, what, boredom, right? And the proper punishment for not loving your neighbor, right, in a friendly way, because charity is a kind of friendship, as Thomas says, right? The punishment for going against friendship, in other words, right, is loneliness, right? Loneliness is sadness caused by the absence of a friend, right? And so, loneliness is the appropriate punishment for abusing, what, friendship, right? And boredom is the appropriate punishment for abusing your mind, right? Now, in a short way, you know, as I mentioned, you know, I hate correcting exams. Everybody hates correcting exams because it's kind of boring, you know, see? But sometimes, if you don't have an exam to correct you, you could waste your time doing something like watching TV or something like that, right, say? Yeah. You know? So, when you're correcting exams, anything seems extremely interesting, right? Even TV. You're like, oh, it's fascinating, you used to read a literary, you know? Anything other than, you know, same stuff over and over again, see? So, but... But anyway, I think boredom and loneliness have a great influence on this life, you know? They were trying to, you know, a lot of people were trying to escape loneliness, right? Oh, yeah. You know? And I remember, it was in conversation with an older professor, Todd Creek and so on, but he's dead now, can rest his soul. But he was talking about the first time he's going to get married, right? And his son, his father, he's thinking he's going to get married, right? And his father said, well, I hope it's not that old sex business, he says. No, he says, you just get so lonely, he says, they're by yourself, see? And I think, you know, men, you know, seek the company of women, not because of this, obviously, sexual thing, but that's part of it, but because of loneliness, right? You see? And, you know, I see these things happen, you know, people go in the army, something like that, you know, and they get away from home, and they get lonely, and then they get involved with some woman, you know, out of loneliness, and they get in trouble. I know people, man, marriage is this way, you know? It's because they were, you know, they were lonely, right? You see? You see? So, but I often think that boredom is something that drives us, too, you see? Just like loneliness does, huh? I think they're very important. And I think, you know, I read good things, because I would be bored, you know, even with most academic subjects, right? You know? I mean, I take a certain interest in economics, but I think I can do all myself in Italian economics. I just get very bored with the things, you know, just not very interesting, really, in the long run, right? And all kinds of things, you know, that I may have a little taste for, but I mean, I... I like history, but I mean, I couldn't go myself full-time to history, you know? I just get very, what, very bored, you know? I do kind of a relaxation from the universality of philosophy, a little bit of history, right? I just got through reading my copy of The History of Florence by Machiavelli. Did you ever read that? You know? Well, interesting connection here between the fifth book of The History of Florence by Machiavelli and The Inchon Landing of MacArthur, right? So my friend in the politics department, who knows everything, and I said, now what's the connection here in the fifth book of The History of Florence and The Inchon Landing? Of course, he didn't know, right? But he hadn't read, you know what The Inchon Landing was, and he had read, you know, The History of Florence, you know, many years ago, but he didn't know anything, you know? So I've been bugging him, you know, about his ignorance of these matters and his impiety, you know, knowing more about earth and so on. And then I got the other guy, you know, a friend who was in the politics department, you know, and he hadn't even read these to you with Florence, you know, by Machiavelli. I said, well, he's your teacher, Machiavelli. Well, I mean, they know the prints and the discourses, but they know the fifth. So I got to sit down, and I'm going to give them a 15-minute lecture on the connection to the fifth book. And I got one of my colleagues in philosophy that got him interested in what the connection is between the fifth. Once he said in the 15-minute lecture, I said, it's going to be really significant in this. To lead into it, you see. I mean, actually, I can tell myself full-time The History, you see, if I can take a couple of these things, you know? And so I think, you know, you know, I mean, Thomas is really interesting. And if you're bored in college, it's either you don't understand him or you don't know how to read him, you know? You're reading him too fast or something, you know? You're getting indigested. You're not reading him in the proper order, right? But I mean, he really is interesting, you know? Oh, yeah. And never bored again, you know? I have a colleague who's all cop and eye digger, you know? And he's extremely boring, eye digger. There's nothing to say. And about hell is fascinating, because that's abuse of our intellect and our will. It makes so much sense, the not loving people with our will and the abuse of our mind. Yeah. It makes it absolutely great. In the hell, I guess, you know, how can you really be funny towards anybody there, you know? They're all twisted anyway, to get a minute. There's nothing lovable much in them, in terms of these things, and you can't lose that. And if you're cooperating with you in sin, right, you know, it's not going to make you feeling, right? You helped to damn me, you know? Damn you. They're going to be, you know, you know the way Dante represents, you know, the devil all the way down at the bottom there, you know? It's frozen down there, right? You know, but I mean, it's just, the communion of saints is quite an interesting article of faith, you know, communion of saints. In heaven, everybody will rejoice in everybody else's good. They'll be, you know, they won't be, they won't be envious of anybody else's good, right? But, down in the hill, all of this envy, you know, like, starts playing there, you know, no exit, you know? All of this is ultra, right? You know, but other, you know, people of age down there. I think that's an appropriate punishment, right? You know, when Thomas... He's talking about the excellence of wisdom there in the Summa there, you know. In a sense, he's quoting scripture there, right? You know, no study is more perfect or more sublime or more joyful, you know, and so on. But there's no boredom at all in this, right? More perfect, more sublime. And he says no boredom, huh? Yeah, he's quoting scripture too, you know. No tedium there, you know. I can attest to that. I was bored out in the world, not since I... I was thinking too, you know, of what we call the visit to the Blessed Sacrament, right, you know. A lot of people, they can't sit in church and, you know, make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament or something like that, right? They can't do that. They're bored just sitting there. So, but, you know, I don't think the saints are ever bored, do you? You see? In the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, they're never bored? They're not. I suspect most people are bored, right? You know, I mean, you know, a couple people, if they manage to come to Mass on Sunday, you know, they rush out, you know. And I never rush out, I mean, I mean, it doesn't make any sense to rush out, you're just standing in line, you know, and everybody's in the car, you know, just stay there and relax the church. I mean, you know, they can't stay there because they would be, what, bored, right? They get nervous and twitchy, you know, so they've got to get a car and go someplace, right? Mm-hmm. You see? And, well, it was Pascal or something, he said, you know, when all the troubles come to the world, people can't sit in their room and be quiet. But, you know, you've ever seen St. Alphonsus Luguri, he's a little, it's like, he's got like 3D1 meditation, you know, for making a month of his sacrament and so on. But he talks about the role that this played for him in his, you know, conversion, right, or to a more serious Christian life anyway, you know. But, I mean, you know, the way they describe St. Dominic, you know, you know, any time he'd come and he'd travel, he'd always go, when he got to a new town, he'd go to the church right away, you know. And he'd usually fall asleep eventually there for the altar or something, you know. You know, but, I mean, you know, these people were never, what, seemed bored, you know, present son. He supposes that. And we say, the second way, the professor asks for the birth star. Next way.