Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
Lecture 51: Proportion in Philosophy, Science, and Theology

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found in gravity. Go back to the history of it. The inverse square law is saying that if you double, say, the distance between two bodies, the force of gravity will be not a half of what it was, but a fourth, right? If you triple the distance, it'll be, what, not a third that strong, but one ninth. They call it the inverse square law, right? It's one over what? X squared, right? So you double the distance, it's two squared, one fourth. Triple it, one ninth. How would you discover that? You see? When you go back to Newton and its contemporaries, and it's based on a proportion between this and light, because gravity seems to be like light spreading out evenly, right? And if I have, let's say, a square on the wall there, and I double the light source, the single light source, how much light is falling compared to what was before? A fourth with the light done. If I triple it, a ninth. You fall in the same area. And this can be shown very simply because, you know, the square that it makes there will increase in that way, right? And that's the way Faraday would demonstrate it, you know, from the popular lectures in the 19th century in the British Museum, right? So they knew that light decreased inversely as a square, right? So I'm standing in a light in your face, right? And if I double the distance between a flashlight and your face, your face will be receiving, what? Not a half of the light, but a fourth of the light will be receiving. If I triple my distance, you'll be receiving one-ninth of the light, huh? And that actually goes back, and that actually goes back to the theory of geometry. You study nuclear and the theory of proportions, huh? Lasers would be different, I guess. But, um, so the proportion, light received by proportion to geometry, and gravity proportion to light, right? So it's the most, um, useful thing, according to Emile, right? And Einstein said very often, huh, science is the way it's seen, right? He says to see a, a, a, a likeness, you know, a superficial likeness that's nothing, but to see, you know, one hidden under, right, all these differences, right? That's really very important in scientific work, huh? I remember reading one thing by Einstein one time, he was talking about the fourth dimension, right? And he says, well, our knowing the fourth dimension would be like a, what, two-dimensional creature discovering that really his world is two-dimensional. It's an interesting proportion that he, he gives, right, huh? And how, how would a two-dimensional creature, you know, calling in his two-dimensional, apparently, when he thinks of a two-dimensional world, how would he discover that he's reading a three-dimensional world, right? Interesting proportion, Einstein, yes. But, uh, when you read Plato and Aristotle, you can see that they just fill the proportions, huh? If you look at The Republic, you know, it's one of the most famous works of the great Plato, right? It's generated out of books. He's talking about, you know, a just soul, an unjust soul in book one, right? And he, he very convincingly shows that, um, you know, the just soul is better off than the unjust soul in itself, you know, apart from the punishment, the rewards, and so on, right? And, uh, they can't really answer the argument, but it's not as clear as it could be, right? And then Socrates says, well, I want me to blow it up, right? And then he gives this proportion, you know, of three parts of the soul to three parts of the, what, city, right? And then you see, what, in the disordered city, right? What a disordered soul is life, right? It's like going up. It's based upon the proportion, right? But there are simpler proportions than that one of the public there, huh? And there he's comparing what reason and the irascible appetite and who's appetite to, uh, the rulers and to the army and to the mob, the common citizen, right? Okay. But I mean, sometimes Plato compares, they'll say reason is the emotion that the man is to a horse. You know, the man gets on the horse and the horse tries to come off, right? And the man can give up and let the horse do what it wants to do, right? Or he can continue to get back on the horse and eventually the horse is what? Tamed and obeys the man, right? So in a sense, you can say that reason is to the emotions like a man is to the horse, right? That's very helpful to understand these, huh? And then the great Aristotle there was talking about the rule of reason over the emotions, huh? He raised the question, should reason rule the emotions like a master rules his slave, right? Or should reason rule the emotions like a father rules his son? And of course, what's the difference there? The master rules the slave for the good of the master. To hell with the slave, right? But the father rules the son for the good of the son, right? And so when reason rules the emotions, it's for the good of the emotions, huh? And they're better off, right? If reason doesn't rule the emotions, the emotions are all jagged and ragged and so on, right? Now, sometimes there's another proportion that we use, you know, and especially in talking about the cubical appetite, right? Thomas calls some of these vices there in the cubical appetite in the forms of intemperance, he calls them childish vices, right? Okay? And especially in the analogy that you say these things, right? Because if you don't correct the child, right, eventually the child becomes what? As he gets older, unruly, right? And you can't control the child, right? You get to a point where you can't do it as a parent, and the state has to step in, right? But notice, huh, those households in which the parents, you know, discipline the children as a parent should discipline a child, not as a master slave, but as the father should discipline the son, in those households the children are actually happier and more contented than the households where they're not given the discipline that they, what, need. And you can see that in the classroom, too, right? You know, in grade school, you know, or even high school, you know, that the teacher who can't really control the students, right, the students are more unhappy in that class, right, than they are in the class where they get the proper discipline, right? Okay? So you can kind of see by that, right, that just as the children who are given the proper discipline by the parents are happier as children now, right? Not just the parents who have less problems with them, but the children themselves, you know, are happier. So likewise, one's emotions themselves are, but better when they're ruled as a father should rule a son, right, huh? The one's emotions themselves are not ragged, you know? For some reason I compare, you know, a man with this incurable appetite, sense appetite, they're out of order to, it's like working in McDonald's or someplace like that where you have a million people yelling at you that they want their order. And you're running ragged there, you know, from satisfying one cousin to another one, and then way down this guy, this guy, he's like, where's my thing, you know, and I gotta get out of here, and so on. And if you've ever been in that kind of a situation, you know, the poor guy, you know, in the pizza place, you know, in the summer, you know, and they're sweating there, you know, and people want their pizza and so on. Well, it's kind of like being enslaved, you know, to your emotions, huh? You see? So these proportions are very important, right? When Aristotle is developing what moral virtue is, right, and how moral virtue is a habit in the mean between two extremes and so on, right? And he makes it proportion to art, right, huh? When you cook, you know, a piece of meat or you season a food or something, right, you can ruin it by, what, putting too much seasoning on, right? They still talk about the time when Daddy put too much pepper in the soup, and it's a family joke, right? And, but then sometimes you don't have enough, right? You need a little bit more, right? You should have put some salt in the water when you cooked something, you didn't, right? And it's lacking something, right? But the idea that what? When you're cooking a steak on the grill, right, you can cook it not enough, or you can cook it not enough, right? it too much right and the good is between too much and too little right and that's that's true right yeah about a uh all these things in art right you know if your nose is too short or too long right you know Cyrano de Bergerac right the nose is too long and he's he he's uh but then somebody can have a nose is too short right and that's not beautiful right so so um art consists this and the golden mean right and that's maybe easier to see than that virtue consists in the golden mean huh Mozart is always talking you know about the golden mean right now it's not understood fully you know but that's that proportion helps you to see right that that in in eating or drinking or whatever it might be um you've got to avoid too much but also but also too little right huh so there's all kinds of proportions in in all the parts of philosophy as we said it dominates science too huh you know it's also um extremely important in what theology right notice notice this proportion that that uh second vatican council was using a lot there when it talks about the word of god remember that you know the proportion there between the word of god in the sense of the second person the blessed trinity the word of god became flesh right became human now right took on that well in the bible the word of god becomes what human it takes on human language right and expresses itself in a way that man you know does right in words huh you made that proportion it's very interesting huh and they developed that proportion and kind of reason from it right you know it's very important that the lord is my shepherd huh that's based on a what proportion right when you say you know forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us you even have a parable about that you know the servant who was forgiven and so on well notice there you have a what we call continuous proportion god is to you who have offended him right as you are to what the person who's offended you right okay so if you don't what forgive the person who's offended you then god will not offend forgive you for what you intend to offend him right but it's based that that petition of the our father and the parable right that's about that petition really right so it's about huh but the petition forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us that proportion there that's based on a proportion isn't it when you say you know we call him father you're saying god is to us like a father is to a son right or sometimes you know the lord is my shepherd god is to to us as a shepherd is to his flock right okay you find that same proportion in homer right because homer speaks of you know the leader like i commend on is the shepherd of the flock right the shepherd of the people right that's based upon a proportion of course the most beautiful what metaphors when aristide was talking about the metaphors in in uh fiction poetry he says the most beautiful metaphors similes and so on are based on what proportions huh so pericles right when during the war when so many young men had died right and he said since it's spring it had been taken out of the year that's beautiful isn't it you know you lost all these young men right where are they you know they're all dead and you know that one of our he's quoting from uh roman juliet right when juliet is found dead apparently on her wedding day you know your only daughter this is supposed to be most happy day right and so the father says death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field it's a perfect way of saying it right who knows it's based on what proportion death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower so all the way from the most beautiful metaphors to what discovery right in science and in philosophy this ability to see a proportion is very important right and it's not easy to see sometimes when the proportion becomes even what a more necessary argument right there is double you know when he when he um speaks of these he speaks of uh consideration here of likeness right because he had very careful of proportion in what way are these two ratios like right and not to try to make them like in a way that they're not odd right okay so these are the four tools the dialectician well it's the basic tool is the ability to select probable opinions but in order to understand those opinions and to avoid equivocation proceeding from them it's good to be able to distinguish the sense of the word right but you can multiply in a way the probable opinions if you have different what different senses of the word yeah and then uh but these last two tools are very useful for what arriving at definitions for syllogisms about difference for induction right and then for this uh seeing a proportional likeness and therefore for syllogisms based on these proportions we talked about Shakespeare's exhortation right now it's based the first part there on a proportion the chief good of man is to man is the chief good of the beast is to the beast right and then alternating the proportion right as the chief good of man is the chief good of the beast so is man to the beast right so if the chief good of man is no more than the chief good of the beast then man is more than a beast right and then um we all know man is more than a beast then so therefore his chief good must be something more than the chief good of the beast right see it's very important when we stop how much important if i i mean we'll talk a little bit more about um about the material logic next time a little bit more into sophistry and so on right okay but um you want to go on to some natural philosophy then or i don't know i didn't ask them if you want to do that or the love and friendship or do love and friendship you want to do it i think i still have some of those things i'm taught for a while but i guess i still have some of the things you know what's the actual road in the same place okay so maybe some natural philosophy okay do some personal natural philosophy then okay well i think the sophistry course would be interesting well we'll do some sophistry next time in fact when i start natural philosophy i always you know give a little sort of argument there you know you guys can see me figure it out but they're all deceived by it they're all you know i've got one for the one on certitude and right opinion yeah right opinion seems to have a hope about it yeah and hope is good to have so it seems better to have right opinion and certitude people what would more of a rapier say there he's more rather converted at the end you know he said uh he thinks you know possession of truth is better than the than the uh search for truth right he says i'm not incurable romantic he says i think the possession of truth is better than the search for truth but some people you know they like the search right and you think that's better and then why don't you think well you want something else right to search for truth is for finding truth, right? If you're knowing the truth. The end is always better, right? What is the sake of the end? So knowing the truth must be better than searching for the truth. But some people, you know, want to make the pain that searching is better. We're excited. That's right. One other thing you were saying about your colleagues and, you know, voting and payments and all that. Oh, I wanted to do that. Your word got unemployment, but I was just reading here, G.K. Chesterton. He said that the opposite of employment isn't unemployment, it's independence. Yeah. What was funny was, you see, I happened to be on these two different committees, right? One, one, to have a different thing. And so the academic team came to both of them, right? And that's their opinion, and we actually had to vote in both, right? And that left them free to do what he thought was just, right? Now everybody voted one way. I think it's kind of funny that the city's very different from us, you know, they're obviously a fucking book, you know? I know, the whole is greener than a park. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. We'll see you. Oh, what was the other one? I just heard this, I don't know if I've seen anything, Chesterton said. He said the, the architecture of New York City is continual destruction. That's interesting. That's interesting. 19, 20, 80. But Chesterton said, you know, something that's worth doing is worth doing badly. Can you explain a little on the places that... Okay, what, what, you know, the stock example of a place is the a fortiori, right? You know? If a predicate belongs where it's less apt to belong, right? They don't belong where... So an example of that would be in Socrates' reasoning that the soul is immortal, right? He says, well, which is more apt to be destroyed, the composed or the simple, right? Simple, right? And we seem to be the composed, right? Well, people would think of the soul as being simpler than the body, right? So, um... Then he goes and gets some other arguments where he says that the body, through the senses, knows this chair, or something like that. He takes an example. Or this dog, right? But this chair or this dog are corruptible and eventually are destroyed, right? But the soul, through reason, knows what a chair is, what a dog is. That seems to be indestructible, what a dog is, right? So that shows that the soul, through reason, is more... has more affinity with the indestructible, than the body, the senses, right? So if the body survives death, then the soul will survive death, right? But then, in fact, the bones, at least, to the body, survive death, right? And the moment he's down in Egypt, right, even the flesh isn't something preserved, but at least the bones, right? Within a fortiori, the soul will survive death, right? So you look at what is, what, something that's less apt to belong to, right? And belongs what's less apt to belong than the other, right? So if fornication is bad, then adultery is bad, right? You know, if stealing from somebody is bad, then taking his life is even worse, right? So that's another example of our opposites of what? Opposite causes, right? Now it's first to thinking about comedy, which our style doesn't compete, that we don't have a part where he spoke about comedy, but I said, well, comedy and tragedy seem to be contraries, right? So if tragedy purges us of pity and fear, then comedy would have to purge us of what? The contraries of pity and fear, right? Which would be joy and what? Confidence, right? Well, there's some probability there, right? But then, you know, as I got more learned, I learned about the principal passions, right? Which are joy, hope, fear, and sadness, right? Well, then I said, maybe comedy is really concerned with joy and hope rather than joy and boldness, right? I see. Because hope is not the opposite of fear. Boldness is, right? But comedy is really concerned more with hope than with what? Boldness, right? And I said, you know, picking up all kinds of evidence of this, right? Because when you speak about comedy, purges away melancholy and despair that melancholy needs to, right? And if you're concerned with, more with joy and hope, right? And, you know, the comic poet that even Thomas quotes a number of times to illustrate things, Terrence there, right? You know, I had an edition of Terrence's comedies, you know? And the guy was quoting, you know, St. Paul, in about faith, hope, and charity, right? But contrary to Paul, for Terrence, the greatest of these is hope. This is obviously not a statement of theology, right? But I mean, it's interesting how this Latin scholar, you know, sees hope as standing out in Terrence's comedies, right? And just as, you know, tragedies and death, which is something sad to be feared, right? Kind of the ultimate thing. So, you know, the comedies tend to end in a marriage, right? But a marriage has the idea of joy, but also the idea of hope, because this is, you know, they're married and they're happy ever after, right? And so you have that aspect of joy and hope, right? Rather than boldness, right? So since I was correcting my first thinking, right? My first thinking was, well, tragedy and comedy are contraries, right? Therefore, the emotions they move us to must be what contrary? Well, pity is a form of sadness and fear is the other emotion of tragedy, right? Even Shakespeare sees that in a prologue to momentarily earth, right? Where he signals out those two emotions. Well, then comedy must be a form of joy, which is true, murder, right? And a form the opposite of fear, which is confidence or boldness. Right? I don't, you see, there's some probability there's some truth to that even, right? Because there's always that. But maybe it's not really boldness so much as what hope, right? But then you have to, you know, understand the teaching of the chief, what, passions. And Thomas will explain that, you know, in an article on why joy, hope, sadness, and fear, right? Of course, you can see that in the treatises of John and St. Thomas, right? He sings out those four. You can see it in the Vatican II there in the beginning of the Constitution of the Church of the Modern World, right? Because he shared the joys, the hopes, fears, sadness, right? Gaudium et spes, remember that statement? It's Gaudium spes, joy, hope, and then he goes on with fear and sadness, right? But he was thinking out those four, right? You know, the same reason, reason that St. John rectify those four and then you rectify the rest of yourself. And you're going to be joyful about the things you should be joyful about and sad about the things you should be sad about, right? You know, fear the things you should fear, you know. You can put both body and soul in hell, as the Bible says, and you hope for the things you should hope for, right? And don't be jumping, you know, they say in 1999 they're jumping out of the buildings on Wall Street there when the stock market crashed, right? You know, hopes are in the wrong place. They see the stock market is falling out and everybody is losing money, right? You know, the common investor, right? All these plans, you know. So, in a sense, with the teaching about the four principal passions, right, I kind of corrected my first thought. It wasn't really bad in a sense, right? There's some probability of that, right? The tragedy and comedy are contrary, right? And I have the opinion of Aristotle, which, you know, these are the ones that tragedy moves us to, so I guess that comedy moves us to the opposite ones. Not with bad thinking, my part, right? But I didn't really have it fully, right? Now that they didn't take me all the way. If tragedy and comedy, as I said later on, tragedy and comedy are the chief forms of fiction, they should be concerned with the chief passions, right? And they are joy and hope, not joy and boldness. Is the place like a major premise? Well, yeah, in it you can find a premise in a way, right? You can construct it out of it, right? See, I mean, you know, if you take Suckab's army, because of giving it there, if the body survives death, then the soul will, right? But the body, at least the bones, we know, survive, right? Alas, poor York, right? The bones, you know, and them there, you know? You know, the bones and relics of the saints, right? The bones. Sometimes maybe more than the bones survive. So one way of arguing that the soul survives death is from looking to see if there's something which is more apt than the... Or less apt, rather, than the soul to survive death, but which is known to, in some ways, survive death, right? So it's more known to us, through our senses, right, that the body survives death in the form of bones than the soul does, right? You know, when Shakespeare's play there, King John, you know that one? Well, the little crown prince there, right? At one point, he almost put his eyes out, right? So he's trying to escape, right? He doesn't know what he's going to do to him. And so he tries to jump off the battlement there, you know, to the thing, and he... Once he jumps off, he realizes he's not going to make it, right? He's going to get killed, right? In the fall. He says, Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones. But he says, well, in Acts, I say that, rather than England keep my flesh, right? Because his flesh is going to corrupt, right? But his bones, you know? So the bones are the immortal part of the body, so this is what he got. He said, see, in the Old Testament there, he had all the bones on that. Zekio. Zekio, yeah, yeah. But when I was in Quebec, you know, I don't care if you've been in Quebec, in the old seminary to Quebec there. But I used to go to kind of master after school. And they have, you know, the martyr's bones in two cases, glass cases, that were, right? Got the skull and the whole thing. First thing I go in, I go, distract him in and out with it. I go, oh, you need to eat it. He isn't, you know, he's used to it. But bones are the mortal part, right? So if you can find something that you know to be mortal, but which is less apt to be immortal, right? Then you can reason that, right? So he argues that if the bones, if the body survives death, then the soul does, right? But he's got to show, you know, apart from that, that the soul is more apt to survive death than the body, right? And one reason he gives is one I gave you, that through the soul or through the reason of the soul, the eye of the soul, we're in contact with what a cherry is and what, that's incorruptible, right? Why, through the eye of the body, only with the corruptible, right? That shows a, you know, it doesn't show that the soul is immortal, but it has more affinity with the immortal. And then he adds another one, that the soul in some way rules the body, right? It's God who rules the universe, right? So it's more like God, the soul, in that sense, right? So it's more like the immortal. It doesn't mean it's immortal, but it means it's more apt, more like the immortal. Therefore, it's more apt to be immortal. But it's more like the immortal. It's more like God, it's more apt to be immortal. But it's not like God, or it's less like God. So in those ways, he shows that the soul is more apt to survive death than the body, right? That's an argument that it does. But now he can look and say, yeah, you know, if the soul, you know, in the immediate soldiers and self, you're not saying, you know, if something belongs where it's less apt to belong, it belongs where it's more apt to. But it's based upon that, right? You say, if the body then survives death, then the soul, it can form that statement, right? From the place, right? Okay? You see that? Is the place just a more universal statement of the premise that you used? Well, you know, in a sense it is. It is a statement in a way. But it's like a place in that it can, what, many things can be fitted into it, right? This is one body can succeed in another body. It's kind of, in a way, contains there for many things, right? Like a place does, huh? He uses the word place there, too, and he's talking about that second tool, as I mentioned, right, huh? You know? But, you know, of course, in a kind of concrete way, you know, using the word where, right? Where you might look to see if a word has more than one meaning. You might look at the opposite of that word, right? For example, does the word to see have more than one meaning? Well, does, doesn't see have more than one meaning? You might say about a blind man, he doesn't see, you know, he doesn't see. You know? And there we mean he doesn't have the capacity to see, right? But now you might also say, you know, that you don't see anything around you to do, right? You don't see the traditions, you don't see this, you don't see that. Kind of funny, you know, we've got three cars, but my son goes to Boston in his car, right? My wife, you know, drives her car around. So, sometimes you have a problem because somebody's car is, you've got one car garage, so whoever's home first might put his car in the garage, right? But you might have two cars in the driveway, and you've got to be first. So you've got to move those two cars, right? Well, usually, I'm home before, so if I have to be good in the morning, I may have to move two cars, right? You know, so I thought I had to move my son's car and my wife's car, so I took my son's keys, and my wife's keys, and I went out there, and I put his, what, car out in the street, right? I went over to their car, and it's, I put the key in, it's my, my car. Oh, my God, whatever happened the day before, so in my mind, I went out, and I actually put his car in between his keys, and then I got the keys, you know, and my car sat right there in front of me. I didn't see it. You know, I had to move two cars, what do you know? And so I didn't see, but that's a different sense, right? Because I saw, I saw it, and I kind of got to get opened up for keys. And so, you know, to say, he sees then has two meanings, right? He has a capacity to see, or he's actually, what, using that capacity to see, right? I didn't put it to see in his end, but the ability to see in the actual scene, you know? So, yeah, but here, you're doing an example, I was using them, or contraries, right? You know, so, right? But I mean, you do, you could use contraries and even contradictories, you know? That's where you might look to see. So, I suppose, even the phrase liberal education might be used by some people to mean this kind of education that turns you into a political liberal, right? But that obviously is a political use of the word, right? You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know,