Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 3: Confused vs. Distinct Knowledge: Aristotle Against Descartes

Transcript
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This is a very fundamental disagreement about something very fundamental. And the question is, who's correct? Now, the reason that Aristotle gives is pretty clear. In fact, we put Aristotle's reason in the form of syllogism. What is more known to us is more, what, certain for us. And the confused is more known to us than the distinct. Therefore, the confused is more certain, right? Okay? That's Aristotle's reason. Now, Descartes doesn't give clearly a reason, right, for what he's saying. But he is, if you read the whole discourse of the method, he wants to proceed everywhere like he do in mathematics, right? And basically, I think the reason behind Descartes is what we would call a third-figure infanema. And it would be that mathematics is more distinct than the other sciences. And mathematics is more certain. So he takes mathematics as a sign that the more distinct is more what? Certain, right? And even, you know, Plato and Aristotle would agree, and Thomas would agree, that mathematics is the most certain of the sciences for us, right? Okay? Geometry, yeah. And likewise, it seems clear that mathematics is more distinct, huh? Isn't what a triangle is more distinct to you than what love is? What friendship is? Or what the soul is? Right? So, mathematics is a sign that certitude and distinction go together, right? Right? Okay. Of course, he may also partly be influenced by bad argument, which would be that the word confused is equivocal, right? And confused can mean, what, mixed up, mistaken, right? And if Aristotle meant by confused, mixed up, mistaken, it would be stupid to say that we know more of what we're mixed up and don't know. Right? But as he pointed out, that's the most common kind of mistake in thinking, right? Okay? Now, if you go down Main Street and you ask somebody on Main Street who's never studied philosophy, are we more sure in our confused knowledge, when we're confused or when we're clear and distinct and precise, what are they going to say? You're clear and distinct and precise, right? Okay? Now, they possibly, you know, thinking of confused in the bad sense, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? And now, to come back to these fundamental arguments, you can see that Aristotle's argument is much stronger. Because Aristotle's argument is a, what? Syllogism in the first figure there, right? Descartes' argument, as far as he has it, is at best a, what? A third figure entity. And Aristotle takes up the third figure entity and he says, Socrates is just, Socrates is a philosopher. Philosopher is therefore a just, right? Right. Perkwist is Swedish, Perkwist is a philosopher. Therefore, philosophers are Swedish, right? It's not a very strong argument, the third figure, what? N3, right? Okay. But notice, even in mathematics, although it's more certain than the sciences, am I more sure, for example, that 28 is a number or that 28 is a perfect number? A number, yeah. Even there, I'm more sure that it confuses that. Stop and think, see. I just say to my students, they say, How old am I? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I say, I'm over 20? And they say, yeah, you're over 20, I'm sure about that. I'm over 30, right? We just have to go through the decades, right? But the more precise we get, the less what? Certain. Certain they are, right? You see? If I'm drinking that glass of dry red wine, right, I'm more sure there's dry red wine than that it's what? Carboné, right? And more sure that it's what? Carboné, maybe, than that it's what? From Napa Valley, right? Okay? Now, take a simple example. Usually I've been in a classroom, right, for, well, I use the board here. Which is longer, the horizontal here or the vertical side? You all sure about that? Now, let's be more precise. How much longer is the board on top than the one on the side here? A third one. Huh? A third. Yeah, you're not sure about that, though, are you? How many inches longer is that one on top? Look. You're more sure that it's longer than that it's a foot and one inch longer or something, right? Okay? Now, somebody said, let's be scientific, let's get a ruler out, right? Okay? So we get out, and we measure that, and we measure this, right? Okay? And we find out this. One foot, one inch longer, let's say, the one on top, right? Okay? Now, maybe if two of us measured the same thing, we wouldn't get the same thing. I might get one foot, two inches, right? Okay? Or one foot, one and a half inches, or something, right? People, in fact, would not necessarily get the same, unless they measure the same thing, right? Okay? Um, so, are you more sure that it's one foot, one inch longer, after you measure, than that it's longer? No, as a matter of fact, you're ruler, when it goes down to a certain, what, size, right? And maybe it's actually one foot, one inch, and one hundredth of an inch. Yeah. Right? Could be, right? In which case, this is strictly speaking, incorrect. It's not one foot, one inch longer, it's one foot, one inch, and one one hundredth of an inch, or one one thousand, it's one one millionth of an inch, right? Right? Or it's shorter one inch by one millionth of an inch, right? You see? So you're still not more sure that it's what? One foot, one inch longer, than it's longer. Right? You see? The same with my example there, I say, um, what do I weigh, right? So you weigh more than a hundred pounds, you say? Okay, weigh more than three hundred pounds? No. But now as you start to narrow this down, right, are you going to become more sure or less sure? Less sure, aren't you? Right? Okay. I say, let's be scientific, let's put you on a weighing machine, right? But maybe one weighing machine might say, I weigh 195, another machine say, I weigh 196. Right? So which is more sure? Can I weigh 195, or can I weigh between 190 and 200? Which is more sure? Between measures. See, 195 might be incorrect, it might be 196, it might be 195 and a fourth, right? Of a pound, right? Do you see that? You're less sure of the precise, huh? Even when you use these instruments, right? How old am I, right? They always get the wrong age for me. I was going to go to the hill. Okay? But I say, now, let's be scientific, let's go and get the birth certificate, right? But aren't there mistakes made sometimes in birth certificates? Huh? The guy had something to drink, or he was distracted, right? I know when my father died, there was two dates for his birth. Oh. Two years, right? Some of the documents, right? And I don't know how to do it with insurance. I don't know. I don't know how old he was. But I mean, there were two dates, two dates, right? Well, the one was 1892, and the other was 1893 or something, you know? And so, but, you know, so are you more sure he was born in 1892, or are you more sure he was born in the last century, you know, in the decade of the last century, right? I'm more sure of that, right? See? Didn't make mistakes, Because something's falsified records too, right? For one reason or another, right? So, the more precise you get, the less, what? Certain you are, huh? So Descartes made a very fundamental mistake here, huh? And, ah, the more precise you get, the more precise you get, the more precise you get, the more precise you get, This ineffication to certitude with clarity and distinction gives you, for one mistake, two other kinds of mistakes that follow from that. Sometimes when he's very sure about something, he thinks he knows it clearly and distinctly, because certitude and clarity and distinction go along. Other times, because something is very clear and distinct, it must be so. So in Descartes, for example, when he talks about the soul, or he talks about thought, everybody knows Descartes' famous thing there, I think, therefore I am, right? Which, you know, Dustin used against academics before him anyway, but he's very sure he's thinking, right? And therefore he must know clearly and distinctly what thinking is? Does that follow? I'm very sure I'm alive. Does that mean that therefore I know clearly and distinctly what life is? So Descartes makes that kind of mistake, right? He doesn't want to define motion because he knows clearly and distinctly what motion is. Why? He's so sure about motion, right? Shakespeare said, things in motion sooner catch the eye of but not stir. Everybody knows what motion is, right? But the fact that you're sure about it is not a sign that it's what? Known clearly and distinctly. Unless those two go together, right? But they don't. It's reverse. But vice versa, when he gets into his mathematical picture of the world, things are so clear and distinct, they must be what? Must be true. Surely something so clear and distinct must be true. So in making that fundamental mistake of identifying certitude for us with clarity and distinction, he can make two kinds of mistakes from that. Where he's sure about something or certain about it, he thinks he must therefore know it clearly and distinctly. And vice versa, where he's clear and distinct in something, it must surely be so. Two kinds of mistakes from one, huh? But I think to some extent, this thinking of Descartes kind of dominates the modern world for a lot of reasons, huh? And it's very important when you talk about general and particular knowledge because particular knowledge is more distinct than general knowledge, right? If it were also more certain, then you could forget about general knowledge, couldn't you? But if the general is more confused and therefore more certain, you don't replace the more certain with the less certain, do you? So if I know I'm drinking Cabernet Sauvignon, I don't cease to know by that fact that I'm drinking dry red wine, right? In fact, I'm more sure I'm drinking dry red wine, the Cabernet Sauvignon, okay? But if the more precise was more certain, then the particular would simply replace the general. So the moderns have a kind of tendency to jump into the particular all at once, neglecting the general, right? Now, if the particular was not only more distinct, but also more certain, then they'd have their cake and eat it, right? As a matter of fact, not the same. Now, it's not really until the dawn of the 20th century that some of the physicists, and then those who partook of the great developments in quantum theory and relativity theory, that they began to return to Aristotle's position. But I think, without thinking of Aristotle, right? On their own, huh? And what I've attached here is first a couple of passages from Pierre Duim, right? Now, Pierre Duim actually wrote the aim and structure of physical theory around the turn of the century, I think, 1903, was it? But this particular edition, which I have in my office, 50 years later, it's still being reprinted, right? Kind of a classic work in the philosophy of science, huh? And you can see it's got Princeton University Press there, but more than Princeton University Press, the preface to it, to this edition, is by none other than the father of wave mechanics, Louis de Broglie, the greatest French physicist of the 20th century, right? The father of wave mechanics. And it is a description of Duim. Duim was, first of all, a physicist, right? He was working mainly in thermodynamics, and he made important... contributions to that part of physics. But secondly, he's very famous as an historian of science. And then on the basis of his experience in physics and his knowledge of the history of science, he wrote something on the nature of physical theory. But he sees the point that Aristotle's made, he makes an order from Aristotle. He sees it from his own experience, right? Notice what he says here in his first passage. The initiated believe, that should be uninitiated, I think. The uninitiated believe, that the result of a scientific experiment is distinguished from ordinary observation by a higher degree of certainty. They are mistaken. For the account of an experiment in physics does not have the immediate certainty, relatively easy to check the ordinary and unscientific testimony has. Though less certain than the latter, physical experiment is ahead of it in the number and precision of the details it causes us to know. Therein lies his true and essential superiority. See? In its precision, but not in its what? Certitude, huh? Ordinary testimony, which reports a fact established by their procedures of common sense and aposcientific methods, can be certain only at the expense of not being detailed or minute. With rare exceptions, ordinary testimony offers assurance only to the extent that it is less precise, less analytic, and sticks to the grossest and most obvious considerations. Quite different is the account of a physical experiment. But he is not content with letting us know what the most phenomena. Okay? Defining the last paragraph there. Therefore, a theoretical interpretation removes from the results of a physical experiment the immediate certainty, right, that the date of ordinary observation was asked. On the other hand, there is theoretical interpretation which permits scientific experiment to penetrate much further than common sense into the detailed analysis phenomena and to give a description of them whose precision exceeds by far the accuracy of current language. Notice the contrast he's making there between an ordinary observation as being more certain and the scientific one as being more precise. It's just the opposite of what Descartes was saying and what Aristotle was saying. Now, the same way he talks here about the laws and so on. He goes through describing that, right? He talks about how the laws of physics are provisional and so on. But look at the bottom of page two in particular. The problem of the validity of the laws of physics hence poses itself in an entirely different manner, infinitely more complicated and delicate than the problems of the laws of common sense. A law of physics possesses a certainty much less immediate and much more difficult to estimate than the law of common sense. But it surpasses the latter by the minute and detailed precision of its predictions. Again, that contrast, right? The laws of physics can acquire this minuteness of detail only by sacrificing something of the fixed and absolute certainty of common sense laws. Precision doesn't go together with that. He takes example of balance here, right? And I think this is a marvelous image he has to very well in his thinking here. There is a sort of balance between precision and certainty. One cannot be increased except to the detriment of the other. He's thinking about the belt if you had a physicist, right? And one you have precision, distinction, and then the certitude over here. As one goes up, the other goes down, right? What are you thinking, Mr. Burkwest? A liquid. Can you be a little more precise? Yeah, it's a red liquid, right? It's a wine, yeah. Okay. What kind of wine, right? As I start to get more and more precise, I get less and less what? Sure. Sure, right? See? I say to students, how old am I? You're over 20. Sure about that? Yeah. Over 30? Yeah. Over 40? Yeah. Over 50? Yeah. Over 60? Something I'm not sure. I'm over 60. See? And as I get them to be more and more precise, the less what? Sure they are, right? See? See that? How much do I weigh? You know? They try to narrow it down, right? The more precise you try to state my weight down. You say I'm between 100 and 300 pounds? Pretty sure about that, right? Okay, maybe between 150 and 250? Okay, pretty sure about that, right? And you get down to the decade of my poundage? You know, you're a little more sure about that than exactly 196 or 197 or 193, right? Do you see that? So it's kind of a balance there, right? As one goes up, the other goes down. So we have a... You can't have your cake and eat it, you might say here, right? We want both, what? Certitude and precision. But the more we have of one, the less we have of the other. That's kind of the defect of man's knowledge, right? But he sees that very clearly, right? And Aristotle saw it very clearly. And Pierre Duem is the first major name, especially in the history of science and so on. He sees this very clearly. But as I say, the original edition goes back to the turn of the century. So it's really before it developed in the physics of the 20th century. Now, the rest of his lectures are from physicists who took part in the changes that took place in the 20th century. And Louis de Broglie was talking about how some of the physicists in thermodynamics didn't want to go beyond this because of the incertitude of being more precise. Look at the third paragraph there on the first reading here. Precisely because thermodynamics pictures only bulk appearances without wishing to enter into the details of the elementary processes, it does not run the risk of the errors which necessarily affect the more audacious theories that pretend to enter into description of these processes. So a great number of physicists were of the opinion 40 years ago that was preferable to be satisfied with these thermodynamic propositions without making it appeal to more precise but more hazardous conceptions, right? If they're more precise but also more hazardous, they're less what? Certain, yeah. Okay. Now, he goes on to say in the next paragraph, of course, that our mind wants to go on to that more precise thing, right? I want to know if I'm drinking carbonate or, you know, what I'm drinking, right? But I know I'm going to be less sure when I try to be particular, right? And the more particular and precise I try to be, the less sure I'll be, right? It doesn't stop if I'm trying to recognize the kind of grape I'm drinking and so on and where it came from. But I have to realize I'm going to be more hazardous, huh? And my answer is right, huh? Do you see that? So he sees that, right? Now, in the second selection of Louis de Broglie, he realizes, and this is something that everybody who's spoken about these things, the great scientists, Einstein, Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, and so on, they all realize that in modern physics, the precision comes from something they call idealization. And because idealization, as Heisenberg will explain, involves a departure from reality. I'll give you a very simple example of that, huh? Einstein, the evolution of physics, right? He says, you've got a part out here, right? And you give it a push, right? And it rolls for a while and then it stops. Okay? Then you get out, you say, and you oil the wheels here, right? Okay? You give it the same push and it rolls even further before it stops, huh? Then you get out and you make the road as smooth as you can, right? Basically smooth, right? Classy. You give it a little more oil and so on, and you give it the same push, it goes even further without stopping, right? Now, he says, you go into your imagination. Suppose we could eliminate all of that friction in the wheels, right? And in the road and so on. Then you get that same push and what happened? It'd go forever. But Einstein says, there's not one example of a body in the absence of external forces. I've gone into imagination. I've made this more precise, right? That's more smooth that road that it really is ever going to be in reality, right? Okay? And I imagine what would happen. But I'm imagining it now. I'm departing from reality. See? Well, Heisenberg realizes this. Louis DuBois realizes this. Louis DuBois is the father of wave mechanics, Heisenberg, the quantum mechanics, right? Okay? And that's what Louis DuBois says in this book now. We also could examine whether all idealizations are not that much less applicable to reality when they become more complete. Heisenberg is the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the father of the Though we have little inclination to be paradoxical, we could hold, contrary to Descartes, that nothing is more misleading than a clear and distinct idea. You see how far he's moved there, right? Louis de Broglie, of course, is a Frenchman, right? He's the greatest French physicist of the 20th century. And he's talking about his French compatriot, Descartes, in several centuries. Isn't that strong, huh? I don't know what he's saying there. Now, Heisenberg is the father of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg, of course, is responsible for many things in modern physics. He's the first man to say that the nucleus of the atom is composed of protons and neutrons, right? In 1932, after the discovery of the neutron, right? He figured out that else what was in the nucleus. But then he formulated quantum mechanics, and he actually formulated the greatest change in physics since Newton, the principle of indeterminism. We'll talk about that later on in the course. Notice what he's saying here. These are really based on his Gifford lectures. They published on the title, Physics and Philosophy, but it says Gifford lectures, basically. Furthermore, one of the most important features of the development and analysis of modern physics, and by modern physics he means the physics of the 20th century, is the experience that the concepts of natural language, vaguely defined as they are, seem to be more stable in the expansion of knowledge than the precise terms of scientific language, huh? So he's saying that the vague is more, what? Stable, which means more certain, right? Thomas will often say on Latin, Stabiliora, Certiora, or stable and certain, right? Than the precise terms of scientific language, huh? And he's hinting at the reason there. Derived as an idealization of only limited groups of phenomena. Now he gives a reason to be clear to science because of the idealization that Louis de Broglie spoke of. This is, in fact, not surprising since the concepts of natural language, ordinary speech, are formed by the immediate connection to reality. They represent reality. On the other hand, the scientific concepts are idealizations. They are derived from experience obtained by refined experimental tools and are precisely defined through axioms and definitions. Only through these precise definitions is it possible to connect the concepts with a mathematical scheme and to derive mathematically the infinite variety of possible phenomena in this field. But through this process of idealization and precise definition, the immediate connection to reality is lost. And therefore you lose certically, right? Now, in the bottom of this page, Heisenberg sees that, you know, this is important for talking about God, too, later on. Keeping in mind the intrinsic stability of the concepts of natural language in the process of scientific development, one sees that after the experience of modern physics, our attitude towards concepts like mind or the human soul or life or God will be different from that of the 19th century because these concepts belong to the natural language and have therefore immediate connection to reality. The general trend of human thinking in the 19th century had been toward an increasing confidence in the scientific method and in precise rational terms. And it led to a general skepticism with regard to those concepts of natural language which did not fit into the closed frame of scientific thought. Modern physics has in many ways increased the skepticism, but it has at the same time turned it against the overestimation of precise scientific concepts. The skepticism against precise scientific concepts does not mean that there should be a definite limitation for the application of rational thinking. On the contrary, one may say that the human ability to understand may be in a certain sense unlimited. When you look at the fragment of Annex Sabres of the mind, that's the first thing he says about the mind, it's unlimited. Talk about that, huh? Whenever we proceed from the known to the unknown, we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time in the meaning of the word understanding. We'll come back to that when we look at the second page in our reading here, you know. Now the third one is taken from Bertie Russell, whom I don't often have nice things to say about, but notice what he says here about his own philosophical method. This is concerned with my method. My method invariably... To start from something vague but puzzling, something which seems indubitable, but which I've got to express in any position. They seem to see somewhat there that he has what? Something certain, right? But not very what? Precise, right? A little bit of, let's see, a little bit of what Aristotle said. So there are some thinkers, I think, mainly the great scientists of the 20th century, who, from their experience of physics, have come back to Aristotle's understanding that the confused is more uncertain, right? Than the distinct, huh? But, now, come back to what Aristotle said there. You might think that because he's going to consider things in general here, before in particular, he's going to remain confused, right? But, if you look at the different kinds of examples he has, there's really two movements from the confused and distinct. And one you might call on a horizontal level, on the same level of universality, and the other, the vertical, when you descend to the particular. Let me give you an example of what I mean. When I go from triangle to equilateral triangle, isosceles triangle, scalene triangle, I'm going from the general to the particular, and therefore from the confused to the distinct, right? Okay? When I go from triangle to the definition of triangle, something like a plain figure contained by three straight lines, I'm moving from the confused to the distinct, too. From the name to the definition, right? But I'm staying on the same level of universality, aren't I? Because every triangle is a plain figure contained by three straight lines, and vice versa, every plain figure contained by three straight lines is a triangle, right? When I go from triangle to equilateral, asosceles, scalene, when I go from quadrilateral, let's say, to the definition of quadrilateral, as a plain figure contained by four straight lines, right? I'm on the same level of universality, right? When I descend to the square, and the oblong, and the rhombus, and the rhomboid, and the pincelium, right? I'm descending from the general to the particular, right? Okay? So you have two movements from the confused to the distinct here, right? One on the horizontal level, staying on the same level of universality. And we talked about going from the whole to its parts, right? If the whole is told to its parts, you're staying on the same level of universality. When you go from the universal whole to its parts, you're descending, right? Now, which of those movements should you go through first? Should I move from the confused to distinct? Going from the general to the particular first? Or should I go from the confused to distinct, staying on the same level of universality first? Same level of universality. Yeah. Yeah. Why? Why should I do that first? Yeah. So you know what you're dividing. Yeah. In other words, if I don't know distinctly what a triangle is, I cannot understand the basis for this distinction here, right? Because in the equilateral triangle, those three lines, those three straight lines are all equal. In the isosceles, two of them are equal. In the scaling, none of them are equal, right? So unless I know distinctly that you have a plane figure contained by three straight lines, I couldn't understand the very basis of this division. You see that? You have to understand the genus, right? Take another example here. The same thing. Let's talk about the most famous literary poetic form. Let's talk about the sonnet, right? The sonnet is divided, as you know, into the Italian sonnet and the English sonnet. And sometimes they name them from the greatest practitioner, the Tarkian. Sonnet and the what? Shakespearean sonnet, right? Okay. Now, there you're going from the general to the particular, right? Okay. Now, if you define the sonnet in general, you'd say it's a poem in 14 lines, right? Okay. But there's two forms or two species, right, of the sonnet, the Italian sonnet and the English sonnet, huh? Okay. So should you move from sonnet to Italian and English sonnet first? Or should you move from sonnet to a poem in 14 lines first? Yeah. And then you can understand better the distinction between these two. Because in the English sonnet, the 14 lines fall into what? Three quatrains and then a what? Couple that completes it, right? In the Italian sonnet, you have an octet of eight lines, right? Answered by a sextet of six lines, huh? Okay. But if you don't understand that a son has 14 lines always, you wouldn't understand the basis for the activation, right? Okay. Do you see that? Okay. You're talking about the syllogism, right? Should you go from syllogism to demonstration in dialectical syllogism? Or should you go to syllogism, the definition of syllogism, right? And then you'd see that in any syllogism there are at least two statements laid down, right? Which no one follows necessarily, right? But then in the demonstration, the two ones are seen to be necessarily true, right? In the dialectical one, they're seen only as being, what? Probable one. Okay. So Aristotle, in the eight books of natural hearing, is going to be moving from the confused to the distinct, but on the, what? Love of the general, right? And then he would descend to the particular, in the book on the universe, in the book on generation corruption, in the book on the soul, in the other books on living things, huh? So in a sense, what the moderns do is they jump from the general to the particular without going through that first movement and becoming distinct, huh? On the general. Could you give some examples? Well, I mean, when they studied natural things, that's where they began, with chemistry or physics or biology, right? You're already talking about a particular kind of change, huh? As we'll see, natural philosophy is mainly about change, right? So Aristotle's going to be talking about what's involved in change in general, and then we're going to talk about change of place in particular, right? Okay? Change of quality, growth, and so on. But the moderns will jump right down and talk about change of place right away, first. They are satisfied with the confused knowledge of what they're studying in general, right? And they descend to a particular kind, huh? I mean, the mind can do it to some extent, because it knows in a confused way what the general is, right? But maybe you should have a distinct knowledge of the general before you try to descend to the particular, right? So they go from a confused knowledge of the general, trying to get a distinct knowledge of the particular. But some orthopulists come back to the general later on. If you read Heisenberg's books, right, you often have a chapter in the early Greeks, right? You often, you know, discuss Plato or Aristotle, right? But they need to go back to this to see, in perspective, you know, what he's talked about as the young man in a very particular way, right? Now, to some extent, too, they can do this because they're studying the natural world mathematically, right? So they don't have to talk about what these things are. The mathematics has to work, right? So they don't have to talk about what these things are, right? So they don't have to talk about what these things are, right? So they don't have to talk about what these things are, right? So they don't have to talk about what these things are, right?