Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 7: Nature as Internal Cause: Definition and Distinction from Art

Transcript
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It's also due to something within. Now, likewise, huh? Suppose you have a big rock in your yard and you have a tree, and as the years go by, the tree grows and gets taller and so on, and the stone stays the same size, huh? So again, that little inquisitive point. Mama, why do trees grow, and why doesn't the stone grow, huh? Well, now the poor harassed mother, huh? She says, well, it's the nature of trees to grow. It's not the nature of stones to grow on. Well, that word nature covers maybe a lot of ignorance, but is it complete ignorance? Well, you have the same sun shining on the rock and the same sun shining on the tree. You have the same rain coming down on the rock, coming down on the tree. It could be in soil with the same nutriments, right? Everything on the outside is the same, and yet the one grows and the other, what? It doesn't grow, right? So, though the growth of the tree may, in fact, I think it does depend upon the sun, it does depend upon water, it does depend upon the soil, it also depends upon something within the tree, and there's something else within the stone, whereby it doesn't grow, but remains at rest. And that inward cause we call nature. We're kind of drawing a circle on nature without really knowing what it is, you want to try to bring it out later on, more fully what it is. But it's clear from that example that there's something within, okay? And that's what's being called nature. He'll spell it out in the second paragraph, but this is the whole circle. Now, sometimes they quote Antiphon, or it's got to refer to Antiphon. And Antiphon gave a kind of a strange example for sight. He says, You took the wooden bed, and you thrust it into the ground, and it got moist and it sprouted. What would come up? A little tree-like thing, like a twig or something, or a little tiny bed? A twig, yeah. Now, why does that show that the twig is from within, and the bedness of it is kind of imposed on it from the outside? See the idea of the cause within. Sometimes they take a more interesting, a more real example for us, maybe. When De Tocco came to the United States in the 1830s, and eventually wrote the greatest book on America, democracy in America. But he describes the log cabins that the Americans made. I see a log cabin they're putting up on the road here, and I come up, not right here, but further down. I don't know if you go all the way down there, because I see it much more along now, but I don't know if they're going to make it. It's going to be a private building. But the Americans would build these log cabins, and then they would live in them for a year or two, and then they'd abandon the log cabin, and they'd go further west. And he's talking about the restlessness of Americans, and they're in search of better land, or more land, or something. And so he would come across these abandoned log cabins, because these are very rough houses, as you might expect, and nature was taking them forward again. You've seen sometimes, you know, tree logs out in the woods that have fallen, and sometimes they, what? Sprout. What comes up is a tree-like thing, a little twig, not another little log, what? Cabin at the start of a little log cabin. So the log cabin, as the thing that was by art, seems to be from the outside, and the tree character is from within. So he's saying the difference between natural things, like the animals and their parts and the plants and so on, they seem to have within themselves a cause of their own, what? Change, but also the rest. Now, it's due to something within the tree, not only that it grows, but that this or that kind of tree grows to a certain height, and then doesn't. It's due to something within the tree. It's due to something within the tree. It's due to something within the tree. It's due to something within the tree. It's due to something within the tree. It's due to something within the tree. It's due to something within the tree. It's due to something within the tree. It's due to something within the tree. It's due to something within the tree. There's something within you and I that when we eat as a child, we grow, but also it's too something within us that we don't keep on growing and growing and growing, but that we stop growing, at least in the right direction, at a certain, what, age. I guess we grow almost 30, but, you know, much less at the end there. Do you see that? Sometimes, when they're talking about wine, sometimes you'll see in literature on wine, they'll talk about, say, a table wine, a wine that is suitable maybe for dinner or something, but sometimes you'll see the table wine called a natural wine, and they'll contrast a natural wine with what we would call a fortified wine. Now, an example of fortified wine would be something like, say, sherry, port, and so on. It might be used as an aperitif, or it might be used as an after dinner drink, or it might be used sometimes in cooking, too, but they call these a fortified wine. But a wine like, let's say, Carbonet Sauvignon, or Merlot, or Chardonnay, we call these, what, a table wine, a natural wine. Now, that's interesting, the words there. Now, if you look at the alcoholic content, which by law you have to put on the bottle, you'll notice that the fortified wine has a higher alcoholic content. And the fortified wine would be something like maybe 18 to 20% alcohol. The natural wine would be something like usually in range 11 to 13 or 15.5, something around that range. Now, why do they call this a natural wine and then a fortified wine? Well, depending upon the sugar content and so on of the grapes, this will kind of start even without man, though man helps it along. It'll start turning into alcohol, but when it gets up to somewhere in this range, it, of its own sort, it stops. By the fortified mine, what they've done is to distill brandy or something, didn't brandy, and they add brandy to it to bring it up to 18 to 20%. And that makes it more powerful, obviously, but it makes it less suitable for drinking with the dinner. And, but it'll preserve the wine more if it's a higher alcoholic at times, you see. But it doesn't naturally stop at 18 to 20. You have to, it doesn't naturally go to that. Right here, it's almost like a certain chemical reaction. They'll go on and then they'll naturally stop at a certain point. But everything is used up, so to speak. So I think the fact that you call this an actual wine, even though human art comes into health things, reflects what our style is saying. It's due to something within that it goes to this amount and it stops somewhere in this range. It doesn't do something within, go up to this and then stop. No. It stops down here and then someone adds this and brings it up to that higher alcohol. So the idea that nature, the natural things, have within themselves as such a cause of their own change, but also of their own rest. Now, in the second paragraph here, Aristotle spells this out a little bit more. And you can distinguish five different parts of the definition here of nature. But it's a definition in the sense that we speak of it in circling as a definition. So let me put on the board here separately the five parts of the definition, so we can stop at each one and see something of what it means. So he says, first of all, that nature is a beginning. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. and cause. That's the first part of the definition. Nature is the beginning of the cause. Notice this is also true about human art. Human art is the beginning of many things, the cause of many things. And then he says, of motion, and I'll put in parentheses change because sometimes you use the word motion there in English, too narrow it says. A motion or change and rest. But again, this is also true of human art. So it's due to the art of the bricklayer that the wall gets taller, but also that he stops at a certain height according to the plan for the house and so on. But now the third part of the definition is what begins to separate nature from art. And for the most part, it's sufficient to separate nature from art. In that in which it is. This is bringing out that nature is the beginning of cause of motion or change and rest. Not in another thing, right? But it's inside the very thing itself that is changing or coming to a rest. So the cause of the tree getting taller, and it stopped getting taller when it gets to a certain height is something within the tree. But the cause of the wall getting taller, and stopping it to sit in height, is not within the wall or in the bricks, but in the art of the bricklayer. You see that? For me, when I put the steak on the grill, I'm a cause of the change of the steak because I grill it. But also, I've got to take it off, and I think it's going to still be pink, and therefore it's still taste good. Okay? So it's not due to something within the steak. The steak does just jump off the thing when it gets to, right? It'd be nice and handy if it did. But I've got to be there, and if I get distracted by something out there, maybe I'm equipped to eat too much, and I'd be in for criticism and penance and so on. Okay. So, this third part of the definition separates nature from art for the most part. Nature is also beginning to cause a change and rest, but it's something else, right? The cause here of the change of the steak and stopping its change at a certain point is in me, right? And my tools there, my grill and so on. Do you see that? Now notice when he says motion and change, and come back to what he said before, he doesn't mean just change of place, but he means, what, might be change of quality, it might be growth, huh? So there are different kinds of change in the later parts of the study of the natural world. He studies one of these kinds of change in particular. But we're concerned here maybe with change in general. So this third one, this third one is very important, huh? The idea of being a cause within. And that, as we said, is common to all the means of nature. You understand nothing of nature if you don't see that. You don't understand what Heraclitus meant when he said, or why he said, nature loves to hide. Now the fourth part of the definition is first. And that's the part of the definition that we don't have Aristotle with here explicitly explaining. Now, there's a couple of things you might see though. This is very important to see that nature is what is first in a thing. I talk about that in the, what, in the other sense of nature here and why this is the first road, huh? In the introduction here. Why is the first road the natural road? The minor premise is clear because the nature of a thing or what it is, is what is first in that thing. A thing must be what it is before it can be anything else. Hence what is natural thing is first in it. But here he also has the word first. That's very important to the definition of nature. To everyone's hearing the answer, that's the most important part of the definition. I don't know, it was really very important. Now when Thomas explains it, this is what he brings out. And let me exemplify it here with something that's easier to see. If I step out the window on the second floor, what's going to happen? I'm going to descend, right? Okay. And actually I go down. Now, do I go down because I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or an animal? I'm a man or Is it due to my nature as man or animal that I go down? No. If you had a sack of chemicals, more or less, so the chemicals in me, and you put it out the window and let it go, they go down too. So it's not due to my nature as a man that I go down, or even my nature as an animal. It's my nature as heavier than air that I go down. So nature is what is first responsible for something. So there can be a certain variety of natures in me, can't there? Now, if you see me going upstairs, my office on the third floor, am I going upstairs because I'm heavier than air? That's why I'm huffing and puffing going up the stairs, see? Now, this brings in my nature as an animal, whereby I can use my muscles and so on, against the force of gravity and against the very heaviness of my body, if I slip on it, I go by gravity downstairs. Do you see that? So, this is the explanation that Thomas Aquinas gives a first there. It's what is first responsible. Now, a second thing I sometimes point out is that this separates nature from what we call custom. Now, custom is like nature because it internalizes. But we often call custom second nature. So, in My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins, singing about Miss Doolittle, she's second nature to me now. Like breathing out and breathing in, that's the way the song goes. Now, breathing out and breathing in is due to nature in the first sense, isn't it? In the sense that we're interested in. If people had to think, you know, they'd be dead if they had to think to breathe. But you naturally breathe in and breathe out all day long without even thinking about it. You'd be doing it all day long, I bet. You wouldn't be here if you hadn't. But custom is like that. He's grown accustomed to Miss Doolittle. She's second nature to me now, like breathing out and breathing in. But notice that word second nature. Second, not first, is it? So custom is not nature, because custom is something second, something that's acquired, although it's internalized. But it resembles nature because it seems natural once it becomes customary. So it seems to me natural to speak English. You know, though I learned a little bit of French, it just seemed like a forced and artificial way of speaking. English is a natural way of speaking. My children all studied Latin, and they come home with this joke someday. Daddy, what was the greatest accomplishment of the Romans? So I'm thinking, you know, this comes to the Romans or a law or something. Well, the answer is, they spoke Latin. How could anybody be speaking this totally artificial language? And when I was in French class in high school, this one kid was having a heck of a time learning his French. And one day in class, he'd be like, Oh, do the French kids ever learn this? And we all started laughing. There's probably some poor little French kid over there. I guess it's even harder for them to learn English than for us to learn French. How do the English kids ever learn this? But the point is that you pick it up with your mother's milk, your native language. But not the expression, we speak of your native language. English is my native language. And to speak French or Latin always seems kind of a little stilted and artificial and so on. And so that custom does resemble nature after a while, but it's second nature. So, that's at least two things that the word first brings out. It separates nature, as we define it here, from custom. And it also, as Thomas says, brings out that you have to look at what is first responsible for something. So, my going down, when I step out the second story window, is due to my nature as heavier than air. Not due to my nature as animal or man. But my going upstairs is due to my nature as animal, or my having senses due to my nature as animal. So, if I was made out of helium, when I stepped out the window, I had to, what, go up, right? Your children, you'd have to be worried about yourself going up rather than going down. I'd hang your children down. And so on, so they don't. Why goodness my child got loose this way? But again, it wouldn't be, you know, due to your nature as man, or... Then you're going down if you do that, huh? See, it means you're using your muscles to pull yourself down and keep yourself from going up when you get on by. Okay, so that's the fourth part of the definition. Now, the last part he adds, and he gives in the third paragraph, the reason why he adds the last part. The last part is necessary to completely separate nature from art. And Aristotle is thinking of an unusual thing, where art is within the thing that it changes. And Aristotle was the son of the leading medical doctor there, and his father was the court physician in Macedonia. And that's how Aristotle himself became known to the court of Macedon, and he was chosen to be the teacher of Alexander the Great. Now, the doctor usually cures, or tries to cure, some patient that comes to see him with some disease. But, suppose the doctor himself became sick with the very illness he's been carrying in others, and he used the medical art within himself to cure himself of the disease. Then the change in him, from sickness to health, would be due to art. But in this example, the art is within the thing that is changed. So the art of a doctor who uses his art to cure himself rather than somebody else, that is very much like nature, isn't it? It's a cause of change within the thing that is changing. But yet, it's not nature. So, Aristotle, the first thing we require in a definition is that it separates the thing you define from everything else. So you have to add something to the definition to completely separate it from nature. It's an odd example that the son of the medical doctor comes up with. And that's why he adds his last word. words, as such and not by happening. This is a very important kind of distinction that we talked about in a bit when we talked about the first kind of mistake outside of speech, the mistake for mixing up the as such or the through itself with the by happening or the through happening. Sometimes you say by accident, using the Latin word for happening. What he's saying is that it happens that the man who has this disease also possesses the art whereby it could be cured. Or you could say vice versa. It happens that the man who possesses the art that can cure this disease also has the disease. And usually they're not the same, right? All these doctors are calling in for anthrax, right? They don't have the anthrax, but they're trying to cure it to somebody else with antibiotics, etc. But notice, you and I, but also the dog or the cat, we all have certain natural powers of recuperation. So sometimes we get sick and we don't go to the doctor, we don't even take medicine, but nature hears that something. And, you know, a simple example there, you get a cut in your finger, and you don't want to go to the doctor, you don't even always put something on it. Sometimes the bleeding stops. And when I shave the warmth, I get a little nick and, well, if it's still, you know, going off, it's going to get my shirt, you know, so maybe I'll put a little bit of steamy stuff on and it'll stop. But sometimes I notice it's a little bit of a stop of its own. And the same when I get other cuts in my body. Now, is that by happening? That I have that power to stop the bleeding? No. And I know, especially with the male cats I had, they're always coming home as a child with some scratch, they're in some fight, huh? And so, how could the animals survive if they didn't have some way of, you know, stopping the bleeding, huh? Because they're always having fights and, you know, running through the bushes or something? They'd all, what, drip, drip, drip, let me can with a hole in it or something, or a gas tank with a hole in it. So he adds this to separate nature from what? Well, if the art of building a house could be put into lumber, so lumber would build itself into a house, then it would be very much just like nature, huh? And that's why Aristotle's hinting at the idea that nature is something of an art, but not of the human art, huh? But something of the art of some mind that has put something of its art into things. And of course, man is trying to do that with the computer and so on, he's trying to put something of his art into things. He's trying to imitate nature in that sense, huh? Where you have a cause within. So he adds this last part, as he explains in the third paragraph, he explains why he adds that fifth part, to separate nature from this strange example of art being a cause within the thing that it's, what, changing. The art of the doctor being within the, what, doctor who is cured by his own art. Do you see that? Yeah? Now, you know, I spoke before of the importance of that kind of distinction, and here's an example of the importance of that distinction, understanding what nature is. The distinction between as such and by happening, right, is absolutely essential to completing the definition of nature. I was talking to the students in introduction there about the definition of the good. The good is what all want. And he said, well, this is a good definition of the good. Aren't bad things sometimes wanted? So how does the definition of good as what all want separate the good from the bad? Socrates criticizes Mino's definition because it doesn't separate virtue from vice of the good man and the bad man. Well, you have to see the distinction between the good and the good man and the bad man. distinction between as such and by happening. Because the bad as such is not desired. The bad is desired either because it appears to be good, right? Or it's desired because the good in it and you don't see the bad in it. But it's not the bad as such. See, the man who robs the bank, does he rob the bank? Not because it's unjust to rob a bank? No, he robs the bank. No, as the famous bank robber says, that's because that's where the money is. That's where you rob the bank. So he's robbing the bank because it's a way of increasing the money in his pocket if he doesn't get caught and all the things you can do with money in our society. So he's desiring a good thing for himself when he robs the bank. And the man who drinks the delicious poison, does he drink it because it's poisonous? No. But because he sees or tastes that it's delicious and he's pursuing the good in it as such. He's not pursuing, he's seeking to be poisoned. The man who's offered the last drink at the party, the one that makes him sick, does he want to get sick? No. He wants that last drink because it appears to be a way of continuing the good time or increasing the good time. It's actually a way of ending the good time. See? And even, you know, these more subtle cases where a man might seem to be choosing bad knowing it's bad. The famous, was it crime and punishment? The famous story of Dostoevsky. But the young man is going to murder somebody, not because he hates or dislikes this person really, and not because he wants this person's money or something. But he really wants to murder somebody to show that he's above the law. Okay? Well notice, if all the rest of you are under the law, and I'm above the law, then I appear to be above all the rest of you. So he has a perverted notion, obviously, he's just going to put him below everybody else. Murder. But I mean, he's pursuing what? Out of pride, you might say, a false appearance of superiority. You're all below the law, and I'm above the law, so I'm above everybody. But only a proud man could deceive himself in that way. And eventually, well, you know the story. You know, eventually he's broken down, right? And repents, actually. So, in order to defend the definition of good, and that's a very important definition of good, you have to see, or add really, that it's the good as such that is desired, and the bad as such is not desired. But here he has to make use of that same distinction to complete the definition of nature. For the most part, it's enough to say, like he did in the first paragraph, that the natural things have within themselves a cause of their own change and rest. And the art is a cause outside of the thing that's changing, or bringing to rest. But then the strange example, right, of the doctor who uses his art to cure, not the patient who comes to see him, but himself. How do you separate nature from that? Well, you have to see that the man who has the sickness doesn't belong to him as such to have the art. It happens. Or the man who has the art, it doesn't belong to him as such to have the disease. But it could happen when he has the disease, which can be cured by that art. So he adds that last part to complete the separation of nature from art. So a lot of times in an exam I ask the students, you know, what is the definition of nature, this cause called nature. But then I'll follow it up and I'll say, what parts of the definition separate nature from art? Well, it's not beginning and cause, because nature is a beginning and cause. It's not a motion and rest, because art is also a cause that changes things and stops changing them and so on. But in that which it is, ah, that very much separates nature from art. And it's almost sufficient by itself to separate nature from art. But then because of this odd that way, it's not a problem. It's not a problem. It's not a problem. It's not a problem. It's not a problem. It's not a problem. It's not a problem. It's not a problem. It's not a problem. 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That's why we say the name and the definition should be convertible. One is not a set of more than the other. Every square is an equilateral, right-angled, quadrilateral, and vice versa, right? But Aristotle is moving from the confused to distinct here, from nature to the definition of nature, but not definition in the perfect sense, but definition in the sense of the encirclement, right? He's drawing the line around nature that separates it from art, the other main cause. Now let's make a little footnote back to experimental science here, because you could say the philosophy of nature is a knowledge of natural things, not a knowledge of artificial things. And you might ask, why did the Greeks see wisdom as more a knowledge of natural things than a knowledge of artificial things? Well, it's because wisdom is a knowledge of the first causes, the first causes of all things. And all things in the beginning of our knowledge are the things around us. And these are, for the most part, either natural or artificial. But the artificial things seem to, in some way, depend upon the natural. Because the matter out of which the artificial things are made, like the chair out of wood, that matter comes from nature. And the hands of the man who shaped it, right? Those hands are by nature, too. So in some way, natural things are ultimately responsible for the existence of artificial things. So if I found the causes of natural things, I would apparently have found the first causes of all things. Assuming that all things are these material things around us. Later on, when they found out that they're immaterial things, then they realized that wisdom comes metataphusica, after the books in natural philosophy, after the eight books of natural hearing, and the three books about the soul. That's what metataphusica means, although nobody knows what it means. This is the word metaphysics, they don't even know what the word means or what the origin of the word is. But if you look, you know, if you have the Aristotle and the Greek, it will be three words, metataphusica. And it's because it's, as Thomas says, transphysica and Latin. It's after or across or through the natural things that you come to this other thing that is even more wisdom. Now, when you study experimental science, you'll find out that modern experimental science is not a purely natural science. It involves a union of what? Natural science and technical science, as Heisenberg says in the Gifford Lectures. In the 17th and 18th centuries, there was a union of natural science and technical science. Sometimes they call it the union of science and technology, but it's a little better to describe it as Heisenberg does, as Heisenberg does, the union of natural science and technical science, of the natural and the artificial. And these two became kind of intertwined and kind of inseparable, the two. Notice right away, when you make an experiment, is an experiment something natural or something artificial? Yeah. So they're already there, maybe the experiments are in mixture. When you start to look at even the most simple instruments, like, say, a thermometer, and you say that the temperature out there is 61 today, let's say. Well, is 61 the number of an actual thing? Like, five fingers is the number of fingers on a hand, or two is the number of legs I have, or four is the number chambers of my heart. Have they gone and found 61 things out there in the natural world? No. 61 is a number found on an artificial instrument. And that artificial instrument may be, you know, in contact with the natural air, and the different numbers you get on the thermometer in some ways shadow the changes in the natural air, maybe. But it's not directly the number of an actual thing, 61, is it? Like five fingers here is the number of an actual thing. So even with the thermometer, you're not really talking about the number of an actual thing anymore. And that's why the physicists sometimes say, like Ellington and the scientists that I mentioned earlier, that we are shadowing the natural world, and we don't, what, contain the real substance of the natural world.