Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 23: Democritus, Atomism, and the Problem of Change

Transcript
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Einstein never tried to, what, publicly, uh, overthought, right? He gave up, right? And Louis de Broglie at that time, you know, he saw this, he went back to France and announced his allegiance to Heisenberg and the Copenhagen Interpretation, uh, although a number of years later he wanted to go back there still to determinism, uh, but it seems that it's here to stay, uh, you know, and most, this kind of led to the eclipse of Einstein, uh, and Ehrenfest, who is the physicist, who is a personal friend of Einstein, he says, I'm ashamed of you, Einstein. You know, you can't refute it, right? But you won't go along with it, right? And you're just like those guys who wouldn't accept relativity theory, right? Because they're so unusual. But Einstein wouldn't, uh, to his, uh, to his death, he would not give up this, uh, belief in determinism, right? And Heisenberg discusses that, you know, I mean, talk about what a great change this was. And, and that Einstein, you know, revolutionary, geniusly might say he was, huh? He didn't want to give up this, huh? But it seems that we have to. So you have to, bar the sickness for, for stating back in the, you know, shortly before Socrates, Democritus almost takes you up to Socrates, almost contemporary or democratic, uh, but stating what was the absolute principle of modern science, huh? But in, in a way, what you see sometimes when you go from the Greeks to the moderns, you see history kind of coming back, you know? Um, like the, uh, early Greeks, you know, thought there's only change of place and there's determinism and then Aristotle rejects it. And the same thing happens in the moderns, right? But it's not really, you know, going in a circle. It's more like a, I compare it to a spiral staircase. They're coming back, you know, to the same point, so to speak, but a different level of experience. And, uh, there, there are scientists now, you know, biologists who are questioning, you know, Darwinism and questioning this, uh, denial in their purpose of the natural world, right? But they're questioning it on a very concrete level, right? And so, again, in a circle, but, but a different level of experience, huh? They're coming back, huh? Now, Democritus, in his first fundamental statement here, was probably influenced also by the mathematical science of nature. Um, because in a mathematical science of nature, there's no, what? Sense qualities, because there's no sense qualities in math, huh? No substance for that matter either. No purpose. So that influences people a lot, huh? So he's denying that the sense qualities are real. Sweet exists by custom, the bitter by custom, the warm by custom, the cold by custom, color by custom. But nevertheless, there's another fragment of Democritus that we put with another group, where he has a little dialogue between the senses and reason. And reason is trying to convince the senses that these things are not real. And the senses that's replying to reason, our overthrow is your overthrow. And Schrodinger, the, the great, uh, mathematical physicist there, he quotes this, in one of his essays, he quotes this little fragment of the conversation, the dialogue between reason and senses, huh? And he points out, he says, that, um, in modern physics, huh? There's no greenness of green or redness of red, none of those sense qualities of. But he says, when we read our instruments in the lab, we have to, you know, have the black marking and the red marking and the thing. So all of our instruments are red using the blackness of black and the redness of red and so on. But none of that appears in our scientific picture of the world. So the whole scientific picture of the world depends upon something that doesn't appear in the scientific picture of the world. Which is a rather strange thing, huh? And it's, it's like the paradox, you know, that took place in the 20th century when they went from Newtonian physics, right, to both relativity physics and to quantum physics. What they found out, and Bohr really pointed out this interesting analogy between the two, that the observations that are the starting point in the testing of relativity theory and the starting point in the testing of quantum theory, the observations are made with Newtonian physics. So if you threw out Newtonian physics, you'd have to throw out relativity theory and quantum theory because there's no way to get, to make the observations, see? But the numbers you get, huh, in these experiments and observations, you can't order them with Newtonian physics. You have to order them by, by the theories of relativity or order them by the theories of quantum theory, right? So it's kind of a strange thing, right? It's a little bit like that other paradox that that Schrodinger's talking about. Relativity and quantum theory see a different order in the world or in the numbers that they get from Newtonian physics, but you can't get to that order without going through Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics has, like all physics, has no no sense qualities, right? But you can't read your instruments or even see your instruments without these sense qualities. It's a very strange thing, right? So Einstein, and I mean, not Einstein, but Heisenberg, in his, his, his, his, his, uh, different lectures, and Louis de Broglie and his, you know, the father of way mechanics, they both say that this should not be called a revolution. The revolution is something where you replace the former government. But, you know, you gotta watch, you gotta watch the publishers because they'll want to stick on the cover of the book with the revolution, right? If you get Louis de Broglie's book in French, it's Le Quanta, okay? Le Quanta, I guess they pronounce it in Latin, Le Quanta. But the English title of the book is The Revolution in Physics. Inside the book, Louis de Broglie says, this should not be called a revolution, he gives you a reason why it should not. Heisenberg's different lectures, right? They, they slot the title on physics and philosophy, right? The subtitle is The Revolution in Modern Physics. Inside, uh, Heisenberg, uh, says it should not be called a revolution, he gives you a reason why it should not be. It, it strikes me the contrast of that, you know, to, to Albert the Great when he's commenting on the, the topics of Aristotle, right? What the Greek word means and so on. And he says, if you understand the title, he says, illuminates the whole work he says. In democratic times, you're, because of our commercial civilization and so on, you're trying to sell the book, right? So you've got to put revolution on there, right? All these media guys were all closet cameras, weren't they? Okay. So none of these sense qualities exist, but the market has had some second thoughts about that, right? Dialogue, right? In the senses and the reason that that's authentic. But what truly exists were two things, the atoms and the what? Yeah. Now, what does he mean by atoms and why does he think that they would, would exist, huh? Well, let's first of all examine the word atom, the Greek word. The root here, t-o-m, you find that other words derived from the Greek, anatomia, the same root, t-o-m. Now what does that root t-o-m mean, you know, in Greek? But now the prefix here, anathom and anathomy is different, anana, right? Ana in Greek means up. So that means what? Cut out. Aristotle, you know, did anathomy, right? He cut out animals and examined their parts and so on. But atom, the a there is a negative prefix. So it means, it means what? Uncut, huh? That's the etymology right now. But in the context where he introduces the word atom, it has a sense, we'll see, not only of uncut, but uncuttable. Okay? Aristotle's account of this, the marketists apparently did something that Einstein was especially fond of. Einstein was often conducting what he called a thought experiment, huh? A thought experiment is something performed in imagination. Okay? That's a way of clarifying certain things. So apparently, Democritus performed this thought experiment. He says, imagine the bodies around us cut in every way that could possibly be cut. Would something nothing be left something yeah because you can't cut up something to nothing because then be made of nothing right so if the bodies around us were cut in every way they could be cut there would have to be something left over however small it was uncut right and since in the thought experiment you cut the body where it could be cut what's left uncut is uncuttable right so that's what must be what everything is made out of these uncuttables okay now um from some of the texts where Aristotle discusses Democritus's opinion sometimes Democritus seems to have spoken of the atoms as being very small but having some size right and therefore some shape and so on but there's one text where Aristotle seems to speak as if he spoke of the atoms as being points right okay but in either case they're uncutable but he may have had a little uh ambiguity there between uh mathematics and natural philosophy because in mathematics the only thing at least in geometry the only thing uncutable is a point right but you have to go down to a point in the natural world before you have something uncutable of course it's something that resists being cut right so he may have hesitated between those two but we'll come back to that later on first now um heisenberg says that if you want to compare our thinking with that Democritus don't be so stupid as to compare what we call an atom with what he calls an atom because we're really misusing the name huh and what we called an atom might have been something we couldn't uh break up through chemical means but then we found other means to break it up right so um it would make more sense to compare what we call let's say elementary particles right or if there's something smaller than that with what he called atoms right okay but we borrowed the word atom from him right and they first applied it to what was uncutable by ordinary chemical means and then when they realized these things could be cut by other things they should have stopped calling it a what atom but i mean i mean you're accustomed to calling it an atom and and people don't know greek anyway so it doesn't bother them so right it's like the proton right huh if the proton is really you know the first uh major piece of matter and there's nothing smaller than the proton well that comes in the greek word meaning first right but if there are quarks or some other thing before the proton and it's not first right they'll so-called first because but these names in a way mark our what ignorance at a certain stage you see why he spoke of there being truly atoms there has to be these uncut and uncuttable things right left over and they make up everything i think we explained before why he thought the empty exists he thought that motion required that there being what yeah empty space that if there was nothing empty we'd all be packed like sardines in a can or something and be impossible to what move right and so he's admitting that what is not is because the empty is nothing right but nothing must be as well as something the atoms in order to have motion so he's admitting what seems to be a contradiction in order to hold on to the reality of what changed aristotle replied and he said well there can be motion in a kind of circular way without the empty in that's what is giving rise right and one thing is moving out of each other is moving in right you see but that's what's the main point of talking about these sense uh things as custom well that they're not really there see although we're accustomed to speak of them just like i'm accustomed to say that the sun rises at 610 but maybe as a scientist i say it doesn't really rise the earth is turning on its axis but i follow the way of speaking right okay but you know if you think mathematically you're going to think without sense qualities and you think mathematics is the key to the world right then sense qualities have no place in the world but you see that even more so in the modern sound you know all the modern philosophers are tied up with this idea that there's nothing there's no sense qualities right but then they have a hard time knowing the world don't see there's nothing objective at all about those see because notice you know if we're in contact the world around us uh it's going to be through our senses huh reason is uh depend upon the senses so if these sense qualities aren't real right then we don't have to acknowledge the world around us it seems huh now this next passage here man is a little universe that's a very famous thing and in greek could it be micro what which means small or little and cosmos huh and man is in a way of the universe huh i was reading thomas then the summa contra gentiles he was talking about how quoting gregory and augustine how the angels and the immaterial substances right their minds they rule the material world in some way and something like that in man where his reason rules his body yeah he's like a miniature universe but sometimes they point to the fact that that uh you have a material world and you have an immaterial world and then man is sort of what in the middle right he shares the material world in his body but in his soul he's kind of did with the immaterial world it's kind of interesting you know between death and resurrection right we're going to be living in the immaterial world our soul we're going to be in the immaterial world right so we spend all this time in the material world then we'll spend all this time in the immaterial world and then at the end of united again but the immaterial world will dominate him so we'll have our body back and we'll have vocal praise on this thomas says what's that again be conducting up there you know healthy and so on oh god you are my god whom i seek for you my flesh pines and my soul thirst right the body's brought in there as well as the soul so it's primarily the soul how can there not be time in the next world if we have body parts is that a mystery well actually in terms of the beatific vision right you're going to partake of eternity there won't be any before and after in the beatific vision you'll see everything all at once that'll be the main main focus of your mind obviously but notice the things that really are in time in the full sense they have a beginning and end in time right and our body won't be subject to corruption it won't be measured its life anymore by time things are measured by time their life that have a beginning and end in time we won't have that so this is a very famous statement that man's a little universe the the egyptian not egyptian but the uh mohammedan philosopher says man is on the horizon right between the material world and the material world that's a good way of saying it huh we'll take up time later on he's into eternity we'll take up time later on this last one here is is something that our style will develop the idea that art imitates nature right reason imitates nature but he says it in a very uh concrete way here we have become pupils in the most important things of the spider for spinning and mending huh who was that saint that was in kind of a prison cell with the spider and the spider was uh making its webs and he you know get rid of them you know and the spider would go back and do it again and he'd get rid of it you down and then he started to learn from the spider the importance of perseverance on the spider just kept on reading another you know yeah yeah it's upside there which one it was now but okay so we learned how to spin and mend from the spider we learned from the swab how to make houses and things right okay that's a very concrete way but we do imitate huh so our knowledge starts with our senses and our senses at first are in contact with natural things so the shelter we have in a cave or under a tree we imitate that when we put in the four of ourselves huh but that'd be very important our style i mean thomas was saying there that in logic even there we try to imitate nature so far as possible and notice what we're saying there in discourse huh you know in nature of two dogs Come together, male and female, they produce not a cat or a horse, but another, what, dog. If two cats come together, they produce not a horse or an elephant, but a cat, right? So in logic, if two statements come together, what do they produce? A statement, yeah. And so Arthur Eddington says, you know, if we put numbers in, what do we grind out in mathematical physics, more numbers, you see? So two numbers give rise not to a statement, but to another number. Two statements give rise to another statement, but ignorance is barren. So, that's a little introduction there to the natural fragments of the first philosophers, right? Okay. Now, this is what we're going to be going on to. I don't know if we just anticipated a bit here today, but... Okay. I'll just keep my capital. I'll just pass these around here. I think I have ten copies there. Okay. Count them later. My calling is correct. Now, what Aristotle is doing in the second reading is to give a logical division of the opinions of all those men who have been reading, right? And even including those who are not natural philosophers like Parmenides and Melises, huh? Okay. So notice the way he begins. Surely it is necessary that there's one beginning, or many. That seems to be logical division, right? Okay. And if one, either immovable, as Parmenides and Melises said, there was one thing unchangeable, so they were outside of the natural philosophy. Or immovable, as the natural philosophers say. And even those couldn't agree because some said it was air, some said it was water, and so on. Right? Okay. And if they said that there were many, either they made a limited multitude, or unlimited, right? And if limited, but more than one, either two or three or four, some other number. Of course, the famous one we met with, in Pedocles, said there was four, right? Okay. And if unlimited, either is Demarcatus, one in kind, but differing in figure or form, or also contrary, like in Anaxagris, huh? Now, we have to stop there after you see that division, right? What do you see? You see all this disagreement among them, right? Some say it's one, some say it's many. That's a disagreement, right? Those who say there's only one thing, basically, some say it's movable, some say it's immovable. They can't agree. Okay? Even those who say it's immovable, one says it's limited, the other says it's unlimited. Those who say it's movable, they can't agree. One guy says water, the guy says air, and the guy says fire, right? Those who say it's many, some say it's limited in number, some say it's unlimited, huh? And those who say it's unlimited can't agree, right? So you have all these different opinions, and for each opinion, you've got a different man, huh? There's many men, there's many opinions, right? Okay? Now, I usually stop with the students and I say, now, is this an unusual state of affairs in the history of human thought? That everybody's got his own opinion and they all disagree? No. This is a very common situation, right? Now, where do you go or don't go from here? Put yourself back in your style of shoes, right? And the first reaction to this is to, what? Be somewhat discouraged, right? Even to despair, right? Because this is a sign of the great, what? Weakness of the human mind. If one of these guys is correct, right, all the other guys will have to be wrong, right? And they can't all be right, because it can't be one and many, it can't be water and air, right? So, possibly, everybody's mistaken, but, you know? So, to be mistaken is the usual state of the human mind. And when Aristotle is talking about the Greek philosophers before him in the Deaima, in the books on the soul, he says, some of them tried to explain how knowledge takes place, he says, but they gave no explanation of how mistakes take place. And yet, that seems to be more common. And if you want to explain what takes place in men and animals, they should explain mistakes as well as knowing. And it is a more common phenomenon, even more in need of explanation. So, this is a prime example, but it's not the only example, of something that happens again and again in the human thinking, huh? This almost universal disagreement, huh? Yeah. Now, one reaction to that is not only discouragement, but to go all the way, it's to despair of ever knowing the truth about these things, right? You might take this as a sign, simply, of the weakness and inability in the human mind. Everybody's got their own opinion, and you know the truth, right? Okay. And I tell you that little story, when I was first starting out in philosophy, I happened to be at some kind of a social function, I got talking to an older woman, and she asked me what I was studying. Did I tell you that story? And I'm studying philosophy, and she said, oh, well, let me tell you about this young man that she knew. And he had gone to the University of Minnesota. And he read author A, he said one thing. Read author B, he said something else. Author C, again, something else. Author D, something else. He became more and more confused, right, as to what things are. And finally, what? Yeah. And so he gave up the pursuit of philosophy, academic life, and he goes out and lives on a farm now, she says, and he refuses to pick up a book. Well, I think that's kind of an interesting reaction, right? She's concerned about something that might happen to me. Now, I think that's kind of a very natural reaction, you might say, and a very common reaction. And I think the universities are, in fact, filled with people who have disparate. And if they're honest, they just get up and leave, go on the farm and forget about the whole thing. But for one reason, another, they stay, and they, what? Spend to spare. Yeah. But also, it reminds me of what Whitaker Chambers said, you know, when he came back to Columbia there, and he said that his friends there, they treated ideas like ping-pong balls, huh? A ping-pong ball is something you knock back and forth, but you don't take it too seriously. That's what ideas are. You don't, you know, take seriously this pursuit of truth and try to get it. I mean, it's obviously impossible for man, right? You just play with ideas, bang, bang, back and forth, huh? So, this despair, as I say, is a very common thing. So, I think the universities are filled with people who have disparate of knowing the truth. And this becomes almost like a common opinion. Man can't go to the truth, huh? They're a very serious state of affairs, huh? Okay. If you read Descartes' Discourse on Method, where he has a little autobiographical sketch of his life there, he fell into a kind of despair for a while. And it's because of this universal disagreement among people, right? Okay? Okay. Now, if you read the dialogue called the Phaedo, right? Socrates' friends fall into a kind of despair of knowing the truth about the, what, immortality of the soul, right? Because Socrates gives them a number of arguments that seem to them good, right? And then Simeon and Simeon and Simeon come with some objections and all of a sudden they don't seem to be good anymore. And they get discouraged, right, huh? And Phaedo, who's recounting this, the last day of Socrates to Eshapratus, they have kind of a little interlude there, right? And Eshapratus himself speaks of, you know, the sinking feeling he had when he prayed what had happened that day, right? And Phaedo talks about how the fact that they've killed this kind of despair. And Eshapratus says, what did Socrates do, right? And Phaedo says, well, I never admired Socrates more, right? And if you read the dialogue, Socrates gradually leads them out of this despair, right? To continue the investigation, right? To continue the investigation, right? To continue the investigation, right? To continue the investigation, right? To continue the investigation, right? And then he takes up the objections of Simeon's, right? And see this, huh? He eventually answers that, right? But that despair is very common. And I think Plato's teaching us in the Phaedo, and something you can teach in a dialogue form, but you can't really teach in a more textbook-type form, right? Or a treatise form. You know, the role that the appetite, the will and emotions play in our thinking, huh? Thinking represents somebody getting angry and not seeing the truth. And he gets angry with Socrates and Amino, right? And other people get angry, you know, and they're being examined by Socrates, huh? And so you can see various defects of will and emotions that now this influences our thinking, huh? I notice this despair of knowing the truth. Despair of knowing the truth. This really comes after this natural desire we have to know the truth. But because truth is, in many cases, something very difficult to know, we easily get discouraged and even fall into despair. But this despair of knowing the truth, if that becomes, you know, habitual, then you give up the pursuit of truth, right? And so this is against the natural desire to know the truth. But nature doesn't do what? More than is necessary, huh? If nature gives us a natural desire to know the truth, this must be possible in some way for man. Just like if nature gives us hunger and thirst, it must not be impossible to get food and water. You may not always succeed in getting food or water, right? But if it were impossible to get food or water, why would nature give us hunger and thirst, huh? So it goes against the natural desire to know the truth. At the same time, you can see that the natural desire to know the truth is not enough to know the truth. You need also the hope of overcoming the difficulty, right? And so sometimes it's the duty of Socrates or the teacher to encourage the student, right? Especially when they're young, right? They need to be encouraged, huh? My old teacher, Kasurik, told me this one time, you know, in his eye of the ball there, and he had some questions in his mind as to the matter that was being talked about in class there with Monsigny Dian. So he went to see Monsigny Dian in his office afterwards, right? Monsigny Dian talked much different in the office than he had in class. And Kasurik said, well, why did you talk so differently in class? He said, well, it's a duty of the teacher to encourage the student. But now he had a student who didn't need to be encouraged, he said, he needed to be, what? Cautioned, you know? And to go to some of these difficulties, right? But the hoi polloi had to encourage him, right? To keep on and not make things too difficult at first, right? Cautioned, you know, when I was working on my, when I was outlining what I was going to do, my doctoral thesis, and I brought him to Monsigny Dian, and he had it for a day or two, and I came back in there, and he asked me if you'd like the question, and then he said, now I'm a more serious objection. He proposed a change in order to my thesis, and then he proposed it, I could see it was better, right? In fact, it was so good that I could write the thesis by myself after that. But I said, yeah, it's not clear what it is. And he said, well, I'm going to give you evidence what I'm saying, he says. He's giving me, you know, all I need to write the thing myself, and I'm going to give you evidence what I'm saying, he says. It's like I had to be viewed at it too quickly or something, or else he was just testing it a little bit. But this is the most common reaction to this situation, okay? It's despair. So men become skeptics, huh? And there have been men who are skeptics in every age. But there's something wrong with that because it goes against our natural desire to know the truth. But at the same time, you realize that a philosopher needs the hope of overcoming the difficulties in the way of knowing the truth, huh? Now, to take my favorite whipping boy there, Descartes, if you go back to the discourse on method, and you have a biographical sketch, I mentioned how Descartes did fall into a kind of despair for a time, right? But his desire to know, revived, and was not crushed by this, right? And decided to, what? Well, if these guys can't agree, let's forget about that. Let's try to do it ourselves. Okay? And this is, what? Another reaction, all right? I'm going to do it myself. Do it yourself. Now, this is not opposed to a natural desire to know, really. It's not opposed to, what? Hope, right? Okay? But what reason is there to think, if you do it yourself, that you will do anything more than add another opinion to an already, what? A few long lists, right? And Descartes says, well, what I say will be so clear that nobody will disagree with that. But after he publishes his work, he gets all kinds of objections, right? And so you have to apply to all the objections and so on. So, this do-it-yourself doesn't suffer from despair, but maybe it suffers from what we might call boldness, a kind of overconfidence, right? That I can succeed where everybody else has, what? Failed, right? And this is against something else that we need. It's not against the hope, as I say, but it's against the fear that we need in our life. Against the fear of being mistaken, the fear of making a mistake. Against the fear of being mistaken or making a mistake. Now, you go back to that great dialogue, the Phaedo, and I mentioned how the friends of Socrates fall into a kind of despair. Well, Socrates gradually leads them out of that despair, and you can see how he does so if you read the dialogue, the Phaedo. And then they start to take up the objections of Simmias and Sibis. And Socrates, one, two, three, the three refarmaments, he destroys the position of what? Simmias, right? And now, you know, it's got to get what? Kind of bold, right? You see? And Socrates says, wait, wait, now. It's not going to be so easy to answer. Sibis' objection as it was, what? Simmias' objection, right? Well, now you see what a good teacher can do, right? He can see now that they're not in need of being encouraged, but now their boldness has to be what? Tempered. Tempered, yeah, see? With the fear that they might make a what? Mistake, yeah? Wisely and slow, they stumble and run fast as Friar Lawrence did, son. So that the philosopher has to have a balance of hope and, what? Fear, right? And you have to realize, as a teacher, but it's kind of hard to maybe, or the whole class of people, those who need to be encouraged and those who need to be, what, cautioned, so to speak, right? And with that balance of hope and fear is something necessary for the philosopher. And it's analogous to what you have in other things in life. You know, if I'm running for political office, if I don't have the hope of getting elected, let me just go through the motion, I'm not going to run a very good campaign, right? But they often talk about the necessity of a politician running scared, as they say. And sometimes a man has been elected to office many times, kind of thinks that he's got things sewed up. And he stays in Washington too long. The other guy has written bells and philly of course. And when he comes back to the district, he suddenly realizes that, what, things are not such an easy thing, right? And so his boldness or his overconfidence is going to lead to his, what, defeat, right? Okay. And of course, you have something like that in religious life, right? When Thomas is coming in.