Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 27: Becoming Strong in Common Ground: Agreement Among Philosophers

Transcript
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You know, they didn't have so much common sense in those days, right? You know, and we're so accustomed, you know. I remember one time Rosa and I going with a young couple who weren't married yet, you know, to see a movie, right? And of course Rosa was a little shocked by the scenes, you know, in the movie, you know. And talking to the other one was a good girl, terrible, but you know. But she was, you know, going to movies regularly and, you know, it's a shocker because she was so good to get accustomed to it, right? And your wife said, what's going on? It's falling apart, you know. Well, it is falling apart, but if you get accustomed to it, it seems to be the normal way of doing it, huh? Because Sergius used to give kind of a crazy example. He says, you know, the guy comes to see the doctor, right? And he's not feeling too good or something, you know. The doctor says, well, tell me about your daily routine, right? And he says, well, I get up in the morning, you know, I shave, I vomit, and I brush my teeth, and then I breakfast. He says, you what? I get up in the morning, I shave, I vomit, and then I... He says, you're fun today? Yeah, yeah. He says, doesn't everybody? That's what he is, right? Doesn't everybody, right? And Heisenberg remarks, you know, on how Einstein, Einstein wouldn't go along with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, although the evidence was there, but he was so accustomed, as they were, to the principle of determinism, right? That he couldn't, you know, revolutionary as he was, and Einstein was in some ways revolutionary, he couldn't, you know, there's such a great change from everything he had been brought up on, huh? And it's, we said, with freely ascending, so we see, in a sense, a sharing of the freely part of experimental science. Would there be a sharing in the philosophical part of that something that can be built on? What, are you talking about faith now, or what? Faith, yeah. Yeah, yeah, faith is like the beginning in philosophy here, in its certitude, right? In its certitude. Yeah. But it's like this insofar as you, what, freely ascent to the Word of God, huh? Okay. I mean, it's more involved in that, because... Sure. ...the will is moving the reason to ascent, see? Otherwise it wouldn't be a free act. But the will is being helped by divine grace, huh? And the reason is being helped by the gift of faith itself, huh? Which enables it to be, disposes it to be moved by the will, huh? And then God has joined these, what, exterior motors of credibility, too, as the Vatican I points out, huh? So it's not a chekus sensus, right? But nevertheless, it remains something free, huh? So if the Trinity is not forced on the mind, when you see God face to face, then the Trinity will be as obvious as though there's a whole world more than a part, right? Couldn't be otherwise, see? But reason doesn't see that by itself now, right? But it's moved to ascent to it, huh? Okay? By divine grace moving the will. Okay? And the gift of faith there in reason itself. See, it takes a long time to study these three beginnings, but it's good to note that there are three different beginnings in our thinking, yeah. I was wondering, have you had, you've done studies on modern physics, have you done anything with modern astronomy at all? I just had this thought, Father Anthony, I were talking briefly about this one time. I was trying to figure out, I thought Anthony made a good point, that you could see reasonable guesses in modern astronomy. One of the things I kind of wonder about, there seems to be a lot of imagination involved. Like I mentioned, it seems like a lot of it's more science fiction than... Yeah. You know, Einstein said in one place that creation of scientific hypothesis is like writing a novel, he said. Oh, okay. See, it's much more like fiction than philosophy is. And it's much more tied up with the imagination of it. Pardon? It's much more tied up with the imagination, yeah. And that's why the great scientific theories are usually invented by young men, relatively speaking, huh? The imagination. Yeah, yeah. And when Einstein, you know, left Europe and came to America, I mean, you know, he didn't come up with anything really successful, like he did in the earlier years, huh? But most of these guys, it's in their 20s, sometimes in their 30s, but they're rarely later than that, if they have their brilliant idea. But that's because the imagination is most perfect at that age, huh? But, you know, when I read Heisenberg's, and even these kind of semi-popular things in a sense, I mean, these things for laymen like me, but I mean, if you read them down through the years, he gets a bit more clear in understanding of what it all meant as he goes on, right? See, but the, his original ideas go back to his 20s, huh? See, because the imagination, the imagination is better at 20 or 30 than at 50, you know, but the reason is better at 50 than it was at 20, huh? See, see? So he's more inventive in his 20s or 30s, but he understands better what he invented in his 50s than he did when he invented it, huh? See? And I said in Heisenberg, you know, that it's more and more clear, crystallized in his mind, you know, brilliantly. He understands it better and better as he goes on. Would it custom hinder the imagination as you got rid of it to the process of it? Well, yeah, I suppose, but it's something, I may suppose something bodily too, partly, huh? Because the imagination is in the brain, right? And so it's slowing down. It's a combination of nature. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes you see Mozart, you know, he takes a melody from one of his earlier pieces and he proves it, you know, you know? But the original idea there, you know, the vegetative part comes from the earlier part, huh? Although Mozart keeps on getting you, actually, because he died so young anyway, Mozart's hard to tell. So that's the second step he takes, right? So there's a very important step he's taking there, right? And he sees what kind of a beginning this is in the minds of these Greeks, huh? It's more when forced on the mind by truth itself, rather than hypothesis, huh? Now, in the third paragraph of page three, he takes a third step to become a strong. And he's pointing out that they try to take all the pair that's most fundamental. But some take a pair that seems to be more fundamental to the senses, like hot and cold, right? Or moist and dry. That would take a pair that reason sees as more basic, like hot and even, right? Or hate and love, right? So he's pointing out, right, that they're all trying to find the most fundamental pair of contraries. But some judge which is most fundamental more by the senses, some more by what? Reason, huh? So that's the third step he takes forward, huh? That distinction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's manifesting in the sense that they are trying to take the first pair of contraries, right? But some look at it more from the senses, which would tell you hot and cold, right? And then these crazy mathematicians who don't follow their senses. Odd and even, right? Even in pedicures taking heat and love, which are not as sensible as hot and cold, huh? So that's the third step, right? Now the fourth step, huh? Thus they say the same thing in some way and something different from each other. Other, just as it seems to the many, the same, however, insofar as proportional. Now, sometimes I call, as I say, I call this the fourth step. But you can put along with it the first step in a way, huh? You can say they're all saying the same thing in two ways, right? Okay? They're all saying the same as we saw at the beginning of the video in general, right? But not in particular, right? But now he's pointing out that they're all saying the same proportionally. Now we're using the word proportion here, of course, in the Greek sense of analogous that I'm translating by. But in Euclid's sense, right? Where proportion doesn't mean a ratio, but a what? Likeness of ratios, huh? And since we defined that first in math, let me also have Aristotle saying here, right? Okay? I'll show you the way the thinking goes here. Suppose thinker A said that the clauses are 2 and 3, okay? Thinker A said that, okay? And thinker B said they're 4 and 6, okay? And thinker C said they're 8 and 12. And thinker D said they're 10 and 15. Now at first sight you say, oh my God, here we go again. Nobody agrees with anybody else. Nobody has anything to comment with anybody else. It's hopelessly human, right? See? A says 2 and 3, and nobody else says either 2 or 3. Nobody thinks that. The other guy says 4 and 6, and nobody else says 4 or 6, right? And this guy says 8 and 12, and nobody says 8 or 12. There's nothing in common, right? And so on for 10 and 15, right? Then you come back and you say, yeah, there's something that's kind of interesting about this, huh? You see? 2 is to 3 as what? 4 is to 6. As 8 is to 12. As 10 is to what? And then you say, yeah, there's something that's kind of interesting about this, right? And then you say, yeah, there's something that's kind of interesting about this, right? And then you say, yeah, there's something that's kind of interesting about this, right? And then you say, yeah, there's something that's kind of interesting about this, right? Well, yeah, they don't have exactly the same, right, but proportionally it's the same, right, that she is to him as the other woman is to her husband, right, see, okay. In other words, a woman usually likes to have the man be a little bit tall in there, right, and like to dance with the man just a little bit tall in there, right. You don't have to die up so much with the man who showed him there, right, you know, when I was in grade school, there was this one guy who was kind of tall, and tall in the rest of us, and this one girl was rather tall, and she was always chasing this guy. He ended up a priest, by the way, in his case of her, by the name of him. But, I mean, the point was, he was the only guy that was... Proportional. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, the thinking is similar, right, huh, okay. And, uh, another example, too, you know, a little different one, but something like that. Now, Sunday people say, you know, well, there's nothing wrong with a man wearing his hair long, you know, and that sort of thing, and they say, well, Christ wore his hair long, and so on, and so on. But the point is, you go back to the age when men wore their hair longer, and the women wore their hair all the time to their ankles almost, right, huh. So that what's natural is not, maybe, the absolute length of the man's hair, or the woman's hair, but the woman's hair should be longer than the man's hair, huh. That a woman's glory is her hair, as the Bible says, right? But don't compliment a man and his hair, that's really an insult. You shouldn't be concerned about these things, see. But a woman, you know, the hair is a woman's glory, it says in the Bible, huh. So that the woman's hair should be, what, longer than the man. So proportionally, it hasn't changed that much, right? You see? You see that, yeah? Okay. Okay. So, you can say that the, although one man says, let's say, the dense and the rare, the dense is the rare, something like the mixed is to the, what, segregated, huh? Like, love is to, what, pink, as the, what, full is to the empty, as the hot is to the, what, cold, right? Okay. And so on, right? Now, at this point, I sometimes tie things to the end here and at the beginning. And I say, where is Tao's pointing out that they're all saying the same in two ways, right? They're all saying the same in general, because they're all saying the beginnings are contraries, although they disagree in particular as to what the contraries are. And they're all saying the same, what, proportionally, huh? Okay? So there's two ways that they're all saying the, what, same, right? But the proportion is that the principles are contrary. Well, it's more than that, see, okay? And so different points you're making, right? You're saying that one principle is to the other, as the other one is the other one, right? You know? But when you say contrary, you're just kind of, you know, seeing what they have in common, right? But now he goes on, and he says, and worse and better, right? Okay? In the middle of that paragraph, huh? Worse and better. Now, Thomas sees in that another step, right, that our style is taking. And that is that of the two contraries, one is better or more positive, and the other is not as good or as lacking in something, right? So to compare the dense and the rare, if I give you a mug of yellow beer, and I give you a mug of beer foam, and I charge you the same amount, the man with the beer foam is going to, what, object, because he's getting less beer in the same thing, right? Okay? Likewise, the mix has something that the, what, segregated doesn't have, huh? That's what we mix things in a salad dressing, right, huh? Okay? Love seems to be better than hate, huh? Heat seems to be missing something, right? Obviously, the empty is missing something compared to the full, right? But even the cold, we think of as somehow involving a lack of heat, huh? Okay? So, he's pointing out that not only are they proportional, but in this proportion, one member is to the other, right? as somewhat lacking, huh? Okay? So, you don't want to say just, you know, dense is to rare as the empty is to the full, thinking of the opposition, right? But dense is to rare as the full is the empty, because the rare is the one that's lacking something, and the empty is the one that is, what, lacking something in comparison to the other. Now, this idea of lack will come out later on in the first book, huh? And this idea of lack will in some way become even more essential than the idea of contrary, we'll see later on. Here there's kind of a hint at it, right? That one of the two things is better or more positive, and the other seems to be not so good or bad, or lacking something compared to the other one. That's a very important thing, but only Thomas would notice that, huh? Okay? And that's the way he understands these words, and worse and better, right? Yeah? So, however you want to distinguish those, you've got almost five or six, what, steps that Aristotle takes to become strong, right? You know? One thing he takes is what? He gives a reason to what everybody's saying without giving a reason, right? Secondly, he points out that this thought that they all have is the kind of thought that seems to be forced on the mind by truth itself, right? Rather than hypothesis or something that seems probably, right? And, what, third, they all try to take not just any pair of contraries, but the very first pair of contraries, which some of them judge more by the senses, some judge more by, what, reason, right? Right? And they're going to make these two. You can say they all take the same proportionally, right? They all say the same proportionally, and they all take the same, what? In general, right? Okay? Now, go back to my comparison there with men and women there in marriage, huh? Okay? If you look at these two marriages here, right? And you have the woman and the man, right? And then you have the woman and the man, okay? Well, you can say, what do they have in common, these two marriages? Well, in both cases, you have a man and a woman, okay? That's what they have in common, right? Each is a union of man and woman, okay? But then you come back and say, yeah, but this woman is to that man, as this woman is to what? That man, and therefore you have a, what? Kind of a portion there, right? Okay? Just like if you had two, you know, nuts and two bolts, right? And you say, well, it's just a nut and a bolt. That's not a bolt, it's not a bolt. But then you see, yeah, but this bolt is proportional to that nut, it fits the thing, and this fits that one, right? Okay? Okay. My brother Mark and I, when we were bastards out there, we saw he's inviting a couple up there, you know, to the house, you know, and to get to know the husband and the wife, you know, and so on. And these two couples we used to invite a lot, we struck, you know, by that they were well matched, yeah? But if this husband had been married to that woman, and vice versa, he would have had horrible problems. Two families, right? So there's something, you know, in the sense that she's the wife he needs, and she's the wife he needs, but she's not the wife he needs. And vice versa, right? See? And it just kind of struggles, you know, it just would have been, you know, maybe you could see the problem perhaps on this. But there's something proportional there, right? And the same way we're not going to wine in a meal, right? You see? I mean, you should drink the wine that matches the meal, huh? You see? And it might be different wine that matches chicken, let's say, and matches what? steak, right? As I say, the name is indeed spaghetti so I can name Chianti. But Chianti is better with spaghetti than with maybe chicken, let's say. Or maybe Chardonnay would be better with chicken, right? Okay. So yeah, I'm having food with wine. Food with wine. That's in general, right? But you can say, yeah, but Chardonnay is the chicken as Chianti is the spaghetti. You see the idea? So, you have the reason, right? You have the observation that they're all saying the same, right? I mean, you see that there's force in the mind by truth itself. You have the distinction there of how they try to take the first pair of contours, right? Not just any pair of contours, right? But some judge it by the sense, some by the reason. And then, if you want to make these two, you can say they're all saying the same proportionally, they're all saying the same in general, right? To tie it up with what went before. And then, that one member of the pair, in each case, is what? Lacking or inferior in some way to the other one. He has something like that in, I can't remember the whole table, but Aristotle, Thomas gives it in the metaphysics there. The Pythagomians had this table about ten contraries, right? One column is a good one and the other one is a bad one, right? So right is good and left is bad and male is good and female is bad. You know, go right down the line, right, huh? It's kind of interesting, huh? Which one he puts in the good column, which in the bad column? But it's kind of anticipating what Aristotle is saying here, right? That one contrary seems to be better and the other not so what? Not so good, huh? Tragedy and comedy, right? You may look at tragedy in the good column and comedy in the inferior column, right? But, so there's about six steps you want to make it here, right? Where you're becoming strong, huh? But the main thing is, it is clear then that the beginning should be what? Contraries, right? Now, the major step forward, though, is going to take place in the eleventh, what? Reading, huh? Okay? But it doesn't take place right away in the eleventh reading, huh? The major step he's going to take is in the eleventh reading where he's going to say that a third thing is required besides the two contraries, okay? And this is going to be very important how he goes from two to three, huh? But he's going to be forced by the truth itself in part to go from two to three, okay? But we'll see that, huh? It's going to involve the role of, what? Contradiction in the development of our knowledge, okay? And perhaps the first man to have some insight into the role of contradiction in our knowledge was Heraclitus, who was the father of all things, he said, right? The hidden harmony is better than the parent harmony, and so on. But we'll be looking at some texts, you know, I'll bring them next time. It won't be here next week, as I mentioned, huh? Two weeks from now. But I'll bring in some of the texts on the role of contradiction, huh? Okay. The basic ones from Heraclitus and then the key one from Aristotle when he talks about this, and then the ones from the scientists when they talk about this, huh? Okay? Because Einstein and Bohr and others talk about this, and then the ones from the theologians, okay? Mm-hmm. You know? What's kind of striking is that in philosophy and in science and theology, they all see a role that contradiction plays in the development, either of philosophy or the development of science and development of theology. How important it is, right? But the first major example of that is going to be in reading 11, where Aristotle is going to go from what? Two to three, by untying the apparent contradiction in all change, that Heraclitus was pointing out, in which God permitted, he's all excited, right? Okay? And the thing is, that what they all recognize is that you have to see these contradictions, which may be in your thinking or may be apparently in the thing, but not really in the thing, or a contradiction between your thinking and the thing, but the untying of that contradiction, or the breaking down that contradiction, is actually the discovery of something that was hidden to you before. Okay? And so this is something of universal importance. As I say to the students, it's an old saying, you know, get it from the horse's mouth, the race is going to take place, it's an old saying, like the horses down there, they've been talking about things, they know who's going to win the race, huh? So you get it from the horse's mouth. Well, most of us get discovery at second, third, fourth, fifth end, right? And with no understanding of how the great discoveries are made, huh? But you go to the great philosophers and they will talk about the role that contradiction played and you go to the great theologians, huh? And you go to the great theologians, huh? And they'll talk about this, huh? The importance of this for theology. Okay? So I had some, you know, short and low readings, but very key readings from the philosophers and scientists and theologians. Because just the way everything you meet in a course like this is extremely basic, right, for the whole life of the mind, huh? But it's appropriate to talk about it here because this is the first major, it's not the most difficult by any means, but it's the first major example of how the human mind goes forward by trying to, what, unravel or untie, as Aristotle would say, the contradiction, or break it down, as Einstein would say, right? Okay? And we'll see how the philosophers and scientists and so on and theologians are saying basically the same thing, although they have somewhat different language when they talk about the world contradiction, huh? But we'll see how similar their thinking is, huh? But the first man to see this was Heraclitus, and that's one reason why I call him the central thinker in human thought. And sometimes I say that if what all these philosophers and scientists are saying about the way they went forward was first anticipated by Heraclitus, huh? Then Heraclitus is the father of the progress of the human mind. That's quite a title, right? The father of the progress of the human mind, huh? But he's the first man to see, to some extent, how the human mind would make its greatest steps and most profound steps forward, huh? And that's quite an accomplishment, huh? Now, what does Aristotle do in this eleventh reading, huh? Well, he raises the question about the number of beginnings, huh? The beginning of the very reading itself, right? Okay? And what he's going to do is to eliminate, he's going to eliminate the two extremes, huh? Okay? He's going to eliminate there being just one beginning, okay? And the other extreme, if there is a, what? Infinity of them, right? Okay? There's just one beginning, and there's an unlimited multitude of beginnings, huh? Now, he's going to eliminate one very quickly by saying the beginnings are contrary, so there can't be just one. Okay? So you've got to have at least two, right? Okay? Then he's going to, by four brief arguments, eliminate there being an unlimited multitude of them. Okay? So now, at the end of that, you know there must be at least two, right? Okay? Then Aristotle says, is there any reason to go beyond two? And then he's going to say there is reason for going beyond two. He's going to speak with philosophical modesty, there's some reason, right? There's very much reason, right? And he's going to give three arguments, but the first one is the one where the prince, where the royal contradiction appears, right? Okay? And he's going to say, and he's going to say, and he's going to say we're really forced to go from two to three. Now, you're going to see throughout this, huh, the famous principle of fewness, huh, which in modern science is sometimes called the principle of simplicity. But we saw that a little bit in this text here, right? Fewness in truth, as the great Shakespeare says. But what that principle is, is not that fewer are better, but fewer are better if they are enough, right? That's the fundamental principle for Newton, right? The fundamental principle for Galileo. Einstein says it underlies the whole natural science and the Greeks all the way through my work. Okay, so although two is fewer than three, he's going to argue that two is not enough. There must be a third thing. There must be a third thing to change, okay? But then he's going to say, that's enough. And he's going to get a couple of arguments to say, you know, kind of indicate that's enough, right? Now, I say the thing I emphasize most of all, I think the most important thing is to see the role of contradiction going from two to three, okay? As I said, this is historically, or not historically, in the order of learning, this is the first major, what, place where the role of contradiction takes place. The reason why I say that is that our knowledge starts with our, what, sensism, and as Shakespeare reminds us there in Troilus and Cressida, Ilysses does there in, things in motion, sooner it catch the eye, the whatnot stirs, right? Okay? And everybody, to some extent, sees the changes between contrarism. And we all say that one contrary becomes the other, without recognizing that in so saying there's an apparent contradiction what we're saying. Because we say the dry becomes wet, huh? And becomes means what? Comes to be. So if the dry comes to be wet, then the dry is wet, and something is both wet and not wet, and dry and not dry at the same time, you've got an impossibility, right? But if the dry never becomes wet, then things are going to remain dry forever, right? And the healthy will never become sick, but if you're sick, you'll never become healthy either. Okay? So, change is what first, what, gets the attention of the senses, huh? There's an apparent contradiction there in change, which Heraclitus was the first man to, what, emphasize a lot on, okay? And the untying, therefore, of that contradiction is in the order of learning the first major example of the role of contradiction, right? But ever since Aristotle did that, that's the way the human mind has gone forward, huh? Now, as I say, it's somewhat anticipated by Heraclitus, and maybe more so by Plato, but it's really fully comes to evidence here in Aristotle, huh? So it's appropriate, after we see that, then to stop and to talk about the universal importance of contradiction and development of our knowledge, huh? And then we'll see why Heraclitus is the father of the progress of the human mind, huh? He's the father of the going forward, the human mind, huh? That's with the tremendous man, huh? It's kind of funny there. We had a session there, you know, we get together once in a while, and we get together at somebody's house, like, you know, on a Friday or Saturday night, and we start at about 7 o'clock, and someone presents a little paper or something, right? And then we go on, you know, we go out midnight, see? And, you know, it's a good chance to discuss something, and they wanted me to do something, so I said, okay, I'll do Shakespeare's exhortation to use reason, huh? And we went on to about midnight, you know, at this, see? And, now, why did I bring that up? Somebody's going to bring that up. You're talking about the going forward in the human mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember, I was going to make a point to this, something that happened that night. Oh, oh, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Somebody was asking me, when I talk about Shakespeare's phrase, looking before and after, which isn't the definition, right? You know, I give him a copy of Aristotle's chapter in the categories, and before and after, so, you know, you expect a question, you know, did Shakespeare know these things, right? And I said, well, stop and think that in the play called Hamlet, huh, Hamlet is concerned about his mother's marriage, right, huh? And why? Because she married, first of all, so soon after her, what, husband had died, right? Which is enough to, you know, bother you, right? But then, as we find out in the scene where you have Braidser, right, he compares his father with the uncle, right? What a superior man he was, right? Right? See? In other words, his father was such a better man, huh? So that's the first and the fourth sense of before, isn't it? Right? He's bothered by the fact that she married so soon after the death, right? In fact, he says bitterly, you know, that the food for the funeral meal, right, could serve as the wedding. Now, if that's going to happen, you know, but it was that close that he said that, you know, one could be the other. And then the fourth sense of before, which is better, right? You know? She married so soon after the death of her husband, a man so inferior to the man that had died, right? That's doubly bothersome, right? You see? So he had in mind the first and the fourth sense, right? Okay? And he writes the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, that's the third sense of before, right? But then I took the example of how in the All's Well That Ends Well, right? When Helena is kind of forced by the countess to confess her love for the, what, her son, the count, right? Then he puns on the first and the fourth meaning of before, or meaning of before, attached to the first, before and place, right? He kind of kneels down until the countess. Then before you, right? I confess that before you and next to heaven, I love your son. Well, you know, here's Shakespeare's putting in the first and the fourth sense, right? See? Okay? So you get some awareness of the fact that the word before has more than one meaning, right? And whether he saw it as fully as Aristotle there, well, that's another question, right? I mean, soon he does talk, you know, about Polonius looking for the cause of Hamlet's apparent madness, right? And so he's only aware of that, right? In fact, he even has a little fun there with the scholastics, right? You know, that madness doesn't have an efficient cause, but a deficient cause, they say. This effect by cause or deficient cause, he's got these little tannins. But he changes the work of all this, right? You know? So he seems to have all the senses in mind. But see, apart from that, my attitude towards Shakespeare is sometimes to be a good reader of Shakespeare and to enjoy, you know, Shakespeare, but other times to be a good student of Shakespeare, right? And then I try to do what Thomas says a good student should do. You know, Thomas has that famous passage on the good student in his prologue to Sacred Scripture where the good student is compared to the earth. And Thomas has explained the metaphor there, right? The earth is lowly, humble. So the good student, right? He humbles himself under the master, huh? And then secondly, the earth is what? Something stable, right? So he has some judgment. He doesn't just take anybody's word for anything. But then third, like the earth, he is what? Fruitful, right? So one tries to what? Take the thought of the master and see what follows from it, okay? And you might possibly see something that follows from it that the master had not thought about, right? Okay? Like an axiomene. I think the example of an axiomene is when he includes that water animals came before land animals, right? Which would be a nice deduction from Thales' thought that water is the beginning of living things, right? And therefore, it would come from that. And he confirmed it with the example of the frog, right? With the newt. It's like a fish in the beginning, right? And then it becomes a kind of land animal. So say you read Shakespeare, you see, this is awfully wise what he's saying. And maybe Shakespeare doesn't see everything in the word before the aristocracy, right? But a good student, right? Tries to what? But be fruitful, right? You know? And so whether Shakespeare saw that or not, right? When I read Euclid, I sometimes deduce conclusions that I don't find in Euclid, right? I suspect it's obvious that you could do them, right? But I mean, that's a good student does, right? You know? It's an obvious deduction from Proposition 5, which is that, you know, if these two sides are equal, the animals are equal. It's an obvious deduction. And from that in the sixth, in an equilateral triangle, all the angles are equal, right? Big deal. But I mean, you know, that's a good student does, right? He sees the consequences of this, huh? And the same way I read the Greek fragments, right? I see an awful lot of wisdom in them. Did the Greeks see all the wisdom in that, huh? I know, when I was in a talk at TC, I don't know if Richard or somebody asked me, you know, I have to use a physicist, and I don't know if you, was that one of those talks mentioned or what? I don't know the one. Yeah, but not that one, the prior. Yeah, but, you know, I was seeing so much in the fragment of Heraclitus, and he was asking me, you know, did Heraclitus see all this? And I said, well, I don't know, but then I said, I gave the example of Max Planck, right? And Planck, you know, presented the quantum hypothesis in 1900, and Heisenberg, giving his lecture on the history of quantum theory, says Planck went for a walk in the park after he presented this, right? And he said to his son, I think I discovered something as great as Newton, right? Now, five years later, Einstein showed you can't understand light without the quantum. And then 13 years later, Niels Bohr showed you can't, what, understand the atom without the quantum, right? And so by then it became clear that nothing in the physical world, neither matter nor light, was existing without the quantum, huh? And now did Planck see all those consequences that are going to come out of his discovery, huh? Maybe not, no, not to Einstein and Borg, you know? But nevertheless, he knew there was something extremely important, and when he went for this walk with his son, he said, I think I discovered something as important as Newton, right? And he realized that there was something here, right, you know? And so, but as I say, sometimes, you know, the good student, right, he will see some consequences that the other one doesn't, huh? I know when I was at Laval there, the last year that he lectured, right, and he was lecturing on the dependence of the life of the mind, not only upon reason but upon the will, right, huh? And he was dealing with the dispositions of will and appetite that you need for the philosophical life. And he was doing it in a very, very concrete way. He was using the Confessions of Augustine to show the movements of Augustine's will and, you know, pointing out, you know, universal truths, you know, to be seen in the movement of Augustine's will and so on. And so, well, then I was listening to Dion there, and I was reading Thomas' commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul, right? And then when Thomas divides the causes of error, he divides in the same way that Dion divides these other things, huh? You know, there's a cause of error on the side of the will and a cause of error on the side of the knowing powers, right? And he said, you never thought of that exact, you know, that way, you know, but, I mean, beautiful text and comments, right, you know? But I'm taking the idea that Dion had given me and just kind of, you know, developing it, right, you know? And as Heath points out a lot, huh, you know, in the Pythagorean school, they were always saying, you know, they're contributing everything to Pythagoras, even the discoveries that they made because it's all coming out of the things that he had done, you know, huh, you know? The reverence for the Master, you know, involves a recognition, right, huh? When the Master sees all the consequences of what he said, right, huh? And you yourself, I mean, if you see something basic, right, you yourself, as the time goes on, we start to see more consequences of it, huh? And so, you know, but what difference does it make, right? Who, you know, whether he saw it all or he was a good student, right? But when you read something like Shakespeare, right, you know, you start with something, right? You know, I was, this year, I just happened to think, I'm always quoting this line, wisely and slow, they stumble and run fast. I'm always quoting it, right? And suddenly I sat down and danced and said, I think there's more meaning in there than I've ever really unfolded, right? I started thinking about it, I said, more and more is coming out of this, you know? And, you know, I go and I give a talk to the Legionaries every year, you know, the students there, and they have to go up there, and I said, I think I'll give a talk, you know, on Fire Lawrence on Stumbling. That's a kind of catchy title, you know, Fire Lawrence on Stumbling, you know, and don't be as dry as hell of my tongue. But I mean, you start to think about it, you say, oh, yeah, I didn't see that at first, right, you know? And it's so suggested, the Mayan, once you start to think about it. And did Jake see everything? I don't know. I mean, you know, it just starts to unfold, you know, and it's just amazing, right? You know, just something amazing. There's more in there than I've really seen before, you know? I said, I've got to stop, sit down, and then all of a sudden, you know, I don't think I could notice that's coming out. It's just amazing, right? You know, just incredible. You know, how much, and so. So I said, I said, what does it make, you know? I mean, I gave these other texts, you know, where, you know, Shakespeare, you know, is planning on the different meanings of before, so obviously he understands something about the equivocation of the word, right? But who cares? I mean, you know, you bring in Aristotle because you have an explicit text where he's unfolding the meanings of before, right? And you see, you know, how much Shakespeare's words cover, right? So maybe you should stop here now. It's going to be five to five, okay? Okay. So we'll start here with reading 11 next time. It'll have to be two weeks from now because there's a towel and other things going in my house, okay? I'd be there when I... My wife's going to be away for a few days, and I'd be there with a towel man. I've got to pay him. She puts a towel in the right place, and so on. And now I almost do exactly what my wife wants, but that's very dry. Kind of funny. I opened the wrong jar the other day. We're going to make some, you know, some of these tomato sauce or the spaghetti and I used the wrong sauce. It doesn't seem to have the consistency, you know. It doesn't seem to be, you know. And I just grabbed with the ball. I just thought they were all the same, you know, and opened it up. So, you know, that's very nice. Oh, our Andy cat we had to put down this weekend. Oh, yeah. A little floss for cat. Oh, see? Too rational. Yeah, yeah. Kind of funny, you know, in the Summa Congentitas, Thomas discusses, you know, Plato's opinion, you know, that the souls of the cats and so on are immortal, right? And of course he refutes this, you know. I mean, it's kind of interesting, huh? Yeah, yeah. You see? Because then you have, you know, the moderns with no soul is immortal, right? Right, yeah. And Plato, who's gone to the other extreme in the sense where all the animals have an immortal soul. Of course, the truth is in the middle between these two extremes, huh? Yeah. I just reading the words in the book of the Summa there today, Summa Gentilis, we can't use that phrase more or less, right? Hmm. You know, that the man who falls, he says, the more or less than the truth, right? You see that phrase in Shakespeare, right? Like, Faustus says, right, they say more or less than the truth, they are nays in the sons of darkness. So, meeting 11, yeah. Something confused me both last week and this week that I don't understand. Like Einstein, he quoted him saying that matter is condensed energy and Heisenberg saying, energy is in fact the substance from which all elementary particles live. I think using substance here in the sense of a kind of matter, right? That's one meaning of substance, matter. Well, Aristotle in the metaphysics when he talks about substance, you know, he speaks of matter as being substance and then form in the genus of substance and the composition of the two, right? Oh. But the moderns tend to think of substance just in the sense of what? Matter, huh? That's one meaning of substance. Okay, so he doesn't mean it as... Energy, isn't that like an accident or a property? I mean, it's not... No, no, well, you see, for the modern physicist, energy seems to be... enable you to do things, right? So it seems like a mover, right? But then you can generate mass, right? From energy. Oh. So energy seems to be the source of matter so far as they understand it, right? Source of matter. If you understand matters being mass, right? Okay. So you have to be careful because all this is a mathematical science and you don't really have any matter there. Schrodinger, right? I mentioned Schrodinger, right? You know, he says the modern atom consists of no stuff at all. There's no matter there.