Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 37: The Three Things in Every Becoming

Transcript
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Good to know what you don't know. So, let's say our little prayer. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. And help us to understand all that you've written. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Amen. So, we're just starting reading 12, I guess, huh? And let's recall, you know, the reason why you have to understand change or becoming, which is basically the same thing, huh? As I say to my students, if you don't understand change, you don't understand changing things. And if you don't understand changing things, you don't understand unchanging things. Because you know unchanging things by the negation of changing things. Like we saw when we made that theological footnote to God there, huh? And if you don't understand changing things or unchanging things, you don't understand anything. So, from the first to the last, if you don't understand change, you don't understand anything. So, see how basic this is for us, huh? So, Aristotle found a common basis among the Greek philosophers, the Greek natural philosophers, about change, huh? And then he became strong in that common understanding. And now in readings 12 and 13, he's going to do something like that. He's going to become, he's going to find a common basis, huh? He's going to become strong, huh? As I mentioned, I think, last time, there were three differences between what he does in 12 and 13, and what he did in 10 and 11, huh? In 10 and 11, he found a common basis about change, huh? Here he's going to use the word becoming. Now, we said last time that change and becoming are really the same reality, but looked at from a different point of view, huh? In becoming, you're looking at the change from the point of view of the end, huh? Of the change, the goal, the destination. While if the word change, you're looking at this reality from the starting point, huh? So, it's a little bit like the distinction we said between coming and going, huh? Okay? It's good to know whether you're coming or going, although it might be the same reality in one way, huh? So, that's one difference between 12 and 13, huh? But now his second difference is that he's going to find in 12 and 13 a common basis that in a way is shared by all men, and not just by the natural philosophers. And third, he's going to become strong in this common basis with a complete necessity here in 12 and 13. And so, he's going to correct something that we saw in 10 and 11. And in 10 and 11, there was some necessity, but also some great probability mixed in with that. And he's going to correct something and determine the truth with complete necessity. Okay? So, those are three differences that you can note between 12 and 13 and 10 and 11. 10 and 11 are still somewhat dialectical, you could say, huh? Because there's some probability there. But 12 and 13 is more determining the truth now with necessity, the beginning of demonstration, if you wish. So, bearing that in mind, you can understand what he's doing here now. So, let's look at the text there, page 1 there. He says, Let us speak, therefore, in this way, first considering about every becoming. He's going to talk about becoming in general, right? And that way he's going to talk about every becoming. For it is according to nature, he says, to state first the general, and then to consider what is proper about each thing, huh? And that's what we learned in the very first reading. It's natural to go from what is more known to us to what is, what, less known to us, huh? What is more known to us is the confused or the indistinct. What is less known to us is the distinct, huh? And the general is to the particular as the confused, as the distinct. Therefore, it's natural to know things in general before you know them in particular. And, uh, I remember one time in Paul VI touching upon that one of his addresses, huh? He said, this is the common principle of all learning. And I can't find it addressed. I remember reading one time in the Servitorio Romano, so. But it's a fundamental truth here. So he recalls that, right, from the first reading, huh? Now, in the second paragraph, he begins by talking about the way we say things, huh? And the we here is not the editorial we. We are a stable. It's not even we, the Greek natural philosophers, like we might have met at some points earlier. It means we, meaning you and I, people in general, right? Okay? He's going to begin for the way that we all speak about becoming. Why is he going to begin that way? Well, the way we all speak about becoming, there will be a sign of a common understanding of becoming. Okay? And he takes his example there, huh? Okay? But notice, huh? You could say that we all say that this becomes that, huh? And what you'll find is that we have two names for the this that becomes that, huh? You might say, for example, that as life goes on, right, a man becomes old, right? Right? Or you might say as life goes on, the young become old. Now, are we talking about two different becomeings there? No. No. So we're saying, we all say this becomes that, but we have two names for the this that becomes that. The man becomes old, the young become old, right? And he says we may use these two names separately, like I did, or you might put them together and say the young man becomes old, right? Okay? If you put the soft butter in the refrigerator, right, you could say the butter becomes what? Hard, right? After a while. Or you could say the soft becomes hard, right? Or you might say the soft butter becomes hard, huh? No big deal, right? Okay? But all he's pointing out is that we all say this becomes that, right? And we have two names for the this that becomes that, and one and the same becoming, right? Which we sometimes use together, sometimes separately, right? Okay? Or you could say that, what? You take a dry cloth and put it in the water, right? The cloth becomes what? Wet, right? Or you might say the dry becomes wet, right? In this case, right? Or you might say, combine the two, the dry cloth becomes wet. Okay? Okay? Don't we all speak that way? Okay? But now, in the third paragraph, he points out a little more subtle way in the way we speak about these things. that we tend to use the preposition from with one of those two names for the this that becomes that. For example, when the young man becomes old, we would say that he goes from being young to being old, right? Would we say he goes from being a man to being old? No. When you put the soft butter into the refrigerator, we'd say it goes from being soft to hard. We don't say it goes from being butter to hard, do we? Okay? When we put the dry cloth in the water, it goes from dry to wet. Not from cloth to wet, right? Okay? Now, there he's just pointing out a second more particular... in our way of speaking, right? But now, in the fourth paragraph, it comes down to something that is not in the way we speak, but something that we observe in the thing itself. And that is that one of these names, for the this that becomes that, is the name of something that is lost when this becomes that. And the other is the name of something that, what, remains when this becomes that. So when the soft becomes hard, it's no longer soft, is it? But when the butter becomes hard, it's still, what, butter, right? When the dry becomes wet, it's no longer dry. When the cloth becomes wet, it's still a cloth, right? When the sick become healthy, they're no longer sick, right? When the man becomes healthy, is he longer a man? No, he's still a man, right, huh? Okay. When the young become old, they're no longer young. They're grandfathers. But when the man becomes old, the man still remains, right? Okay? Do you see that? Now, do you see a connection between the fact that one of these names, right, is the name of something that remains, one of the names of the this now that becomes that, huh, is the name of something that remains when this becomes that, and the other is the name of something that is, what, lost, right? And the third paragraph, the fact that we use the word from with one of those two names and not the other names. In those examples I gave you, you could take many other examples. Do we use the word from with both names, the name of what remains, the name of what is lost, what do you use it with? What is lost? That's because it's the contrary. Yeah, yeah. Because from simply indicates you're going away from something, right? Don't get leaving it behind, right? So we say that the butter went from soft to hard, right? We don't say it went from butter to hard. The cloth went from dry to wet, huh? We wouldn't say it went from cloth to wet. Nobody speaks that way. I mean, that's the philosopher. Nobody speaks that way, right? You see? You go from man to old? No. You go from young to old, right? You go from man to healthy? Or from sick to healthy? So, notice, huh? Not only do people, when they say this becomes that, not only do they have two names to this, right? One of which is the name of something that remains. The other name of something that's lost. But they tend to use the word or preposition from with the name of what is lost. Right? The fact that they have those two names might indicate a certain awareness that there's, what? Something that remains and something that is lost and this becomes that. Because, in fact, they use two names, right? For the this that becomes that. One of which is, in fact, the name of what remains. The other name of something that's lost, right? And that maybe shows a certain awareness of this, right? But more so than that, the fact that they use the word from with the name of what is lost consistently, right? Rather than the name of what remains is assigned in a way they see. And when this becomes that, something of this remains and something of this is, what? Lost, huh? That they see in some way that difference. Do you see that? See what Aristotle's pointing out, huh? Yes, sir? That their very way of speaking makes them aware, in some way, of there being three things in, what? Becoming. There's this and that, obviously, to begin with, right? But that they have two names for this. They're not just synonyms, right? But there's some difference between what they're signifying. It's shown by the fact that they use the word from with one and not the other. That they've seen that difference. That one is the name of something that remains and the other the name of something that is lost, huh? And notice, even our Proverbs reveal that same way of speaking, huh? As an American, you probably heard the phrase from rags to riches, huh? Okay? It can happen in America, right? From rags to riches. Notice, that's the proverb, right? It doesn't say from humanity to riches, does it? You didn't go from being a man to being rich, right? You went from being poor to being rich, right? So even our Proverbs reflect that commonly of speaking. The philosophers didn't get that phrase from rags to riches, huh? It was something that grew up kind of naturally or customarily here in America where you saw people start off life sometimes being poor, right? And end up being all through hard work and so on. Self-made man, as they say. Rich, huh? Right? From rags to riches. That's kind of sums up the American success story, huh? Do you see that? That's what he's talking about. Now, in the last two paragraphs on page one, he's going to establish now that there are three things found in every becoming, huh? First of all, there's obviously the this and the that, but the this in some way is twofold, huh? Because in one way it remains, in the other way it's lost. Now notice that he uses what he's shown before. In the first of these last two paragraphs, he uses what he pointed out before in the fourth paragraph, right? Having determined these things, one can take this from all the things which come to be. If someone looks at them as we have said, it is necessary always for something to underlie which comes to be something, huh? There's always this that becomes that. And this, he says, even if it is one in number, it is what? Not of one sort, huh? Okay? I mean the same by sort and by definition. For it's not the same to be man and to be unmusical, right? It's not the same to be man and to be sick, right? To be cloth and to be dry, right? In definition. Now in the bottom paragraph, huh? He gives us a reason for saying that, huh? That the this that becomes that is numbered, as he says, right? That there's a two-ness there. The fact that the one remains while the other does not remain, right? Okay? The one not opposed remains for the man remains while the non-musical and the unmusical does not remain. Or the composed from both is the unmusical man, huh? The same in all these examples, right? Huh? We say when the dry cloth becomes wet, right? The opposite of wet, namely dry, but does not remain. But the subject is not opposed. The cloth remains, right? Okay? And then at the top of page two he gives a sign of their difference which is the fact that we all say from in the case of what is lost rather than in the case of what remains, huh? Okay? Now, notice, huh? You know the importance of looking before and after, right? Okay, from Shakespeare's definition there, reason, huh? Well, notice the before and after here. In the first four paragraphs, if you look at the last two paragraphs, the third and the fourth paragraph, right? In the third paragraph he talked about the fact that we say from, right? In the case of one of these words and not the other. In the fourth paragraph he looked at the things and said, hey, this remains and that is lost, right? Now at the bottom of the page, in the bottom paragraph on page one, paragraph one and page two, he has those same two things but in reverse order. Now, what's the reason for that? What's the difference, in other words, of what he's doing in the second, third, and fourth paragraphs on page one, right? And in the last two paragraphs of what he's doing in the third paragraph? That's in the first paragraph on page 2. You notice when the word is reversed, right? Because in 3 and 4, he goes from the way we speak to a difference in things, right? On the bottom of page 1, going to the top of page 2, he begins from the way things are, right? That one remains and one is lost. And then he goes to what? The way we speak about these things, huh? Well, the way we speak is, I'd say, it's an effect of the way things are. Yeah, yeah. In other words, when the question arises, when this becomes that, is this, huh, that becomes that, in some way numbered, as he says, you know? Is it in some way twofold, right? Well, the main reason, the chief reason we're saying it's twofold, the reality of there's two things there, is that one of them remains and the other's lost, huh? If you stay in this room and I go to the next room, that's very clear that you and I are not the same person, right? Okay? And the fact that we use the word from with the name of one of them and not the other is at best a sign that there is a, what? Difference between the two, right? But it can't be the chief reason, right? The chief reason for saying there's two things in reality has got to be drawn from things themselves, right? That in things themselves, in the this it becomes that, this remains and that is lost, huh? When the dry, what? Cloth becomes wet, right? The fact that the cloth remains but the dryness is gone is the best reason for saying the cloth and the dryness are not the same thing, right? The fact that we say from dry to wet and not from cloth to wet is at best a sign that there's a difference between being dry and being a cloth, right? But it's not the main reason to say this is the way things are. The main reason for saying the way things are has got to be drawn from things themselves and the fact that one of these things remains and the other is, what? Lost. Do you see that? But up above, he was, what? Trying to find a common basis among all his, what? All men in a way, huh? And therefore he had to begin from what? The way all men spoke, right? Which was a sign of a common understanding that men had, huh? Do you see that? Okay? Very subtle, right? So the order is reversed, huh? For a very good reason. Do you see that? Okay? So Aristotle has found a common basis among all men in their understanding of becoming. And their way of speaking shows that they are aware, at least in a confused way, of there being three things there. And of course we saw before in the way we looked at it from the point of view of change, right? That there had to be three things in change, right? Okay? But notice, if you ask the man in the street, right? And you said to him, you know, went down on Main Street, was to there and stopped the first man, and preferably someone's never been to college and had his mind followed up that way. And you asked him, you know, do you ever talk about change? And he says, yes. And I say, no. Now, do you ever talk about change without having three things in mind? You say, huh? Right? That's going to be his first reaction, right? See? I say, well, what change has struck you in the last year? And he said, well, went to my high school reunion, right? And I saw Joe there, Mary. My Joe had changed, right? You see? But, what does he have in mind when he says that? See? Oh, what do you mean he changed? Well, he used to have all his hair, you know, and now he's bald, right? You see? So he has in mind the way Joe was 20 years ago with all his hair, right? Now the way he is today, bald, with no hair, right? But still he has to recognize that the man who's bald now, in front of him, was the man who had the bushy hair 20 years ago, right? You see? Because you see, you know, a man with a lot of hair and a man with a bald, you can say, why, he's changed. No. You've got to have a third thing there, right? That's the same man who was bushy and now is bald, right? Okay? Who was dark hair and now is gray or something, right? Do you see? Okay. So he does have three things in mind, although he doesn't maybe think of it explicitly, right? Somebody, you know, walks down the hall with dark hair and comes back in all gray hair, right? He might have changed. Well, he has to be the same guy in some way. He's had some kind of a shock out there as a whole. That turned his hair. I guess it happened. They tell me. I don't know. I've never seen it happen. They say it couldn't happen, right? But you have to recognize it as being the same person, right? So when you go to somebody's house, say, and you haven't seen their little child or something, you know, for some time, you say, my, Johnny's grown, right? Well, you must remember what Johnny's height was the last time you were there and Johnny's height now, right? But you have to recognize that this is Johnny, right? So there's three things that you have in mind, don't you, when you speak of change. You say, my Johnny's changed, in the same way in becoming, right? So you can see Aristotle's following the advice of the great Heraclitus here to find a common basis and to become strong in it, huh? And notice there's two ways that this is common. It's common to all men and it's a thought about, what? All becoming, right? Mm-hmm. So you're becoming strong, but it's common to all. Common to all in these two ways. Now, in the next two middle paragraphs on page two, what is Aristotle going to do there in those two little paragraphs there in the middle of page two? Well, he's going to show something that in a way he assumed before. Okay? And sometimes I like to make this very explicit to see how careful writer Aristotle is. There are three things in becoming here that you could talk about. And one of these things Aristotle in no way tries to prove. Okay? One thing he has presupposed up to this point, huh? Which on a kind of second thought is going to manifest a bit, right? And the third thing was the thing up front that he was showing. Okay? Now, what are those three things, huh? Well, one is that in every becoming, something comes to be. There's something new, right? Okay? In every becoming, something comes to be. Something new. Something comes to be that was not before, right? Okay? Secondly, what comes to be, comes to be from something. And third, the something it comes to be from is twofold, huh? And I'm stating, I think, three truths about becoming, right? One, in every becoming, something comes to be. Something new that was not before. Secondly, what comes to be, comes to be from something, huh? It doesn't come to be from nothing. And third, that's something it comes to be from. To be from is two-fold, because in one way it remains, right? In another way it is, what? Lost, huh? Okay? Now, up to this point, up to the end of the first paragraph on page two, what does Aristotle really show here, huh? Tried to show. That's something that it comes to be from is two-fold. Yeah, yeah. This is the thing he's been trying to show, right? Okay? Now, the proof that there's something two-fold about, there's a number in a way, right? Two being the first number, is the fact that this remains and that is, what? Lost, right? Okay? And the sign is that we say from, in the case of what is lost, right? Okay? But he assumed that what comes to be, comes to be from something. Now he's going to manifest that in the next two paragraphs. That when something comes to be, it does, in fact, come to be from something. But he assumed that up to this point, right? Okay? But in no way he's going to try to manifest the first statement. That in every becoming, something comes to be. Now, you see a method here, a reason for doing this. Would it be reasonable to try to prove that in every becoming, something comes to be? It seems self-evident. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like if I was going to try to prove, in every change, something changes. You see? You know what Aristotle said back when we were studying the definition of nature, right? He said there are those who try to prove that nature exists, right? And he says this is laughable, right? Because it's obvious in our experience that nature exists, huh? Well, it should be obvious to you that in every becoming, there's something that comes to be. Otherwise, I wouldn't mean to be becoming. Okay? Just like it should be obvious to you that in every change, right, there's something that changes. Or in every growing, there's something that grows. In every walking, there's something that walks. In every falling, there's something that falls, right? So, Aristotle wisely, listening to his own idea, if I had to prove the obvious thing, in no way does he try to manifest that in every becoming, something comes to be. Now, if you take the second statement here, that it comes to be from something and not from nothing, well, all the Greek philosophers have that as a common opinion. You can't get something from what? Nothing, right? So, you kind of assume that, right? But once in a while, you have somebody who says you can get something out of nothing. Okay? But most people, like Julianne, who there sings, nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could, remember, in Sound of Music, right? Or King Lear says to Cordelia, you know, nothing will get you nothing, right? You can't say anything, remember? The test scene there in the opening place, like, nothing will get you nothing. But it keeps you out of somebody who wants to get something from nothing, right? Who was it? One of the American scientists there, you know, with the steady state theory of the universe, right? Matters being created out of nothing, right? I don't know, without a creator, too, by the way. It's just coming into existence out of nothing, right? Okay? So, certainly there can't be any coming into existence without something coming into existence, right? But once in a while, you have someone, you know, who gets a little bit hazy about this, but it can come into existence from nothing, right? Okay? So, it's also going to manifest this a bit, right? But the main thing to manifest is that the, what? The something it comes to be from is twofold, right? Because some people might not see, right? But just kind of like, Cordelia is going to manifest briefly, right? That what comes to be does come to be from something. Okay? But in no way he's going to try to show that in every becoming, there's something that comes to be. Okay? It'll be clear, then, that there are three things, right? In every becoming, right? There's a new thing, right? And there's the, what? The thing it came to be from, which was twofold, so there's three things, huh? Another case here of three is enough, right? Okay, Aristotle manifests this by two brief inductions, huh? The induction, as you know, is an argument from many particulars to the general, right? And the first induction is from the things that come to be. And the second induction is from the ways of coming to be. Okay? Now, it gives an exhaustive division, of course, of the things that come to be. They're either, what? A substance or an accident, huh? Either a substance like a man or a dog, right? Or a tree. Or an accident like health or sickness or color or shape or something of this sort. Now, do you recall the definitions of substance and accident that we first learn in logic, huh? Substance. Substance is that which can exist. But accidents can't exist of themselves. Okay. So an accident is a thing that exists only in another, as in a subject, right? It can't exist apart from it. Like the health of the man, right? Exists only in the body of the man, huh? And can't exist except in the body of the man. You can't put the man in one room and his health in the other room. Okay. Why substance is a thing like a man or a dog that exists not in another subject, huh? Okay. So if you have a man and a dog, you can put the man in this room and the dog in the next room, right? But you can't put the dog and the shape of the dog in different rooms, right? Okay. So what comes to be is either a substance or a what? Accident, right? Okay. So he makes an inductive argument. He says, obviously accidents don't come to be from nothing because they have to exist in a substance, right? So health doesn't come to be from nothing because it has to exist in some body. So he has to start off with the body, right? The substance should exist. So that particular kind of thing that comes to be an accident doesn't come to be from nothing. Okay. That's what happens. Now he says the substance is not as clear, but look carefully. The man or the dog or the tree seems to come to be from a seed or something like that, huh? Okay. Or a fertilized egg, we say, and so on, right? So neither a substance nor an accident comes to be from what? Nothing, right? So it's kind of a universal division there of the things that might come to be. Either substances or accidents, right? Accidents most clearly come to be from something because they can only exist in substance, right? So obviously you have to have a substance before you get an accident. So you can't get an accident from nothing. But even substances, if you look carefully, right? The tree comes to be from what? An acorn, right? And they check in from an egg, right? And so on. So they come to be from some kind of a seed, right? Yeah. So they're convinced, right? Okay. Brief induction. Induction for the things that come to be, right? They don't come to be from nothing, do they? Okay. Now, in the second and the third paragraph in page two, he gives another induction from the ways, the common ways things come to be. And he distinguishes five common ways there, right? One way of coming to be is by changing shape. It might be better to speak of it here as molding, right? And he's thinking here now of maybe, let's say, a clay statue, let's say, huh? Okay. Where you mold the clay into a different, what, shape, right? So there's something, there's nothing molded into a different shape, huh? No, you have clay or play-doll or something else, right? Okay. Some things come to be by addition, as the Greeks spoke of the growing as an addition. But take the example of the mighty Mississippi, right? It comes from what? Many rivers and streams, you know? If you go up to Lake Itasca, you know, they're in northern Minnesota, where I'm from, and you can see the star of the Mississippi, you know? It's just a little stream, right? But then all these other streams and rivers flow into it, right? It becomes the greatest river almost in the world, right? Okay. So it's by adding nothing to nothing that you get a great river? Okay.