Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 38: Causes in Becoming and Prime Matter

Transcript
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No, no. Or a crowd grows by, what, in the stadium or in the plaza or by adding nobody to nobody? Like they add somebody to somebody, right? Some things come to be by subtraction, as the statue of Hermes from the stone or the Pietas, huh, came to be by subtraction, right? Someone was chipping away at the marble, right, huh? Taking away, huh? So you chip away at nothing to make a statue? You chip away at a marble, you carve away wood or something to make a wooden statue? Okay. Some by alteration, huh, as you, what, freeze or melt the butter, right, and so on, right? Okay. So you freeze or melt nothing, huh? Make it softer, hard. Okay. Some by putting together. I skipped that. Some by putting together. What, you nail nothing to nothing and you get a house, huh? No. You nail one, what, piece of wood to another piece of wood, huh? Or you smelt one brick to another brick and so on, right? Okay. So it goes through the common ways that things come to be, right? And each of these in particular, you see, it doesn't come to be from what? Nothing, right, huh? Okay. So, kind of like an afterthought, if there wasn't too much in doubt, right, that what comes to be comes to be from something, right? It is manifested a bit by these two inductions, huh? The main thing he wants to show is that that something is too full, because in some way it remains, in another way it is lost. But in no way does he try to prove that there's something that comes to be. That's altogether obvious, right? So he says it is clear in the last paragraph now on page two, so it is clear from the aforesaid that everything which comes to be is always composed. He says something like that would change, right? What changes is always composed. Remember that? And that's one reason why God can never, what? He can never become or change, right, huh? Because he's altogether simple, right? And so you understand the unchanging, huh? By negation of the, what? Changing, right? So that's one of the syllogisms in theology, right? God is not composed. What changes or becomes is composed. Therefore, God is changing, right? So it is clear from the aforesaid that everything which comes to be is always composed. And there is something which has come to be, and there is something which comes to be it, right? Okay? Something which has come to be, that's a new thing, right? There is something which comes to be it. And this is twofold. Those are the three propositions that I was, in a way, touching upon, right? But the first of those, in no way does he try to manifest, right? And mainly the third one, that this something that it comes to be from is twofold. Either the underlying subject or the opposite. I mean the opposed as the unmusical in his example, right? Or like in my example, dry or soft or dry as opposed to wet and so on. The underlying as the man. The unshaped in general and the unformed of the sword, the opposed with the bronze or the stone or the silver. The underlying what remains, huh? Okay. So, he's found a common understanding among all men about what is common to all becoming. Then all becoming, right? In a way, three things are involved, right? Every becoming this becomes that, but this is twofold, right? Okay. Now, in the 13th reading, he's going to become strong now, much stronger in these three things. And there's going to be some things in the 13th reading that are altogether new. Other paragraphs will be kind of summaries, you might say, various statements and restatements, right? Of what we've seen there, right? So, in the first paragraph of the 13th reading, there's something new, very new. And in the fourth paragraph, there's something very new. And in the fifth paragraph on page three, there's something very new, huh? Okay? But the second and the third and the sixth paragraph will be more, what, kind of summaries and restatements of things, huh? Various ways of saying them. Okay? Now, what he's going to do in the first paragraph of the 13th reading, huh? He wants to show that of the three things found in every becoming, only two are causes as such. Of what comes to be, huh? Of the three things found in every becoming, only two are causes as such. Of what comes to be. Now, how does he show this, huh? And what are those two, huh? Well, he says, if you examine, if you take apart, that is to say, what comes to be, you'll find that it's composed of the underlying matter that's remained throughout the change or becoming, and the form, the act, has been acquired in. But the opposite in no way enters into the final product. So take some examples of that, right? When I put the soft butter into the refrigerator, what comes to be? You could say, hard butter comes to be, right? Okay? Now, if you take apart hard butter, what do you find? There's butter there, and there's hardness, but there's no what? Softness. So softness is not found at all, is it? Okay. And if you want it to be more complete, you could say, nor does the softness make the butter to be hard. It's being opposed to hard, right? So in no way is it a cause of the hard butter, neither within the hard butter, right? It's not found within the hard butter. Nor is it even an extrinsic cause like a carpenter, or is it a cause of the chair, I'd say, huh? But the carpenter's not inside the chair, right? There's always more concern with showing there's not a cause within of what comes to be, because he's trying to manifest what nature is, right? And nature is a cause within, huh? And so matter and form are the two senses of nature within, huh? But the contrary opposite in no way is a part of it, huh? So it's not a cause, it's such a hard butter. Nor is it even an extrinsic cause, huh? Of the butter becoming hard, huh? So although the butter is necessarily soft before it becomes hard, the softness is in no way a cause of the hard butter. It's obviously not, as he shows here, a cause within, because if you take a part and examine hard butter, there's butter there and there's hardness, but there's no softness. But you could add to what he says there, as they say, there's not even an extrinsic cause. The softness didn't make the butter to be hard, and so you're not that for the sake of which the butter is hard. Okay? See, see what he's doing, huh? He's becoming strong, stronger. In the twelfth reading, we realize that there are three things found in every becoming. But now we see more distinctly that only two of them are causes as such of what comes to be, namely the underlying subject, right, or matter that remains, and the form that's acquired. And the third thing, the contrary opposite of that form that's acquired, that was from which, right, we use the word from with, that is in no way a cause. The same way if you take, you know, you should take, you know, multiply these examples just to consider it. When the dry cloth is put into the water, what comes to be is a wet cloth, right? The same way if you look at the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water. What comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, what comes to the water, Now you take apart wet cloth, and what do you have? You have a cloth, and you have witness, right? But the dryness in no way enters into the wet cloth, does it? It's not a part of the wet cloth. Nor for that matter did it, what, make the wet cloth to be wet, did it? How could dryness make the cloth wet? So in no way is dryness a cause of the wet cloth. So only two of the three things found in every becoming are causes as such of what comes to be. And here's, as I say, a hint at the two senses of nature, matter and form. The active and the passive sense, we see later on, of nature. Now in the second paragraph, as I say, I don't think there's anything particularly new there, right? But he's merely restating things that we've seen. The underlying subject is one in number, but two in sort, or in definition, as he said before. For the man and the gold, and generally the matter, can be numbered. The one is more, this something, and what becomes does not come to be from it by happening, but the form is one. But he's kind of restating things that we've seen already. Now in the third paragraph, he's talking about various ways we can say that the beginnings or causes are two or three. Whence it is on the one hand that the beginnings ought to be said to be two, while on the other hand there are three. And it is that in one way they are contraries, as we saw before, and in another way it is not, for it is impossible for contraries to be acted upon by each other. That goes back to the 11th reading, if you recall, right? But this is untied, the difficulty we saw, right? Due to the apparent contradiction and change that Eric Cleissie pointed out, due to the underlying subject being other, for this is not contrary. So butter is not by definition hard or soft, but it's able to be both, right? But not at the same time. That's the beginnings of either more than the contraries in a way. If you take the contraries, what, concretely, right? Like hard and soft, right? Where hard kind of implies, what, hardness and whatever the hardness is in, right? Then hard and soft is all you need, right? But if you look at the contraries purely as hardness and softness, then you need a third thing, which is the, what, butter, right? Okay. So in some way they are two, in some way they are three. Thus the beginnings of either more than the contraries in a way, but two, so as to speak, in number. Nor again entirely two, because to be other belongs to these. For to be a man, to be a musical other, and to be unformed, to be bronze other. Well, I think he's bringing in both of the readings here, the earlier ones and these ones. Because here we see, right, in a way there are three things, right, in every becoming, but in another way there's only two, right? Only two are beginnings or causes as such. But if you bring in the thing that happens to one of them, right, then you have three. Okay. So just speaking of various ways, you can speak of two or what? Three, huh? Okay. As I mentioned before, there are other places where you can speak of what? The same thing as being two or three, right? First, I'll sometimes speak of the plot as having what? A beginning, a middle, and an end, right? Other times it speaks of the plot as having just two parts, tying the knot and untying the knot. Okay. Sometimes you say the family has what? Parents and children. Sometimes you say it as a father, a mother, and children. Okay. No big deal, but I mean, there are different ways we sometimes speak, because there are two or three, right? Sometimes, going back to my logical example there, right, sometimes we say there's only, what, names said uniquely of many things, and names said equivalently of many things, huh? There's only two. Either a name is said of many things with one meaning in mind, right? Or more than one meaning in mind. Right. That's all there is. But then, better on, they subdivide equivocal into what? Purely equivocal, and then what they call analogous sometimes, right? Equivocal by reason, right? Okay. But sometimes they divide them, like Thomas does, maybe into three. When one name is said of many things, sometimes they have entirely the same meaning in mind. Sometimes they have entirely different meanings in mind. Sometimes partly the same and partly other meanings. And then they divide it into what? Three, right, huh? Okay. How many commandments of love are there? Ten or two. We all say two, right? And one is to love God, right? And the other is to what? To love your neighbor. Yeah, okay. But now if you stop and think about it, right? You distinguish these by the object of love, right? To begin with. But just a minute now. It says you're supposed to love your neighbor. As yourself. Yeah. So in a way there's three, you're supposed to love, huh? See? So in a way there's two, but in a way there's what? Three, right? Okay. But since it's natural to love yourself, it seems less need to have a command there, right? Right, huh? See? But notice, if you look at the commandment to love your neighbor, as yourself, it presupposes that you love yourself. So that does fall under charity, right? And then there's truth in the saying that charity begins at home, right? You see? Now, in the fourth paragraph, though, he has a new figure now. And now he's going to correct and determine the truth with complete necessity, huh? It has been said then, how many are the beginnings and the becoming of natural things, in what way, how many? And it's clear that something ought to underlie the contraries. And the contraries are true, are two. Okay, going back to 10 and 11. In a way, the other is not necessary, for it will be enough that one of the contraries make the change by its presence and absence. Okay? Now you see the significance of what was hinted at back in the 11th, in the 10th reading, rather. That one of the two contraries seems to be lacking something in comparison to the other, like the empty, with respect to the full, but even the rare, with respect to the dense, right? And the segregated, with respect to the mixed, and so on. Now, I'd certainly like to stop and manifest this a little bit, because it's very brief here, I'll stop it. And the difference between the contrary form and the lack of the form, okay? Because contraries in a strict sense, they should define them as species or forms that are furthest apart in the same genus, huh? Like the example of the genus of habit. As you mentioned before, in ethics, we learn about virtue and vice. Books, what, two through six, if you know the thing about in ethics, in books two through six. Actually, at the beginning of the book, one, you start to learn about human virtue, but, and then he goes through the human virtues in books two through six, right? And he describes each of the virtues and the opposing, what, vice or vice is, huh? But then in book seven, he takes up things that are either, what, not quite a virtue or a vice, or there's something more than a virtue or a vice, huh? But among the things he takes up there is what is called continence and incontinence, huh? Now, what's the difference, huh? Well, the virtuous man is, to some extent, confirmed in goodness, and the vicious man, in some ways, confirmed in evil, the confident and incognitive man has a great struggle going on, right? His reason and his will, and maybe his emotions, on the other hand, are what? Opposed, right? And the confident man, the reason, the will, but with a great struggle, right? Went out, like the man, the alcoholic, anonymous person, right? Who has a struggle to avoid going back to the Bible, right? But his reason and will went out. Incognitive man, he gives in, right? But then he would get to the game in, right? He feels remorse and so on, right? But the vicious man, he does evil, and he, what? Rejoices that he succeeded, right? In doing evil, right? You know, the photographs of Ben Laden now, you know, with his smile, talking about, blowing up the heads on TV now. I don't see TV at all, but they've got the Ben Laden tape, you know? You know, where he's rejoicing over what happened in New York. So, the vicious man, Don Giovanni, right? He's got the vice now, right? Okay. So, he doesn't have any conflict because his will is as bad as his emotions, huh? So, virtue and vice are the habits, the species of habit, the forms of habit that are furthest apart, and therefore they're called, what? Contraids, right? Now, vice is not just the lack of virtue. Vice is something, what? Real. It's a habit, and it's a real habit, right? So, the man who has the vice, he has the real inclination to do bad things. But now, speaking to my grandchild there, Mary Rose, huh? The newborn baby, do they have the virtue or the vice? Neither, right? See? They lack the virtue, right? But they also lack the vice, right? Now, if you brought up this new grandchild to be virtuous, right, she would go from the lack of virtue to virtue, right, huh? Right? Without ever being, what? Vicious, right, huh? Okay. But now, a person at our age, if we're not, if we don't have the virtue, we probably have the what? Opposite vice, huh? Okay? And much more difficult to take someone who's already got the vice, and to, what? Teach them the virtue, right? So, if I have a thief or a criminal like that, who's been robbing and so on, it'd be harder to make him, what, just, than to take a newborn baby and bring them up to be a just person, right? Because that criminal is going to, what, resist your attempt to transform them, right? Because they find out in jail. The same way, it'd be easier to take the newborn baby girl there and bring her up to be chased, let's say, right? And to take, let's say, a prosecutor who has the vice, you know, the standing example of the priest trying to convert the parish prosecutor, right? Because they very easily relapse, you might say, into the vice that they have. Because the person who has the vice is going to resist you, you see? Do you see that? So, before you come to be virtuous, are you necessarily vicious? But you necessarily, what, lack the virtue before you acquire it, right? Because you, the person who has the vice before the other virtue, if you have the vice, you also lack the virtue, don't you? But not everybody who lacks the virtue has the, what, yeah, you see? So, what is necessarily before the coming to be a virtue? Lack of virtue. Yeah. Not necessarily the vice, huh? See? So, change doesn't necessarily begin from the, what, contrary, right? In many cases it does, but not necessarily. But it doesn't necessarily begin from the lack of the form that you're going to acquire. See? I can't come to have a virtue that I already have. So, Aristotle is now determining the truth with necessity. And he's saying change is not always between contraries, huh? Not always between two forms that are poised, huh? But it's sufficient that you, what, lack the form before you acquire it. Now, another example to show that. You've all read the Nino, huh? Okay? Now, before the slave boy comes to know how to double a, what, square, right? He's in fact, what, mistaken, right? He thinks if you double the side, you're going to double the, what, square. Now, is it the same thing to be mistaken and to be ignorant of how to double a square, right? What's the difference between a mistake, or error, and ignorance, huh? First would be wrong knowledge, and the other would be lack of knowledge. Yeah. So, when a person is mistaken, he's not thinking nothing. He's thinking, what, falsely, right? Okay? So, if someone, you know, says, is Burkhus standing now, right? And if someone in some other place in the world says, well, I don't know. I don't know whether he's standing or not, right? See? But if someone says Burkhus does not stand, right? He's what? Stating. Yeah, yeah. Now, the person who thinks Burkhus is not standing is ignorant of what Burkhus is doing, right? Because everybody who's ignorant, mistaken about Burkhus, is President George Bush, is he standing now? I don't think that he is, I don't think he isn't either. I just don't know, see? I'm merely, what, ignorant, right, huh? Okay? So, everybody who is mistaken is, what, ignorant, huh? But is everybody who is ignorant, mistaken? Now, is it easier to convince somebody who's ignorant or somebody who's mistaken? Somebody who's ignorant, you have to remove the mistake from the mistaken person. Yeah, mistaken person is more difficult, right? More difficult. Yeah, yeah. In a way he is. Okay? And he may, what, resist your attempt to teach him, right? So, Socrates has to show the slave boy that he's mistaken, right? And then he turns to me and he says, haven't you done a good turn, right? Before he would have gone out and told the whole world, the way he's double squares, he's on the side. But now he knows he doesn't know, right? And now he'll want to know, right? Okay? But if the slave boy had merely said to Socrates, I don't know how to double square, right? And Socrates could have begun, as he did in the second conversation, right away. So, years ago when I was at St. Mary's College there, we were teaching my brother Mark there, you know. And my afternoon, Pete DeLuca called us up on the phone and said, can you bring his cousin over and his cousin's friend? And sure, sure. So, they came over and we kept talking, you know, and so on. And we were an educated man, one had a, his cousin had a master's degree in economics in Stanford University. And his friend had a master's degree in physics from Harvard, you know. And the other guy, there was his wife who had a degree in math and taught math in one of the junior colleges around there, something like that. So we kept talking, you know, and going on. And then I realized that opened to the Ayn Rand school, you know, Ayn Rand, the novelist, you know, who smoked cigars and hit the dollar sign. And she had some good things about her, but I mean, she has a crazy, you know, view of morality, huh? And they had picked up. Your idea about morality, that the whole basis of moral obligation was your free agreement. That you morally obligated to that which you freely agreed to, but only that. That was the whole basis of moral obligation. So after talking to them for some time, I kind of didn't see their position. So I said, finally, now I'm going to write down your position here. In clear English. And I put it down on a piece of paper and I said, now, do you want to change the word to that? And they said, no, no. So that was their position, right? That you're morally obligated. So, let's say if you went to college, say, are you morally obligated to study? Well, no. But if, say, your father said to you, I'll pay part of your way through college, but you've got to work, then you have a moral obligation to do so, right? That was one of the examples that they gave. So I said to them, well, well, then you have no obligation to your parents, huh? For bringing you into this world, huh? Because you didn't sit down with your parents. You didn't really agree with God in this world. And they were willing to admit that comes into their position, right? That you have no obligation to your parents. But then they brought this example going to school, right? If your parents, you know, help the paper going to school with the understanding that you would, you know, pay attention to your studies and so on, right? Then you have no obligation, right? And I said, and you have no obligation to God, either. You can sit down and make a deal with God to be, you know, created. No obligation here, right? Okay. So that was kind of perverse, both of those. So I was searching for something that would get them into a contradiction, right? So I found out that they were quite firm anti-communist, right? And I said to them, okay. But now, the communists have freely agreed among themselves to overthrow our government. Therefore, according to your principle, they're morally obligated to overthrow our government. I don't want to accept the consequences of their position. And then I said, and furthermore, you shouldn't criticize somebody for doing something that you yourself say they're morally obligated to do. So I kind of copped them, see. And then I said, and suppose the guy down the block here said, purpose, I'll pay $1,000 to rub out. And I freely agreed to rub you out for $1,000, right? Then if I do your principle, I'd borrow the obligation to do something. Okay, they wouldn't accept that, see. So, then I just got to try to teach you what morality is really based on, right? I see. But I had to remove that error first, right? Well, it's kind of modest, I mean, you know. It's one of the perfect examples, you know, almost of a Socratic conversation that I've had in my life, you know. Oh, right. Because most times people would not, you know, follow the argument, right? Oh, yeah. You know. And the men were willing to follow the argument. The wife was not. Oh. Wow. And the cousin told the wife, you know, just, you know, shut up, you know. So we went out of the conversation. Otherwise, you know, we would have, no. But, no, there's a real difference between someone who's mistaken, like the slave boy, Or someone who's been named married in school. And someone who's merely, what, being married, right? They're going to resist you, huh? There was a student that came to Assumption years ago, you know. And he had read some philosophy books on his own, right? Yeah. And therefore, he thought he'd be kind of ahead of all the other philosophy students, right? And, of course, he'd pick up all kinds of mistakes and errors from reading the philosophy books that he had read. And so he told them, actually, you're behind everybody else, because we've got to remove all these mistakes and errors in your head before we can teach you anything. And so, he thought you were going to be ignorant, right? But that's the difference between being mistaken and being ignorant, right? So, everybody who's mistaken is also ignorant, right? But not everybody who's ignorant is mistaken. So, you necessarily are ignorant of something before you come to know it. You are not necessarily, what, mistaken about it, huh? Very often people are, right? But you're not necessarily so, right? So, Aristotle is determining the truth here with necessity, right? That was the second difference that I was talking about in regard to what he's doing here, right? In 12 and 13, huh? You had him done in 10 and 11, right? 10 and 11 had some necessity, right? But also some probability. And it corrects this idea of contrary forms, right? A lot of people don't see that distinction between contraries and lax. There are two different kinds of opposition here. In addition to those two kinds of opposition, there's also what we call a contradiction, too. Okay? And then there's relatives or opposites that we talk about. Now, another example very much like this is the idea of persuasion, right? So, if I'm going to persuade someone to vote Republican, huh? Because Republicans are more pro-life, right? It's going to be easier for me to persuade someone who's uncommitted, right? Than someone who's Democrat or decided not to vote a Republican, right? He's going to resist me, right? See? So, just in terms of time, they're persuaded to try to target those voters who are, what? Undecided, right? Undecided, right? Because they're going to make more converts there than among the Democrats, right? You see? Because the Democrat, he thinks he should vote for Republicans, right? The Democratic guy doesn't know whether to do or not, right? He just doesn't have his mind yet, huh? So, you can see the Democrat is not persuaded to vote Republican, but the undecided voter has not decided to vote Republican either, right? They both lack the persuasion, right? But the one has this contrary thinking, right? They'll make him resist you, right? So, that's something new in the fourth paragraph, huh? And you can see the difference there, as they say, between this and the earlier part. That he's trying to determine the truth, you're now with complete necessity. Now, the fifth paragraph is also new, and it's the most difficult of all. And it's the one that touches upon what all the Greeks before Aristotle could not see. He's saying the underlying nature is knowable by proportion. And what he's actually talking about here is the first underlying nature, the first matter of all, huh? And he says it's knowable by proportion, huh? Now, what does he mean, huh? If you go back to what we saw in 10 and 11, huh? We saw, let's say, the change from, let's say, hard to soft. There had to be something underlying the change, right? We took the example of bud, right? We're in the change from, let's say, wet to dry, or reverse, huh? There had to be something underlying the clock, right? Okay? Now, Aristotle is asking here, is what underlies, not these kind of changes, which are changes or accidents, what underlies change of substance, huh? If you have, let's say, a man and a dog, huh? A change between man and a dog. A man should become a dog, or a dog become a man, huh? It's a good case, huh? If the man eat the dog, right? The dog eat the man, right? A man would become a dog, or a dog would become a man, okay? There was a big, uh, where's it down in, uh, where is it? One of those countries there, is it Vietnam or Korea? One of those ones where they eat dogs, right? Vietnam. Vietnam, yeah. I guess they would have the, some kind of big games there or something. Some of the Olympics or something. And they try to discourage, you know, the eating of dogs, you know, while the foreigners are in. And they say, what can't we do this? We've been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years and stuff. Okay? But, you know, vice versa, you know. You know, the dog is committed sometimes, right? You know, the body is okay. Okay. So, what would underlie the change between man and dog? See, huh? Okay. First of all, saying that the, what underlies that change is knowable by proportion. It's not knowable by itself, huh? And what does that mean? Well, he's saying that the first matter is to man and dog, something like, let's take play, is to sphere and cube. He's saying the matter. He's saying the matter. or the subject underlying substantial change, the change, say, from man to dog, that first matter is to man and dog, as clay is to sphere and cube. Now, in order to understand the proportion, you have to understand in what way the first is to the second as the, what, third is to the fourth, right? Okay. And before we try to understand this proportion, let me just take a very simple example of a mathematical proportion. Let's say four is to six as two is to three. All agree? Okay. Now, sometimes you have a student who wants to say, you know, five is to six as two is to three, right? Is that proportional? The distance between five and six is the same as between two and three, right? That's not what we mean. We mean that what? This is to that, four is to six, as two is to three, right? And so if a student is slow to see, you say, well, in a way, you say four is two twos, and six is three twos, so it's the same ratio, two to three, right? Okay. I think that's, you know, something for our students to understand what proportion is. But now, if someone came back and said, okay, four is to six is two is to three. Two is an even number, right? And three is an odd number, right? Therefore, four should be an even number, and six should be an odd number. You don't understand the proportion, right? You see? Proportion doesn't consist in that as two is to three is an even number, so four is to six. That's not what the proportion consists in. I don't understand it. What we're saying is that four is the same parts of six that two is of, what? Three, right? Okay? So you've got to be careful, right? In considering a proportion that you, what? See in what way they are like, and don't exaggerate the likeness between the, what? The terms, right? Okay? Up here, notice, clay is an actual substance, huh? And sphere and cube are two accidents, huh? Is the likeness of the frisk matter is to man and dog as clay is to sphere and cube? That frisk matter is an actual substance and man and dog are two accidents? No. Man and dog are two actual substances. Over here, in the fourth term, he had not two actual substances but two accidents. I don't see the likeness there. Well, that type of thing is consistent. Right? That's like mixing up. You know? Thinking six is odd because three is odd, right? Okay? Again, the frisk matter. Is that an actual substance? That's, you could say, it's substance and ability, substance and potency, but it's not an actual substance otherwise man and dog would be two, what? Accidents. Accidents, yeah. Okay? All the terms seem to be different, right? When what does a likeness consist of? What consists in this? That just as clay is able to be a sphere and able to be a cube, right? But not at the same time, right? And when it's actually a sphere, right? It is still able to be a cube, right? But if it were to be actually becoming a cube, it would cease to be a what? A sphere. Yeah. So likewise, the first matter is able to be a man, right? Or a dog, right? Or some other substance. But it can't be both at the same time, right? But when it's one, it remains an ability to be in the other, right? But if it became the other, it would cease to be the one it was, right? Okay? So the likeness consists that the first term is to the second, in a way, as ability is to what? Act, right? Okay? But in other ways, all the terms are quite different, right? Because in one case, you have, what? An actual substance in ability to two different accidents, right? Or over here, you have substance in ability in reference to two, what? Actual substances, huh? Okay? Now, Christoph could be more explicit there and say that in a way, the first matter is knowable only by this proportion. Why? Well, if you stop and think about substance in ability, if you try to consider substance in ability by itself, is it actually anything? No. It's going to be, as we say sometimes, pure ability. Ability without any act, consider it by itself. Now, stop and think a bit about ability, huh? There are many, you know, meanings of the word ability, huh? And this ability for substances is one, but this is the most radical example of ability. But stop and think a bit about ability, which I would consider as most universally in the ninth book of wisdom, but is ability knowable by itself? Any ability? Take, for example, a ball player's ability, right? To pitch or to hit. Do you actually see his ability or do you see what he does because of his ability? Okay. Do you see my ability to talk now? Or do you just hear my talking? Yeah. Do you see my ability to walk? No. I mean, you're paralyzed for all you know down at this end of the table, right? And so I'm going to get up and I walk but you realize I have what? The ability to walk, right? Okay. So, sometimes I begin this way. I say, can you sense or even imagine the ability, some ability? Do you ever sense or imagine somebody's ability to walk? Or do you just sense his walking? So, right away there's a difficulty in talking about ability, right? You're talking about something you can't sense or imagine. How is ability known? Ability is known only through the, what? The act. For which it is an ability, huh? Okay. And that's why ability is known only by reason and not by the senses or imagination because as Shakespeare tells us in the definition of reason we looked at earlier in the year reason is the ability for what? Discourse, right? And discourse there means knowing one thing through another like when you reason, right? Or when you define or when you calculate and so on. So ability is knowable only by reason because it's only reason that knows one thing through another. like an example would be we know your ability by the test we give you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How long do you want to test? Yeah, yeah. How long? Show me. You have a, you know, I want a job playing the piano in your bar, you know. Okay, show me. Okay, sweet. Okay. I'm able to speak French. Well, show me. So, ability is knowable only to act then. And that's the way we also distinguish the abilities we have, huh? So my ability to... See and my ability to hear are not the same ability, because seeing is not a form of hearing, or hearing is a form of what? Seeing, right? So my ability to see or to hear or to walk are different abilities. And ultimately we define an ability by the act for which it is an ability. We have an example of that in the definition of reason itself, right? But Shakespeare defined it as the ability for a larger discourse, huh? Looking before and after, right? Reason doesn't even know what reason is, except for what reason does, huh? Okay? And then reason knows itself as the ability for what it does. Okay? But, something that is an ability, or something need not be itself, only ability, huh? Clay is something in its own right. It's an actual substance, a particular kind of matter. Although it's an ability to be in a sphere and a what cube, right, huh? Okay? And man is something actual, right? Apart from his health or his sickness, right? So though man is in the ability for sickness or health, he's able to be sick or able to be healthy, not at the same time. But, nevertheless, man is knowable apart from sickness, right, and health, huh? You can define man without that. But, the first matter, huh? It can't be an actual accident, because accident can't underlie substance, right? And it can't be an actual substance, right? So it's nothing actual if you consider it by itself. So it's not knowable by itself. Therefore, it has to be known by this proportion, huh? And that's why the early Greeks had a difficulty in understanding the first matter, because it seemed to be nothing, right? And they thought the first matter as some kind of an actual substance, like water or air or Mother Earth or something like that, right? And very often, the modern scientists think of the first matter as some kind of actual substance, huh? But sometimes, when they get down, you know, studying matter very deeply, like when Heisenberg was, you know, going from quantum theory to the study of elementary particles, and there it seemed in experiments with elementary particles that no form of matter is, what, permanent, right? No form of matter is eternal, right? And therefore, the first matter must be something, what, formless, right, huh? Okay? And Heisenberg says, we know matter only through the, what, forms of matter, right? We don't know matter by itself, huh? You know? Okay? But it's more clear to us, huh, that man and dog are substances, and there is, therefore, substantial change, huh? When a man dies, or a man comes into existence. But the Greek philosophers before Aristotle, they couldn't understand, right, how such a change would be possible, because they don't want to get something from nothing, right? And this year was hard to, what, understand. So it seemed to be, to not be, huh? Okay? The reason why I do what might seem kind of stupid, but the reason why I attach the 9th reading and the 15th reading, right, after the 13th reading, because Aristotle's so brief in talking about the first matter here, that I think you can use the 9th and the 15th reading to get into it, right? Because the 9th reading is a vast critique of Anaxagoras, right? Anaxagoras' difficulties in his trying to understand the first matter, his difficulties arise because he tries to put actually into matter everything that's able to be. And there's a difficulty getting everything actually in there. Just make it differently small and solid to get all in there. And Aristotle's so many difficulties in there. But what's interesting is, too, from the point of view of modern science there, the most advanced part of modern physics, as far as the study of matter is concerned, right, which is the study of the elementary particleism, there, Anaxagoras' way of speaking came back. Yeah. I think I'll bring in Heisenberg's book on the unified field theory there, I mean, particles, but just doing a bit of a witness there, you know, what speaks of the well-known formula. Every elementary particle is composed of all the rest, right? It seemed to the physicists, right, when they're studying these things, to be a good stigma with what is there. But it's like Anaxagoras' way of speaking about matter, right? Yeah. Because what we call in philosophy, false imagination, right? Heisenberg's student there, Weizsacher, another famous physicist, Weizsacher has an interesting observation there. He says that when we imagine something, we make it actual, our imagination. And so when we try to imagine the first matter, as we tend to do, try to imagine something, we try to understand, we necessarily falsify what it is, huh? Because we make actual there what is only there in what? Ability, huh? Now, one could stop here and say that in many other kinds of ability, right, you'll find the same difficulty, right? Now, this is the most difficult one of all, but men will tend to want to make actual what is there only in what? Ability, huh? You see that in logic, for example. You see it in logic there where they want to make the universal a class, right? You see it in a lot of magicians. And notice the difference between a universal and a class, huh? The difference between, let's say, man, which is said of every individual man, right? I am a man, you are a man, and so on. And let's say mankind, huh? You know? Or the human race, right? See? Human race is, what, a collection of many individuals, right? So the individuals are actual in that collection, aren't they? But in the universal man, none of us are actual. Only in what? Ability, right? And so the desire to make a class out of the universal is a desire to resolve the imagination, like you do in mathematics, rather than to reason, like you have to do in logic. And I can bring in that text from John Locke, you know, in the essay of Human Understanding. There's a famous text where he's talking about the general idea of triangle. And he's trying to understand the general idea of triangle, and he says, is it, you know, equilateral or sasadis or scaling, right? And he says one of these, and it doesn't fit the other one, right? But so he ends up saying it's all and none of these. And then John, or Barclay comes after him. For George Barclay, the next philosopher, he says, well, that's absurd. It can't be all and none of these things, right? Therefore he denies that there are any general idea of triangle, see? So neither Locke nor Barclay can understand the general idea of triangle, right? But notice what they're doing, you know? In part, they're resolving to the imagination, huh? See? Any triangle that I imagine is going to be either equilateral, isosceles, or scalene, right? So if I try to imagine triangle in general, I'm trying to imagine as being equilateral, scale, and isosceles, all and none of these at once, right? You know, so let's end up with that crazy way of speaking, huh? But also it comes from as not understanding what? Ability, right? See? What's the proper answer to that? See? You see? You say, what's the definition of triangle in general? Well, it's a plain figure contained by three straight lines. The guy thinks three straight lines. Well, three straight lines have to be either equal or unequal, right? So which are they in that definition? Right? Which are they? Actually. They're not actually equal or unequal. They're able to be equal.