Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 45: The Four Kinds of Causes and Their Univocal Meaning

Transcript
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What stands out, first of all, is the fact he's looking for one beginning of all things, right? And secondly, he takes something that, at least to our senses, appears to be simple and imaginous. So he takes something like water, right? Rather than orange juice, you know, with a mope and the other part and everything to be. So you get the idea that the beginning of all things is one and, well, simple, right? And then you come to Anaximander, and he speaks of the beginning of all things as being unparalleled, right? Unlimitary, right? Okay? Or infinitesimal, he's a lack of word. And then he points out, like Pernard Stiles is pointing out now, that in a way it's, what, changeless, right? Okay? Incomfortable, in a sense, the first matter, right? Everything comes to be from it, and we're broken down to it, right? So in some way it's unchanging, right? Aristotle, he talks about the infinite there in the third book. He says that all the Greeks, when they talked about the beginning, they thought that it was being unlimited in some way, right? So it's very interesting, huh? That these are four of the five attributes of God. They have a different meaning, and they're said of God, and the sin of the matter. But God is one, simple, unlimited, or infinite, and unchanging. Okay? Now when Thomas takes up the substance of God in the Summa Theologiae, everything he says about the substance of God, he leads back to five things. And these are four of the five things. What is the fifth thing he leads it back to? Perfect. Perfect, yeah. If you study, you know, both Summas, the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles, you'll see that he considers first the existence of God, right? Okay? Shows that God exists. And then he considers what he calls the substance of God, right? What God is, right? And then third, he considers what God does, the operations of God, right? And even though these three might be the same thing, in reality, the existence of God, what he is, and his understanding of God, right? In our knowledge, right, we have a separate consideration of that, right? And then to that you can add a fourth consideration, which is out of the, what, Trinity, right? Okay? But as far as natural reason is concerned, then, you have just the first three. You consider the existence of God, what he is, and what he does, right? The substance and the operation of God. The existence of God, the substance of God, and the operation of God. But then theology, or revealed theology, you have added to that a fourth part, which is on the Trinity, right? Now, as you're studying those four parts, you'll see that one isn't actually presupposed to the other, right? If you don't know that God exists, you don't ask what he is, right? Okay? But you ask and sense what he is before what he does, right? Okay? You have to know the understanding of God and his will before you can understand the Trinity, right? So far as we can. But anyway, notice that's somewhat in the Twelfth Book of Wisdom, too, where our style will take up the substance of God before his, what, operation, right? But now we're looking at the substance of God, and Thomas leads everything back to those five. So when he talks about God being good, that's attached to the consideration and perfection of God, right? When he talks about God being eternal, that's attached to God being unchanging. When he talks about God being in some way everywhere, right? That's attached to his being unlimited, right? So everything is led back to or arranged around these five things, huh? So here you have the number five rather than the number, what, three, right? Before these five, they rise so naturally, since you're in the Greeks, huh? These four. But because they're thinking of the first cause as being matter, right? But they don't see it as being, what, perfect, right? Once you realize the first cause is not a cause in the sense of matter, but a cause that's more like form, or like mover, or in, then you realize, yeah, this fourth one, this fifth one, rather. But it would be hard, right? It would be hard to maybe demonstrate and give a reason why these five are the five, right? But if there's anything you can say about the sense of God, there wouldn't be one of these five, or attached to one of these five. I was looking just the other day at the first chapter there in Vatican I, you know, where it talks about God, and a whole bunch of things said about God, right? And, but they all seem to be led back to one of these five, unless they're talking about his understanding of the next part, right, from the aberration. But, you know, there's nothing similar if it doesn't go back to one of these five. So it's kind of an interesting text, but it's kind of jumbled compared to this, you know? You look at the text, and I can show you the text sometimes. But, nevertheless, there's, you know, authority that kind of doesn't have, right? But, but everything that's said there was back in one of these five, right? Kind of, you know, if we have to be a sign here of the, of the completeness of this, huh? I mean, someone said, you know, well, show me if that's complete. I don't know if I could give you a reason, right? But, when I come to it from the Greek philosophers, it seems very, what? Natural. Natural, yeah. And these four, you know, rise very naturally. And in the fifth one, right, let's just see different kinds of cause. The order of the two sumas is a little bit differently, right? Different, isn't it? Because in the Summa Kondi Gentiles, he shows this first, that he's unchanging. And then that he's, what, simple. And then he's perfect. And then he's one, and he's unlimited. But in the Summa Theologiae, he does, what, simple first, then perfect. Unlimited, then unlimited, then I'm exchanging in 5D1. I gave him a paper one time, and it's a little different order he gives. And something is brought out in each different order, right? There would also be a little reason why the order is a little different, too. I don't care how to say what is the correct order, but it isn't. Because he does, you see. But it still revolves around those five, right? But it seems kind of necessary, we'll see, to talk about the simple before we talk about it being perfect. So, no, sir, I was touching here upon the first matter, in a way, as being a remaining plot, all change, right? Yeah. They say that's reflected in the modern science, the conservation laws being the most, uh, basic, uh. The idea is you want to understand, in some way, the, what, changing by the unchanging, huh? Is that necessary, or what? Well, if the ball is hit in the infield, right, and caught in the outfield, it should be the same ball that was hit in the infield and caught in the outfield. There's something that has to remain the same, right, in order for there to be even that change in place, right? The ball ceased to be after it left the infield. It makes the game impossible, along with other things, but it also makes motions impossible, right? You know, and you talk about a stone falling to the ground, right? Well, the stone has to remain, right, in order to fall to the ground, right? Right? Aristotle, you know, in the biological works, he gives the example, I guess, is a common one for the Greeks. You know, they have a pile of grain. I guess if a mouse gets in the pile of grain, it gets, you know, it can't move. Because the grain keeps on, what? Giving way as he tries to walk, huh? So you depend upon something that doesn't move, right, in order to walk. So you can't walk in the water unless you're gone or something, right? His way, right? Back to something unchanging, huh? It seems to have changed, huh? Somebody's kind of inclined to the idea that the first cause must be in some way, what? Unchanging, right? Now, matter is not in every way of changing, because it's always under a different form, right? But in some ways persists, so it'll all change. But God is much more unchanging than that. But now he says, but about the beginning of his form, whether it is one or many, and what sort it is, is the work of first philosophy, which is the way Aristotle often calls wisdom, first philosophy. To determine assertitude, huh? But concerning natural and corruptible forms, we will speak in the things to be shown later. Let it be determined thus by us that there are beginnings, and what they are, and how many in number. We shall speak again, starting with another beginning, huh? And he starts to talk about the beginning of science. Now, I'm going to pass out the next reading here, huh? Okay? It just passes it on here. I got about ten copies there, I think I got one. I'll just say, if you wouldn't, by introduction to this reading five, huh? Reading five is a very, in book two, it's a very universal text on cause, right? Okay? Aristotle there, he's going to, we're going to meet there, is the distinction of the four kinds of causes. The way it anticipates us a bit if you read the figure, right, huh? But it's not as clear as it is in Aristotle, right? Okay? So we're going to meet the distinction of the four kinds of causes, and this is also a distinction of four senses of the word cause. Okay? But these are not, each of them said to be a cause, in exactly the same sense, right? Okay? It's not entirely, what, univocal, the word cause, right? Okay? That's kind of a strange thing, huh? Kind of a strange thing. Let me contrast this with my geometrical example. Euclid, if you recall, in geometry, he distinguishes many kinds of quadrilateral. The square, the oblong, the rhombus, the rhomboid, and then the trapezium kind of keeps the rest, right? Or if you want to take just the first four, you want to refine that they're parallelograms, right? Okay? Now, there are four kinds of, or five kinds of quadrilateral that you distinguish today, right? Or four kinds of parallelogram, right? Is that five meanings of the word quadrilateral? Because each of them is a quadrilateral in exactly the same sense. But here, right, he's distinguishing four kinds of cause, but each is not a cause in exactly the same sense. Okay? That's kind of strange, isn't it? What is it that unifies? Well, it's not going to be purely equivocal to the word quadrilateral. In fact, we will give a definition of cause. In fact, we can give this definition of cause. We can say a cause is what is responsible for the being or the becoming of another. Right? Okay? And that other, of course, we could call the what? Effect. Effect, right? Okay? So you could say the effect depends upon the cause, right? For being or becoming, right? For its existence or its coming into existence, right? Okay? Now, though we give a kind of definition here of cause, you'll see as you go through the various kinds of causes that depend on there seems to have not exactly the same meaning in each case, right? See? I'll take an obvious example here. If you have a wooden chair, right, is wood and the carpenter responsible in the same way for that chair? See? And so sometimes, you know, people want to limit cause to just one of the kinds of cause, huh? Because they kind of sense that it's not exactly the same meaning, huh? See? Okay? They want to collapse all the four meanings into one? Yeah, or just keep one of the four, right? Oh. Okay? See? Now, you might want to say, you know, what's the cause of the chair? Well, the carpenter is the cause of the chair, right? Okay? But doesn't the chair, if it's a wooden chair, doesn't it depend in some way upon wood? And would it have come into existence without wood? Right? No. See? But at first you might not think of the wood as being a cause of the chair. You think it's the carpenter, right? Right. See? But then in some sense, the wood is responsible for the chair. Yeah. Or metal is responsible for this chair, right? You see? But in a different way than the metal worker or the carpenter is. Sure. See? And is sitting in some way responsible for chairs? Well, a sitting doesn't do anything to bring a chair into existence, does it? Right. But isn't it sitting in some way responsible? Yeah. That's very why. Yeah. Because for the sake of sitting, that carpenter made the chair, right? Uh-huh. That's why he gave the chair the shape that he did, right? Right. See? In some way, sitting is responsible, right? Yeah. We get the way in which sitting is responsible for the chair, and the carpenter seems so different, doesn't it? You might want to say that one is responsible and not the other, right? Yeah. Yeah. See? As you study these four kinds of causes, you get the... Should we use that word feeling? I think, uh, that it's not exactly in the same sense that each of them is called a cause. Yet, in some way, right, they're all responsible for the thing. See? I think it's kind of an unusual thing to see that, huh? Yeah. And perhaps other examples of that, huh? When Aristotle distinguishes the word part there in the metaphysics, he distinguishes four meanings of the word part, right? Well, could you speak of four kinds of parts? I think you could, yeah. Yeah. Um, but, it's actually parts in the same way, huh? If I give you some examples, let's do this off. Take the word cat, right? What are the parts of the word cat? C-A-T. Yeah. Okay. Now, what are the parts of the word act? Yeah. Okay. But, you know, if you first think of C-A-N-T as being parts of the word cat, now, but isn't there something in the word cat besides the letters? Yeah. Now, could you say that the parts of the word cat are the letters and the order of them? Yes. Isn't it, isn't the word part in a somewhat different sense? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. At first, if someone says that the order of the letters is a part of the word, you might say, that's kind of strange to say that, right? You'd think first it's C, A, and T are the parts of it, right? But yet, you know, if a part is not out of which something is made, or it's what's composed or something, right? It seems that the order is part of it too in some way, right? But I use the word part in different sense. So when we say that the quantitative parts, and we speak of matter of form as parts, in this case the form being the order, we seem to be using the word in different sense, right? Or it talks about the parts of the definition, right? So the quadrilateral and equilateral and right angle are parts of the definition of what? Of a square, right? Now, are they parts in the way that C, A, and T are parts? I can say the square is equilateral, right? Can I say that the word cat is the letter C? No. No. I can say the square is equilateral. I can say the square is an angle, right? I can say it is an equilateral right angle quadril, right? What about the word cat? I say that's C, A, and T, and it is C, and it is A, and it is T. You see that? I can see. It might be a different sense of part, right? Right. But still, is it purely by chance that we speak of these as parts of the definition of square, and these as parts of the word cat? You see, there's some likeness there, right? It's not simply by chance we call them both parts. And then when I say, you know, that the particular is a part of the general, right? Is that? Is dog a part of animal? Or what did you say? Well, I mean, is animal composed of dog and cat and horse? Like cat is composed of C, A, and T? No. Is it defined by them? No. It seems to be the word part in a different meaning, right? And yet, why do we speak of these as, you know, we use a word derived from part, like particular, right? But in some way, it's a part. There's some likeness there, right? It's not simply by chance that we use the word part. So you end up with four kinds of parts, and what? Yeah. Why quadrilateral is not four meanings of quadrilateral. There's exactly the same meaning, right? In arithmetic, if I distinguish between odd and even number, or prime and composite numbers, right? Different kinds of number, right? Are there different meanings of the word number? No. See? How many kinds of things are there in the world? Yeah. Well, if I want to be a little more strict, you say there are four kinds of things, right? There are substances, right? Quantities, qualities, relations. There's four kinds of things, right? Right? Aren't there also four senses the word thing? See, is the body and its health, you know? Is the health a thing in the same way the body is a thing? Is the clay a thing in the shape of the clay in the same sense? So when you say you've got four kinds of things, substance, quantity, quality, relation, and four kinds of things, but I also have four senses, four meanings of the word thing, huh? See? But it's not pretty equivocal, because quantity is the size of substance, right? And quality is the disposition of substance, and relation is substances towards something, right? So they're all connected, these meanings, right? It's kind of a strange thing to see that, right? Virtue and vice are two kinds of habit, right? Two meanings of habit. Dog and cat are two kinds of animals. Two meanings of animal. But here, this example I'm giving you, right? Four kinds of part, but also four meanings of part, right? And notice, I'm not saying that the distinction of kinds, huh? The distinction of senses is the same kind of distinction, but they correspond in this case, right? Right? Right? Now, it's kind of strange the way these different kinds of distinctions sometimes correspond to you. Let me give you a little bit of an example of this, but it's relevant to what we were saying before. Would you say that the body and its health are the same thing? Would you distinguish between the body and its health? What justifies your distinguishing between the body and its health? The body can be sick. Yeah. Sometimes the body loses its health, right? And it's sick, right? Okay? So, it's change, right? Most of all, it reveals to us that the body and its health are not the same thing, right? Okay? So, we make a distinction between the health and the body, right? Okay? What is that kind of distinction is that? Well, some of you might say, well, the body here is a substance, a thing that exists, but not in another subject, right? By health is what we call an accident, right? It's a thing that exists only in another, it's in a subject, right? It's apart from that, right? But could you also say that the body is, what? In a way, the body is able to be healthy or to be sick, right? So, the health, in a way, is the, what? The form. The form of the body, right? Okay? It's an accidental form, but the body could be sick to be, what? It's a matter, right? Okay? Or take another example of that. Let's take the spherical shape, and you've got the clay, right? Okay? And what kind of distinction is that? Okay, so the distinction between substance and what? Accident, right? It might also be a distinction between, what? Form and what? And that, right? It's a place of a sphere, a cube, and so on, right? So, is that the same kind of distinction, isn't it? Because later on, as we saw in the part we've just been through, within substance itself, you've been distinguished between, what? Form and matter. There's a different sense of form and matter. It's a substantial form, and so on. But this distinction is found within substance. Well, obviously, there's a distinction here within substance, right? So, we need two different kinds of distinction, right? But they kind of reflect. Materially, they coincide in this case, right? And so, you know, if you want to understand the distinction between clay and the shape of clay, or between the body and health, you might have to see that it's both, in a way, a distinction of substance and accident, right? But it's also a distinction of matter and of form, right? Or the distinction, let's say, of the body and the soul. We say man is composed of body and soul, that's a distinction of form and matter, but not of substance and accident, right? So, Aristotle distinguishes the four kinds of causes here, right? Is it a distinction of four kinds of cause, or is it a distinction of four senses of the word cause? I'd say, in a way, it's what? Both, right? Okay? Or when Euclid divides quadrilateral into those four or five, he's distinguishing five kinds of quadrilateral, but not five meanings of the word quadrilateral. You see that? It's the same thing at work here when all of a sudden we're starting to talk about here more beginnings, whereas last time we were talking about beginnings too. You see, up to this point, Aristotle was trying to understand nature, right? And nature is a cause within, right? The beginning and cause of motion rests in that which it is, right? And first in the deception of the happening. So it's interesting what's intrinsic to these things, right? What's found in every change, what's found in every becoming? And then we see the distinction between matter and form, which are the two basic meanings of nature, right? But now here he's looking at complete university, you know, and cause, right? So the text we're going to read now is useful for every part of philosophy, right? For any knowledge, we look for causes, right? Because if Aristotle has distinguished all the kinds of causes there are, right, then any science that looks for causes will have to look for one or more than one of these kinds of causes, right? And there may be, you know, some signs that look for only one of these four kinds of causes, and some as many as four, right? Okay? And then Aristotle will ask the question afterwards, which of these kinds of causes are found in the natural world, right? Okay. But that's the question you could ask, which of these causes are found in geometry, right? If you're talking about God, which of these senses is God a cause, right? So this is going to be useful for geometry, or for natural philosophy, or for theology, right? For any science, right? Any knowledge that tries to understand why. Any knowledge that looks for a cause, right? So he makes the same thing in the fifth book of wisdom, right? Okay? Now, I think if you go back to the definition that we gave, kind of a cause, that a cause is what is responsible for the being or the becoming of something, right? But natural philosophy is the knowledge of becoming, right? And wisdom, you find out, is the knowledge of being, right? So it's kind of relevant to both of these to talk about what it causes. But he distinguishes exactly the same four kinds in the fifth book of wisdom and in the second book of the natural hearing. Physics is in God. He's in reason, right? So something extremely universal here in this book. Can you give an example of a distinction of senses of a word which is not a distinction in kinds? Well, obviously, if you take a word that's, you know, equivocal by chance, right? Okay. If it's equivocal by reason, like in, it makes sense as if there's any kinds of being in. I mean, if you're distinguishing back into the baseball bat and the flying rodent, right? You wouldn't call it two kinds or something, would you? It's really just too many of the word back, right? But here there seems to be more unity than that, right? So you could speak of many kinds of, what, cause, right? It seems to be a kind of common notion, but one that's kind of, what, not said equally, right? The exact same meaning of all. Yes, I would think knowing of kind as species, but it's not really right. Well, kind can be used for a species or for a genus, right? In other words, a species is a particular kind of thing, right? And the genus is a general kind of thing, right? Yeah. So I say there are four kinds of things, substance, quantity, quality. I'm talking about four. Gena, right? They're not species. But they all seem to be, you know, you can say each species has something there, right? But it doesn't seem to be something or a thing in exactly the same way. So if I ask the person, is a man and a dog the same thing, they'd say, what? No. Is a man and his shape two things, like the man and the dog are two things? They kind of hesitate, right? You see? Is your nose and the shape of your nose two things? Your nose and your ear, those are two things, right? But your nose and the shape of your nose are those two things? What do you say? You'd probably say no at first, right? They'd say, no. It's nothing if I find it in your nose. Well, then the shape of your nose is something, right? You know? Is it? But he kind of hesitates at first to say that the shape of the nose, because it doesn't seem to be a thing in, you know, the same way that the ear is, right? So the nose and the ear are two things in a way that the nose and the shape of the nose are not two things, right? But in some way, the nose and the shape of the nose are two things, aren't they? If you're a certain note of Bergerac, right? The nose is longer than the other men's nose, right? That's something. It bothers you, right? Yeah. The English guys got a story there. He had his very long nose, you know? Everybody, you know, who saw it, they were, what? They'd wonder, you know, is that really his natural nose? Is that some kind of a traction he's got on, right? And so everybody had the idea they wanted to, we can imagine, if you had a nose at that, people wondered whether there was a nose or some kind of a tricky head on there, and they wanted to feel it, you'd get irritated after a lot of people picking your nose all the time, right? You'd get very defensive after a lot. So that is something, right? To be longer, right, huh? The girl likes to dance with the man who's, what, at least as tall as she is. She likes to dance with the man who's shorter than her usually, right? Occasionally you see a couple like that, but usually you see the man who's a little bit taller than the woman, right? And so, that's something, right? Take into account, right? See? So being taller than her or shorter than her is so important, right? So essentially you're going to be forced to admit that these are all something, right? And therefore, in a way that they are a thing, huh? But you seem to be using the word thing in a kind of, what, completely univocal way, right? They're not completely the same, right? Substances we think in a primary meaning, right? And the other things are something of this basic thing, right? But they are something, not nothing. So Aristotle's going to distinguish then four kinds of cause, we'll see here. And as we study these four kinds, we're going to, he's going to define each of the four kinds, okay? And he's going to give examples, and he wants to see the definition and the examples, right? But then after he's gone through them, we're going to ask, is there a certain order in which Aristotle is to distinguish these four? Now, after he goes through the four kinds of causes, then he goes on to the three corollaries, which starts at the bottom of the page, right? And the first two paragraphs on the second page, right? Now, I call them corollaries because at least the first two clearly follow upon the distinction of the four kinds of causes. They're very important for many reasons. But then in the last paragraph, what does he do in the last paragraph? Let's see if you can hear what he's doing in the last paragraph. He seems to come back to the four kinds of causes, but he's just summarizing, or is he doing something new there? He comes back, okay? Well, as you'll see, he is doing something new there, but read carefully, you know? So we'll look at this reading five next time. Okay?