Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 58: Place, Time, and the Problem of Change

Transcript
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Well, then, you know, there's some distinction there, right? Between the office and the man, or the position and the man. But therefore, it's all right in the case of change of place. Now, as they say, our good friend DeMarcatus thought that you had to have the empty to have change of place. Because if there was nothing empty, we'd be all packed tight like sardines in a can, huh? Or like your clothes in your suitcase, and you have to sit in the suitcase and close the suitcase, right? And nothing moves around then, right? You know, sometimes you pack something, you don't want it to break or something, you pack it real tight so it can't move around and so on. Yeah, well, if there's no empty, there'd be no give at all, right? So it'd be, you know... So, although DeMarcatus seems to admit that the empty is nothing, but you've got to have the nothing, nothing's got to be, in order for there to be motion. So, I mean, it's another example of a man admitting, in words at least, a contradiction, right? Desperately trying to hold on to the reality of what? The greatest, the most difficult, let's say, anyway, thing in motion, the most difficult apparent contradiction in motion is the one that comes up in Book 6, when we take up the continuous, huh? And this is the one that Aristotle solves in Book 6, huh? But it plagues the human mind all the way down to the Middle Ages, and it plagues him into modern times, huh? And Hegel, not being able to solve it, he admits a contradiction in change. And the Marxists follow him and say, you know, dialectics is a study of the contradictions and the very essence of things. But it had tremendous, you know, difficulty for the theologians, too. And Thomas, knowing Aristotle, was able to solve the whole problem. But we'll see that apparent contradiction later on. We look at Book 6. My teacher, Dick Kahnig, has an interesting article in that, Le Vol Théologique et Philosophique. It's in French, some of his articles are in French and in English in there. Paradox to Devenir, Paradox to Contradiction. I'll just give you a little hint of what the parent contradiction says. Yeah, please. Suppose you have what is not a serpore or not a sphere becoming a serpore or a sphere, right? It takes a little bit of precise like that. So, there's a time in which it is not a sphere, and then a time in which it is a what? Sphere, right? Now, if you represent the time which is not a sphere by this line here, and the time which it is a sphere by this time, is there any time between the end of the time it's not a sphere and the time it is a sphere? Is there any time in between those two? Well, if you said there was some time in between the two, I'd say in that in-between time, is it or is it not a sphere? It's got to be one or the what? Other, huh? Like Hammond says, to be or not to be, that is the question, right? That's a question because you can't both be and not be, and you must either be or not be, okay? So, that middle time, I must either be what? A sphere or not a sphere? And if it's a sphere, well then, it belongs to the time that I am. If it's not, right, then it belongs to this time here. So, you end up by saying, huh, there can't be any time between the time which you are not a sphere and the time you are a sphere. But now, if you take the last instant in which it is not a sphere and the first instant in which it is a sphere, are they the same instant? See? See, this time in which it is not a sphere comes to an end, right? So, it seems there's got to be a last instant in which it's not a sphere. And this time in which it is a sphere has a beginning, so there's got to be a first instant in which it is a sphere. Well, now, are they the same instant or not? Well, if you say they are the same instant, that instant in both is and is not a sphere, and now you have a contradiction. And Hagen goes along with that, right? Okay? If you say they're not the same instant, well, when you study the continuous, you'll see that two instances always have a what? Time between them. Two instances cannot touch any more than two points can touch without becoming what? One. One, yeah. See? So, just in between two points that don't coincide, there's always a line between them, right? So, between two instances, the indivisible in time, right, there's always a time in between them. Then we're back saying, well, what are you in that middle time, right? Yeah. Okay? So, you can't have any time between the time which is not a sphere and a sphere, therefore it seems that the last instant you both are not a sphere and a sphere. Okay? Now, this was a terrible problem in the Middle Ages because when they started to study the great Mysterium Fide, the Eucharist, right, we'd say that under the appearances, right, the accidents of bread and wine, you have at first what? Bread and wine, right? And then, later you have the body and blood of our Lord, right? Okay? So, there's a time in which there's bread and wine under those accidents, huh? And there's a later time in which there's the body and blood of our Lord, right? Mm-hmm. And is there any time in between those two? No. Now, that would seem to mean, then, that the last instant in which it is bread and wine is also the first instant in which it is, what? The body and blood of our Lord. Mm-hmm. And now you have this heresy, I guess it's Uthra or somebody revived, right? Mm-hmm. Where you have the bread and the wine existing along with the thing. And, of course, it involves other kinds of problems. How does the body and blood of our Lord get there if the bread and wine is still there, right? And not been trans-dustantiated into his body and blood? Mm-hmm. So, they had to solve that problem, right? But it bothers the theologians, right? Mm-hmm. But Aristotle would solve this problem in book 6. So, it's going to have tremendous problems with the theologian if he can't solve it, right? But it's originally a philosophical problem, right? It's kind of amazing. Aristotle solves the problem and Hegel doesn't seem to be even aware of the fact that he solved it and now he's making the same, what? Mistake, I get it, huh? So, this is just one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, example of how people trying to understand change don't see, in many cases, how to hold on to the reality of change without admitting a, what? Contradiction of things. But that's something impossible, as Parmenides first recognized. You know, we saw a bit of that with Heraclitus, now, with one opposite becoming the other, but that's relatively easier to answer than this one here. So, anyway, that's kind of a side right now. But the empty, the existence of what is not, he thought he had to admit that what is not is, mainly the empty, right, in order to hold on to the reality of change. Of course, as Shakespeare says, or Ulysses says in his Shakespeare's play, things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs, huh? So, motion is what really grabs the attention of our eyes and our senses. And since our now starts with our senses, we are very much apt to want to hold on to the reality of change, and it is a reality. Well, but then when we try to understand change, we tend to fall into these seeming contradictions, huh? And that goes right down to history, huh? Quantum theory, Heisenberg said, began with the strange apparent contradictions between the experiments. But the way the mind goes forward is not to accept that contradiction, but to find a, what? Solution. Yeah, yeah. And the untying of that contradiction not only enables the mind to move forward, but the untying of the contradiction is itself a, what? Discovery, huh? That's why, you know, if you look at Thomas' earlier work there, these sentences, which is like the Summa's, I mean, in the sense that he, you know, has objections and so on, but what we call the body, the article of the Summa, it's usually called there in the sentences the solutio, the untying. And C.S. Dois, in one of his works there, he's raising a problem, you know, a knot really, and he says, now we've got to find the loose end, right? And so then you can start to unravel it, and you find the loose end. When Chuck Holmes is stumped temporarily, of course, you know, he's never stumped entirely, but, you know, it can make either head or tail, right? He can't find any loose end, right? It's like a, you know, tangled thing, you know, to cast him playing with or something. You can't find the loose end, right? How can you begin to unravel it, huh? Now, motion also seems to take, what? Time, right? Okay. So, that's again something that follows upon motion, huh? Now, he has given one reason for taking up, what, place and the empty and time, and the continuous, that they're all connected either intrinsically or extrinsically with motion, right? And motion is in the definition of nature, huh? But we also learned in the beginning reading there how we should consider natural things in general before in particular, right? And we're now studying natural things in general, right? And these seem to be common to all things, huh? It is clear then, he says, that on account of these things, and because they are common to all and universal, and of course, when Aristotle takes up place, huh, he says, he quotes a common opinion of the Greeks, whatever exists must be somewhere. And if it isn't somewhere, it, what? It doesn't exist, right? That's what you're saying there. You're saying whatever is, is contained in some place, right? And if it isn't contained in some place, it isn't. Now, it's really a property of bodies to be, what? In a place, right? So you're thinking that what is, basically, and bodies are the same thing. And our imagination can't transcend the continuous, huh? We never imagine without the continuous, and time for that matter, too, at least in the second act of reason. And so we tend to, you know, imagine the soul to be a continuous air-like thing in the shape of a man, right? And that's the way Homer represents him, even the way Dante represents him, right? But the soul is not a continuous thing in the shape of a man, huh? You know, T.J. Kosirik used to joke, how do I recognize your soul, right? Because I can't recognize it, like Dante recognizes the souls of those people he meets in purgatory elsewhere, right? By their shape, huh? The way he has signs in one of these Hollywood movies, right? There's somebody's, you know, thing. But he has the same shape, right? The ghost of, you know? He says, well, some guys, he says, they all, they approach a philosophical problem, I'll screw it there, you know, in their minds, you know? That's how I recognize this guy, because he approaches the subject in such a crazy way, you know? But it's kind of just a question, how do I recognize your soul, right? I remember my cousin Donald, who was philosophically trained, and he's trying to explain to his mother, who's a good Catholic, you know, that God in his divine nature has no body, right? I just can't understand this, right? If I said, what difference is making my head? But it's very hard for people, right? You know, to transcend their imagination. That's why the study of immaterial things really belongs to the latter part of life and the latter part of your studies, right? Where you're above this, huh? You can transcend the imagination. That's why logic, in a sense, even as a science, helps one to do theology, because in logic, the basic thing is how Robert the Great teaches us. The first thing you consider in logic is the universal. And can you imagine the universal? No. And in the dialogue of the Parmenides there, Socrates is, represents a young man, right? He's trying to understand the universal, and he imagines it to be a sail that's over everybody, covering everybody. But it's resolving to the, what? Imagination. Or the modern magicians, you know, they want to have a class, you know, because you can imagine a class. But the universal is something you have to understand, huh? So logic and wisdom have to resolve to reason, not to the imagination. But in geometry, you can resolve to the imagination. So plain geometry is plain to us in more than one way, huh? So Aristotle, you know, says, If that's what place is, if it seems to be the first of all things, right? Because place can be without the body in the place, right? But the body can't be without a place, huh? And he quotes Hesiod, you know, Hesiod said, First of all, there's a yawning gap, you know? And then there was, you know, broad booze and earth and love and so on. But if there had to be a place for things before you could, right? Right. Yeah. So you can't come into this world until there's a place for you. There's no place for you, you couldn't come into this world. But nothing else could be in this world, right? You can have a place according to that opinion, right? Well, then it seems that place is before everything else in the second sense of before. You know, that sense in which this can be without the others, but they can't be without it, right? So then place seems to be something almost divine, right? The first of all things, huh? But later on, we come to realize that not all things are in place. Remember when the communists just don't power in Moscow and they sent some rocket up into the sky, you know, and they read it back to us, No, God up here! So naive in a sense, you know. I think Thomas and Albert de Grey would be laughing about that, you know. But, you know, those people had to make some sense, right? So, look out of here! He's not in place. So, that's the second reason we're taking them up, right? They're common to all. And everything, again, seems to be, what? In time, huh? It's very hard, you know, for students to understand eternity, right? And to understand the fact that God is not in time, huh? They can't understand that, right? Everything's got to be somewhere and got to be in time, huh? And so, he calls the principle, huh? For the consideration of the private or the particular is after that of the, what? Common, huh? You saw that in the beginning of the first reading, right? To consider things in general before in, what? Particular. I remember a talk of Paul VI, huh? When he was Pope, where he was saying, you know, he was saying about general before in particular. Kind of the common rule of all learning, he says. He wasn't referring to our style, but I mean, I wish I had, you know, jotted down where he said that. But, you know, being so familiar with this, you know, I was struck that he should come out and say that, huh? And first, as we have said about motion, right? Because motion is in the very definition of what? Nature, right? You don't put place or time in the definition of nature, but it's connected with it through motion, huh? So motion would be the first thing to take up after nature in the second book, right? Now, he's going to start to approach this, and he's going to try to define motion. And I think I mentioned last time, you know, that Descartes, the so-called father of man philosophy, denies that motion can be, what? Defined, right? And John Locke, one of the principal empiricists, the other line of philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries, right? Also makes the same denial, huh? And the other moderns just seem to neglect altogether, right? Okay? Okay? Okay? Okay? Okay? But those who talk about defining motion in modern times say you can't define it. And as I mentioned before, Aristotle thinks there are things we know without definition, and that we can't know by definition. And if you look at the Ninth Book of Wisdom, you'll see him saying that explicitly about act, right? We should not try to define everything, right? There are some things that are known without definition. And I think Aristotle knew where the defining stopped, right? But Descartes and Locke thinks motion is one of those things where it stops, right? And I think we spoke a bit about why they did. With the case of Descartes, it perhaps is connected with his confusion about the certitude of the confused and the distinct. He thinks that if he's sure about motion existing as we are, he must know clearly and distinctly what it is. Just as if I think and therefore I am, I must know clearly what thinking is and what a thought is. But it's not so clear when Descartes tries to talk about those things, huh? In the case of Locke, as you mentioned before, he seems to have been influenced by his distinction between simple and composed ideas, right? And the composed ideas are defined by the simple ones, but the simple ones can't be defined, huh? And motion is a what? Simple thing, right? Well, as a matter of fact, it's divisible forever. But nevertheless, you could say the fact that it's divisible forever doesn't really help you to define it, huh? Because just as we divide a straight line forever, what do you get? A lot of straight lines. Yeah, so you can't really define a line by the parts that you get by dividing it, huh? Okay. But what about the parts of a definition, right? Can you break up motion into what? A definition, right? That's the question, right? And there the question is, is there some multiplicity, right, in the reality of what motion is that could be the proximate foundation for the diversity of parts in a definition? Okay? And I was comparing it a bit to, can you in some way define the point, huh? And perhaps, perhaps the point is like an accident. It doesn't exist really by itself, huh? And I know when students sometimes, you know, in class sometimes, when we talk about the point, I have a student sometimes who will say, well, the points really exist, huh? Okay? And they'll deny maybe that points exist, huh? So, how do you convince them that there exist points, see? Well, what you have to do is go back to the fact that bodies exist, right? Okay? Mm-hmm. And there exist finite bodies, bodies that don't go on forever. Like your body or my body didn't go on forever, right? Mm-hmm. The body here, the chair or the table didn't go on forever, right? Mm-hmm. So, there is an end to the table, right? Mm-hmm. There's an end to a sphere, right? Doesn't go on forever. But what's the end of a body? It's a what? Surface. Surface, yeah. Okay. Now, the surface has length and width, but does the surface have depth? So, if you gave the surface any depth, it would really come to the end of the body, have you? See? So, the end of the body, and the body does, if it's a finite body, it does come to an end. It does have an end, therefore, right? But the end can't have any depth, but only, what? Length and width, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay, so the surface is not something that can be separated from the body, like a different, like a nut from a bolt or something, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? It's not a body, it's not a substance in that sense. It seems like an accident, right? Mm-hmm. But there still is a surface, right? Because it doesn't go on forever. Mm-hmm. Okay? Now, you've got something with length and width, but no depth. Okay? So, this doesn't go up and up and up and up. There's a surface here, right? It has length and width, but no depth. But now, does this surface go on forever? No. It must come to an end, therefore, right? Now, has the end of the surface got any width? Mm-hmm. Then you haven't really come to the end, have you? If you take a little, and draw a little line here, you know? Eighth of an inch or a seventh of an inch, then that's not all at the end, is it? So, there's an end to the surface, so now you've got length without, what? Width. Now, does that line go on forever? No. Mm-hmm. So, it has an end, and that end is what we call point. But the point now has no length or width or what? Depth, right? So, maybe a point is really the end of a line. Maybe that's what it is. It's not something that, what? Exists by itself. So, even though the point is something indivisible, as the great Euclid says, the point is that which has no parts, but does the acquisition, right? But the point has no parts, but there is some multiplicity that you can conserve as a basis for the multiplicity of parts in a definition. A definition is never just one name, right? A definition always has to have many names, each of which has some meaning by itself. And the meaning of the whole definition is, in a way, depends upon the meaning of the parts, right? That's why a definition is more distinct or more explicit than a name. So, if I say a square is an equilateral and a right-angled quadrilateral, that means the same thing as square, but it says it much more distinctly, because it has parts that signify something by themselves. Quadrilateral, equilateral, right-angled, right? So, if it's the very nature of a point, despite being indivisible, to be the limit of a line, now I have a multiplicity, don't I? Limit means one thing, and line means something else, and I can put these together and say, the point is the limit of a line. A line is the limit of a surface. A surface is the limit of a, what? Body, right? So, motion, of course, is not as simple as the point, but if even the point can be defined, right? If there's a multiplicity because the point is something of another, right? So, you can say what that other is, and what it's something of that other, right? Okay? Just like you might define health as the good condition of the body, right? Okay? Well, the point is the limit of a line. Well, is motion something of another? I mean, the great Galdeo studied the, what, free fall of bodies to the earth, a naturally accelerated motion, he calls it. Um, but is it the falling that falls to the ground? Huh? Just has some, some falling there falling? Huh? My stock example in class is you go bowling, huh? Is it the rolling that goes rolling down the lane? When you go for a walk, is it walking that goes for a walk? Or is it always something other than the motion that is in motion, and the motion can't be without that, what? Yeah. Yeah. So, when he hits the ball of the ballpark, there's something going on the ballpark, right? It's not the motion that's going out of the ballpark, is it? Or if it is, it's going out of the ballpark because it's in, it's really going out of the ballpark. It's really the ball that's going out of the ballpark, isn't it? Or is it the, the motion of the ball that's going out of the ballpark? I think it makes more sense to say the ball that's going out of the ballpark, right? Yes. And if the motion of the ball is going out of the ballpark, it's because the motion is in the ball, right? So you see the ball moving along outside the ballpark for a while. Okay? Do you see that? They don't think very deeply, these guys, huh? I've discovered, you know, that these definitions, these definitions of philosophy, they're hard to understand, even if somebody like Aristotle has already thought out the definition, it takes us a long time to absorb it, right? But if you try to think out a definition yourself, I spent a long time trying to think out the definition of comedy, because that part on comedy is lost in Aristotle, and a lot of help from Aristotle, right? And the English comic muse, which is my experience for it. But it takes a long time to think that out, right? And it took me a long time to recognize that Shakespeare was defining reason so well, see? But you really understand that definition. So the definition is kind of a major work, huh? And you see, you know, how Thomas, say, when he takes up, say, these great definitions, like the definition of eternity, by Boethius, huh? You know how Thomas says, he has objections, you know, in the Summa. Mm-hmm. And you have an objection to each part of the definition, and then he explains the definition, right? And defend it, and then he answers each objection, right? Mm-hmm. It kind of focuses your mind, huh? But in his defining law, like, say, in the Prima Secundi, right? There's kind of four parts to the definition of law. You know, it's an ordering by reason, you know, for the common good, you know, property promulgated and so on. He has, like, if I remember, right, like, one article for each part of the definition. You see what I mean? So, I mean, it's a major thing to understand, well, one of these, what, definitions, like the definition of law, the definition of eternity, or, you know, the definition of virtue and the moral virtue there in the second book of Nicomachean Ethics, huh? And it's a major thing to understand the definition of motion or place or time, right? And we're going to be looking at the definition of motion and the definition of time, huh? But even after someone like Garistow has succeeded in defining it, you have these nitwits or dimwits afterwards who can't grasp that, you know? I like to ask my colleagues sometimes, you know, I tell you that, you know, I say, what is reasoning, you know? They can't define reasoning. I say, don't you do any reasoning in your class? What are you doing? You're teaching your students to reason? Well, everybody knows what reasoning is. Do you do? What is it? What is reasoning? Do you know? What's reasoning? Do you have a reason? What is it? No, no, no, so you try to define, you're looking for a speech as opposed to a name, right? Reasoning is a name, but you're looking for a speech composed of many names, right? That will make more distinct, huh, what the thing is, right? You don't even have a definition that's trying to do that, huh? So what is reasoning? A statement. Huh? It's rather statements already know are accepted. Okay. I'm still sitting there now to put my legs off, right? Someone told you that. Yeah, I know, I know. I could tell it's it coming. But, I mean, you know, the guys who are, you know, teaching philosophy, right, they don't have any definition. What they're doing, you see, you know, it escapes easily, right? Definitions are so hard to understand sometimes, too. People say, you know, well, you know, it's much more real to me when you give me an example. Of course it is, because example is something your senses can get at, right? But you don't understand it fully until you can define it, right? Maybe before we define other things, we should define definition. Well, they can't define definition. I was saying to a student the other day, what is understanding, huh? Are you trying to understand things or not? You know, maybe you've got to understand what understanding is before you try to understand other things. I don't know what understanding is. What is understanding, you know? Now, I mean, it's not definition in the strict sense, but there is a speech making known what understanding is, that is more distinct than the word understanding, huh? And that speech is suggested by the, what, etymology of the word understand, right? Understanding means what? Knowing what is said to stand under something. Or, knowing something through what is said to stand under it, huh? It's no more distinct than just the word understanding, isn't it? So what does it mean to understand an effect? Yeah. But we speak of its underlying cause, right? To know its underlying cause, huh? It's just the cause that's supporting the effect, right? And in English, of course, the English word for cause is ground, huh? Yeah. What does it mean to understand a word? Yeah. It's to know the meaning or the thing, right, that is said to stand under it, huh? And it's because we imagine that the name is placed upon the thing, huh? So in Latin, Thomas is always speaking of the, what, impositio nominis, right? The placing upon of the name, right? And the Greek philosophers before him spoke of the placing of a name upon something. Put a label upon it, right? He said, right? Yeah. Yeah. As if the thing named is under the, what, name, huh? Okay. There's a character in Mr. Ford there, right? And Marywise of Windsor, right? He doesn't want to stand under the name Cuckold, right? That's worse than being called a devil. It's mine, right? He thinks his wife's being unfaithful, right? They're playing a joke on Falstaff, you know, the famous comedy, right? You know, but he gets all his friends, you know, together to march up to the house to surprise his wife with Falstaff, and Falstaff isn't there, of course. He'd look at your dickness all the time, right? But he'd have to be in the play, you know, to see it. But he doesn't want to stand under this name Cuckold, which means a guy whose husband is, you know, unfaithful, right? It's worse than being, you know, the devil doesn't have as bad a name as that. But he actually speaks of standing under the name, right? You know, being under the name. What does it mean to understand a methodos? Before and after the things on the road. Yeah, to know its subject and its road, right? Whereas the word subject means what? And methodos means over a road, so the road is said to be under the thing, right? So to know its subject and road, that's what it means, you see? So in a sense, this is more distinct when you understand that to understand means to know what is said to stand under something. It doesn't have to be standing under in the original sense of the word standing under, right? But what is said to stand under something, right? Or to know something by knowing what stands under it, huh? There's a connection between understanding and substance, huh? It's the understanding of no substance, the senses don't.