Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 82: The Now, Motion, and Rest in Time

Transcript
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So, Aristotle makes a comparison, and he says, he compares it to what we do in knowing, right? We don't begin from the beginning of the thing, but we begin from what is more known to us, and what's easier for us to understand, right? See? So, you know, notice in our thinking there, we knew water before we knew hydrogen, right? And we knew hydrogen before we knew the proton, right? And the proton means, what, first, right? And it may not be all together first, but among those three things, the proton is first, right? But our knowledge is just the inverse. Water, hydrogen, proton, right? So we don't begin at the beginning of the thing, do we? See? And I've seen Heisenberg say that. He says, when we consider reality, we never start at the beginning. I think what he means by that is, what? Where we begin is never the beginning of things. I mean, if we really begin from the beginning of things, we begin with God, right? Yeah. But God is the last thing we really, what, know in philosophy, right? The last part of philosophy. So there's so much beautiful comparison there, right? Beginning here, where I live, right, rather than where the world begins, right, is like what you do in knowing, where you begin with what you know, even though it's not the beginning of the thing. We usually begin with the effect, don't we? Not the cause. And if the cause has a cause, that comes even later, right? Okay. She hit me. Why'd she hit me? Oh, she's angry with me. Why'd she angry with me? Well, something made her angry, then she hit me. You know? And then she hit me because she's angry. But I got hit first, and then I realized she was angry. And then I realized what I hadn't done with me or anything, right? It's a woman's reason. Well, you see what I mean, right? But some people, when they read those words of Aristotle, they think he's talking about the beginning of knowing, right? Warren Murray was remarked one time, he was seeing a conversation there between Monsignor Dion there and John Galp. You know, Galp was misunderstanding the text, looking at the Aristotle. And Galp says, no, no, look at what Thomas says here, right? And actually, the sense in which the starting point of knowledge is the beginning is not until the fifth one, right? Because that's more hidden in the mind, right? You start from what Simpson thought. This is the beginning of the table, right? The foundation of the house, right? You know, the house builder out there, you know? See? You can see that, right? You know, the man who's commanding, right? And so on, right? He's a mover. He's a beginner, right? Beginning, in our knowledge, is more, what? Inside of us, in hidden, right? That's the fifth meaning of beginning. So the Aristotle's ordered it perfectly, huh? As Thomas explains, we name things as we know them. And so the first thing we name is the things we can sense. And that's why we, what? You'll find that the first meaning of these words is originally something sensible. And then it's carried over to things that are not so sensible, and last of all, to something that you can't sense at all. So that fifth one, the beginning of knowledge? The beginning, yeah. You could say in geometry, the definitions and the axioms, the postulates, are the beginnings of geometry, right? But is that as well known to us as this is the beginning of the disk? Little kid going to know about that? Now you stay in the yard, right? Don't go in the street. This is where our land begins, right here, the curve, right? See? He sees that sense of beginning before he's going to see the sense that, you know, the definitions, the axioms about being and not being at the beginning of our knowledge of statements, they are. You tell people in class, they're, what? I know that. You see? Yeah? Can we say that second sense is beginning and emotion, like we did with the end? What? The second sense? Yeah, yeah. In a sense, you're kind of taking it to emotion warrior, right? Where you begin your emotion, right? And you call that the beginning, right? Even though it's not the beginning of the road itself, right? But it might mark the spot on the road, so that's where I begin. But it's not like the beginning of the road. It's where I begin my emotion, right? Well, if I travel the whole road, you know, then the beginning of my emotion is beginning the road, right? Here, the beginning of my emotion is simply the beginning of the distance I went, but it's not the beginning of the road itself. You could just call it something, say, a subjective beginning because it depends upon who, or would that be a bad way to express it? I wouldn't say it's that. I would say it's a reasonable, convenient place for me to begin, right? You know? Nothing subjective about it. It doesn't make any sense to go out. It's long enough to get to Boston. You know, if I'll go all the way up to the end of... Okay? So in a way, he's arguing that up to this point, that if it's indivisible, it's got to be the same limit of both, right? And now he's kind of turning around and manifesting the same, huh? But if it is the same, it is clear that it is indivisible. For it's divisible, the same things as before will happen again, huh? It's clear from what has been said that there's something indivisible in time, which we call the, what? The now, right? Now, we talked about the now a bit back when we talked about time, right? Remember how I was mentioning how we talked about eternity, and Wethius has this way of leading us by saying the now that flows along makes time and the now that stands still makes, what? Eternity, right? Okay. So we sometimes speak of the eternal now, right? Because there's no, what? Before and after, right? In the eternal, what? In eternity, it's all at once, huh? But unlike the now of time, right? It doesn't always flow. So the now of time, in some sense, is always an other in some way, right? So we're losing the future all the time, aren't we? I guess so. The future is always going to the past, right? So now is always, in a sense, moving along. So when, what's his name, Wethius defined eternity, he said it's the, what? Possess y'all, right? It's a possession, right? It's a firmness there, right? You can't possess the now of time, huh? People are always saying, I wish this one in, you know, a kid or something, you know. Yeah, yeah. My oldest grandchild, she had some kind of a birthday, a little party there with their relatives and so on. And if one of the first time we've been there, I don't have any children, you know, and she says, I'm so happy, she says. But it doesn't last, I'll say, you know. Okay. Now, I said the first thing you wanted to show, I wanted to really show two things in this reading. One is that there's no motion in the now, right? Okay. And then second, you're going to show that the thing that moves is itself divisible, right? But in showing that first thing, you wanted to show first that the now itself is something, what, indivisible. Because that's going to be necessary to see why there's no motion in the now. And then it's going to show there's no rest in the now either. Okay. That's very easy to see in the next paragraph how you can reason that out. That nothing is moved in the now is clear from these things. If it were moved in the now, something could move faster or slower, right? So let the now be in and let the faster be moved in it the distance AB. Therefore, the slower in the same would be moved less than AB as a distance, say, AC. Since then, the slower has moved the distance AC in the whole now, the faster we moved in something less than this. If it's not in something less, it wouldn't be faster, would it? So the now would be divided. Okay. But we saw that was impossible, because the now is indivisible. Hence, there is no being moved in the now, right? Now, he's going to give, as Thomas explains in the commentary, three arguments to say there's no rest in the now, right? Now, you've got to realize that he's using the word rest here as the, what? Opposite of motion, right? But opposite in what sense of motion? Is it the contradictory or the privation or the contrary? Privation, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the strict sense, we say something is at rest, right? That is able to move, right? And when it is able to move and how it is able to move, right? But it's not in motion, right? Okay? So you've got to be careful now if you say that God, you know, rested in himself on the seventh day, right? Or you say God, you say God doesn't move, right? God's the unmoved mover. So God's at rest? Well, not in the sense he's talking about rest here, right? Just as God is not, what? Deaf, right? But does God have a sense of hearing? No, contrary to xenophon, right? Do you see the fragment of xenophon? Beautiful fragment. He says, the whole of God sees, the whole of God hears. That's kind of interesting, huh? Because although he doesn't, you know, have senses, right? You see, the whole of God understands, right? The whole of God loves, right? There's no composition at all on God, right? That's kind of remarkable, huh? That he sees that, huh? Couldn't quite get it right, you know? I think he says, you know, xenophon. There's a mark of Aristotle that kind of dismisses xenophon, and I remember talking to a clinic one time, you know, and I said, how can he do that, you know, you see these fragments of xenophon? I've got no explanation for it. Maybe there's two xenophons, or what, you know, but in this notes, they, you know, the fragments we have from the xenophon, right? You know? They're really extremely interesting. Yeah, interesting. I collect those in another group of fragments called the natural theology fragments, right? It's kind of marvelous to see this, huh? Yeah. But neither is there rest. Now, the first argument, and the main argument, is the one from understanding what we mean by rest in the sense of a, what, privation or lack, right? For we say that something is at rest, which is apt to be moved, that is not moved when, and by what, in the way it is apt to, okay? Whence, since nothing is apt to be moved in the now, neither will it be at, what, rest, right? Okay? You see that? Now, they say don't get hung up on the, what, word, right, huh? Remember when I was talking before, and I was saying, talking about the word unlimited, okay? And when Thomas talks about God being unlimited, this is one of the five attributes of the substance of God, right? God is unlimited, right? You want to use the Latin word, God is infinite, right? And Thomas is always careful to explain that unlimited is not a privation there, a lack, right? That, okay, but if you say that a line is unlimited, right, then it's a privation or a lack, right? But when you say it of God, it is a negation, but not a, what, privation, huh? Now, sometimes we have a very clear word for the privation, see? So I wouldn't say that this piece of chalk is blind, huh? I don't think even in daily speech a person would say this piece of chalk is blind, right? But if someone asks me, does this piece of chalk see me? Does it see anybody? Does it see anything? I have to say, by the axiom of, what, beings and un-being, right? I have to say, it doesn't see, right? That's a mere negation, right? It doesn't see, right? But blind means, no, you don't see, but this is the sort of thing that, what? Should see. Yeah, that is, by nature, axiom will see, right, and should see, and wouldn't see, right? Okay? Now, if I didn't see through these things here, then you'd say I'm, what, blind, right? I don't see through my hand, but is my hand blind, huh? Well, one is not apt to see through his hand, right? The hand is not lacking something, it should have an eye here in the middle, something, right? You're missing an eye here, like, for 80 of us, or both of them, you see, 80 of us, right? It's his eyes put out, huh? I see he's on the stage, you know, because he's like, I read with that, you know, quality of his eyes, and it's hard to see, you know? But then I'll do it to go off the stage. So this man is now blind, right? Of course, the poet likes to say, you know, that he didn't see the truth until he's blind, you know? That sort of thing, you know? And play with different senses, huh? You see? But, no, so the word unlimited is not like the word blind, it's not so clearly in our language, signifying a privation rather than negation, huh? You've got to be very careful with the word limited, huh? So instead of God, it's a, what? Negation, right? What you're negating there is that his, what, perfection is not limited to any genus in particular kind, huh? But if he said the line was unlimited, then that would be more of a lack, right? Because a line is apt to have an end point, huh? When Aristotle's talking about the three forms of the, the three main forms of the beautiful, in the 14th, is it, or 15th, I guess it is, of the wisdom there, metaphysics, and it says, limit is one of the, what, forms of the beautiful. Well, God's not a limited in the sense as opposed to that, right? Aristotle's thinking of the creature, right, huh? There's certain limits always for the creatures, huh? And there's the great, what, Sherlock Holmes says, right? That story, the Norwood Builder, you know that story? The Norwood Builder's got a vendetta against a woman, right, who would turn him down in his early years, and he's plotted a horrible revenge, right? To make it appear that he's been killed, right, in the fire by her, what, son? And all the evidence points to his, her son, and he's got a, he's framed the guy in the sense, you might say, right? Okay? He's done it very quickly, and everybody's convinced that the son has committed the murder, and he'll be tried and executed, right? It's a horrible revenge, isn't he? And even Holmes is a bit taken in by it, right? But then the Norwood Builder, he does one more thing to make it so, and Holmes notices, right? And the whole thing unravels, right, huh? And of course, an Norwood Builder, being a builder, can have a secret compartment in the house and so on, and finally, when Holmes realizes what he's done, right, his guess is that he's concealed because of the, you know, dimensions of the walls and so on, right? And so he starts a little fire out there, you know, and if you can get it, hurry, hurry, it's there, it's running out. If he is, the man's supposed to have been burned up, you know, days ago. So anyway, in the after conversation that you have between Holmes and Watson, you know, and Holmes is kind of talking about how clever this guy was, you know, and he had me fooled for some time. Then he said, he lacked the supreme gift of the artist, knowing when to stop. You know? And that's what's marvelous about, you know. I've heard it said, you know, by Barth and other people about Mozart, right? He always knows when to stop, see? And I've heard it said about, I think it was Titian, I think, you know. He knows he's having to stop, you know? See? So that's the limit that is the perfection of a thing, huh? That's why I used to always say, you know, the old soap operas, you know. Or even these ones used to have their kids, you know, Jack Armstrong and so on, you know, they're before your time. I might have listened to them, but you hear about these things. But they always have to have something, you know, that's about to happen or something that gets you curious. At the end of each episode, because once you turn it in the next week, you get to be advertised, but then they end the thing, right? And so the thing just goes on kind of, you know, forever, right? Like these soap operas do, you know, on TV, you know, at every end, right? And so very unsatisfactory things always going on, right? And here it comes to an end. So that thing has a, what? A privation, right? It doesn't have a limit. It's able to have a story. It can have its limit. It can end, right? And what? It should have. It should have. Yeah, yeah. Like a game where, you know, where it's not resolved, who's won, right? You know, there's something incomplete about that, right? It hasn't reached its end, right? No, he's been knocked out or whatever it is, right? You see? So, why I mentioned all this here, because I try to say that the word unlimited, is more ambiguous, you might say, or more equivocal, right, than the word blind is, right? And we might say, you know, about somebody who's blind, you see? That's how he points this out, that the words do not see. At first, it sounds kind of strange when you hear him say this, but he says, do not see or does not see has two meanings. In one case, you're negating the, what? The act of seeing. In the other case, you're negating the ability to see. And sometimes, you know, when there's a blind person there, and she's going to make an awkward, you know, mistake, you know, socially, you know, he doesn't see, you know? Yeah. We say, you know, one person to realize he's blind, so, you know, take that account, don't, you know, assume that the person can see, right? You know, but so when you say he doesn't see, that means what? In this context, it has the meaning of, he's blind, not that he's, what? He doesn't understand. He's not actually seeing you, looking at you, you know? I don't see you, you know, looking in the other direction, or daydreaming, or sleeping, or something, right? That I don't see, right? I say, he doesn't see. And we often use that in that sense, don't we? And there, the words you don't see are not as clear as the word blind, right? Do you see the point? And of course, you might use the word doesn't see, even for the piece of chalk, right? So you're getting very careful with the word unlimited, right? And so I'm making the same point about the word rest, right? Because you might say, is God in motion or at rest? You might seem he's got to be one or the other. But if you're taking rest, is it privation, right? It's neither, right? If I say, does this piece of chalk see, or is it blind? Well, it's neither. It either sees or doesn't see, but not the other, right? So, he's not concerned with God's rest here, is he? He's concerned with the mobile's resting, right? And that's a, what? Privation, right? So, if it can't move in the now, it cannot, what? In the now. Because nothing is apt to move in the now. There's no motion in the now. There couldn't be. See? So, it's not a lack, is it? Further, if there's the same now in both times, this is the second argument now, and it could happen in the one to be moved and the other to rest through the whole, and what moves through the whole is moved in everything of it as it is actively moved, and the resting is similar, it would happen that the same rests in his move. That's a little bit like the argument that the past will be in the future, and the future in the past, right? For now is the same extremity of both times. Now, the third argument goes back to what rest means here. Further, we say that rest which has itself and its parts in the same way now as before, right? Now, notice, we contrast rest with change, right? Don't we say that change, we say that thing is change when it's different now than it was, what? Before. So, you've got to have a before and after in change, right? And we say something rests when it's the same now as it was before. See? And that means you've got to have a before and after, right? And the first meaning of before and after here, of course, is time, right? Okay? Further, we say that rest which has itself and its parts in the same way now as before, right? But in the now, there's no before. So, there's no rest. It is necessary, therefore, that what is moved be moved in time, and that what rests be resting in time, right? This is a preparation for a discussion of the divisibility of motion, right? Because if all motion must be in time, rather than the now, and all time is divisible, that's going to be one way of talking about the division of motion, right? So, it wants to clarify the fact that there's no motion in the now, right? But at the same time, as I say, that helps us to understand, as we were saying earlier, how little reality motion has, right? Remember one time, years ago, you know, they had some of these demonstrations downtown, Worcester, you know, I don't know, all these things. So, I'm driving off the campus, there's a student there at the same time trying to get a hitch a ride. I say, well, I think I'm right, obviously, right? And I say, where are you going? He says, well, I'm going downtown. I say, well, you're going downtown. That's where the action is. But you could say, that's where the motion is, right? Yeah. You know? And Aristotle talks about that in the Ninth Book of Wisdom, you know, of how people, you know, think that motion is more real, right? Oh, yeah. And if you're in motion, you're doing something, right? And I tell you kind of a funny story. One flosser, I know, he says, if I'm sitting there, you know, in the living room, reading my book, right, my wife doesn't interrupt me, see? Because I'm obviously doing something, right? You see me moving up and down the page, right? But if I stop to think about what I've read, you know, then she thinks I'm doing nothing. Because you can come in for a small talk, you know? You see? But, I mean, anybody who does philosophy, you know, properly, you know, is most, probably maybe is that when he stops reading, right, and thinks and, you know, gets a hold of something, right, or thinks it out or something, right? You know, he doesn't seem to be doing anything, because he's just stuck. A lot of times, you know, this is true about the practical man, you know, in a sense, he sees you sitting in a chair there doing nothing. And that's not doing anything. But you might be, what, thinking, and you really are doing something, but you appear not to be doing anything to the world, right, huh? Motion seems, what, real, yeah. Aristotle says there that people will say about what is not real that they thought about it, they wish things that aren't real sometimes. They never say that it moves what is not real. He thought about it as real moves, you know. But you see that, how that came to dominate, you know, the thinking of the moderns, right, you know, that they all think that, what, everything is historical, right? And then that, you know, they kind of sum up the existentialness, you know, man is no nature, Jesus is a history, right? Right? See, so reality is what? Motion. That's it. You know? I mean, Hegel says what? Philosophy is the history of philosophy. So everything is historical, right? Everything is in movement, right? This is the common thinking in modern times, right? So that the only thing that seems real to them is what is historical, what is progressing, what is moving, you know? Right? You see? I used to joke about that, you know. It's a fact of academic life. If you want money to do research, right, you can get it much better if you're traveling. If you're sitting still, right? You see? If you ask for money to sit in your house or your room and think something out, you won't give any money for that at all, right? If you had to visit ten museums or ten libraries or travel, you know, you see? And anybody who travels to conferences, apart from the, you know, the Bajimab Nonsens that goes on at the concert, they spend so much time, you know, traveling there, you know, and they get exhausted, you know, and they want to see the conference, so, and all this motion is, you know, you know, if you stayed home and read a good book, you'd learn more, right? And everybody, you know, has been thinking about something different, it's at some other point, so, you know, you can't really connect very well, you know, you have to explain, you know, what you were thinking about before, before you get to this point, which is interesting, if you've been thinking about these things, they get up to it. So, I mean, if you stay home and read a book, you get a more continuous thing, you know? It's like I always said to people years ago, you know, if you want to understand what's going on in the world, I mean, so far as you can understand that, a good news magazine is better than the day newspaper, you get a little more continuity of the magazine article than with the newspaper, right? You see? And then, you know, later on, you need a book, really, you know? But you have to, it takes time to really see things that are connected, right? And the newspaper is just kind of like a blur, you know? But the newspaper is probably better than the TV, right? The TV is, you know? They just repeat themselves, you know? There's a lot of motion there, you know? Now, we could say there's something that's in act in the now. Can you say there's something that's an imperfect act in the now? Well, maybe what imperfect act are you talking about? The imperfect act is motion? Because we need no motion in the now. But is the thing that's moving in the now, is there a difference between the thing that's moving in the now and the thing that's... There's no motion in the now, see? Well, the thing that's moving, if you just take one now in the motion, if you divide it, pick one now, and the thing that's not moving, take the same now. So if I was moving past this chair, we took the now and I was at the chair. Would I be in the place, would there be a difference in the now, the way I'm in that place than the way the chair is? Would I be in that place, even in the now? Well, that's the problem, see. Because you really are in motion only in time. And you really only have rest in time, right? Couldn't I say at least that that now belonged to the time in which I was in motion? And yeah, I could say that, and then at least, would that be anything? I think that's as close as you can get. When you're moving, you're not, you move through places, but you're not in a place in the same way. Even, I'm just wondering, in the... In that rest of the place, yeah. Because, I mean, it's only the now that is. Yeah, the point is, you can't rest, you can't rest, and going through a room, right, without taking some time to rest. But you can be in a place in the now. In a way, it seems to be, yeah. So, are you in a place in a different way, in the now that's a part of the motion, and in the now that's a part of the rest? Well, it seems there is a difference there, yeah. But, you know, how do you want to state that? I'm not sure. If you say you're imperfectly in the place, whereas the other one is... Yeah, but the other one, are they perfectly in that place in the now? Well, there's nothing that is at rest in that place in the now, is what he's saying. Because you have to be at rest in time. So God can't be at rest in this sense here, can he? Because he has no time. God's got no time at all. Right? Huh? You know that? In his divine nature, he has no time at all. Because he never runs out of time either, but he has no time to do anything. Yeah, if you take a photograph, something's still, you know, moving, and you have a fast stone, they both look like they're... But, you know, some people, you know, those who think, you know, that contingent is composed of infinity of indivisibles, right, you know, they have kind of a problem there, you know. But are they really saying, you know, that it's at rest in each one of these indivisibles, right? Right. See? You might speak that way, but maybe that's not really being at rest in the strict sense, is it? See? It's just, it's more a negation of motion, right? See? But, Wesley, with the photograph, is that from that it looks like both things, the one in motion and the one that's still, they both exist in the place where they're at at that moment in time of that now. They both exist in the respective places. I can say that whether or not it's imperfect, you know, being in that place. I think I want to emphasize to understand the imperfection of motion, you want to understand the fact that there is no motion in the now, right? And the past is no longer, right? That's before the now. And the future is after the now, right? So then you see that motion hardly is, right? And that's going to be important later on. You know, maybe, I don't know if we'll do, you know, book 7 and 8, but what we will do is look at the, when we get through with book 6, right? We'll look at the Summa Conte Gentile. It's just the part where he, the first two arguments for the sense of God, which are based on what? Kind of like a summary of book 7 and 8. But he will reason, sometimes in the definition of motion, right, to the dependence of motion upon a mover, right, that nothing moves itself, right? But he's going to reason for these things here, too. You see? And part of it will be the fact that, what, you never really, in a sense, have motion, right? Because it isn't in the now. If the genus of motion is at, what would the genus of the now be? Is that a valid question? Well, we probably, you know, define the now as the limit, right? Or else, negatively, right? Just at the point. Now, the point, sometimes, you see, like Euclid says, the point has no parts, right? Right. Okay? But sometimes they have something positive, they have position, right? Okay? But they also sometimes speak of the point as the limit of the line, right? And this is the way, you know, it kind of helps you to understand we're going to talk about God, right? Because sometimes you talk about God using a negation. You say God is unchanging, right? God is unlimited, right? Okay? A lot of times you say that God is, what, the beginning and the end of all things, right? You know? See? So you know him by a kind of a relation to other things, right? Not because he has a relation to other things, but because they have a relation to him, right? And so we understand him relative to them. Would the genius be a limit, then? The what? The genius of now? Well, I see, if you define the now as the limit of the past and the future, right? Then you'd be...