Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 29: Division, Whole and Part, and the Four Senses of Causality

Transcript
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Okay, let's come back to the thing I was mentioning. Division in the strict sense is a distinction of the parts of some whole, right? So there's a correspondence with the different senses of whole and part and the kinds of division, right? Now, in the fifth book of wisdom, Aristotle takes a whole and part. I'll just mention the kinds that whole and part he talks about here. The first kind of whole and part he talks about is the quantitative whole and part. You have a pure quantity, like you're dividing a line up, you know, or you're dividing a circle up or something. But even if you're dividing our body up here, right, into its organs, right, because our body is quantified, huh? So you have the quantitative whole and part. And, you know, when Aristotle defines, say, quantity, that continuous quantity, one definition of continuous quantity is a quantity whose parts meet a common boundary. Another one is that it's what's divisible forever, so you've been dividing it into parts. But it's Thomas' remarks on quantity, by its very nature, has parts, right? So there's a real connection between quantity and whole and part in the first meaning. Now, the quantitative whole is sometimes called the composed, but there are other kinds of composed whole besides the quantitative one. But composed is a Latin word meaning put together, right? Okay. Now, he'll contrast that with what is called the universal whole, okay? Because the universal whole is not put together from its parts, but it's, what, a set of its parts, right? And sometimes when you use the word part, you use the word particular for the parts of the universal whole. But the word particular is taken from the word for part. Well, Aristotle, in the physics, talks about going from the general to the particular. The Greek word for general is kathalou. We get the word Catholic. But kathalou in Greek is running together with the word kata and holos, according to the whole. So the word for general in Greek there, that's translated in our text by general, is taken from the Greek word for whole, while the word for particulars, in English, or Latin, is taken from the word part. So it's like the whole and part. And Aristotle, in the beginning of natural hearing there, when he's showing that we should know the general before the particular, among other reasons, he makes an analogy and says that the general is the particular, like a whole is the parts, he's thinking of this here. And if we know a whole before we can distinguish the parts, we'll need to also the general before we can distinguish the particulars, right? So you see the likeness there. Now, besides these two kinds of holes, he talks about two other kinds of composed holes. And one is the definition of its parts. The definition, as we mentioned before, is put together from the genus and the differences. So the definition of square, as we mentioned before, is an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral. So this is another kind of composed hole. But it's not the quantitative hole, whose parts mean it a boundary and so on. But it is a composed hole, that's what I'm saying. Now, the other sense he takes, son, is that of matter and form. Okay? Now, let's take a simple example of that, son. Let's take the word, let's say, cat, and the word act. At first, you know, if someone asks you, what are the parts of the word cat, you'd say c-a-t, right? You're thinking of the kind of quantitative parts of it, right? Ternal parts. Act, and so on, okay? Now, suppose someone comes along and says, well, why do you have two different words, cat and act? There's something in the word cat besides those letters. Otherwise, it wouldn't differ from the word act, right? And, of course, it's the order of the letters, right? So isn't the word cat put together from the letters and the order of the letters? Now you get a different sense of the whole and part, don't you? The parts of the word cat are the letters and their order. That's kind of a strange sense of the whole and part, isn't it? Okay? Now, this is the one he's going to be about here. Okay? It's kind of strange, right? If you ask the average person, is the order of the letters a part of the word, what do they say? No. Because they're thinking of that first sense of the whole and part, right? You think of the parts of the word cat as c-a-t, the letters, right? Yeah. You don't think of the orders as being a part, right? So this is a sense of whole and part that's kind of strange, right? The parts of the word cat are the letters and the order of the letters. Now, what are the parts of you? Well, you probably think of my head and my arms and my legs and my other quantitative parts, right? And you do have those parts, right? Okay? But maybe you're a creature composed of what? Body and soul. What kind of a whole and parts is that? It's matter and form, right? Okay? But that's kind of hidden from us, isn't it? If you think of your parts, we think of your quantitative parts, right, first, right? Because your body and your soul are parts of you, but in a quite different sense of part and all, right? And it's more like the, what, order of the letters. Okay? And that might be what's most important for knowing you. Body and soul. Okay? Act and ability. Okay? So, the dialectic here is going to involve these three. And they don't know. Okay? Now, the first way you can divide these different sets of holes apart, you can say, these three are all composed holes, right? And divide them against the rest of the hole. Every hole has parts. Either that it's put together from, or that it's set of, right? Okay? So, you can divide the composed or put together holes from the one that is set as parts. We can also put together the quantitative hole and part and the matter and form are parts and hole and say, these are in reality and things outside. This is only in our mind. And the definition is basically in the mind, too. So, these two could be divided against these two because these two are in the things and these two are in the mind. So, it would be very interesting to think about these four senses of a part and hole. Now, in the beginning of the natural theory, the beginning of the so-called physics, you know, Aristotle was saying we have to go from the general to the particular. So, he touches upon this sense of a whole and part. But, the reason he gives is that we know things in a confused way before distinctly. And then he takes this kind of thing to show that we know things in a confused way before distinctly. And he says, you know, a sensible hole, right? And you can break that down. Take a... It's something It's something or a salad dressing or something, right? You don't distinguish the parts of the first studio. And then he takes a name and a definition. We can name a thing before we can define it, right? But the definition is more distinct. Equilateral and right angle quadrilateral is more distinct than square, right? Okay? But a little child will call something a square before they'll be able to define it, huh? He makes a comparison between this whole part and this one. So this and this and this, and he takes something like this in the senses. There's something up there on the hill. Something moving. It's a dog. It's Joe's dog, right? It's like this, you know? Missing. Right? But later on in Book 1, he's talking about what's found in everything. that changes. That's what natural philosophy is about, changing things. This is much more important than anything else. Matter and form, right? Okay? So that's hidden, right? It doesn't appear in the first chapter. It doesn't appear here. There he is. So, right? And that's the one that people kind of, what? Miss. Miss. It's a very strange kind of whole part. I mean, you just, you know, think of talking to somebody. I tried talking to somebody in the street about, you know, whether the order of the letters is a part of the word. You know, they wouldn't think of that part, would they? You know, it's kind of a, it's really a different meaning of part. You wouldn't call that part. See? See? But isn't in some way the word made up of not just the letters, but also the order of them? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You see? How do you can't explain it? It's an intrinsic thing, like parts are inside the thing, right? Mm-hmm. You see? In some sense, the word cat is put together not only from those letters, but also from that order. Kind of a funny thing, that order. Kind of a strange part, isn't it? Mm-hmm. See? And of course, if you cut up the word cat into the letter C-A-T, you've got the letters still, right? What happened to the order? It's not there. It doesn't seem to be there, you know? It's like the materialist, you know, doctor saying, I cut off these bodies in the lab and never saw a soul there, right? It's like, but, you know, I cut up the word in there, found the order there, right, huh? Here's a C, here's a A, here's a T, here's the order. But you're looking for the wrong kind of part there if you're looking for it in that way, right? It's not a part in the sense of a quantitative part, huh? Okay? So he says, and whether the beginnings and the elements, and perhaps he mentions elements because he's thinking of what? The parts that make up a thing, right? Okay? They like matter, but they like matter, right, huh? Are they the genera, or those into which each thing is divided, existing within? Okay? In other words, am I getting to the word cat better when I say, well, if you want to know the word cat, you've got to divide it into C, A, and T, then you can know it, right? You've got to be able to spell it there, right? C, A, and T, right? Okay? Or do I know cat better when I tell you what cat is? It's not C, A, and T. Cat is a word. That's what it is. Now, what should I tell you more about what cat is? When I say it's the cat, it's something put together from C, A, and T, or cat is a word? The letter. Hmm? The letter. You see, Socrates, in teaching Plato, they ask the question, what, right? What is that? Haven't you begun to answer what it is, and you say it's a word? And what it is? Nothing? Okay? But the materialist, or the biologist, or something, right? He'd say, you know, water is H2O. Cat is C-A-T. That's its formula, right? You know, Socrates, or Plato, would say, hey, you mean to tell me what it is. Right? Yeah. Now, if you say it's more in terms of the, what, universal, right? Well, then you have these two ways of the mind dividing, right? Okay? Now, when I divide a genus into its, what, species, right? And if those species are genus, I divide them into something even less universal. The end result of all this dividing would be the least universal of all, right? Okay? Well, when I divide a definition, and then divide a part of the definition into its definition, and a part of that into its definition, right? If I, let's say, the definition of square, an equilateral, a right angle, a five-lateral, right? Now, quadrilateral can be divided into a rectilineal plane figure contained by four sides. Now, I've got something even more universal, rectilineal plane figure, than quadrilateral, and then square, right? Now, what's a rectilineal plane figure? Well, it's a plane figure contained by, what, straight lines. Now, I've got something even more universal, a plane figure. And then I can, what, right? So, when you divide in the way you do what you define, you keep on getting something more and more what? Universal. Yeah. Yeah. Is it? But when you divide in this way, you keep on getting something less universal. So, two different ways of dividing, where you both agree that you get to the beginning of things by dividing, you follow this way, you end up with the most universal, because you have this way, you end up with the, what? East universal. Okay? But the first part is asking you to divide in this way, or in these ways here, right? We noticed in that first question there, our friend Empedicli said, right, here are the four roots of all things, and he gives poetic names, to earth, air, fire, and water, right? That's the way to know these things. They're made out of earth, air, fire, and water, in some ratio, perhaps, right? Okay? Empedicli would say, no. What is this? It's a body, right? So, in other words, do you go to the universal, or do you go to those quantitative parts to know it, right? But then if you go to the universal, then you have two ways of proceeding, right? One is by dividing the universal into less universals. The other is to define the universal, and end up with something more universal. So you're going to get three different answers, possible answers, to what is the beginning of things, right? But Aristotle is going to say later on, that just as matter and form are fundamental to changing things, right? So ability and act are fundamental to what? All things. Yeah. But ability and act are like what? That division of matter and form, right? You see? So the answer is not here. But it's interesting what he's doing, though, right? And there's a similarity between those questions, which are trying to get to the beginning of things by dividing. If you think about dividing as giving you parts, and parts being like what? Matter. Okay? So, let's go back now. We said that Plato had two unique positions, right? You made universals exist, separated from all matter, in a world of forms, right? What they call the world of forms. Good things, right? The first two questions are about universals, in a sense, right? But notice, huh? The first question brings in the other people's opinions, doesn't it? Okay? So, if you went to Intendocles, as we've mentioned already, he'd say, well, you take these things apart, which are fine. ...find our earth, air, fire, and water. The famous Demarcus, right? Demarcus says, you cut these things up and you'll get to these indivisible things called atoms, right? So they have disagreement as what they're saying, but they're answering one side, right? So Demarcus is getting to the beginning of things, the atoms, by dividing in a kind of quantitative way. You know, I think I mentioned that when he talked about Demarcus, he's used a, what they call thought experiment, or what Einstein calls a thought experiment, and he said, imagine the bodies around you being divided in every way that could possibly be divided. Well, would nothing be left? Could I hate you so much that I didn't catch you up into nothing? I might catch you up into such small pieces we couldn't find you like Jimmy Hoff or something, but could I catch you up into nothing? No, as a matter of fact, I hate you. Especially Stolli, he hates you. I still couldn't cut you out of nothing, could I? Because you couldn't be made out of nothing, could you? He cuts something up into what it's made out of, right? If you cut something up in every way it can be cut out, you must end up with something uncuttable, right? And this is what the atoms mean, right? They'll train things. But that's a quantity of division, right? Okay? And Empedocles says, well, hate, you know, divides up flesh and blood and bones into earth, air, fire, and water, and a quantity of division. Okay? So that's the way to get to the beginning of things. Well, all the natural scientists, all the chemists, all the chemists, and all the departments in the country would agree with Demarcus and Empedocles. That's the way to divide to get to the beginning of things, right? Okay? But Socrates or Plato following him might say, hey, no. You haven't begun to tell me what this is, right? Man walks. What is that? Well, it's the noun man and the verb walks, that's what it is. You can tell what that is. Is that the noun man and the verb walks? Well, sure. Divide up. That's the noun man and you've got the verb walks. That's all you know and all you need to know, right? Right? It does tell you something about it, doesn't it? It gives me up with a noun and a verb, right? Yeah. Well, what is that man? Is that a noun and a verb? It's a statement. It's a statement, yeah. See? But that statement is something universal, right? See? It's not a quantitative part of it, is it? Okay? So that's what the first question is about, right? What should you do? And Socrates is always going around asking the question, what is this, right? And when you answer the question, what is something, you always end up with something universal. But the chemist doesn't do that. He gets up there and he starts electrodes and he gets separating, I guess, the hydrogen action, I guess, and something, and this goes to that battery, that goes to that battery, right? And that's the way they get to know this thing, right? He's got a point too, I think, right? It's not as if there's no knowledge or two to what he's saying, right? You're getting to know something and you divide this into an honor and a verb. Aristotle does in the book on the statement, he does divide into an honor and a verb, right? But he also tells us that it's a statement, right? He defines a statement, right? Okay? So, it's not as if one of these guys has got the only way to know things, right? Maybe you have to divide this into an honor and a verb, and that's part of knowing this, right? But also part of knowing this is a statement, this is speech signifying the true or the false, right? No? Okay. I don't know what matter and form would have to do with this, sir. See what first sight didn't do with it, does it? Notice that the gene is no difference, it's a bit like matter and form, isn't it? Because the difference determines the gene in the sun, but the like form determines matter. But if you say in some way it's better to say that this is a statement than to say it's a non-verb, right? Then you go to the second question, right? And they say, well now you've got to get a universalist to get the beginning of things, right? Universalist at the beginnings of things. Okay? And now you're going to find Hegel there coming up, right? Okay? Hegel, he starts everything from the most universal, right? So in the second question, Hegel's coming down to what? Being is the most, he starts everything from being, right? The whole Hegelian system, you know, if you see it laid out in Stace's diagram, you could buy the old Stace's book on the Hegelian system, right? That Dover put out, right? He was republished in Dover. But in the back you have, you know, put out like a map, you know, the whole Hegelian system. But it all starts with being, right? And being gives rise to its antithesis on being, and then the truth of them arise to be coming and you go through the whole thing. But Hegel divides things all the way down to the most, what? Most universal. Okay? But if you divide the way we do when we divide a genus into its, what? Species. And then sometimes the species can be subdivided into lower species. You end up with the, what? Least universal, right? Probably more people, though, like Plato and Hegel or Hegel or something who want to go back to the most universal, right? Okay? As we mentioned before, you know, the distinction they make sometimes between the universality and calzando, right? And the universality and predicando, right? Now you don't want to confuse those two, right? Now I was mentioning how Shakespeare and Torres and Cressida, right? It kind of plays with the two meanings of jungle, right? Because in Cressida, the project we can, Agamemnon, who's the general of the army, right? He gives her a kiss, right? And she's kind of a free woman, so I usually say, you know, she's been kissed by the jungle. She hasn't been kissed in jungle. He kisses her and every kiss of Aaron. This is the downfall of Cressida, I see. But there's two meanings of jungle there, right? You take the United States Army and you say, Douglas MacArthur, he's the general, right? But then you can say that soldier is general in another sense, huh? In general, you can say everybody in the army is a soldier, right? Two different senses of general, right? But when you make the most universal at the beginning of all things, right? It's sort of like confusing soldier with Douglas MacArthur, right? You see? Because MacArthur is a universal cause of the movement of the army, right? He's directing the whole army. But soldier is something what? Said of everybody, right? It's not a cause of everybody, right? Now, of course, the wise man, as you'll find out, he talks both about the cause of all and the set of all, right? But are they the same? We're all Christians here, right? Christians set of all of us, right? See? Is Christian the cause of all of us? No, it's Christ, right? He's a cause of all. The Christian is the set of all. See? They should know both. You want to know what a Christian is, right? Okay? You want to know Christ, right? And the cause of all is more important than the set of all. But that's something I know too, right? But what you want to avoid is to confuse the two, right? And if you look at Hegel's logic, so-called, not logic in any normal sense of the word, but he explicitly identifies that being which is said of all things, that most confused notion of our mind, with the one who said, I am who am, right? See? So I kind of make fun of him and say, you know, that Shakespeare is wiser, right? Because he distinguishes it between the two senses of general, right? But, in a way, Plato is kind of making that mistake, right? And so far as he's making the forms, universal forms, the causes of all these things down here, they all in some sense partake of this, right? Just like all the moral virtues partake of reason in some way, huh? So in a sense he's taking what is universal, what is said of all or said of many and making that the cause of all or the cause of many, huh? Because our mind has a hard time understanding universal cause. And we can't, you know, get what a universal cause is without knowing to some extent what it extends to. And then we have to use the sort of what is said of everything it extends to. Like, and this is a good comparison to make, huh? If you wanted to distinguish the king and the general, right? Well, the general's causality extends to everyone of whom soldier is said. The king's causality extends further, right? To everyone of whom citizen is said, right? Well, citizen is said of more than soldier. Every soldier is a citizen, but not every citizen is a soldier, right? That's the difference in universality, right? One is said of more than the other, right? As the king and the general, right? King is a cause of more than the general, right? But if you tried to say, or to express that causality of the king's saying to more, it would say, well, it extends to everyone as a citizen. The general doesn't command every citizen. He commands only those citizens who are, what? Soldiers. Soldiers, yeah, you see? So there's a connection between said of more and cause of more, right? But they're not the same thing, right? But in trying to understand the extent of the cause of more, we tend to use something said of more, which you don't want to confuse those two, right? Yes, the king's more general, right? Yeah, yeah, in another sense, though, see? Okay. You see that? So in a way, the opinions of the moderns come up, too, right? You say, where does Hegel come in here? Well, he comes under one side of the first question, and then on the second one, he comes under the what? The way of getting it more universal. You see? And perhaps Plato does, too, huh? And, of course, there are many thinkers in the German universities, right? Even theological schools are mixing up those two. But they end up, you know, with kind of a pantheism, you know? Because if you make the cause of all, what is said of all, you kind of mix it up with everything, don't you? And I mentioned how in my favorite work there, the Summa Cantu Gentiles, in the first book, after Thomas has shown that God is I and who I am, and so on, then he's got a whole chapter, or capitulum, as they call it, that this is not the being which is said of all. God is not being that being. It gives me the hardest, you know, against that. But people are falling into that mistake again and again. And Hegel, in some sense, they're more gross, right? But he's kind of anticipated by Spinoza, who says, the order in thoughts and the order in things is the same. And if that's true, then what is first in our thoughts is first in things. Well, first in our thought is confusion. And the most confused, right? So that's the beginning reality. But again, there's a likeness of that to those who want to reduce everything to matter. Because just as, you know, wood, say, could be shaped into a table or into a cabinet or bookcase or something else by its form, right? There's a kind of indetermination, right? So when you take the more universal, it's going to be what? Less determined. Yeah. It's going to be determined by the difference, right? And so on. So a little bit, you can say the genus in a bit is like matter, right? And so you find people, you know, making the same kind of mistake about genus that they make about matter, right? Even the great Anaxagoras, in the sense, he's trying to put actually into matter everything that is their own inability. And that's why he gets into the difficulties he does, huh? Or like the modern physicist saying, every particle is composed of all the rest. And they're getting a lot of difficulties doing that. But that's a little bit like the problem that Locke has, as you mentioned in the text from Locke there, where he's saying, you know, this general idea of triangle is very difficult. That isosceles gave you a, you know, what's all or none of these, he says, right? So in a sense, he wants to kind of put them all in there, right? And it's like you take the particular ideas and you're, wham, together, right? And you get the general idea. And it's kind of difficult to do because it's made up of inconsistent parts and so on, right? But in a sense, that's what Anaxagoras is trying to do, right? He's taking everything that you can get out of matter and it's all in there, you know? But you've got to make it real small and get it in there. So all these things and none of these things does not really distinct, you know? Okay. You have to use a lot of force. What? You have to use a lot of force, violence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, good boy. Again, the problem is, if you say, are the three lines in the definition of triangle in general, are they equal or unequal? Are they all and none of these? No, you'd say, it's all of these in ability, none of them act. But you can't make the distinction between ability and act, which is that kind of whole and part that you have in matter and form, which is the one that Aristotle is up, huh? Okay. But nevertheless, there's alms of truth and all these things, right? So you get a little sense here of the first six questions, right? Now, the next time, which will be two weeks ago, you said, huh? Two weeks ago. And the next six questions will be a little more particular, but they're divided into four and two also, except the four comes first and the two comes second, right? So four of them are about the one and the many, the multitude of these beginnings, right? And two of them are about whether the beginnings are in ability or an act, okay? So, but you get some unusual questions in there, you'll find out when you get into the one and the many. Okay? So, it's like, are the causes one or many, right? And you see the questions of what it developed, and they're in ability or an act. Very interesting, very interesting questions you'll find once you get into them, but, okay? Thank you, so that's a good place to break. We're through to him. Sit. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, pray for us, and help us to understand all that you have written. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Amen. So to recall where we are here, in this second group of questions, which is in this third reading, you can divide these questions to some extent according to the positions of Plato, right? And we mentioned last time the reason perhaps why he did that, huh? That Plato was kind of the first thinker to speak to any extent at all about an immaterial world in addition to the material world. And if there's only this material world, natural philosophy would be wisdom. And for 200 years, almost, the Greek philosophers proceeded as if natural philosophy was wisdom. Now, Plato had two major positions there about things apart from the sensible or material world. And one was the mathematical things, corresponding to the mathematical sciences and the pure mathematical sciences. And then he had the universals, huh? Separated from the singulars, the so-called forms, huh? That corresponded to the definitions that Socrates was searching for, huh? The way Thomas divides these 14 questions is that the first 12 pertain to the universal separated and the last two to the mathematical things. So that's a division into two, I believe, right? Now, as regards the first 12 questions, you can see this more clearly in the first six than in the second six. And in the first six questions, you have two questions about universals, and then four questions about separated, or separated from matter, right? Okay, so is the beginning of these words, the letters, right? Or is it the universal word? And if it's universal, is it the more universal or the what? Less universal. The most universal or the least universal. And then, assuming, which everybody does take for granted, that there is a clause called matter, right? Then you have the questions about separation. Is there any kind of cause besides matter, yes or no? And if the answer is yes, does this other kind of cause, does it exist only in matter, like the parents of the dog or the cat or something, something material themselves, but it's a different kind of cause to be a maker of something or a generator and to be the matter of which something is made? Or are there some causes, other than matter, that don't exist in matter, huh? Now the answer is yes, there are some causes besides matter, and some of these are, what, not even in matter, like the unmoved mover, and the greater mind that Enixerga spoke of, and so on. Is there just one such cause, right? Like the greater mind that Enixerga spoke of, or are these many that Plato and the Platonists speak of? And then the fourth question was a little more particular with Plato's position. I mean, besides the, what, hold together, as he calls it, huh? I'm somewhat, what, what a man is, but I'm something besides what a man is, something private, you know, that, my individual matter, right, and so on. There don't exist, you know, individual men, or is there, apart from individual men, what a man is, existing by itself, right? And apart from individual cats, what a cat is. And Plato's, you know, thought that there was, right? Because he thought that we were getting truth through the definitions that were looked for by Socrates, and we do get truth through definitions. But definitions knows universal and separation from the cingulars. And if truth requires that the way we know be the way things are, we must truly be in separation. And that's one reason why Plato came to the idea that there was this world of forms. And especially because his teacher, the teacher of his teacher, Heraclitus, had emphasized everything's flowing in the world around us. So how can you understand something that doesn't stand? And therefore, to have understanding, really, you've got to have something that doesn't move, that stands still. And therefore, there must be these things if they're getting some truth through these definitions. Now, the second group of six questions in that first group of 12 are dealing a little bit with how are these beginnings, right? The first ones are saying, what are they? Are they universals or something else? Are they separated or in some way are they separated and so on? But now, how are they as far as being one or many? And how are they as far as being an act or in what? Ability. And so, roughly speaking, the first four of those last six questions are about the one and the many. The unity or multiplicities. And the fifth and sixth, or it would be the eleventh and twelfth in the whole group of 12 questions, are about act and what? Ability. Ability, huh? So, in the first six, the two came before the four. In the second group, the four comes before the, what? The two, huh? So, we're on the top of page, what? Three, right? Okay. And actually, down to the third, what? Paragraph is where this begins. Okay. The last two questions are about separated there on the top of page three and then the third paragraph. And whether the beginnings are limited in number or in kind, both those in the definition and those in the subject, the two kinds talked about before. Now, what do you think, offhand, would be the answer to that question? Are the beginnings limited in number or in kind? Okay. But not in number then? No, they're potentially an infinite number of things. Okay. Now, if that was so, then at best they would be limited in kind, right? But is it possible that they could be in one way limited in kind and in another way limited in number? Let's take a little likeness here. Suppose Berquist is the only typewriter in the world. I'm living in the past now, Chris. Berquist is the only typewriter in the world. And Berquist is typing away, you know? And these words are filling up the pages, huh? Now, are the beginnings or causes of all these words on the page limited in number or in kind? What would you say? Well, if you're talking about the intrinsic causes, they are limited not in number but in kind, huh? There would be no definite number or limit as to how many A's, how many B's, how many C's Berquist would fill out as he types away and away and away, right? You see? But if you examined all the words on the page that Berquist had typed, you'd say, hey, whiz, got letter A there, and you got the letter B, and I guess in English alphabet you got 26 all together. So there's just 26 kinds of letters, right? There's not an infinity of different kinds, right? So there's, you could say then that the intrinsic causes, the letters out of which these words are made on the pages of Berquist's disk, for God knows why, filling up page after page, that the intrinsic causes are limited not in number. There's no limit to how many A's Berquist can turn out or B's or C's or F's. There's no limit to how many A's Berquist can turn out or B's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's or C's. there is a limited in the kinds of letters there are, right? There's just 26 in this case, right? But now, besides those intrinsic causes of the words on the page, there is this guy named Berquist, right? And Berquist is one man in number, right? And he has one typewriter in number, right? But these are now extrinsic causes, aren't they? These are the cause in the sense of the maker, right? Berquist as the chief cause and the typewriter as his tool or instrument, right? He's making all these words, right? So now we see that, in some sense, the beginnings or causes of all these words is one in number, the typewriter and Berquist, huh? But in terms of intrinsic causes, the letters, they're limited in what kind, huh? So what is it in the universe, huh? Is it one of these two, or is it in one way one of these, another way the other, huh? When the 12th Book of Wisdom, Aristotle will conclude that the first maker of the universe, right, is limited in number, one in kind, huh? One in number. That's a way of expression, you know. But the intrinsic causes are going to be limited in what kind and maybe not in what number, huh? So this is true about animals and plants and so on, huh? They're not limited in number, but they might be limited in what kind, huh? So in a sense, that's a question about one in many in the broad way of classifying these questions. Now the second question, which is actually broken down a little bit into a couple, but Thomas puts it at first as one question. And whether the beginnings or causes of corruptible things and incorruptible things are the same or other. Now, if you say that the causes of corruptible things, destructible things, and of indestructible things or incorruptible things are the same, then someone might say, well, if you have the same causes, why are some corruptible and some incorruptible? Right? If you have the same causes, why shouldn't they have the same effect, huh? Now, if you say there are different causes for corruptible things and for incorruptible things, huh? Well, obviously the causes of incorruptible things would have to be themselves incorruptible, right? What about the causes of corruptible things? Would they be corruptible? Well, if they're corruptible, then the causes of corruptible things could disappear. Incorruptible things could disappear from the universe, huh? But there's a common thought of the Greeks that things keep on coming to be forever. And that's why they thought sometimes of the beginning of things as unlimited. So if you have a universe of corruptible and incorruptible things, it doesn't seem to make sense to say that only the causes of incorruptible things are incorruptible. But it seems that also the causes of corruptible things should be, what, incorruptible too. But now you've got the same problem again, right? Why should incorruptible causes here give rise to incorruptible things? And what? Incorruptible causes here give rise to corruptible things, huh? A little puzzling, isn't it? Okay. So this is a question, in a way, about the one and the many, right? Are they the same causes for both, or are they different ones for each of them? That raises problems, right? Of course, if you go back to the Greek philosophers that were just natural philosophers before Aristotle, and who thought, therefore, that all you have is these natural things that are corruptible, right? What did they think of as being the first causes of these things? Well, we saw in the fragments, if you recall, even of Anaximander, the second thinker there, that, where he spoke of the unlimited as the source of things, huh? But he said that the, what is the source of things is that into which they are, what? Broken down, right? Dust thou art, and the dust thou shalt return, right? What you're made out of at first is that into which you are broken down to at the end. So whatever is the beginning of you is also found there at the, what? The end, yeah. So it seems that what was the beginning of things, even the sense of matter, in some way remains throughout, what? Change, huh? And perhaps there's a kind of a, an echo of that thought, even in modern physics, where underlying all these things about change and so on are the conservation laws, right? But there's something that is conserved, right? And not lost. There's something, in some way, unchangeable or incorruptible, underlying even the corruptible. So when we study in natural philosophy, corruption, and in general study change, and we see the changes between opposites, like the hard becomes soft, or the soft becomes hard, or the healthy becomes sick, or the sick become healthy, underlying these opposites, there's got to be a third thing. Which is the subject of these things. So there's always something underlying it, isn't there something always persisting throughout change, huh? But it's kind of a strange reality, this underlying substance or nature. Because it's able to be different things, but not at the same time, huh? And when it's actually one, it's able to be another one, huh? So, in a way, there's something incorruptible underlying the corruptible. And that is conserved in some way throughout all change. As Anaxagra said, what is cannot cease to be by being cut, huh? Even if I hate you, I can't cut you up into nothing. I'm going to slice you up until there's nothing left of you. How can I do that? I might be able to cut you up so that we couldn't find the pieces of you, right? But could I cut you up into nothing? Well, you cut something up into what it's made out of, right? So if I could cut you up into nothing, you'd be made out of what? Yeah, it doesn't seem you can do that, right? So Anaxagra says, it seems rightly, what is cannot cease to be by being cut. So even when things are destroyed, are they really annihilated in the etymological sense so the word there, reduced to nothing? I mean, sometimes, you know, you find people speaking this way, to annihilate something, huh? But even when the physicists use that term, they don't, you know, they have energy or something conserved, huh? They're not really reducing something to nothing, huh? But it seems like it, you know, somewhat, but it's not really what they think. So maybe there are some other ways of understanding how there can be something incorruptible, namely matter, right? Underlying the, what? Corruptible things, huh? And then the unmoved mover, which in some other sense underlie change and corruption, right? The unmoved mover, the incorruptible, but causing things by motion, huh? So both the unmoved mover and the first matter are in some way incorruptible, but causes of changeable things, huh? Incorruptible things, huh? But then there is another question which will come up before long here on this page, and that is, well, what about that first matter, right? Is that eternal and always was, huh? And I mentioned, you know, how sometimes when you get to the thinking there of the great that exists and he's arrived at I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. the conclusion that there's a greater mind behind actual things. And perhaps what leads him to this is the old statement that like effects have like what? Causes, huh? And he sees the likeness between the order in the parts of this room or this building, right? The order in the parts of the automobile and so on, and how the parts are well-arranged for the function of it, and a similar good order in the parts of animals and plants, huh? My teeth are where they should be, right? Not here on top of my head or down here on the sides of my thing or below my feet or somewhere, right? And all my parts are more or less where they should be, right? Which helps with my digestion and so on. And my eyes are in a pretty good position from my walking around and even driving up here, huh? And so we see a real likeness there between the two. And that if the artist were to make what nature makes, he would make it in the same way. So my teeth are made on something hard. And if he was to replace one of my teeth, he would have used cotton or cardboard or some other thing, right? He would imitate nature, right? And if he made me false teeth, he would put the biting teeth in front and the chewing teeth in back and arrange them that way. If he replaced it part of a blood vessel, I guess he would use a tube of some sort, right? Rather than a square thing and so on. And so, now, what's the cause of that order inside the automobile engine or inside the room here, right? The order inside my briefcase or my ballplay pin or whatever it is. Well, we know that's the mind, right? But the human mind, huh? So, if like effects have like causes, huh? And the order in the parts of animals and plants is like the order in the parts of the things made by man, and the cause of the latter is the human mind, then it's a reasonable guess, right? A reasonable conclusion that there's some other kind of mind, right? That's the cause of the order in the parts of animals and plants. And since that mind is responsible for much more order and more marvelous order, right? Than things made by man, he calls it the greater mind, huh? Well, I ask him sometimes, has he arrived at the divine mind here? I said, you know, he might think of this as being more or less the divine mind, huh? But, see, as a Christian, you know, where we talk about the human mind and the angelic mind and the divine mind, what is Anax Aguas arrived at? See, well, he's arrived at a mind that is separate from matter, a mind that can move matter by locomotion, but not a mind that is responsible for the very, what, existence of the matter there, right? So, what kind of mind is that? It's the angelic mind, yeah. And Plato, in the famous dialogue, the Timaeus, he speaks of a greater mind, the Demiurgos, right? Which is acting upon matter and reducing it to order. But again, he doesn't speak of the Demiurgos as responsible for the existence of matter. So, in that sense, you would get that far, right? And not get yet to the idea of creation. Because if there is a cause of the existence of the first matter, it can't be matter. Because then that would be the first matter, right? So, if there is a cause of the existence of matter, there's not going to be a cause by motion transforming matter. Now, I read that because somebody might say, you know, well, are the first causes, before which I know are the causes, of corruptible things, one group of causes, and the first causes of incorruptible things, before which there are no causes, another group? So, you don't have one set of first causes of all things, right? Or, see, because if there's going to be some way of uniting those to something one, there would have to be some kind of cause that can give existence to something not using, what? Matter, in other words, creating in a strict sense. And, of course, that's very hard for our mind to, what, understand, huh? But we think, from what we know, that Aristotle had some understanding, right, of the idea of creation, huh? But if so, he would be really kind of the first thinker among the Greeks that we know, and it seems to, what, see something of this, huh? We know, for example, that Aristotle said that, explicitly, he says in the 11th book of Wisdom, that the human soul exists after the body, right? But he denies that the human soul existed before the body. So here's something that begins to exist, that's not made by transforming matter, huh? And in his book on the generation of animals, he says that the human soul comes from without, it doesn't come from the parents. That's kind of marvelous that he sees that, right? But he doesn't agree with Plato that there's this transmigration of souls, where souls are reincarnated, like they still, you know, think in India, you know, and places like that, huh? And those ideas that crept into Greece, too, and Socrates talks about them in the Mino, right? I've heard the priests say this, you know, not you gentlemen, but some kind of priests, you know? But you still find this, you know, thought in India and so on. And so, if the human soul then didn't exist before the body, right? But it wasn't coming into existence by a transformation of the body, well, then it was created, right? There's something causing existence of something without matter, right? That's what creation is. When you say that creation is, you know, making something out of nothing, out of nothing there is a grammatically affirmative way, but it should be understood negatively, right? You're making something not from matter, right? You're making the whole, in other words. And that really takes an infinite power to do this. But it's very hard for our mind to understand that, huh? We can't understand that. And so, as we mentioned before, the early thinkers were basically materialists, huh? Just like most natural scientists today are materialists. They see matter as the beginning of things, a source of things. But then finally you get people like Anaxagoras, right? And people like Plato, who see the mind, the understanding, as something not really dependent upon matter. But they don't see a mind that could, what? Be responsible for the existence of matter. So you have kind of what we might call a dualist, right? Okay? And I was mentioning that before, you know, and sometimes when I'm teaching the early Greek philosophers, and I'll go to what Karl Marx and Engels says, you know, they have a famous division of thinkers there, I think, in the German ideology. There's just two groups of thinkers, right? Those who say that matter is the beginning of everything, including mind, huh? As Lennon said, mind is the highest product of matter. And then there are those who say that mind is the origin of everything, huh? Like, say, John the Evangelist, right? Or even Hegel speaks this way of it. Well, I say, now, is this a good division of all thinkers? They either say matter is the beginning of all things, even of mind, or they say some mind, like the divine mind, is the beginning of all things, even of matter. Does that exhaust all the thinkers? Well, where would you put Anaxagoras, right? Where would you put Pleiador or Tomeos there in the dialogue called the Tomeos, huh? Because, although you could say that Anaxagoras,