Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 38: Nature, Art, and Choice: Distinguishing the Sciences

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In that in which it is, being an inward cause, as such and not by what happening. It is clear that it is neither a doing nor a making science. For the beginning of things made is in the maker, not in the thing made. And it's either mind or the art in the mind, right? Or some power that you have to carry out what the art prescribes. While things done, it is choice in the doer. So, the first difference we get between nature and art is that nature is a cause within the thing. And art is a cause outside of the thing, right? So the cause of the tree getting taller is within the tree. The cause of the church getting taller or the brick wall getting taller is in the brick layer, right? And it's art. It's not in the bricks, huh? The bricks don't build themselves up into a brick house or a brick wall, will they? Okay? So, and this is why the word nature is taken from what? Birth, right? The original meaning of nature is birth. And in birth, the baby comes from within, right? So, if the woman is making an apple pie, and then she gives birth to a baby, the baby comes from within the woman, right? Or the apple pie doesn't come from within, she's acting upon something outside of her. Well, this word for birth was then carried over to the source of the birth, with inside the woman. And then, in a third meaning, it was generalized to mean not just the source within of birth, but of any change. It could be growing or falling and so on, right? And although, as Heraclitus says, nature loves to hide because it's within, yet the fact that things move or behave differently in the same circumstances is a sign that there's something within that's at least in part responsible for this, huh? So, the rock and the tree there, in the same soil and in the same rain and the same sunshine, the one grows and the other doesn't. So, it's not just due to the water alone or to the sun that the tree grows and the stone doesn't, but it's due to something within. And that cause within is what we call nature, right? That's what we're trying to find out about in natural philosophy. Why, the art is something outside, right? So, the art of the carpenter is not in the chair, right? And the carpenter is not inside the chair, to the best of my knowledge. Okay? And the cook is not in the pie, right? It shouldn't be inside the pie, huh? But he's made, huh? Okay? And the bricklayer is not inside the brick wall, right? So, if nature and art are not the same, what, cause, right, then the knowledge which is about things that are by nature and the art of science which is about artificial things, things that are by art, will not be the same knowledge, will they? Now, ethics and natural philosophy and so on, I mean, domestics and political philosophy, are about things that are originally by, what? Choice, huh? Okay? And choice is not in the action, but in the, what? The doer, right, huh? So, choice is not the same thing as nature, right? And what does Shakespeare say there? Nature cannot choose its origin in Hamlet there, right? He sees the difference, right, between nature and choice, huh? Hence, if every science or reasoned out knowledge or reasoned out understanding is either doing or making or looking, right, natural science or natural philosophy will be a particular looking science which is about being as is able to be moved and about the substance which, by definition, is, for the most part, not, what, separable from matter. He says, for the most part, because he's aware of the human soul, right? Okay? So, notice what he's doing, huh? He's separating natural philosophy from the making sciences and from the doing sciences by separating nature from art and from choice, right? But, in a way, he's separating all the looking sciences, right, from the making and doing sciences by separating the one closest to them, namely natural philosophy. Because natural philosophy is about motion or change, and that seems to be a little bit like doing and making, right? But, mathematics is about quantity or numbers and not about motion or change, huh? So, if mathematics, if natural philosophy is not a making or doing science, then a fortiori mathematics is not and a fortiori wisdom will not be if it's about immaterial things. Things which are not subject to our art or our choice, huh? That's why I'm asking my Grand Angel of Strengthen, not telling him, I choose for you to do this. Now, in the fourth paragraph, huh, he's going to begin to separate natural philosophy from the other kinds of looking philosophy, which will be the mathematical philosophy and first philosophy or wisdom, huh? Okay? So, in this case, he'll end up then separating eventually natural or wisdom from every other knowledge, right? Okay? But now, how should one separate it, huh? Well, we've got a few minutes to say it. Well, think about that, huh? You know? And you might, to amuse yourself, how would you distinguish the making sciences, right? And how would you distinguish the doing sciences, huh? Aristotle doesn't subdivide those because that's not his purpose here. He wants to separate wisdom from the rest. But I think it's interesting to see that there's going to be a different way of doing it. And there's a reason why the way you distinguish the looking sciences and the way you distinguish the making sciences and the way you distinguish the doing sciences, all three ways are different. And there's a reason why. Okay? So I'll leave you with that puzzle, right, huh? You're going to be back here in August, huh? Okay? Because in July, you've got to go to Denver with your hermit there. I'm wearing a speech right there. And your hermit there. And some people are going to come, I guess, to there. So maybe in the first week of August, you know, I think I'm going back from Denver in August 2nd or something like that. Saturday or something like that. And then Thursday that week, if you want to start then, you can start again. Well, I'll speak to the abbot and we'll communicate with you. I'll be back a little bit in July before I go to Denver, but, you know, that's what you're expecting them to come up here. So I'll be the best in case. I'll be the best in case. I'll be the best in case. I'll be the best in case. I'll be the best in case. I'll be the best in case. I'll be the best in case. I'll be the best in case. Okay, let's say our little prayer. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, think in the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. We 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. And you've seen that document, by the way, of Paul VI? It's an apostolic letter, I guess it's classified as, called Lumen Ecclesiae. For Thomas Aquinas, it's called the Lumen Ecclesiae. It's like, you know, what the great said that Thomas died, you know, the light of the church has been extinguished. So this is a document that he wrote at the time of the 1274, you know, the 17, 1974, was it? It's the 700th anniversary of the death of Thomas, huh? Oh. So it's in the, on the internet, if you go to the Vatican, to the Holy Father, you go to the, in the last seven or eight popes, you have one for each of them, different categories, and sects, and apostolic letters. This is an apostolic letter, huh? And some of them, there's nothing other than them yet, they haven't put them in yet, you know. Right. But pretty strong there, about Thomas in the beginning. But it's interesting to see that title coming back, Lumen Ecclesiae. Okay, let's situate again a little bit the sixth book of wisdom here. As you know, I prefer calling the 14 books of the so-called metaphysics, the 14 books of wisdom, right? Or first philosophy. And I always cringe when I see, you know, what they call metaphysics in the bookstores, huh? Occult readings and metaphysics and all that sort of stuff, right? Okay. So in the sixth book here now, Aristotle is going to finish stating in general what the subject of wisdom is, and separating it from all the other sciences or all the other forms of reasoned-out knowledge, reasoned-out understanding. And he's going to do so in a kind of unusual way. If you recall the premia to the wisdom at the very beginning of book one, when Aristotle was giving the order in which different kinds of knowing take place along the natural road from the senses into reason, he talked about how sensing comes first, and then secondly, memory of what has been sensed, and then comes experience in the sense of a collection of many memories of the same thing, and only after that comes about the knowledge of the universal. And the reason separates out what's common to the many similar things that have been sensed and remembered and are now a part of your experience. And then he compared experience with this knowledge of the universal, which he called art or science in a kind of broad sense. And he said as far as doing is concerned, the man of experience may succeed better than the man of art or of science. And in terms of that very difference, that experience is a knowledge of the singular, and art or science is a knowledge of the universal. And doing is always about the singular. You don't cure a man, you cure this individual man. And so if you have an experience of the singular, you may succeed better in doing something than the man who knows the universals, but doesn't have the knowledge of the singular in particular. But then he went on to say that art or science, nevertheless, as far as knowing, is superior to experience, because experience as such only tells you that it is so, but art or science tells you why it is so, it tells you the cause. So this is kind of the perfection of art or science, to know what and why, and this is to know the cause. So Aristotle is going to make use of that truth in order to separate wisdom from all the other kinds of reason-out knowledge. He's going to begin to separate the different kinds of reason-out knowledge by the distinction between the causes of what is studied in those sciences. And so he's going to begin by observing that every art or science, the greatest and the least and so on, is about causes in some way. And then he'll use a distinction among those causes. So let's look at the first paragraph there. It says, Now that's recalling something we saw at the beginning of the fourth book of wisdom. Remember that? Aristotle had shown in the premium to wisdom that wisdom aims at knowing the very first causes, the very first cause. And we pointed out how the more universal the cause is, the more universal is the subject of that science that is about that cause. And we gave a very simple example there to bring that out. If there is a science that talked about the king, and there is a science that talked about the general, well, the causality of the king extends further than the causality of the general. And the causality of the king extends to all citizens in some way. And the causality of the general extends to all soldiers. Now, if every soldier is a citizen, but not every citizen is a soldier, then citizen is set up more, right, than soldier is set up. And that corresponds to the fact that the king is a more universal cause. His causality extends further than the causality of the general. He said the causality of the president extends further than the causality of the head of some particular department of the government. Do you see the point? And that helps you to see why the wisdom, aiming at the cause called the first cause, the cause, therefore, which is most universal, the cause whose causality extends in some way to everything, right, that that is going to be about a subject that is said of everything, said of all. So, wisdom aiming at the first cause, which is the cause of all things in some way, is also about a subject which is said of all. And what's said of all is what? Being, right? Whatever is in any way whatsoever, right? Even if it only is in our mind, can be said to be a being. So he recalls that, from what we saw in the beginning of Book 4, they were looking for the beginnings and the causes of beings, and he adds, of course, as beings. Because all reasoned-out knowledge is about what belongs to a subject as such or through itself, and not about what happens to that subject. So the geometry doesn't talk about triangles being green or blue or red, right? Even though a triangle might happen to be green or red or blue, right? But it's not about what might happen to a triangle. But it's only about what belongs to the triangle through itself, that is, through its being a triangle. What belongs to the triangle as such and as triangle. So he's going to talk about the definitions and the divisions of triangle as such. So it belongs to a triangle as such to the rectilineal plane figure, right? He'll tell you that. And to be contained by three straight lines, right? and to be contained by three straight lines, and to be contained by three straight lines, and to be contained by three straight lines, And he'll talk about the division of triangle as such on the basis of the length of those lines and the equilateral association scale, right? And then he'll talk about what happens to triangle as triangle, like he'll show that the interior angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. You probably know that famous theorem there. Number 32 in Book 1 of Ukraine. Okay? But he won't talk about the triangle being red or green because that doesn't belong to the triangle as such. Do you see that? Okay? So that's why he adds it into that first sentence as beings, right? As I said, there's two ways of saying that. You can say through itself, per se, kathal to in Greek, or as such. And then exemplifies. There are some cause of health and vigor, right? And the medical art is going to touch upon the cause of health and so on. And there are beginnings and elements and causes of mathematical things, huh? And so, in straight lines intersect, the geometry will show you why those opposite angles are, what? Equal, right? And in general, every science, and I, for want of a better word or a single word in English, I use the word science, but usually I use a phrase for that instead of science. Reasoned out knowledge, and that misspelled word there, reasoned out understanding. Okay? So he says, and in general, every science, understanding or partaking of understanding, is about causes and beginnings, but some in a more precise or a more certain way and some in a more, what? Superficial way, right? But they're all about causes in some way. Now, in the next paragraph, he begins to distinguish a bit of wisdom, but not fully yet. But he points out that wisdom is completely universal, and therefore it is, what? Different from all the other sciences, in that way. But all of these, he says, meaning all these other sciences, apart from wisdom, drawing a line around, they single out some particular subject, like health, right? Or something. To consider about some being, yes, in some kind, but not about being simply, nor as being, nor to give an account of what it is. Now, notice, let's take a simple example here. arithmetic, in the Greek sense. The subject of arithmetic is numbers, right? And this is much more particular than being. Okay? So one difference between arithmetic and wisdom is the fact that wisdom is completely universal, about being as being, right? And arithmetic is about something much more particular, just about numbers. Okay? But a second difference is that it considers a particular subject in a particular way. It considers numbers as numbers, right? It doesn't consider numbers as beings. So you can see there's, in a way, two differences here in the second paragraph between wisdom and every other form of reasoned out knowledge or understanding. Wisdom considers a completely universal subject, and other ones draw a line around something more particular, right? And secondly, they consider that in a particular way. Consider what kind of being numbers have that belong to the wisdom, because it's considering beings as what? Beings, right? But the arithmetic is considering numbers simply as numbers. Now, don't worry too much here about what he means by giving an account of what it is, but sometimes when we talk about the most universal, there's actually a number of words that are most universal, and being is the fundamental one, right? But then you have the word thing, right? Or something, right? And that's really universal too, isn't it? Because outside of something, there's only what? Nothing, yeah. Now, is the word being and the word thing, the root here is something, these words are both completely universal. They are, the magician might say, convertible, right? Every being is a thing in some way, and everything is a being, right? Okay? But are these two words synonyms, huh? You'll meet that on in theology, you know? We have many names said of God, we say, for example, that God is wise, we say that God is just, but is the wisdom of God and the justice of God two different things in God? No. God is altogether simple, right? So the wisdom of God and the justice of God are one and the same thing. But, are they synonyms? When I say God is wise, and I say God is just, are the words synonyms? No. Well, this is a little different, but something like that, right? They might be convertible and go together, but being is taken from to be in some way, right? And thing is taken from what it is. Okay? So, in logic, when we talk about a definition, right? And a definition makes known what a thing is, huh? We usually use the word thing when we define definition, if you recall logic, then. A definition is speech making known what a thing is, huh? So, you could say everything that is, is what it is, right? It's the same reality, right? But in one case, you're naming it from to be, and in the other from what it is, huh? And we won't get into any subtleties here now, But as you perhaps know already, in God, these will be the same. But later on, you find out that in creatures, they're not the same. Okay? But at this point, you don't have to worry about that yet, huh? Okay? But there's a little difference here, right? Okay? Now, when you read the seventh book of Wisdom, which they had me do a lot of TAC one time in there, but this is the last book I would choose to do, and I never do it with the first time I do books of Wisdom people. That book is very much about what it is, right? And whether a thing and what it is are the same, all kinds of questions, that nobody but the wise might ask, right? And so our scholar was pointing to this consideration of what it is in Wisdom as being something you don't find in particular sciences. Okay? In other words, the geometry, you can read Euclid all about these triangles and wonderful theorems, but Euclid never asked, is a triangle and what it is the same thing? I didn't ask those questions, huh? But the wise man does. And the wise man will say that in material things, a material thing is what it is, are not entirely the same. And that's why you can have many material things of the same kind. You can have two circles, in fact, even exactly the same size. Because one's here and one's there. But that involves the continuous, part outside of part. When you come to the immaterial things that are not continuous, then what it is is not multiplied by these immaterial things. But the other sciences don't talk about these things. Do you hear the biologists talking about it as a dog, and what a dog is exactly the same or not? Don't worry about this question, right? That's another sign of the universality of wisdom, right? The other sciences don't consider numbers, for example, as numbers, right? And they don't consider whether a number, what a number is, are the same or there's some little difference between them. He also points out that the other sciences take for granted that their subject exists, right? Whether the subject is known by the senses, or it's known by our experience of human life, or it's known by the imagination, right? Okay. But now, in the third paragraph, he's going to begin to distinguish, huh? Wisdom, in another way, making use of a little bit of the fact that they consider pauses from all the other forms of reasoned out knowledge. And there's really three groups, you might say, of reasoned out knowledge of art or science, which could be distinguished, as he did earlier in book one, by their end or purpose. So, you could have what we might call the looking sciences, and some people might prefer to use a Latin-derived word, speculative sciences, or a Greek-derived word, theoretical, right? But those are really the Greek and Latin words for, what? Looking, huh? So, I like to speak English, huh? Plus the fact that speculative has taken on, what? The stock market connotations, and I'm speculating, meaning I'm guessing, what? Speccative means, huh? When they speak of speculative philosophy, right? They mean looking philosophy. Now, as that naive looking indicates, huh? Looking means what? Trying to see. And to see in the sense of to understand, right? So, the end or purpose of the looking sciences is just to understand. To understand what and why. There's no end beyond the understanding itself. But then you have the doing sciences, like, say, ethics and domestics and political philosophy. And Thomas Aquinas, incidentally, distinguishes those three in his premium, Aristotle's Nicomagian Ethics. I don't know if we gave that text before or not. I can give it to you sometime. I'll have a translation of it. But in the case of doing sciences, the end or purpose is not to know or to understand, although you have to know and understand some things. But the end is what? To do. Okay? It's not to know. So, you can be more precise than that. You can say it's to do what is good or better. To at least do what is good or to do what is better. And that can be for oneself, right? Okay? So, when I go home tonight, should I read Shakespeare or should I read a comic book? Well, maybe it'd be better to read Shakespeare than a comic book, right? And thinking about what would be better for me, right? Okay? Wouldn't get much out of the comic book. But in domestic philosophy, you're considering what is good or better for the family, right? Okay? Now, a lot of good families, in fact, when my children were growing up, we thought it was better not to have a TV in the house. People were always offering us a TV. But instead, you know, Father, or it's not even known, but a lot of times Father, reads them, you know? And so on, huh? And then they get attached to words and to reading and so on. And then in political philosophy, the end is to do what is good or what is better for your city or for your nation, huh? Okay? So, you can distinguish these by their, what? End. And then you have making sciences. And there, the end is like to do, except it's a little different. There's a project, right? Like a chair or a table or a glass or a briefcase or something, right? Or glasses, huh? So, it's to make, huh? Okay? And they're really making sciences concerned with making different kinds of things, huh? Might be dinner, right? Might be a chair to sit on. Might be a car, might be a blackboard, greenboard, okay? Now, Aristotle could have distinguished these three in those ways. And in a sense, he did so in the premium, right? When he showed that wisdom is a, what? Looking knowledge? Remember that? You know, he showed that wisdom is the first causes. And then he showed that it's looking knowledge, liberal knowledge, not a human possession, but a divine one. And it's the, what? Best and most honorable knowledge because it's the most divine knowledge, huh? But you may recall how he showed that it's a looking knowledge, huh? And he used what Socrates had said in the Theotetus that it began in wonder, right? And wonder is simply the desire to, what? Know a one. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are. You can't do anything about the star, right? But you wonder what it is, right? And so because philosophy began in wonder, especially wisdom, then it was simply sought for the sake of knowing. If it had begun hunger, right? Or thirst, or desire to be healthy, or the desire to get warm, which is not a problem today, yes, it would have given the risen rise to something practical, right? Like farming, or fishing, or something of the sort, right? Or digging wells, or whatever else you need, right? But because it arose from wonder, then its end was something to understand. Because it began in wonder, it's wonder what things are and why they are, which is answered by knowing their causes, and its end had to be wisdom to know the first cause. But Aristotle is going to now distinguish them in another way. And that is by the cause they aim at or consider, right? Now, he's going to do something kind of tricky here, and you've got to see what he's doing. He's going to distinguish three causes. Nature, choice, and art. Art being right reason about making, not art in this artsy sense, but art in the sense like the art of carpentry, right? The art of cooking, so on. We have definite, what, rules and definitions you take to make something out of whatever it might be, wood or dough or whatever it is. Okay? So he's going to distinguish the looking sciences by distinguishing nature from choice and from what? art. And you might say, well, nature is the cause of things studied in one kind of looking science, namely natural philosophy, but it's not the cause pursued in mathematical philosophy, and it's not the cause pursued in wisdom, which is ultimately the first cause, namely God himself. So how can he separate the looking sciences as a group, right? Which he will eventually point out or show has three kinds, right? Natural philosophy, mathematical philosophy, what Aristotle usually calls first philosophy, or he could call it wisdom, right? Well, let me use a homely comparison, right? Is New England a part of Canada? Okay. I suppose I showed that Maine and Vermont, which I guess they're names for the French, right? Vermont means what? Three mountains, right? And I guess Maine is what, province of France, huh? The British you're trying to get back during the Hundred Years' War or something, or how long to, or whatever it was. But suppose I showed that Maine and Vermont are not a part of Canada. Would that kind of show that Massachusetts and Connecticut also are not a part? Because New England is this whole region up here that's cuddled up here in the northeast here of the United States, right? And borders Canada, right? But the ones that are closest to Canada, I guess, are what? Maine and Vermont, is my geography correct here? And New Hampshire. New Hampshire borders, uh, I think. Is New Hampshire border Canada? I don't think it borders Canada. I think it's just Vermont and Maine, huh? Because I know when I go up through New Hampshire, sometimes I go to Canada to Quebec, I have to go up to either Maine or go up through Vermont. You can't just go and stay there in New Hampshire. Oh, yeah. Okay. Anyway, I understand my example that way, that Maine and Vermont are the only parts of what? New England that touch Canada, right? So being the closest to Canada, if even they are not part of Canada, then a fortiori, Massachusetts and Connecticut, which are further away in Rhode Island and so on, are not a part of what? Yeah, yeah. Now, when you study nature, if you recall the definition of nature, huh? Nature was defined as the beginning and cause of motion and rest, huh? In that which it is, huh? First as such and not by happening, huh? So nature is a cause of motion, of change, huh? And motion or change seems something like, what? Choice and actions, right? And activity seems something like a motion, right? And making seems something like a motion, right? While in the case of mathematics, you're dealing with things that are, what? Defined without matter and without, what? Motion or change, huh? So the geometrical sphere has no matter, right? It's not made out of glass or marble or anything like that, right? And therefore, it has nothing to do with change, huh? It has no melting point, no freezing point. The geometrical cube has no melting point, no freezing point. An ice cube does, right? Okay. So if natural philosophy is something distinct from these two, right? Because nature is a distinct cause in these, then mathematics being more abstract and remote from doing and making and motion, right? Will not be part, right? And even more so, what? Wisdom, right? Because there wouldn't be any wisdom or first philosophy. Natural philosophy would be wisdom if there were no immaterial things, right? So wisdom is about things that don't depend upon matter for their existence. And ultimately things that don't depend upon them, huh? So you see what he's doing here, right? He's going to separate the looking sciences and the doing sciences and the making sciences by taking the looking science which is closest to acting and making and so on, right? Namely, natural philosophy. And showing that that is something different, right? Okay? And then he'll turn around and distinguish mathematical philosophy and first philosophy or wisdom from natural philosophy, okay? To see what he's doing there, right? He's taking one of the three kinds of looking philosophy and separating that from practical, from the doing and the making sciences, but also, in a way, in doing that, separating the looking sciences as a whole from these. Do you see what he's doing? Okay? Do you know those animals that are attached to the floor of the ocean and seem to be like plants? If you stick them with a pen, they seem to be in pain and so on. So they're classified as animals because they have sensation, right? But if they're not plants, then therefore it's the orc. The dog and the cat and the horse are not, right? You know? That's one way of proceeding, right? Okay? And it does emphasize the importance of cause. Awesome. Now, in the third paragraph, he recalls the definition of nature, in a way, that we have in Aristotle's eight books of natural here. Since natural science is about some kind of being in particular, namely natural things, it's about such substance as has in itself a beginning of motion and of rest. Aristotle points out that the artificial things don't have a, what, source of motion or change as artificial. The wooden bench burns and the stone statue doesn't burn up, not because the one is a bench and the other is a statue, which is by art, right? But because of the natural material they're made of, that the wooden bench will burn up and the stone bench will not. So he says, because nature is about things that have in themselves a cause of their own motion or change, either active as in the growing of the tree or passive in the sense of the burning of the tree. That's why the great Heraclitus said that nature loves to hide. And the first reason to say that nature loves to hide is because it's within and what's within is hidden. Okay? I was down in the bookshop there and looking at the books, science books, and there's a book entitled Nature Loves to Hide. I looked in to see if he'd acknowledge that he had taken this line from Heraclitus, but I guess it becomes such a common coin that he didn't acknowledge this, but so be it. I contrast that with the beginning here. Is art inside the, is the art of the carpenter inside the chairs and the tables and the doors and the things he made, huh? No. It's an extensive cause, huh? And is the choices I make inside of the actions I do? No. So nature's a different cause from choice, huh? And from what? Art, huh? Now you see, choice is the basic cause of the things studied in the ethics and domestics and in the political philosophy, huh? An election, for example, is from the logic for choice, right? Okay? And when I define marriage, I say, as the stable union of a man-woman by mutual choice for the sake of children, huh? So I define white choice, huh? And when Aristotle defines moral virtue of the ethics, huh? It's a habit with choice, right? in the middle towards us, as determined by right reason. So, it's a habit of what? Choosing, right? And vice is a habit of choosing, too. So if I have the virtue of temperance, I habitually choose to eat modernly, right? And what's appropriate to eat in the circumstances, huh? So you could say practical philosophy, philosophy of doing, is about things that are by choice. You could say by custom, too, but the customs arise as a result of choices, although they have a kind of life of their own. But basically, the basic clause here is choice, huh? So if I choose to eat modernly many times, then I acquire the habit of choosing to be temperate in my eating, huh? And I is something of the virtue of temperance or moderation, huh? Now, art is something different, huh, from choice, huh? And art has definite rules, huh? And you can teach them to everybody, right? Okay? Now, Aristotle is going to go on now and subdivide the three kinds of looking philosophy, the three kinds of looking sciences. Natural philosophy or natural science, mathematical philosophy, right? And then first philosophy, as he calls it, or wisdom. He doesn't subdivide the doing sciences here because it's not relevant to his purpose, right? He's already separated the looking sciences from the doing and the making, so now he really has to subdivide the looking sciences to separate wisdom from everything else, right? Okay? But, sometimes I think it's helpful to recall how you would distinguish each of these three kinds of sciences, huh? And I mentioned how Thomas Aquinas in his premium to the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, again in his commentary, he distinguishes the three doing sciences, okay? He actually doesn't call them ethics, domestics, and politics, he calls them monastic, domestics, and politics. But monastic doesn't mean that the, well, we might think of monastic, right? Monastic means monas from one, right? But we usually call it first-part ethics, although ethics is taken more from the word for custom, right? So, what we call ethics, he calls monastic, because they're concerned with what is good for me to do, or what is better for me to do, considered as an individual human being, right? Okay? And then in domestics, what is good for me to do, considered as a father, or a mother, or something of this sort, as a part of the family. And then what is good for me to do as a citizen, or as a lawgiver, or a judge, or something, right? And then there's political philosophy. Now, it's kind of a subtle thing, but the way in which you would divide, or subdivide each of these three, would be quite different. Okay? Let's take the most concrete one of the making sciences, right? What Thomas Aquinas sometimes calls the mechanical arts, the surabial arts, right? How do you first distinguish the surabial mechanical arts, the making arts? Do you distinguish them by what they make, or do you distinguish them in some other way? What? Yeah, you see? This is very subtle. Take the example. Here you've got two chairs, right? But it's the same art that would make these two? But if the table here is wooden, right? And the chair is wooden, huh? The complete carpenter might make both, right? And even a wooden house, right? But the metal worker of some sort, huh? Would make this chair here, which is a metal chair. And sometimes you have these metal desks, you know? I was in an office at school one time where we had a wooden desk on one side and a metal desk on the other side, so it was a very nice setup to exemplify how they had a student in the office, huh? So, the first distinction of the making sciences, the making arts, the surabial arts, is by the matter, how to which or in which, they make, huh? Okay? And what they make is something under the, what? That art, huh? Okay? But still part of the art of carpentry to make a wooden chair, a wooden table, and even a wooden, what? Bed or a wooden house, right? Okay? And not every difference of matter will result in a different art, huh? The carpentry, for example, might make things out of different kinds of wood, right? But where you have a difference in matter that require a different tool, right? A different way of working that matter, then you clearly have a different making science, huh? Okay? So if my brother-in-law makes some things as a carpenter sometimes, he's going to use a hammer and a saw and other more subtle things than that, but, you know. But my wife or my daughter is making a dress, they're going to use a hammer and a saw, and they use scissors and a needle, right? But you don't find my brother-in-law trying to cut the wood with the scissors and sew it together, and you don't find my wife nailing together the parts of the dress, right? You see? So the art of the tailor, huh, which my wife is practicing there, right? Or my daughter. And the art of the carpenter, which my brother-in-law is practicing, are different arts, right? Because cloth and wood are materials that require different tools to be worked and different ways of working, huh? My father's company there, you know, I sometimes worked in the wood shop and sometimes in the forge shop. In the forge shop, they may take a piece of metal and heat it and bend it, right? Now, do they do that in the wood shop? They take a piece of wood and heat it and bend it, huh? So these are different arts, right? And they're different men practicing the arts, you know, welding and so on, right, huh? And then, you know, usually weld one piece of wood to another, right? You might glue it, but you don't weld it, huh? And, but you might screw it together, right? Or nail it together and so on. Does a glass blower use the same tools as a carpenter? A hammer out there and, you know, you've got to work with the matter differently, huh? And that's also, I think, the way in which we distinguish at first the fine arts, huh? So, a painter can paint a happy face or a sad face, right? And Shakespeare can write tragedy and comedy, right? But it's not one art that writes comedies and makes happy faces, and another art that makes tragedies and sad faces, right? No. But it's one art that works in line and color and make do sometimes both sad and joyfully even though it's all subdivision there, right? And the art of fiction which writes in words and, if perfect, can do both tragedy and, what, comedy, right? Okay? So the first distinction is by that in which they, what? Make, huh? Look at the beginning of the book of the poetic art whereas God is distinguishing the imitative arts, huh? He distinguishes them first by that in which they imitate, huh? So the painter and the musician, that in which they imitate is not the same, huh? The painter imitates in line and color and the musician doesn't do that because in sound and so on, right? And so on. And then a more particular difference is what they imitate, right? But generically speaking, you know, the first distinction is by that in which they, what? Imitate, huh? Do you see that? And this is true of all the, what, or servile arts, huh? Mechanical art.