Aristotle, Physics

The Principles of Nature

BOOK 1

HOW MANY PRINCIPLES ARE THERE?

Four types:

One Not change: Parmenides, Melissus Change: Natural Scientists Plural Infinite: Democritus Definite: 2, 3, 4

CRITICISM OF THE VIEW THAT THERE IS JUST ONE PRINCIPLE, AND THAT IT NEVER CHANGES Principle must be of something / things, if not redundant Premises are false Philosophy being Substance, quantity, quality

CRITICISM OF THE VIEW THAT THERE IS JUST ONE PRINCIPLE, AND THAT IT NEVER CHANGES

Melissus quantity implies quality or substance Oneness: continuous = infinitely divisible (part whole) Indivisible one = no quantity or quality, unlimited Everything is one = heraclitean thesis, good bad indivisible Parmenides One = is? He is pale, he pales Many in definitions, by division (whole parts)

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

Impossible for all to be one

Melissus is invalid Created hv beginning; Uncreated no beginning Created beginning of thing, not of time Being one thing that is unmoving? Why? Water Alternation

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

Parmenides Is mistaken that being has just one meaning, in fact equivocal Conclusion does not follow: pale and pale things Just is being, not an attribute of anything, but other things are attributed to it Non-being Nothing has being except just being Being cannot be attributed to being pale Coincidental = may or may not be an attribute of something

OTHER VIEWS OF EARLIER THINKERS

Natural scientists, two schools One and difference, condensation and rarefaction Plato great and small Anaximander, one contains oppositions, separated out Empedocles, Anaxagoras: both one and many Mixture Separation in cycles or unique event Only the familiar elements or infinite number of things homoeomerous substances

SOME OPPOSITES MUST BE PRINCIPLES

opposites: Parmenides hot and cold pale and dark and between

reasons and senses

THERE ARE EITHER TWO PRINCIPLES OR THREE, BUT NO MORE

Not 1 Opposites are greater than 1

Not infinite plural Being will be unknowable

THERE ARE EITHER TWO PRINCIPLES OR THREE, BUT NO MORE

Not 2 but 3 Both opposites act on the same thing Difficult to make 1 opposite to another

The third as the underlying The opposites never constitute substance of anything

The third is intermediate between opposite

THERE ARE EITHER TWO PRINCIPLES OR THREE, BUT NO MORE

No more than 3 No need the third to be acted on the 2 opposite Redundant, if 1 pair of opposites, 1 generates the other

THE TRUE VIEW OF THE PRINCIPLES

Simple and complex A comes from B

A person can become educated What is not educated can become educated

A non-educated person can become an educated person

THE TRUE VIEW OF THE PRINCIPLES

Simple: What comes to be something: the person and what is not educated What it comes to be: something educated

Complex Both the thing which comes to be and the thing which it becomes are complex

Comes to be B from being A

THE TRUE VIEW OF THE PRINCIPLES

Some underlying thing, the person persists Forms = in definitions The uneducated person

B comes from A, not A becomes B in cases where A does not persists

B comes from A = A becomes B

THE TRUE VIEW OF THE PRINCIPLES

There must be something underlying Quantity, quality, relation, time and space Composite: 1. that which comes to be 2. comes to be this first thing Underlying thing / matter + a form / privation or opposite of form Educated person = person + educated 2 or 3? Principles of the opposite

THIS VIEW REMOVES THE DIFFICULTIES FELT BY EARLIER THINKERS

Nothing comes to be or ceases to be There cannot be a plurality of things, but only being itself The opposition of contrary, is and is not for example Fail to make distinction Dog have the property of an animal, together with the particular dog Coming to be from something that is not = coming to be from something that is not as something that is not

CRITICISM OF THE PLATONIST THEORY

2 propositions concerning underlying nature Anything comes into being comes from what is not (e.g. great and small) Numerically one, also one in potential Matter and privation are different Matter = coincidentally is not, like substance Privation = in its own right is not The great and small are what is not The underlying nature is one, single Takes no account of the privation

MATTER IS NOT SUBJECT TO GENERATION AND DESTRUCTION

Natural forms which are subject to destruction

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BOOK 2


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