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Topic
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Doctrines
& Discoveries
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Notes &
Quotes
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Overview
Plato:
human: a featherless biped.
Stu
Dent: behold a plucked chicken.
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Forms are immanent real essences not
transcendent Ideals {3.4}
Invented the science of logic virtually ex
nihilo. {2}
Less interested in mathematics than Plato
-- the arch rationalist
More interested in observation -- arch
empiricist
perception provides bases for
generalizations
which, if true, amount to scientific
knowledge of the world
penetrating even to the real essences of
things
Affirmed reality & knowability of the
material world and change
A brilliant scientist: founded the science
of biology
systematic typological classification of
organisms by genus (e.g., homo), and species(e.g., sapiens)
There's natural purposiveness in things;
this provides objective bases for value judgments.
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1.
“All
men by nature desire to know.”
2.
"It
must be held to be impossible that the substance, and that of which it is the
substance, should exist apart; how, therefore, can the Ideas, being the
substance of things, exist apart?"
3.
“And
to say that [the Forms] are patterns, and the other things share in them is
to use empty words and poetical metaphors."
4.
“[Forms]
help in no wise towards the knowledge of the other things (or they are not
even the substance of these, else they would have been in them.”
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Ontology:
Substance, Form, and Matter
BR: Bare matter is conceived as a
potentiality of form; all [natural?] change is what we should call
"evolution" in the sense that after the change the thing in
question has more form than before. That which has more form is . . .
more "actual."
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The basic things -- what's
really real -- are the many: particular things; primary substances e.g.,
Socrates, Bucephelus {2}
A primary substances
are this-somewhats: e.g., this brick; Socrates {4}
a form or essence:
determining the what-ness: shape, etc. {1}
in some matter: the
this-ness: so much clay; flesh, blood, etc.
Categories, essence, &
accident {3}
relativity of matter
flesh, blood, etc. are
formed of earth air, etc.
prime matter distinguishable
in thought only but incapable of independent (unformed) existence: c.f.
Anaximander's aperion & Plato's "receptacle of becoming."
Aristotelian Forms
distinguishable in thought
only -- not distinct in fact -- from the substances they inform
scientific forms may be
captured by definitions -- especially functional definitions
Form follows function
knives are designed to cut
eyes are designed to see
Entelechy: Organic Forms or
Natures are Dynamisms in things
Potentiality (material
empowerment) & Actuality (formal development)
degrees of potentiality:
flesh has more potentiality for humanization than earth; acorn is quite
potentially an oak
1st degree
of actuality = capacity or ability
2nd degree
of actuality = exercise of the capacity or ability
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1.
"By the term
`universal' I mean that which is of such a nature as to be predicated of many
subjects, by `individual' that which is not thus predicated."
2.
"It seems
impossible that any universal term should be the name of a substance.
For ... the substance of each thing is that which is peculiar to it, which
does not belong to anything else; but the universal is common, since that is
called universal which is such as to belong to more than one thing.”
3.
“Terms which are in no
way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time,
position, state, action, or affection.” “Substance, in the truest and primary
and most definite sense of the word, is that which is neither predicable in a
subject nor present in a subject; for instance the individual man or horse.”
4.
“Everything but
primary substances is either predicable of primary substance or present in a
primary substance.”
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Change
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received problem: how can
something do both -- alter and remain the same -- at once
solution
inorganic processes:
different potentialities become activated or actualized in one & the same
matter
organic processes: one and
the same entelechy -- e.g., a living human organism, a human life --
expresses various natural capacities and undergoes various accidents
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1.
[Natural things]
present a feature in which they differ from other things which are not
constituted by nature. Each of them has within itself a principle of
motion and of stationariness (in respect of place), or of growth and
decrease, or by way of alteration."
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Four Causes
4 Then there is what is a
cause insofar as it is an end (telos): this is the purpose of a thing;
in this sense, health, for instance, is the cause of a man's going for a
walk.
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Material cause: from what {1}
bricks, timbers, nails,
etc.;
flesh, blood, bone, etc.
efficient cause = by what process {2}
carpentry, bricklaying, etc.
conception, growth, etc.
formal cause = according to what design {3}
what the blueprint expresses
what the correct scientific
definition would express
final cause = for what purpose {4}: provide lodging: self-actualize
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1.
In one
sense, what is described as a cause is that material out of which a thing
comes into being and which remains present in it. Such, for instance, is
bronze in the case of a statue …
2.
In
another sense, the form and pattern are a cause, that is to say the statement
of the essence … such, for instance, in the case of the octave, are the
ratio of two to one ….
3.
Then
there is the initiating source of change or rest: the person who advises an
action, for instance, is a cause of the action; the father is the cause of
his child; and in general, what produces is the cause of what is changed.
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Function
Transcends Form
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Inherent function looks
beyond the individual in reproduction
Ecologically: each a part of
the universal one
All specific purposing
(after apparent goods) obscurely strives toward the true Good; all want to imitate
God as closely as possible.
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1.
"[F]or any living
thing . . .the most natural act is the production of another like itself ...
in order that, so far as its nature allows, it may partake in the eternal and
divine.”
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The Prime
Mover (aka God) & Big Cosmological Picture
BR: God is pure form and pure Actuality; in
Him, therefore, there can be no change.
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Pure Form/Actuality: The
Transcendent One
Transcendent (Platonic) not
immanent
An individual, not a
kind? No many of which it is the Type; so no resemblance/imitation
problem.
Unmoved Mover The big
picture. {4} {5}
Unmoved: yet actively
self-contemplative!? {2} {3}
Mover: "moves as the
object of desire does." {1}
"The good is that at
which all things aim."
albeit obscurely (compare
"imitation")
each according to its
appearance to them
Compare: Plato's form of the
Good
The big picture: cosmology
& typology
the 5* spheres: stellar,
planetary*, solar, lunar, sublunary
aether aka quintessence (a
sort of spiritual material)
material: earth, air, fire,
& water
Substance {6}
Immovable: God
Movable
Inalterable (&
Imperishable): Heavenly Bodies: circular motion
Alterable (& Perishable):
Physical Bodies
Unnatural: nonliving things;
rocks, chairs, etc.
Natural: living things
insensible (& immobile):
plants
sensible (& mobile):
animals
irrational: brutes
rational: humans
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1.
"There is
something which moves without being moved, being eternal substance, and
actuality. And the object of desire and the object of thought move in
this way; they move without being moved."
2.
"Now if you take
away from a living being action, and still more production, what is left but
contemplation? Therefore the activity of God, which surpasses all
others in blessedness, must be contemplative."
3.
"It must be of
itself that the divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of
things) and its thinking is a thinking on thinking."
4.
"[T]he final
causes cannot go on ad infinitum -- walking being for the sake of
health, this for the sake of happiness, happiness for the sake of something
else, and so one thing always for the sake of another."
5.
"[T]here must
necessarily be some . . . thing which, while it has the capacity of moving
something else, is itself unmoved and exempt from all change."
6.
"Among substances
are by general consent reckoned bodies and especially natural bodies; for
they are the principles of all other bodies."
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Psyche aka Soul
BR: “The soul, we
are told, is the form of the body. Here it is clear that
"form" does not mean ‘shape’’… in Aristotle's system, the soul is
what makes the body one thing. “(165)
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The form of a living body.
Form is the principle of
continuity of each substance {2}
In living bodies the
principle of continuity is psyche -- an inherent principle of change
& motion -- or soul. {1}
The unity of an animal is
the unity of a certain sort growth-maintenance-reproductive process --a life.
Definition: 1st grade of
actuality of a natural organized body. {5}
1st grade =
possession of capacity (e.g., for thought when asleep)
2nd grade =
exercise of the capacity (e.g., thinking when awake)
The three [types or levels]
of psyche & their distinctive powers & functions: each is proximate
matter for the next {4}
vegetative soul: life:
nutrition (growth) & reproduction
animal soul: locomotion
& sensation: ". . . nothing in vain."
human soul: rational thought
Sensation: receiving
the sensible forms of things without the matter
five senses (vision,
hearing, taste, touch, smell) each have their special objects (color, sound,
flavor, feels, odors) they unerringly detect. {3{
common sensibles (movement,
rest, figure, magnitude) are not peculiar to any one sense but common to
several or all.
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1.
"Of natural
bodies some have life in them, others not; by life we mean self-nutrition and
growth (with its correlative decay).”
2.
"[W]e can dismiss
as unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it is as
meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp
are one, or generally the matter of a thing and that of which it is the
matter."
3.
"Each sense has
one kind of object which it discerns, and never errs in reporting that what
is before it is color or sound (though it may err as to what it is that is
colored or where that is, or what it is that is sounding, or where that
is."
4.
"The sentient
faculty never exists without the nutritive, but the nutritive may exist
without the sentient, as in the case of plants."
5.
“[T]he soul is the
first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in
it. The body so described is a body which is organized.”
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