Routledge History of Philosophy Volume II

Aristotle to Augustine

David Furley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN:
  9780415060028
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134928866
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The final volume to be published in the acclaimed Routledge History of Philosophy series provides an authoritative and comprehensive survey and analysis of the key areas of late Greek and early Christian Philosophy.

CHAPTER 1
Aristotle the philosopher of nature

David Furley

1
THE TREATISES ON NATURE

The subject-matter of the present chapter is what Aristotle has to say about the natural world—the subject that in classical Greek is most accurately rendered as ta physika. But of course this includes many topics that would not now count as natural science—indeed Aristotle’s own book called Physics contains discussions that according to twentieth-century categories belong rather to philosophy or metaphysics. Book 1 criticizes the views of Aristotle’s predecessors on the first principles of natural objects, and defends his own view that they are three—matter, form, and privation. Book 2 analyses the kind of explanation that is to be expected of the natural philosopher, introducing the doctrine of ‘the four causes’. The third book deals with motion and change, and infinity; the fourth with place, void and time. The second quartet of books seems to form a separate entity —or perhaps two. Books 5, 6 and 8 are sometimes referred to by commentators under a separate title: On Change (kinêsis—the word may denote motion or change in general). Book 5 analyses concepts essential to the study of motion, book 6 deals with continuity, Book 8 argues for the eternity of motion and an eternal mover. Book 7 (part of which has been transmitted in two versions) perhaps contains a preliminary version of Book 8.

In the traditional ordering of Aristotle’s works, Physics is followed by three theoretical treatises concerned with different aspects of the cosmos: On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, and Meteorologica. After a short essay On the Cosmos, generally and rightly held to be spurious, these are followed by a sequence of works on biology, which constitutes one fourth of the surviving Corpus Aristotelicum. First comes the treatise On the Soul (the principle of life), and a collection of related short essays concerning sensation, memory, sleep, dreams, etc., known as the Parva Naturalia. Then follow the three principal works of zoology: History of Animals (Zoological Researches would be a more appropriate modern title), Parts of Animals, and Generation of Animals. (The traditional Corpus contains also a number of works on the natural world now held to be spurious: On Colours, On Things Heard, Physiognomonics, On Plants, On Marvellous Things Heard, Mechanics, and Problems.)

2
ARISTOTLE’S SCIENTIFIC METHODS IN POSTERIOR ANALYTICS AND ELSEWHERE

Before entering upon a discussion of Aristotle’s researches into the natural world, something must be said about the book in which he theorizes about scientific proof—the Posterior Analytics.¹

The book sets out a system of proof by syllogisms. We have scientific understanding of something, says Aristotle, ‘when we believe we know the cause (the aitia)² of the thing’s being the case—know that it is the cause of it—and that it could not be otherwise’ (1.2, 71b10–12). From premisses that are known to be true, the scientific theorist draws a conclusion that is then also known to be true because it follows necessarily from the premisses. If the argument is to qualify as part of a science (epistêmê), its premisses must have certain qualities: they must be ‘true and primitive and immediate and more familiar than and prior to and explanatory of the conclusion’ (1.2, 71b22–24, tr. Barnes).

Now when one turns to the treatises in which Aristotle sets out his philosophy of nature (the treatises listed above in section 1), it is at once obvious that they do not even attempt to meet these conditions. They are, in general, inquiries, or the records of inquiries, rather than proofs. They do not confine themselves to necessary truths, which cannot be otherwise. In many cases, particularly in the biological works, they start from propositions based on observation. They do not proceed by syllogistic proofs alone.

It is clear that we are dealing with two different phases in the presentation of science, and it is important that this be recognized if the reader is not to be disappointed by the apparent difference between the ideal set out in the Analytics and the more dialectical nature of the other treatises. The Posterior Analytics are generally held to describe the way in which a completed science should ideally be presented; the treatises on the natural world present the inquiries or researches that are preliminary to the finished product. ‘In a perfect Aristotelian world, the material gathered in the Corpus will be systematically presented; and the logical pattern will follow the pattern of the Posterior Analytics’ (Barnes [1.28], p. x).

It should be added that the pattern of the Analytics evidently suits the mathematical sciences rather than biology, and Aristotle would be in difficulties if he confined his biology to the knowledge that could satisfy exacting demands for necessary truths and syllogistic proof.

In the two treatises (Physics and Generation and Corruption) that deal with the concepts most fundamental to our study of the natural world, Aristotle uses methods that are based neither on the scientific syllogism nor directly on empirical studies of natural phenomena. Most typically, he starts from the views expressed by others—by his philosophical predecessors, or by educated and thoughtful ordinary men in general.³

For example, in book 4 of the Physics he analyses the concept of place. We should assume, he says (4.4, 210a32), whatever is rightly believed to belong to it essentially: i.e. that it is the first thing surrounding that whose place it is, that it is not a part of the thing, that it is neither bigger nor smaller than it; and that it is detachable from its content when the latter changes place. It is only because of locomotion, he adds, that we enquire about place. The object of the enquiry is to determine what place is in such a way that the problems are solved and the beliefs about its properties are shown to be true, and to show the reasons for the difficult problems about it.

The first of Aristotle’s statements about place—namely that it ‘surrounds’ (periechein) its contents—turns out to be highly significant. This at once distinguishes ‘place’ from ‘space’; Aristotle’s place is a surface —the inner surface of a container that is in contact with the outer surface of the contents. Thus place is not measured by its volume, as space is, or as space would be measured if Aristotle allowed its existence. In fact, he denies it: it is not necessary, he claims, for the analysis of locomotion, because the concept of place will supply all that is needed (and he finds other problems with the idea of space).

It follows, in Aristotle’s view, that there can be no such thing as the void. The void could only be an empty place: but place is a container, and a container is nothing if it contains nothing. When something changes place, its former place is occupied pari passu by something else, or else the former container collapses on to itself as an empty bag does.

In this analysis there are no experiments, no measurements, and no observations other than those of ordinary everyday experience. What we have is a study of descriptions of motion, and of the assumptions underlying these descriptions. We have also an exhibition of the problems arising from alternative and incompatible descriptions in terms of space rather than place.

There is a somewhat similar but more far-reaching conceptual analysis in book 1 of the Physics. It begins by asking: what are the principles of nature? That is to say, what are the things that are essential to the existence of any natural object? To find the principles, we have to start with what is familiar to us, because the principles themselves are not accessible directly to our minds, nor universally agreed. It is not principles that we are directly acquainted with, but the changing compounds of the natural world.

After a criticism of the ideas of earlier philosophers of nature about the principles, Aristotle continues with reflections on our common notions about the essential features of change, since change is a necessary feature of everything in the sublunary natural world. Change takes place between opposites: things are said to change from hot to cold, for example, or from dry to wet, or from unmusical to musical. So opposites must be among the principles. But it is false to say that hot changes to cold: it is not the opposites themselves that change, but something that is characterized first by one opposite, then the other (or if not from one extreme to the other, from one position on the continuum between the two to another position in the direction of the other). What, then, is the ‘something’, the substratum, presupposed by such change?

Aristotle’s answer is ‘matter’ (hylê). His concept of matter is one that would be thought of now as belonging to metaphysics rather than to physics. Matter is an abstraction: it is arrived at, in thought only, by stripping away from a physical object all the attributes that belong to its form. It never exists in separation from all attributes. The simplest kind of object with substantial existence in Aristotle’s hierarchy of existent things is a piece of one of the four elements: but any such piece is analysable in theory into matter and certain qualities that give it form.

In the sublunary world, as opposed to the heavens, everything that exists is liable to change, from a quality to its opposite, from a given size to a larger or smaller one, or from being what it is to being something else (for example from being a table to being a heap of firewood, from being firewood to being smoke and ash, etc.). What underlies physical change is matter: matter has the potentiality for losing one form and taking on another.

A favourite example of physical change in Aristotle’s works is the making of a piece of sculpture. An amount of bronze or stone is the matter: it has the potentiality for becoming an image of a man, and the sculptor gives it that form in actuality. But this is rather too static an analysis: at each stage of the process of making the statue, the material in its penultimate state is matter (potentiality) for the actuality of the next stage. Matter and form, and potentiality and actuality, are pairs of relative term...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE
• NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
• CHRONOLOGY
• LIST OF SOURCES
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1: ARISTOTLE THE PHILOSOPHER OF NATURE
• CHAPTER 2: ARISTOTLE’S LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS
• CHAPTER 3: ARISTOTLE: AESTHETICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
• CHAPTER 4: ARISTOTLE: ETHICS AND POLITICS
• CHAPTER 5: THE PERIPATETIC SCHOOL
• CHAPTER 6: EPICUREANISM
• CHAPTER 7: STOICISM
• CHAPTER 8: THE SCEPTICS
• CHAPTER 9: THE EXACT SCIENCES IN HELLENISTIC TIMES: TEXTS AND ISSUES
• CHAPTER 10: HELLENISTIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
• CHAPTER 11: NEO-PLATONISM
• CHAPTER 12: AUGUSTINE
• GLOSSARY