Coming To Be: Change: Cause
and
Explanation
- Physics
1.1 and Physics
1.5-9
- To demonstrate that we have
knowledge of something, we have to show that we understand
the factors
that explain it.
- Aristotle calls these 'principles,' 'causes,'
and 'elements' among other things.
- To know what a cow is, we need to
know many things, including: what is it made of? how does it
grow? what
is its purpose? how did it come to be? will it cease to be?
- Physics 1.5-9
- Nature is not random:
- peaches
don't grow on cherry trees,
- cows aren't born to giant squids,
- rocks do
not originate in the tops of trees,
- the air does not become gold,
- cherry trees do not decay into brick walls or pizzas,
- antelopes
do not die and become icebergs or pine needles, etc.
- Anything that comes to be F
must come
to be F from being not-F.
- Nonetheless, whatever becomes F must
be potentially F
before it
becomes F.
- Anything that ceases to be
F
must
cease to be F and become not-F.
- But not just any not-F.
- E.g.
when a pale thing ceases to be pale, it does not thereby
become musical
(which is indeed not-pale).
- Rather, it becomes some other not-F
related to paleness, such as dark, the contrary
of pale. Many such contraries have no names: pale and dark,
human
bodies and corpses are among the few such things that have
names.
- All of this applies not just to simple things, such as a
particular
quality, a particular substance, etc.
- It also applies to
combinations, orders, and
arrangements.
- When they come to be or cease to be, they can only
do so from or to certain other things.
- A house, for instance, comes to
be from what is potentially a house, and ceases to be
into something
that is not-house in a particular way (viz. a ruin, or
recyclable
materials, or landfill).
- THINGS THAT COME TO BE OR CEASE TO BE DO SO FROM OR TO A
CONTRARY OR AN
INTERMEDIATE.
- All comings to be or ceasings to be happen to a subject:
- that subject may be one
in
number,
- but it is not one in
form.
- It is not one in
form, because one of its forms remains the same while
another changes.
- The one that changes comes to be its contrary or an
intermediate thing
between contraries, while the one that remains does not.
- Thus Aristotle
speaks of the subject
and the
opposite in all cases of change: there is
always a subject and
an opposite.
- Sometimes the opposite is merely privation (e.g.
'not-human') and has no common name.
- All things
that come to be are:
they are a subject and an opposite.
- Aristotle distinguishes between changes that involve
coming
to be F or
ceasing to be F where F is a nonsubstance and where F is a
substance.
- Coming to be a substance or ceasing to be a substance
is
what Aristotle
calls coming to be and
ceasing to be
'without qualification'
- We say that a human comes to be, not
that food or an egg 'comes to be human' is A's idea.
- Other comings to
be and ceasings to be are all coming to be some (accidental) thing
or ceasing
to be some
(accidental) thing:
a human comes to be
musical, for instance (we don't say that 'musicality'
comes to be).
- In cases of coming to be or ceasing to be without
qualification (i.e.
substantial coming to be), the substance does come to be
from something
or cease to be into something.
- Some do so by changing their shape (a
lump of bronze comes to be a statue by change of
shape),
- some by
addition (eggs come to be animals by addition),
- some by subtraction
(carving stone involves removing what is not-statue
from what will be
the statue),
- some by composition (houses are put together),
- some by
alteration (A gives no specific example of this).
- A also distinguishes between coming
to be essentially and coming to be coincidentally:
- The musical
human coincidentally comes to be a ping-pong player,
- but the
non-ping-pong player (who is potentially a ping pong
player) comes to
be essentially a ping-pong player.
- Note that both the musical human and
the non-ping-pong player are the same person:
- so every coming
to
be involves one essential
coming to be and a possibly infinite number
of coincidental
comings to be.
- True knowledge of a coming to be involves the
essential coming to be, not the coincidental ones.
- Also, the product
of the change can be
described coincidentally:
- the acorn comes to be an oak essentially,
- but
it comes to be an object liable to lightning strikes
coincidentally.
- The dark thing remains the same thing, but comes to
be
the pale thing:
- paleness comes to be from darkness (which is
potentially pale) and the
subject is the thing itself that is dark or pale.
- Aristotle points out that in any instance of coming
to be of a
natural thing, there are 2 entities:
- the subject of the change and the
form that the subject comes to be.
- The lump of bronze and the form of
the statue, for instance.
- In another way, there are three things:
- there
is the lump of bronze, the quality
absence-of-form-of-the-statue, and
the form of the statue,
- which are the subject, the privation, and the form.
- The
form and the privation are contraries.
- In the case of substances, even if there is no name for
the
substance,
and even if it never exists separately, we can identify the subject
of the change
by analogy:
- as the bronze is to a statue, so the subject is to
the particular substance.
- I'm trying to think of a good example of a substance
with
no name that never exists separately (from what?): can
you help?
- Aristotle improves on the
theories of
change of his predecessors.
- They said that if something is, then
it is, and if it is not, then it is not.
- They concluded that, contrary
to appearances, nothing can come to be, for that would
involve it
coming to be something from nothing, which cannot happen.
- Aristotle's
improvement is to add the concept of a subject underlying
change and
the idea that that subject has potentiality for change.
Aristotle says
that change is the actualizing of a potentiality of the
subject. That
actualization is the composition of the form of the thing
that comes to
be with the subject of change.
- Another way to speak of change is to say that F comes to be F from what is
not-F.
- Only not-F things can come to be F.
- But not just any 'not-F' will do:
in order for a thing to come to be F, it must be the sort
of not-F that
is accurately described as 'potentially F.'
- Another way to put that is
to say that while dogs are 'not-statues,' they are
'not-statues' in a
different way from the way in which a lump of bronze is a
'not-statue.'
- To give it a name, the lump of bronze that is not a
statue
has
associated with it the quality 'not-statue' as a privation, whereas
the dog does not.
- NOW, the question is, has Aristotle merely moved the
question to another place: if the problem his
predecessors had was that change cannot exist unless
something comes to be from nothing, hasn't Aristotle
merely moved the problem from a question of how a whole
thing can come to be from nothing to a question of how a
not-F (and an F) can come to be from nothing? NO, because
his explanation posits that all things are not-_____ in
an indefinite way (each one has an indefinite range of
things that can fill in the blank of not-_____), and
once one of those privations is actualized, the new F
that it is has built into it a whole new range of
not-____'s that it is potentially.
- Physics 1.9
- Chapter 9 is essentially concerned with arguments against
Platonic
conceptions of change.
- Physics 2.1-3
- Natural things are
things such
as animals, plants, chemical elements.
- By 'natural' here, A means
"having within itself a principle of motion and stability in
place, in
growth and decay, or in alteration."
- The principle is part of what A
calls the 'nature' of a thing.
- Things that are non-natural
include all artifacts, all things made by humans.
- They are not natural
because they lack such a principle within themselves.
- A bed may change,
but only insofar as it is acted on from outside of itself or
insofar as
it is constituted by some natural material (which is the
artifact's
matter, but not the artifact itself): it won't change as a
result of some principle internal to bedness: rather it will
change as a result of some principle internal to the
material it is made of (wood, metal, etc.)
- There are also some things which
are the product of luck/chance: things such as a fire due to
lightning.
- But in those cases, the lightning is natural, and the
tree
it strikes
is natural.
- What is non-natural (although not at all contrary to
nature) is the fact that that particular tree was struck
by that
particular lightning.
- At times, an artifact may
seem to be
the same thing as its producer:
- a doctor who cures
herself.
- The
cured body is the artifact, and the doctor is the body, in a
senes.
- Thus the doctor has within herself the principle of
alteration.
- But
that does not fit Aristotle's definition of 'natural,'
because the
doctor and the curing are not necessarily connected:
- it is coincidental
that the person being healed is the same person as the
doctor.
- The
principle of change is within the cured person, but not in
her own
right.
- The sick person is not cured qua doctor, and the doctor
does not
have herself qua doctor as the object of the medical art.
- Rather the
doctor coincidentally has herself as the object of her
medical art.
- The things that have a nature are the things that have the
principle of
(some of) their own change within them, and they are all
substances.
- Things that are in
accordance
with
nature are both substances that have natures and the
things that
belong to such substances qua things with natures.
- E.g. going upward
belongs by to fire in its own right, and so going upward is
in
accordance with the nature of fire.
- Aristotle has little
patience
for
people who claim that there is no such thing as a nature.
- He
holds it to be as obvious as the brick wall that stands in
front of
you.
- His reasoning is that denying that things have natures
involves
using something that is far less knowable in itself to deny
something
that is knowable in itself.
- (He had better have more to say about it
than that, but that will suffice for us for now. The
argument that
bricks exist because this one just bashed my skull is not
in all
likelihood such a bad argument, although it is not one
amenable to
formulation in words.) Perhaps what he has to say is
that passage we analyzed in which he rejected the idea
that things are just bundles of accidents as incoherent.
- Aristotle considers the question of whether material elements are the
true best
candidates for substance and nature.
- I.e. are we really just our
chemical elements in some arrangement with the traits that
result from
them and their arrangement?
- Aristotle agrees that that is in fact one way to speak of the
nature of a
thing.
- There are good reasons for that: those things are
everlasting
and do not themselves change (in our earthly realm, aside
from nuclear
reactions).
- But Aristotle still wants to say that the
form and the account of the form is a better way to
speak of the
nature of a thing.
- His argument is that what is only potentially flesh
and bones just is not flesh and bones: certain of the
attributes that
differentiate a living animal from a corpse are so important
that when
we ask "what is this animal?" we should mention them first,
and only
mention the fact that the animal is made of flesh and bones
later, or
perhaps as a part of our account of the form of the animal.
- The composite of
matter and form is not itself a nature, but is in accordance
with
nature.
- There is a difference when we talk
of
artifacts in these terms from when we talk of natural things.
- A bed, for
instance, does
not produce further beds, and does not become
another bed.
- A wooden bed will catch fire or rot qua wooden, but not
qua
bed. Bedness does not account for its changes.
- But a human produces further humans.
- The bed decays into wood,
metal, fabric (whatever it is made out of) and the things
that wood,
metal, fabric, etc. can become in accordance with their natures, not in
accordance
with the nature of a bed (beds have no nature: they aren't
natural).
- Why can't I claim that the bed becomes a sofa (just
add
pillows), a jumping platform, a seat, or a table in
accordance with its
beddiness? Isn't that a principle of change?
- Because the bed does not itself change in that way as
you
or I or an earthworm change location, shape, etc. in
accordance with
our internal structure.
- Another example which Aristotle brings up: medical science
- Aristotle claims that medical science produces health
via
treatment
- and medical science does not proceed toward medical
science as its goal.
- What if I claim that medical science not only
produces
health but also further medical science, just as humans
produce not
only artifacts but also further humans?
- How would A counter that claim?
- Perhaps he would say that just as the bed by itself
cannot change itself, so medical science cannot change
itself. It is an
artifact, just like a bed, but its principle of change
is not within
itself. Rather, it is within humans. Does that work?
- In the case of natural objects, say an acorn, it proceeds
towards and
from its nature, an oak tree. We say that the acorn is
growing into an
oak tree (which is a producer of acorns), but we say that
medical
science is a producer of health (which is different from
medical
science and does not produce medical science?).
- Physics 2.2
- The mathematician
studies
surfaces, solids, lengths, etc. and studies them in
themselves, not qua
qualities of natural objects (or even artificial objects). No,
the
mathematician separates them from what they are qualities of.
Mathematics does not define its objects in terms of change,
matter,
etc. The definitions do not include any matter that is the
subject for
change in mathematics, but students of nature do study things
that have
matter that is the subject for change.
- The student of nature needs
to
study
both matter and form. As with crafts, the crafter
must know the
material as well as the form. With crafts, there is a user and
a
producer. The user knows the form (e.g. the pilot knows what
the rudder
must do), whereas the producer knows the material (what can be
made to
do that). In crafts, the two are separate in a way. In natural
objects,
the two are not separate.
- The student of nature must know the matter that is matter relative to the form
that the
student is studying. Just as the doctor needs to know
primarily about
the matter of a person qua sinews, flesh, bone, etc. and not
qua
carbon, oxygen, much less quarks, neutrons, protons, etc.
- The four causes: four ways to explain a thing.
- Material: fire and
earth and
air and water cause bodies, assumptions cause conclusions,
parts cause
a whole
- formal: the whole
causes parts,
the form of a body causes the matter to be a body, the
conclusion
causes the assumptions to be assumptions of it
- final: the goal of
a
thing
causes it to be
- efficient: the
seed
causes the
tree, the doctor causes health, the general causes defeat or
victory,
etc.
- Final cause is the goal, not necessarily the
beneficiary.
- Fitness is the final cause of hard work, but hard work
is
the efficient
cause of fitness.
- A pilot can, by presence, cause safety of a ship, and by
absence, cause
shipwreck: in both cases, we say the pilot is the cause.
Thus the same
thing can cause contraries.
- Causes can be arranged in a branching tree: a doctor
causes
health, but
the doctor is a crafter, so a crafter causes health. The
crafter is
farther from health than the doctor is.
- Causes can be coincidental:
Polycleitus
carved a statue, but Polycleitus qua sculptor is the
efficient cause of the statue, while Polycleitus qua human
being is
only coincidentally the cause of the statue, and
Polycleitus qua pale
human is more remotely the cause of the statue.
- The efficient cause
can
be spoken of
as a potential cause or an actual cause: the
housebuilder is a
potential cause of a house before she builds it, but the
actual cause
while she is building.
- Causes can be spoken of in
particular
or in general: for instance, parents generally
are the cause of
children generally, but your particular parents are the
cause of you in
particular.
- We should seek the most precise causes, the ones closest
to
and
non-coincidental to what they are causing. If we are
seeking the cause
of a particular, we should seek particular causes. If we
are seeking
causes of genera, we should seek generic causes.
- Physics
2.4-6
- 2.4
- Luck and chance are carefully defined by Aristotle.
- He starts out with puzzles about them.
- A scenario: Al goes to the market. Pat is at the market. Al
had
no
knowledge that Pat would be there. Al meets Pat.
- What caused the meeting?
- 1) Luck?
- 2) Pat's wanting to go to the market; Al's wanting to go
to
the market.
- Those who say 2 identifies the causes are in general
claiming
that
everything that seems to be caused by luck has fully
explanatory causes
that have nothing to do with luck.
- People nonetheless continue to speak of luck as a cause.
What
is with
that?
- 2.5
- There are clearly things
that
do not
seem to be the result of luck: apples don't just
happen to grow
on apple trees. There is an essential connection between
apples and
apple trees. In general, things that come about invariably or
for the
most part in the same way are not caused by luck. But there
are things
that come to be only occasionally or uniquely: those seem like
candidates for being caused by luck. But in a way that is not
the only sort
of thing that Aristotle says can be caused by luck: things
that come
about for the most part can have particular instances that are
caused
by luck.
- Of things that have a final cause, some are in accordance
with
a
decision, others are not (the argument that
things that have a final cause must have a designer behind
them seems
to work well here). Aristotle
defines
luck and chance: things that come about usually as the
result of a
final cause, but in some cases (the ones caused by luck) do
not come
about as the result of a final cause are caused by luck or
chance.
For instance, meeting someone you know you want to meet is
usually the
result of a decision that leads to action, but sometimes it is
not.
When there was no particular decision that led to a particular
meeting
with that particular person, we say that the particular
meeting was
caused by luck. Note that particular things are caused by
luck. General
things cannot be caused by luck. In the case of a meeting
caused by
luck, we say that it has a coincidental final cause (the goal
of
meeting that person). There can be an unlimited number of
coincidental
causes of any thing. The
coincidental
causes that could be caused by a final cause are instances
of luck or
chance.
- 'Fortunate' is a
term
applied to events caused by luck which
are of no small significance.
- 2.6
- Luck is a specific sort of
chance.
Chance is the more general term.
- Luck is that type of chance which is found in things that
are
capable
of being fortunate and capable
of
intentional action (i.e. agents, such as humans).
Hence
children, beasts, and inanimate things are not able to be
lucky (or
unlucky), although they can do things by chance.
- Chance applies to
all
things
that are incapable of intentional action: a horse can be saved
by
chance. It chanced to come out of the barn before the fire
(but that
can be seen as if it
were
intentional). A tripod can be saved by chance: it chanced to
fall off
the altar before lightning smote the altar (again, by a
stretch, that
could be seen as if
it were
intentional). Chance applies in cases where the event might
have been
caused by decision in the following sense: the horse could
have been
led out of the barn in order to be saved; the tripod could
have been
removed from the altar in order to be saved. Chance also
applies to
things that it is very difficult to conceive of at all in
intentional
terms (there chanced to be a meteor crash): that seems to
contradict
some of the things that A says, but it fits with other things
he says.
- Some events are contrary to nature: siamese twins, for
example,
are not
'normal' (which does not mean "normal" in any 'normative'
moral or value sense: rather in
the simpler
sense that they do not happen invariably or for the most
part). Those
events are caused by chance according to A. Even though there
being
siamese twins in every particular case of siamese twins has a
particular cause, and that cause is internal to the twins,
nonetheless
it is caused by chance. Thus a chance cause can be internal or
external.
- The paragraph at 198a7 is important and difficult. JL
Ackrill
in Aristotle the
Philosopher, P
40,
says that "Luck and chance, he is claiming, presuppose patterns of
normal,
regular, goal-directed action ('mind and nature'); and so it
would be
absurd to suggest that everything
happens by luck and chance. We can have reason to say that
some things
happen as if they had been planned only because we take for
granted
that some things happen because they really have been planned;
and we
can pick out certain sequences as irregular and exceptional
only
against a background of sequences that are regular and to be
expected."
In other words, it seems as if Aristotle wants to say that
chance and
luck are happenings that are exceptions to regularities. He
wants to
say that regularities, by the very fact that they are regular,
can be
seen as having been caused for a reason, i.e. by an immediate
final
cause (not a coincidental one).
- Physics
2.7-9
- 2.7
- Here, Aristotle connects
the
efficient, formal, and final causes in a strong way:
in the case
of natural objects, they often amount to one thing. A
human is
the formal, efficient, and final cause of another human.
Things that
generate motion/change by being in motion are generally of
this sort:
the final, formal, and efficient causes are one.
- 2.8
- This chapter considers the
question of
whether everything in nature happens by chance and necessity
OR because
it is directed towards an end.
- IN ALL, it seems that we have two
major
possibilities for understanding Aristotle's final causes:
- 1) they are heuristic:
they do
not identify some actual thing that exists. Rather, they are
descriptions of things that exist (material) that help us make
sense of
them. They are primarily epistemic entities. The material
causes are
sufficient to explain natural objects, but it is extremely
useful
nonetheless to think of natural things as being for something,
because
it furthers our understanding.
- 2) Aristotle thinks that
final
causes
actually exist as independent explanatory factors:
it takes more than just the proper material to cause a natural
occurrence (a human, fire going up, etc.). It takes, in
addition to the
matter, a further explanatory factor, which is the
final/formal cause.
This is extremely hard for moderns to swallow, and that is
because we
have a very hard time figuring out a coherent notion of final
causes,
unless we postulate a designer-god-like entity, which is just
what
Aristotle seems to deny. There are certainly many very
intelligent
moderns who say that materialism is not sufficient to explain
consciousness, for instance, but they do not seem to take a
tack that
is clearly Aristotelian.
- #2 seems to be what Aristotle intended, because it best fits
the
textual evidence. But there are those who say he intended #1.
- A
modern formulation of the dilemma Aristotle is trying to
get out of: if
we
put baking soda and vinegar together in certain circumstances,
they
will foam up. Putting those two materials together is
sufficient for
the foaming up. There is no particular reason to dream up some
final
cause for the event: the materials alone are sufficient,
because they
have certain chemical traits that inevitably lead to the
foaming up,
given appropriate ambient conditions.
What if animals are simply a more complicated version of that
phenomenon? take primordial soup like that of earth before
life, and
the material things that are in that soup are sufficient for
life to
happen is the idea. No need for a final cause!
- Aristotle puts the dilemma
in
an even
more pointed formulation that smacks of evolution: he
describes
the possibility that only those traits that happen to be
conducive to
survival actually do survive, while traits that do not make
animals
suitable for survival die out. No need for final causes there.
- He rejects that possibility
via an
argument:
- A dilemma argument:
- Such things are either coincidental results OR they are for
something.
- They cannot be coincidental.
- Thus they must be for something.
- Why can't they be coincidental?
- Because things that are coincidental are the result of
chance
or luck,
whereas things that are natural happen always or for the most
part, and
things that happen always or for the most part cannot be the
result of
chance or luck.
- In other words, nature is
largely
regular, chance cannot be regular, and so natural events
cannot be by
chance. They must be for something. This gives us
some insight
into what Aristotle means by 'final cause.' Namely, Aristotle
does not
want to say that there must be a designer behind natural
things.
Rather, he wants to say that material mechanical processes are
not
sufficient for living beings to occur. What is required in
addition is
what he calls the 'final cause,' a striving for being that
occurs in
addition to the material mechanical processes.
- The analogy between nature
and crafts shows that the same arrangement of
sequenced events occurs
in
both, and that those sequenced events have the same basic
structure in
both cases. It is correct to speak of purpose in crafts, and
so it is
also right to speak of purpose in nature. But nature's purpose
is not
the intentional purpose of a human agent, rather it is a
purpose
without a conscious being that formulates the intention. It is
simply a
striving that inheres in substances (e.g. earth strives to go
down,
fire strives to go up).
- Aristotle basically claims that where
there is a regularity, it is often allowable to speak of a
goal,
even if there is no agent there capable of formulating
purposes. Even
if we do not believe that spiders are capable of rational
decisions and
there is no rational decision-maker that made spiders that way
or
continually direct them, nonetheless, we say that they build a
web in order to catch a fly.
Single-celled
creatures wave their cilia in
order
to move towards food or away from threats. When we look for the scientific
explanation
of things, we do not exclusively look for non-purposive
necessary
regularities: there is something very informative about
saying that
web-weaving is for catching food. Saying that is
simply a way of
saying that this regularity generally exhibits the same
relationship
between events as clearly purposive action does (building a
web is to
getting food as bringing money and going to the grocery store
is to
getting food: it is activity for an end). This all makes the
final cause seem like an epistemic entity (#1 above).
- Deviations from such
regularities are
possible both in nature and in crafts: that explains
why things
in nature occur 'for the most part,' not invariably.
- Some regularities, however,
are purely
matters of necessity and involve no purposiveness:
Aristotle
allows for that. Some such regularities are presupposed by
goal-directed regularities: it is hard for me to find an
example of
this (which may mean it is not a coherent notion?). Others
just come
along with them: e.g., exercise is for health, but it is not
for
sweating. Sweating is coincidental to exercise, but a regular
coincidence of exercise.
- But what about the
question,
"What is
the human function?" (or what is the canine
function? etc.) It
makes sense to ask "what are hands for?" but it seems to make
little
sense to ask "What is a human for?"
- Aristotle clearly says the human function is to be as good a rational agent
as possible.
Aristotle
also says it is to maintain
the species. What is the species for? is the next
question.
Aristotle says that everything is striving to imitate his god,
the
eternal and unchanging activity of god: that is connected to
being as
good a rational agent as possible.
- 2.9
- Here Aristotle introduces two notions of necessity:
- conditional necessity:
if we
are going to have hamburgers, it is necessary
to have chopped meat and buns and a grill.
- unqualified necessity:
given X,
Y must follow.
- BTW, Aristotle also recognizes a type of necessity that
attaches to
things that have happened or are happening: for example, it is
necessary that I be at my desk typing right now in at
least the
sense that because I am actually here at my desk, I simply
cannot be
anywhere else right now. We'll call that de re necessity.
- In nature and crafts, the necessity involved is conditional:
if
there
is to be a wall, there must be materials to build it, but that
does not
make it the case that if there are materials, the wall must be.
- Just so, if there is to be a cow, there must be flesh and
bones, but
flesh and bones do not necessitate the cow.
- To make a wall, materials are necessary, but not sufficient.
One must
also understand what a wall is, and doing that involves
knowing what it
is for.
- Just so, for there to be a cow, the flesh and bones (or
food,
or
whatever the material components are) are necessary, but there
must
also be the form of cow, which involves what the cow is for
(growth,
locomotion, perpetuation of the species, and to be as godlike
as the
species cow can be).
- Anything that has a goal has material as a conditional
necessity: if it
is to be, the material must
be available.
- The following may be unqualified necessity: given the proper
ambient conditions, if you plant an acorn, it must grow.
Generally
speaking, put some matter with a privation/potential in the
presence of
the things conditionally necessary for the privation/potential
to
become actuality, and by an unqualified necessity, the
potentiality/privation will become actuality.
- de
Generatione et Corruptione
1.1 and 3-5
- Here Aristotle is concerned with what his predecessors had
to
say about coming to be and
passing away.
- When we die, does anything
really
cease to be? If we are just our material
constituents, then the
answer is no, for they are still there. Thus anyone who thinks
that we
just are our material constituents must call death a change,
not a
passing away, and an accidental change at that. Those who
think that we are something in addition to our
material constituents, however, may or may not think there is
a passing
away. They might think that the soul continues just as the
matter does.
In that case, death is just a change of circumstance for the
soul, not
a true ending.
- Aristotle apparently thinks that when
a thing comes to be, its form comes to be at the same time
as
the thing. For natural things, it takes a natural thing of the
same
species to create a new natural thing: it takes a human as the
efficient cause to impart form to the matter. The new human is
not
identical to the father, because of the matter, which resists
form.
When a natural thing ceases to be, its form too ceases to be.
- Perhaps the debate about whether forms are particular or
generic for Aristotle has a place here: when I came to be,
surely my
species-form did not come to be. At most, we can say that an
instance
of my species-form came to be. But if I have a particular
form, then my
form could have come to be when I came to be and could pass
away when I
pass away.
- 1.3
- In the case of primary substances, the primary beings, how
can
there be
a coming to be and a passing away?
- Aristotle thought that coming
to
be
and passing away actually occur.
The coming to be of a composite of form and matter was the
true
beginning of a thing, not simply an alteration. The
dissolution of that
composite was a true death, not just an alteration.
- When a new substance comes to be (a child is born (well,
perhaps conceived)), does something come
to be from nothing? That would be a problem, since Aristotle
rejects
coming to be from nothing. Aristotle needs to explain how this
works.
- Aristotle's way of solving
part of the
puzzle is via his analysis of change (an
underlying
subject that underlies the move from a privation of a form to
the
presence of a form). The underlying subject must be in a state
of
potentiality relative to what it becomes: not just any old
thing comes
to be from any old thing.
- Every coming to be is also
a
perishing.
When the underlying matter receives a form, the form of what
it was
before perishes. When it loses its form, a new form takes the
old
form's place. Thus there is a continual perpetual coming to be
and
passing away.
- But the coming to be of a this, a primary substance, is
still a
problem, for it is a being in a way that is independent of
other
beings. What underlies the change? The matter: it does not
come to be.
The form, however, comes to be (its source is another form of
the same
sort, but the new form is a separate form, which in a sense
comes to be
from nothing!).
- de
Partibus Animalium 1.1, 1.5
- 1.1
- The discussion is abstract here. It concerns the proper
procedure for
the biologist: examine the species one by one or examine the
things
that are common to more than one species (sleep, growing,
death, birth,
etc.)?
- The primary object of study
should be
the formal-final cause, for that is the key to the
rest, just as
a housebuilder needs the blueprints first.
- Biologists should refer
their
accounts
back to what is of necessity: the sort of necessity
which the
natural scientist pursues is conditional necessity (if this is
to be,
there must be that, and if that is to be, there must be those,
and if
those are to be....: first this, then that, then those, then
these,
then... until we get to the end for which a thing comes to be
and is).
- A problem arises, because it is difficult to provide
demonstrations
with things that are only conditionally necessary.
- We should proceed by looking at how an animal is, and then
say
the
reason why the animal is that way. In other words, for
example, first
we say what a human is, then we say that humans therefore have
certain
parts, since humans cannot be without those parts. We should
produce
explanations that are as close to that model as possible.
- Following that, we should say how the parts come to be: the
material
explanation of the parts.
- In other words, Aristotle
wants us to
look at both the function of the parts of animals (how they
relate to
the whole organism) as well as the way the parts themselves
are
constituted. The function is primary, however.
- Saying that a hand has this shape and these properties is
not
sufficient: for it is conceivable that a wooden hand can have
that
shape and those properties, or a severed hand might have that
shape and
those properties. The only hand that is really a hand is
connected to a
whole and living organism. The severed hand is sufficient if
all we
want to know about is what hands are made of and what shape
they have,
but that is not what a hand is and does not sufficiently
explain hands.
We need to know what they are for and how they relate to
the
whole.
- The nature of an animal is
the
animal's soul, and that is the primary proper object of
study of the
biologist. The soul is the efficient and formal and
final cause
of the animal.
- There is a danger, however, in saying that the proper object
of
the
biologist's study is the soul, for the soul is not just a
thing
separate from others. It is also the thing via which we
understand
everything, and thus the biologist's object of study might
include
everything. Aristotle rejects that idea, because understanding
is found
only in the human soul, and so when we study animals, we need
not
include everything.
- Many items recur here that
we
saw in
the Physics
before:
- The objects of the biologist's study, natural things, all
exist
for some end, as is apparent from the fact that not just any
old thing
produces just any old thing.
- The full-blown adult animal is prior to the egg. The oak
tree
is prior
to the acorn.
- The sort of necessity biologists deal with is conditional
necessity:
food is necessary for growth, but growth will not necessarily
result
just because there is food. A seed is necessary for a tree,
but a tree
will not necessarily result just because there is a tree.
- 1.5
- Natural objects fall into two sorts: the
imperishable and the
perishable. The imperishable are in the superlunary realm
and are not
as easily studied. The perishable include plants and
animals, and there
is ample opportunity to study them.
- Aristotle
clearly
enjoys and perhaps
feels defensive about investigating various animals and
plants and
encourages others not to disdain the study of them. Importantly,
he
emphasizes
the need for observation in the field.