Seth Benardete on Book I of Aristotle's Physics

5th [or 4th Recording based on order on digital archives at New School]

That in the case of composites, although the same holds true, he make this funny remark, that they escape our notice because they have not been named. Whereas you expect him to say the opposite. That is, because they escape our notice, they have not been named. You wouldn't think it would be an argument that they have not been named that they escape our notice. The implication is that it has to move away from the designation of thing. Would we read that? 188b8:

“The same holds of other things also: even things which are not simple but complex follow the same principle, but the opposite state has not received a name, so we fail to notice the fact…”

SB: It is strange, isn't it? That the name gives you a clue as to the state of things.”

“What is in tune must come from what is not in tune, and vice versa; the tuned passes into untunedness-and not into any untunedness, but into the corresponding opposite. It does not matter whether we take attunement, order, or composition for our illustration; the principle is obviously the same in all, and in fact applies equally to the production of a house, a statue, or any other complex. A house comes from certain things in a certain state of separation instead of conjunction, a statue (or any other thing that has been shaped) from shapelessness-each of these objects being partly order and partly composition.”

Now, the question which arises is this. He wants to say that just as “musical” comes from “non-musical,” house cannot come from anything but not-house. It cannot come from chair. The question arises whether it can come from not-house and chair. That's one question. That's kind of what the argument is…. But it's not the case. The second thing is, is he arguing that all natural becomings are reversible? That is, if they go one way, they always go back. So that, if they are reversible, then there's kind of a completeness to the cycle. If they only go in one way, it might go on and on ad infinitum, in a series, but it never turns back on itself. If it does not turn back on itself, the possibility would exist that you get a Wittgensteinian family resemblance. So that two terms quite far away from one another, would not be able to be seen as having this character, as house from not-house, but… like house from suite or something like that. The other question is this. Must all contraries, which are not the ultimate pair of contraries, be in-between contraries? If it turned out that this was not the case, then it would not follow that there was a closure. You would then have a principle which was not paired at the beginning, that would be more possibility. He wants to deny that. In other words, what's strange about the Book I is, what is the one thing that he proves is eternal? Matter. That's the thing which he states at the end of the first book, is the thing which always is eternal. Not the contrary. So the beauty of the book is that is a discovery of the substrate, without any identification as to what it is, in such a manner that it is applicable both to, say, man producing man, and applicable to the elements, and applicable to the ultimate bottom of matter itself. That is, he leaves it absolutely up in the air as to what happens on the various levels of matter. So that the principle which he discovers turns out to be extraordinarily powerful, because one of the pair of contraries, that is, privation, is applicable regardless of the matter that you start with. So, it is as true to say of the assertion that the non-musical man has become musical, as it is to say of prime matter that it has become water. The same formula that is prime matter would then be non-water prime matter, becomes water. Something rather disturbing about the fact that no difference is made between the levels on which the process has taken place. So that nature is all of a piece all the way down, whereas it is striking to about the Pre-Socratics is that that is not the case. All the Pre-Socratics, including Plato, I think, assume that at some point there is a break in the phenomena. And Aristotle seems to argue, all his arguments seem to move towards asserting, that there is no break. So that the application of a speech-analysis to becoming is also true of the ultimate natural processes. And nothing changes. He doesn’t that as a principle, but his whole argument seems to work that way. He claims that this is necessary because if you allow for any kind of discontinuity, apparently you are not able to have anything like being in time or some other possible consequences. It is tricky by the fact, as you can see, if you go back to 187b10… And he said “the thesis of Anaxagoras implies that there is both infinity in terms of quality and infinity in terms of time…”

“But the principles in question are infinite both in multitude and in kind. Therefore it is impossible to know things which are composed of them; for it is when we know the nature and quantity of its components that we suppose we know a complex.”

So we would have then a physics in which nothing could be known. No individual thing could be known, although the whole could be known as having this character. And Aristotle raises that as an objection: that can't be true. It is not necessarily very sound that that’s so. Now, let's see. At 188b26, he talks about something we talked about last time. And he makes two observations.

The first one we talked about last time. That is that he says that all the opposites that anyone has ever proposed are from the same list. That is they are all somewhere on the Pythagorean pairs. And either are more comprehensive or less comprehensive, depending upon whether the principles are aisthetic principles or kata logon principles. So why don’t you read that? That is something very important… “having said that…”

“Up to this point we have practically had most of the other writers on the subject with us, as I have said already: for all of them identify their elements, and what they call their principles, with the contraries, giving no reason indeed for the theory, but contrained as it were by the truth itself.”

He often uses this expression: of the constraints of the truth. And opposes it with any kind of reason. That is also in the Metaphysics. He talks about being compelled by the truth to acknowledge the initial realization, that it is more than one cause.

Student: Like saving the appearances?

Well, that is interesting. He uses that expression particularly for Parmenides. In Metaphysics I, when he talk about Parmenides, he says “compelled to follow the phainomena, he introduced a pair of contraries.” Doesn’t seem to be the same as compelled by the truth.

Q: Could it mean that they are agreeing with the other thinkers?

SB: No, I do not know it means. Let me put it this way. What is his argument for saying that they did not give a reason for their contraries? The argument is that they did not go back to the highest and most comprehensive pair of contraries. That shows that they did not reason about it. If they reasoned about it then they would realize that the highest pair is the one they have to choose. So those who chose hot and cold or density and rarefaction, somewhere down the line, picked them arbitrarily without reasoning what was behind them. Okay, now, the question is this, the highest pair in the Metaphysics list is limited-unlimited, right? And now it becomes what? This one [limited] become form and this one [unlimited] becomes privation. Now, leaving that aside for a minute, you can see, rather easily, that this allows itself to be formulated as the relation between arithmetic and geometry, that is, saying that the discrete and the non-discrete, i.e. the continuous.

So that the possibility of a mathematical physics would depend on trying to combine something like a particle theory and a wave theory. That would be the model. That, of course, is the fundamental way in which the Timaeus is structured. There's something difficult about how they're supposed to fit together. And the distinction between form and privation is meant as obviously overriding this consideration entirely, looking at it in a completely different manner.

Now the difficulty turns out to be this. The physicists split is not really on the character of the substrate, which at this point is irrelevant how you identify it, but on the character of the pair of contraries as to whether they are aesthetic or non-aesthetic. Now, Aristotle argues, and this you might say is a form of the argument that appears also in the Phaedo and the Phaedrus, that if the pair of contraries is aesthetic [sense-perceptible], then you cannot prove that it will not be total mixture. And since, if there can be total mixture, there will be total mixture, once you get total mixture, you will not have contraries, and everything will come to a halt. Therefore, the contraries cannot be aesthetic contraries. Consequently, the trick consists, or the problem, the trick and the problem, consists in the fact that you have a substrate, the hypokeimenon, which is material, and, determining its process, is something which is kata logon. In other words, this is what the problem of physics turned out to be. How can the logos pair of opposites be combined with a material substrate? Because they seem to want two entirely different dimensions. And therefore, if they're kept apart, then you have what he criticizes in the mathematical physics that he knew, namely, two entirely different realms, with no connection. The argument is that one of the terms, the primitive term, is what attaches the kata logon contrariety to the substrate. That is, the numerical identity of privation with the substrate allows for the linking up of the contraries kata logon with the substrate. And it is for this reason why it turns out that the principles are two and three.