Authors/Aristotle/metaphysics/l1/intro

Introduction

Illos vero, sicut quedam inanimatorum faciunt quidem, non scientia autem faciunt quae faciunt, ut * ignis exurit — inanimata igitur quidem natura quadam horum unumquodque facere, sed manu artifices propter consuetudinem – "We think the manual workers are like certain lifeless things which act indeed, but act without knowing what they do, as fire burns, - but while the lifeless things perform each of their functions by a natural tendency, the labourers perform them through habit".

Sed tamen scire et intelligere magis arte quam experimento esse arbitramur – "But yet we think that knowledge and understanding belong to art rather than to experience"

Aristotle begins by addressing the question of what philosophy actually is. It is 'the pursuit of wisdom', he says, but what exactly is wisdom? He suggests that it consists in 'knowing causes', which is why we think that an architect (Latin architector, from the Greek arkhitekton, meaning master builder, master worker, director of work) is superior to the ordinary workers (Latin artifices) who live and learn by experience, and who know that something is so without knowing why it is so. The architect knows the cause of what is done, whereas the ordinary workers are like automatons, who act in the way that fire burns, but through habit rather than a natural tendency. Moreover, the pursuit of wisdom does not aim at practical necessities, which is why mathematics began in Egypt, "where the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure". Wisdom is therefore knowledge of principles and causes.

In chapter two, he asks what causes and the principles the wise man should be looking for. He starts by considering some generally accepted criteria for wisdom, and then shows which objects of knowledge satisfy these criteria. For example, it is generally considered that wisdom consists in general, rather than specific and detailed knowledge; that it should be difficult to acquire; that it should be capable of being taught ("he who is more exact and more capable of teaching the causes is wiser, in every branch of knowledge"). He then shows which kinds of things satisfy the test. For example, they should be universal, for the universal is furthest from sense perception, and thus the most difficult to acquire. Knowledge of the universal is also instructive, since it tells us about the causes or reasons for things being so. He ends the chapter with the famous quote about philosophy beginning from a sense of wonder. "A man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant".

Next, he outlines the four kinds of causes that the philosopher must investigate: (i) the formal cause or substance, which the scholastics called the quod quid erat esse of a substance; (ii) the matter or substratum, the stuff from which a thing is made; (iii) the source or efficient cause, and (iv) the final cause or purpose for which something acts. He supports this with a conspectus of earlier views of thinkers such as Anaximenes and Diogenes who made air the most primary element, or Hippasus and Heraclitus who said the same thing about fire. The problem with these explanations, he says, is that a substratum cannot bring about change. Neither wood nor the bronze causes the change of either of them, "nor does the wood manufacture a bed and the bronze a statue, but something else is the cause of the change". What is sought is the second type of cause, from which originates the beginning of the change. He continues the survey in chapter four, discussing the views of philosophers such as Anaxagoras and Empedocles who sought an explanation in terms of a source of change. Sadly, their work had no clarity or structure: their investigations were like the way untrained men behave in fights, "for they go round their opponents and often strike fine blows, but they do not fight on scientific principles".

He turns (chapter five) to thinkers such as the Pythagoreans who sought explanation in terms of mathematics. They had noticed that modifications and the ratios of the musical scales were expressible in numbers, and so thought that numbers were the first things in the whole of nature, and that the elements of numbers were the elements of everything.

In chapter six, Aristotle moves to Plato, who had been influenced (i) by the Pythagoreans, (ii) by Cratylus and Heraclitus, who said that all perceivable things in a permanent state of flux and so we can have no knowledge about them, but (iii) primarily by Socrates, who was supposedly the first to focus on definitions. Plato argued that definitions cannot apply to perceivable things – since they are always changing. So they must apply to what he called Ideas. Perceivable things participate in these ideas. (For example, all circular things participate in or 'imitate' the Form of the Circular). This did not explain what such participation or imitation could be, notes Aristotle.

He concludes his historical survey with a brief summary of the usefulness of looking at the ideas of previous thinkers, even if they were indistinct or confused. In chapter eight he turns to a more detailed critique of their ideas, attacking monists who thought that the universe is one, pluralists such as Empedocles and Anaxagoras, and the Pythagoreans whose theory of number is incapable of explaining change, as well as being utterly obscure (in his view).

Sed haec alio quidem dicente simul dixit ex necessitate, manifeste vero non dixit –"But while he would necessarily have agreed if another had said this, he has not said it clearly"

Chapter 9 is an extended argument against Plato's theory of Forms. It is important in that it probably reflects contemporary discussions in the Academy, and in that it certainly influenced later scholastic thought in logic and metaphysics. Scholastic thinkers such as Scotus and particularly Ockham generally took the Aristotelian line against Plato (with Scotus holding a subtle and revisionist form of Platonism, Ockham holding for an immoderate and extreme anti-Platonism, which he claimed was grounded in a proper understanding of Aristotle). He starts with five arguments from absurdity. 1. There are Forms for things for which the Platonists did not claim there were Forms 2. There will be Forms even for negations. 3. There will be forms of relations, and there will be the problem of the ‘third man’. 4. Platonists are inconsistent, holding (a) that the Forms are odd in number, and matter is even in number, (b) that the number two is first among number (c) that form is prior to matter. 5. They are equally inconsistent in holding (a) that Forms underlie scientific definitions of things yet (b) there are forms of accidental properties

He argues that the Forms explain nothing, and so are useless for the kind of explanation that, in Aristotle's view, is fundamental to scientific understanding. For example, they are useless in explaining motion; they are useless in explaining our knowledge of perceivable things; they are of no value as patterns of things, for they are patterns not only perceivable things, but of the Forms themselves, i.e. so that "the same thing will be pattern and copy"; it seems impossible that a substance and that of which it is the substance could exist apart; "how, therefore, could the Ideas, being the substances of things, exist apart?"; they do not explain change, for the Forms can exist without the existence of the things that participate in them, and so an explanation of how those things come to exist.

Finally, Aristotle restates his main conclusions, underscoring them with an example of some splendidly confused thinking from Empedocles.