The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (79 page)

6
     The shape of bodies will not account for their moving upward or downward in general,
(15)
though it will account for their moving faster or slower. The reasons for this are not difficult to see. For the problem thus raised is why a flat piece of iron or lead floats upon water, while smaller and less heavy things, so long as they are round or long—a needle, for instance—sink down; and sometimes a thing floats because it is small, as with gold dust and the various earthy and dusty materials which throng the air.
(20)
With regard to these questions, it is wrong to accept the explanation offered by Democritus. He says that the warm bodies moving up out of the water hold up heavy bodies which are broad, while the narrow ones fall through, because the bodies which offer this resistance are not numerous.
[313b]
But this would be even more likely to happen in air—an objection which he himself raises. His reply to the objection is feeble. In the air, he says, the ‘drive’ (meaning by drive the movement of the upward moving bodies) is not uniform in direction.
(5)
But since some continua are easily divided and others less easily, and things which produce division differ similarly in the ease with which they produce it, the explanation must be found in this fact. It is the easily bounded, in proportion as it is easily bounded, which is easily divided; and air is more so than
water,
(10)
water than earth. Further, the smaller the quantity in each kind, the more easily it is divided and disrupted. Thus the reason why broad things keep their place is because they cover so wide a surface and the greater quantity is less easily disrupted.
(15)
Bodies of the opposite shape sink down because they occupy so little of the surface, which is therefore easily parted. And these considerations apply with far greater force to air, since it is so much more easily divided than water. But since there are two factors, the force responsible for the downward motion of the heavy body and the disruption-resisting force of the continuous surface, there must be some ratio between the two. For in proportion as the force applied by the heavy thing towards disruption and division exceeds that which resides in the continuum,
(20)
the quicker will it force its way down; only if the force of the heavy thing is the weaker, will it ride upon the surface.

We have now finished our examination of the heavy and the light and of the phenomena connected with them.

¹
The digression is directed against Plato,
Tim.
62
E
; but the view was held by others besides Timaeus.

²
63 C.

³
The atomists, Democritus and Leucippus.

⁴
For, since the planes have no weight, their number cannot affect the weight of a body.

⁵
Plato, in the
Timaeus.

⁶
Phys.
vii. 1. 241
^b
24; viii. 4. 254
^b
7.

⁷
i. e. because there are distinct species of light and heavy.

⁸
Above, 309
^b
20: if they would only give an account of the simple bodies, their questions as to the composite would answer themselves.

⁹
This view is maintained in its most unqualified form by those (atomists, probably) who distinguish the four elements by the size of their particles (Cf. C. 2. 310
^a
9).

¹⁰
Above, 311
^a
20.

¹¹
The question is discussed in ii. 14. 296
^b
9.

¹²
i. e. in every category.

¹³
sc.
in earth.

¹⁴
On the somewhat absurd theory that the universal ‘matter’ is void or absolute lightness.

¹⁵
viz. air and water.

C
HAPTERS
1–5.
Coming-to-be and passing-away are distinguished from ‘alteration’ and from growth and diminution.

   
CHAPTER

  
1.
   Are coming-to-be and passing-away distinct from ‘alteration’? It is clear that, amongst the ancient philosophers, the monists are logically bound to identify, and the pluralists to distinguish, these changes. Hence both Anaxagoras and Empedocles (who are pluralists) are inconsistent in their statements on this subject. Empedocles, it must be added, is inconsistent and obscure in many other respects as well.

  
2.
   There are no indivisible magnitudes. Nevertheless, coming-to-be and passing-away may well occur and be distinct from ‘alteration’. For coming-to-be is not effected by the ‘association’ of discrete constituents, nor passing-away by their ‘dissociation’; and ‘change in what is continuous’ is not always ‘alteration’.

  
3.
   Coming-to-be and passing-away (in the strict or ‘unqualified’ sense of the terms) are in fact always occurring in Nature. Their ceaseless occurrence is made possible by the character of Matter (
materia prima
).

  
4.
   ‘Alteration’ is change of quality. It is thus essentially distinct from coming-to-be and passing-away, which are changes of substance.

  
5.
   Definition and explanation of growth and diminution.

C
HAPTERS
6–10.
What comes-to-be is formed out of certain material constituents, by their ‘combination’. Combination implies ‘action and passion’, which in turn imply ‘contact’.

  
6.
   Definition and explanation of ‘contact’.

  
7.
   Agent and patient are neither absolutely identical with, nor sheerly other than, one another. They must be contrasted species of the same genus, opposed formations of the same matter.

  
8.
   Bodies do not consist of indivisible solids with void interspaces, as the Atomists maintain: nor are there ‘pores’ or empty channels running through them, as Empedocles supposes. Neither of these theories could account for ‘action-passion’.

  
9.
   The true explanation of ‘action-passion’ depends (
a
) upon the distinction between a body’s
actual
and
potential
possession of a quality, and (
b
) upon the fact that potential possession (i. e. ‘susceptibility’) may vary in intensity or degree in different parts of the body.

10.
   What ‘combination’ is, and how it can take place.

C
HAPTERS
1–8.
The material constituents of all that comes-to-be and passes-away are the so-called ‘elements’, i. e., the ‘simple’ bodies. What these are, how they are transformed into one another, and how they ‘combine’.

   
CHAPTER

1.
   Earth, Air, Fire, and Water are not really ‘elements’ of body, but ‘simple’ bodies. The ‘elements’ of body are ‘primary matter’ and certain ‘contrarieties’.

2.
   The ‘contrarieties’ in question are ‘the hot and the cold’ and ‘the dry and the moist’.

3.
   These four ‘elementary qualities’ (hot, cold, dry, moist) are diversely coupled so as to constitute four ‘simple’ bodies analogous to, but purer than, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

4.
   The four ‘simple’ bodies undergo reciprocal transformation in various manners.

5.
   Restatement and confirmation of the preceding doctrine.

6.
   Empedocles maintains that his four ‘elements’ cannot be transformed into one another. How then can they be ‘equal’ (i. e. comparable) as he asserts? His whole theory, indeed, is thoroughly unsatisfactory. In particular, he entirely fails to explain how compounds (e. g. bone or flesh) come-to-be out of his ‘elements’.

7.
   How the ‘simple’ bodies combine to form compounds.

8.
   Every compound body requires all four ‘simple’ bodies as its constituents.

9.
   Material, formal, and final causes of coming-to-be and passing-away. The failure of earlier theories—e. g. of the ‘materialist’ theory and of the theory advanced by Socrates in the
Phaedo
—must be ascribed to inadequate recognition of the efficient cause.

10.
   The sun’s annual movement in the ecliptic or zodiac circle is the efficient cause of coming-to-be and passing-away. It explains the occurrence of these changes and their ceaseless alternation.

11.
   In what sense, and under what conditions, the things which come-to-be are ‘necessary’. Absolute necessity characterizes every sequence of transformations which is cyclical.

1
     
[314a]
Our next task is to study coming-to-be and passing-away. We are to distinguish the causes, and to state the definitions, of these processes considered in general—as changes predicable uniformly of all the things that come-to-be and pass-away by nature. Further, we are to study growth and ‘alteration’. We must inquire what each of them is; and whether ‘alteration’ is to be identified with coming-to-be,
(5)
or whether to these different names there correspond two separate processes with distinct natures.

On this question, indeed, the early philosophers are divided. Some of them assert that the so-called ‘unqualified coming-to-be’ is ‘alteration’, while others maintain that ‘alteration’ and coming-to-be are distinct. For those who say that the universe is one something (i. e. those who generate all things out of one thing) are bound to assert that coming-to-be is ‘alteration’,
(10)
and that whatever ‘comes-to-be’ in the proper sense of the term is ‘being altered’: but those who make the matter of things more than one must distinguish coming-to-be from ‘alteration’. To this latter class belong Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Leucippus. And yet Anaxagoras himself failed to understand his own utterance. He
says,
at all events, that coming-to-be and passing-away are the same as ‘being altered’: yet,
(15)
in common with other thinkers, he affirms that the elements are many. Thus Empedocles holds that the corporeal elements are four, while all the elements—including those which initiate movement—are six in number; whereas Anaxagoras agrees with Leucippus and Democritus that the elements are infinite.

(Anaxagoras posits as elements the ‘homoeomeries’, viz. bone, flesh,
(20)
marrow, and everything else which is such that part and whole are the same in name and nature; while Democritus and Leucippus say that there are indivisible bodies, infinite both in number and in the varieties of their shapes, of which everything else is composed—the
compounds differing one from another according to the shapes, ‘positions’, and ‘groupings’ of their constituents.)

For the views of the school of Anaxagoras seem diametrically opposed to those of the followers of Empedocles.
(25)
Empedocles says that Fire, Water, Air, and Earth are four elements, and are thus ‘simple’ rather than flesh, bone, and bodies which, like these, are ‘homoeomeries’. But the followers of Anaxagoras regard the ‘homoeomeries’ as ‘simple’ and elements, whilst they affirm that Earth, Fire, Water, and Air are composite; for each of these is (according to them) a ‘common seminary’ of all the ‘homoeomeries’.
[314b]

Those, then, who construct all things out of a single element, must maintain that coming-to-be and passing-away are ‘alteration’. For they must affirm that the underlying something always remains identical and one; and change of such a
substratum
is what we call ‘altering’. Those, on the other hand, who make the ultimate kinds of things more than one, must maintain that ‘alteration’ is distinct from coming-to-be: for coming-to-be and passing-away result from the consilience and the dissolution of the many kinds.
(5)
That is why Empedocles too
¹
uses language to this effect, when he says ‘There is no coming-to-be of anything, but only a mingling and a divorce of what has been mingled’. Thus it is clear (i) that to describe coming-to-be and passing-away in these terms is in accordance with their fundamental assumption, and (ii) that they do in fact so describe them: nevertheless,
(10)
they too
²
must recognize ‘alteration’ as a fact distinct from coming-to-be, though it is impossible for them to do so consistently with what they say.

That we are right in this criticism is easy to perceive. For ‘alteration’ is a fact of observation. While the substance of the thing remains unchanged, we
see
it ‘altering’ just as we
see
in it the changes of magnitude called ‘growth’ and ‘diminution’.
(15)
Nevertheless, the statements of those who posit more ‘original reals’ than one make ‘alteration’ impossible. For ‘alteration’, as we assert, takes place in respect to certain qualities: and these qualities (I mean, e. g., hot-cold, white-black, dry-moist, soft-hard, and so forth) are, all of them,
(20)
differences characterizing the ‘elements’. The actual words of Empedocles may be quoted in illustration—

and he distinctively characterizes his remaining elements in a similar
manner. Since, therefore, it is not possible
³
for Fire to become Water, or Water to become Earth, neither will it be possible for anything white to become black,
(25)
or anything soft to become hard; and the same argument applies to all the other qualities. Yet this is what ‘alteration’ essentially is.

It follows, as an obvious corollary, that a single matter must always be assumed as underlying the contrary ‘poles’ of any change—whether change of place, or growth and diminution, or ‘alteration’; further, that the being of this matter and the being of ‘alteration’ stand and fall together.
[315a]
For if the change is ‘alteration’, then the
substratum
is a single element; i. e. all things which admit of change into one another have a single matter. And, conversely, if the
substratum
of the changing things is one, there is ‘alteration’.

Empedocles, indeed, seems to contradict his own statements as well as the observed facts.
(5)
For he denies that any one of his elements comes-to-be out of any other, insisting on the contrary that they are the things out of which everything else comes-to-be; and yet (having brought the entirety of existing things, except Strife, together into one) he maintains, simultaneously with this denial, that each thing once more comes-to-be out of the One. Hence it was clearly out of a One that
this
came-to-be Water, and
that
Fire,
(10)
various portions of it being separated off by certain characteristic differences or qualities—as indeed he calls the sun ‘white and hot’, and the earth ‘heavy and hard’. If, therefore, these characteristic differences be taken away (for they can be taken away, since they came-to-be), it will clearly be inevitable for Earth to come-to-be out of Water and Water out of Earth, and for each of the other elements to undergo a similar transformation—not only
then,
⁴
(15)
but also
now
—if, and because, they change their qualities. And, to judge by what he says, the qualities are such that they
can
be ‘attached’ to things and
can
again be ‘separated’ from them, especially since Strife and Love are still fighting with one another for the mastery. It was owing to this same conflict that the elements were generated from a One at the former period. I say ‘generated’, for presumably Fire, Earth, and Water had no distinctive existence at all while merged in one.

There is another obscurity in the theory of Empedocles.
(20)
Are we to regard the One as his ‘original real’? Or is it the Many—i. e. Fire and Earth, and the bodies co-ordinate with these? For the One is an ‘element’ in so far as it underlies the process as matter—as that out
of which Earth and Fire come-to-be through a change of qualities due to ‘the motion’.
⁵
On the other hand, in so far as the One results from
composition
(by a consilience of the Many), whereas they result from
disintegration,
the Many are more ‘elementary’ than the One,
(25)
and prior to it in their nature.