On Aristotle Physics. On Aristotle on the void. On Aristotle Physics 5-8 PDF
Preview On Aristotle Physics. On Aristotle on the void. On Aristotle Physics 5-8
PHILOPONUS On Aristotle Physics 5-8 with SIMPLICIUS On Aristotle on the Void This page intentionally left blank PHILOPONUS On Aristotle Physics 5-8 with SIMPLICIUS On Aristotle on the Void Translated by Paul Lettinck & J.O. Urmson LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in 1994 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Paperback edition fi rst published 2014 © 2013 Paul Lettinck and J. O. Urmson (Preface, Richard Sorabji) Paul Lettinck and J. O. Urmson have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as Authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN HB: 978-0-7156-2493-7 PB: 978-1-4725-5804-6 ePDF: 978-1-4725-0182-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. The present translations have been made possible by generous and imaginative funding from the following sources: the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs, an independent federal agency of the USA; the Leverhulme Trust; the British Academy; the Jowett Copyright Trustees; the Royal Society (UK); Centro Internazionale A. Beltrame di Storia dello Spazio e del Tempo (Padua); Mario Mignucci; Liverpool University. The editor wishes to thank Dr Fritz Zimmermann and Dr Peter Lautner for their comments on the translations, Elaine Miller for additional editing of the Philoponus translation and Ian Crystal, Paul Opperman and Dirk Baltzly for their help in preparing the volume for press. Typeset by Ray Davies Printed and bound in Great Britain Contents Preface Richard Sorabji vii Philoponus: On Aristotle Physics 5-8 translated by Paul Lettinck Translator’s Note 2 Introduction 3 Translation 19 Notes 137 English-Arabic-Greek Glossary 151 Index of Names and Subjects 154 Simplicius: On Aristotle on the Void translated by J.O. Urmson introduction and notes by Peter Lautner Introduction 159 Translator’s Note 165 Textual Emendations 166 Translation 167 Notes 223 English-Greek Glossary 237 Greek-English Index 242 Subject Index 263 This page intentionally left blank Preface Richard Sorabji This volume presents works on Aristotle’s Physics by the two rivals, Philoponus and Simplicius, both Neoplatonists of the sixth century AD, the first a Christian, the second a pagan. Philoponus’ text, lost in Greek except for fragments, is here translated for the first time from the Arabic. The Arabic, included in an Arabic translation of Aristotle, is a paraphrase of Philoponus’ commentary on Physics Books 5 to 7, with two comments on the final book, 8. The Simplicius text comes from his huge commentary on Physics Book 4. The comments on Aristotle’s treatment of place and time and Simplicius’ own corollaries on place and time have already been translated by J.O. Urmson in two earlier volumes of this series. What remains is the comments on Aristotle’s treatment of the void in Physics Book 4, chapters 6-9. Philoponus: On Aristotle Physics 5-8 It is of some interest to gain access to a commentary by Philoponus. The first half of his commentary on the Physics, Books 1 to 4, which is available in Greek, is full of daring innovation. The ‘scientific revolution’ of postulating an ‘impetus’ in dynamics started here before it came to the Latin West, and Philoponus’ able reply to Aristotle in defence of motion in a vacuum was to be acknowledged by Galileo.1 It has been suggested that these and other anti-Aristo- telian ideas were inserted by Philoponus in a second edition of the commentary after AD 532, whereas the first edition was produced in 517.2 Many of the later ideas are tailored to Philoponus’ Christian beliefs. The subject matter of Aristotle’s work itself might raise our expectations. Book 5 distinguishes changes and types of changes. Book 6 discusses the continuum. Body, space, time and motion are all argued to be infinitely divisible, rather than made up of indivisible units, and the associated paradoxes are brilliantly handled. Book 7 1. Richard Sorabji, ‘John Philoponus’ in his (ed.) Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science, London and Ithaca NY 1987, ch. 1. 2. Koenraad Verrycken, ‘The development of Philoponus’ thought and its chronology’, in Richard Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, London and Ithaca NY 1990, ch. 11. viii Preface introduces the need for a Prime Mover and Book 8 makes the final case for this necessity. Philoponus’ commentary on these books, as summarised in Arabic, is not, however, as striking as his commentary preserved in Greek, on the first four books. But this is no doubt because of the drastic shortening. The commentary on the first four books of Greek will fill six volumes of English translation; the Arabic summary relating to the last four books fills less than one. On the other hand, Paul Lettinck’s comparison below of the Arabic with the Greek for the first four books suggests that, where comments are preserved in Arabic, they do not diverge very significantly from the Greek. The most interesting difference, perhaps, is that the Arabic seeks to confirm the theory of impetus by drawing on a phenomenon which Philoponus describes in another commentary (in DA 334,40-335,30). Sunlight passing through a coloured glass can throw a pool of colour on a facing stone, and an archer imparts impetus to an arrow, and neither has to impart the effect to the intervening air. The eagerness of the Arabic version to defend the idea of impetus strengthens the view of Fritz Zimmerman that the concept of impetus reached the fourteenth- century West from Philoponus through an Arabic route.3 It is also a pity that only two Arabic passages are recorded from Philoponus’ commentary on Book 8 of the Physics, although both comments reveal the innovative, anti-Aristotelian Philoponus. One passage defends the Christian idea that time began, by insist- ing that a temporal instant need not bound a preceding as well as a following period. The other defends the Christian idea of bodies being created out of nothing, by pointing out that Aristotle is himself committed to an individual form of whiteness, for instance, being created out of nothing. The example is familiar from Phil- oponus’ other writings.4 The Arabic paraphrase presents Philoponus as making inde- pendent contributions at other points too. He joins in the discussion begun by Aristotle, continued, as he reports by Alexander, and still of philosophical concern today, of what counts as one and the same change (one and the same event, in Donald Davidson’s discussion),5 or one and the same outcome of change. Philoponus criticises Aris- totle and maintains that a person can have the same health or process 3. Fritz Zimmermann, ‘Philoponus’ impetus theory in the Arabic tradition’, in Richard Sorabji (ed.), Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science, ch. 5. 4. Against Proclus on the Eternity of the World 340; 347; 365,3; Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World ap. Simplicius in Phys. 1141. Cf. Philoponus in Phys. 54,24-5; 55,12-13; 191,9-33. 5. Donald Davidson, ‘The Individuation of Events’, originally in Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel, N. Rescher (ed.) Dordrecht 1969, pp. 216-34 and reprinted in Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford 1990, pp. 163-80. Preface ix of becoming healthy as before, even if it changes in degree, but not if it is altogether interrupted by illness.6 Another independent contribution is discussed by Paul Lettinck in the list of interesting passages he picks out in his introduction. It may be summarised as follows. Aristotle’s pupil Eudemus had asked how the motion or change undergone by a whole could be the same as the motions or changes undergone by its parts. For the parts of a moving body do not travel only part of the distance, and Philoponus adds that the parts of a whitening body do not go only to a small degree white. Someone, perhaps Eudemus, had said that we do get the result under discussion in the case of growth and diminution. For a person will grow by one cubit when his various members grow by suitable fractions of a cubit. Simplicius was later to discuss whether the time taken by a whole body to make a given journey could be the sum of the motions that the parts would take. He suggests that this would be possible for parts thrown upwards or subjected to motion in other unnatural directions, for then the parts move more easily and in less time than the whole. But with falling bodies, and generally with bodies moving in natural directions, though there will still be a proportionality, it will be the inverse one, because the parts fall less easily and in more time than the whole.7 With this last claim Philoponus would disagree. For he argues in the commentary on Physics that even a much heavier body will fall only slightly faster, and the difference in speed will be imperceptible or nothing at all, if the heavier body is only double.8 He does not contradict this claim when earlier in the same passage he emphasises that a greater weight does indeed fall in (somewhat) less time, nor when in the commentary on Physics 4 he argues that two weights of a pound each joined together are (somewhat) more than two pounds.9 Since he does not take the same view as Simplicius on falling bodies, he needs a different answer. As Lettinck says, his formula here seems to be that the amount of body moved, when the whole moves, is the sum of the amounts of body moved in the movements of the parts. Simplicius: On Aristotle on the Void Aristotle denies the possibility of vacuum or void in On the Heavens 1.9, and in Physics 4.6-9. A void is thought of as a place deprived of body. But Aristotle does not conceive place like other people, as a three-dimensional expanse (diastêma) that goes right through 6. 560,10 ff. 7. Philoponus below 656,10 ff., Simplicius in Phys. 6, 473,21-474,8; 977,31-978,16. 8. Philoponus in Phys. 678,24-684,10 at 683,17-25 9. Philoponus in Phys. 429,7 ff.
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