Philoponus: On Aristotle Physics 4.10-14

143 Pages·2011·0.76 MB·English

by  Aristotle.

PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle Physics 4.10-14
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PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
Physics 4.10-14
Translated by
Sarah Broadie
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First published in 2011
Paperback edition fi rst published 2014
© 2011 by Sarah Broadie
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to be identifi ed as Author of this work.
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Acknowledgements
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 Leventis
Foundation; the Arts and Humanities Research Council; Gresham
College; the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust; the Henry Brown
Trust; Mr and Mrs N. Egon; the Netherlands Organisation for Scientifi c
Research (NWO/GW); the Ashdown Trust; Dr Victoria
Solomonides, the Cultural Attaché of the Greek Embassy in London.
The editor wishes to thank Donald Russell, Pantelis Golitsis, Mossman
Roueché and Ursula Coope for their comments, Ian Crystal for
preparing the volume for press, and Deborah Blake at Bristol Classical
Press, who has been the publisher responsible for every volume since
the fi rst.
Typeset by Ray Davies
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Preface Richard Sorabji vii
Translator’s Note xiii
Translation 1
Notes 99
Bibliography 116
English-Greek Glossary 117
Greek-English Index 120
Subject Index 128
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Preface
Richard Sorabji
This commentary by Philoponus, translated here by Sarah Broadie,
discusses Aristotle’s treatment of time in his Physics Book 4, Chap-
ters 10-14, and it creates a surprise. The other parts of Book 4 of
Aristotle’s Physics concern place and vacuum, and the supposed
impossibility of motion in a vacuum. On all these subjects Philo-
ponus’ commentary offered innovative corrections of Aristotle which
were a genuine contribution to science. These corrections were not
all confined to the two digressive ‘Corollaries’ on place and vacuum,
which interrupt the commentary. In those Corollaries Philoponus
argued against Aristotle that a body’s place is not its immediate
surroundings, much less the inner surface of its immediate surround-
ings, but is a three-dimensional extension that it occupies. This
concept of place as space does not exclude place being an empty
vacuum, even though extraneous reasons may require it always to be
occupied.1 Nor, says Philoponus to the later acclaim of Galileo, would
motion in a vacuum be impossible. The absence of resistance in a
vacuum does not (absurdly) imply that movement would take no
time, but only that it would not require extra time to overcome
resistance.2 The heavens take time to rotate, according to Aristotle
himself, even though they meet no external resistance.3 Philoponus
attacked Aristotle’s explanation of the motion upwards and down-
wards of earth, air, fire and water in terms of their having a natural
place.4 He recorded experiments anticipating Galileo with the
dropping of different weights from a height, to establish that speed
of fall is not proportional to weight.5 Pantelis Golitsis has rightly
pointed out that when innovations in the Corollaries are not re-
flected in the main commentary, this need not imply a change of view
viii Preface
by Philoponus, since he warns that he is saving criticisms for the
Corollaries.6 But an enormous innovation does occur in the main
commentary itself. The motion of projectiles after they have left the
thrower’s hand depends, in Aristotle’s view, on the hand turning
pockets of air into no-longer-moved movers of the projectile, and so
requires air, not vacuum. But if that were the case, Philoponus
complains, artillery could shoot projectiles by means of bellows blow-
ing air at its projectiles. Instead, we should postulate impetus, that
is, a force implanted by the thrower directly into the projectile, not
into the air.7 Thomas Kuhn has called that a scientific revolution.
After that, we turn with anticipation to Philoponus’ commentary
on the last part of Aristotle’s Physics Book 4, concerning time. We
have all the more reason to do so, because of the history of objections
against Aristotle on time that were surely known to Philoponus. The
doctor Galen had taken Aristotle to task for drawing the inference
that time itself requires change from the premiss that our thoughts
have to change when we notice time.8 He also charged Aristotle’s
definition of time with circularity because of its reference to prior and
posterior. Themistius had defended Aristotle against this charge,9
and Themistius was tacitly used in Philoponus’ own commentary on
the Physics no less than 600 times, in the estimate of its editor,
Vitelli.10 Further, the head of the Aristotelian school, Alexander, had
written a separate treatise on time,11 and had defended Aristotle’s
claim that time depends on consciousness,12 although Themistius in
his commentary on Physics Book 4 was not to be satisfied with
Alexander’s defence.13 Themistius’ objection is part of a series of
arguments he gives against Aristotle’s treatment of time.14 In his
treatise, Alexander put forward a view that goes beyond Aristotle,
that the instants by which we divide time into past, present and
future exist only in the mind.15
The surprise comes when we find that Philoponus’ commentary on
the part of Physics Book 4 that concerns time is a straight exposition,
with little objection or defence of Aristotle. This cannot be because it
was too early in his career for him to have thought of criticisms,
because the main part of Philoponus’ commentary on Book 4 on time
is the one piece of commentary that allows us to date it precisely. A
reference at the very beginning of the commentary on 4.10, at 703,16-
Preface ix
17, dates the writing to 517 AD. His teacher, Ammonius, would then
have been near the end of his life, and this commentary of Philoponus
is not one of those that are described as being taken from the
seminars of Ammonius. There would have been ample time for the
brilliant Philoponus to think about the wealth of past criticisms and
suggestions, and to work out his own position. One explanation
would be provided by Verrycken’s controversial view that the com-
mentary written in 517 represents a non-combative early strand, and
that all revision came later as a result of religious conversion, and
was added into parts of the early strand.16 But why was it not added
into the comments on time?
So far we might be drawn to a different explanation. Different
commentaries reflect lectures to different levels of student. I sug-
gested in the preface to Owen Goldin’s translation of the commentary
on Posterior Analytics Book 2, that the difference from Philoponus’
commentary on Book 1 might be due not to its being by a different
author, but to its reflecting Philoponus’ lectures to a more elemen-
tary level of student. Might the commentary on Aristotle’s treatment
of time similarly reflect lectures to a more elementary group of
students than those who were regaled with the lectures on Physics
Book 4, Chapter 8, introducing impetus theory? It is the difference
between these two parts of the main commentary on Book 4 that we
need to explain. If the reason lies in the level of the audience, our
expectations of the content of the commentary would have been
pitched too high, although we would be getting clearer about the
circumstances of Philoponus’ writing.
But even if this explanation is correct, it does not provide the
whole story, as is shown by two passages on which Sarah Broadie has
commented and to which she has drawn my attention. Within the
commentary on Physics 4.13, translated here, Philoponus makes one
of three references17 to his still earlier commentary on Book 8 of
Aristotle’s Physics. He tells us that he had there refuted Aristotle’s
attempt to show that motion exists always – in the sense, that is, of
having no beginning or end. This in turn has implications for a
beginning or end of time, given the view, shared by Aristotle, that
motion and time go together. It means that Aristotle should not
argue, as he does at Physics 4.13, 222a29-30, that time will not end,