Simplicius : on Aristotle physics 1.5-9

176 Pages·2012·0.98 MB·English

by  Simplicius

SIMPLICIUS
On Aristotle
Physics 1.5-9
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SIMPLICIUS
On Aristotle
Physics 1.5-9
Translated by
Han Baltussen, Michael Share,
Michael Atkinson and Ian Mueller
with an Introduction by
Richard Sorabji
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
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First published in 2012
Paperback edition (cid:192) rst published 2014
Translation © 2012 by Han Bultussen, Michael Share, Michael Atkinson and Ian Mueller
Introduction © 2012 by Richard Sorabji
Han Bultussen, Michael Snare, Michael Atkinson, Ian Mueller and Richard Sorabji have asserted their
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ISBN HB: 978-0-7156-3857-6
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ePDF: 978-1-4725-0173-8
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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 Scienti(cid:192) c Research (NWO/GW); the
Ashdown Trust; Dr Victoria Solomonides, the Cultural Attaché of the Greek
Embassy in London. The editor is grateful for comments on early drafts to Myrto
Hatzimichali, Robert Wardy, Eleni Kechagia, Giannis Stammatellos and Fiona
Leigh, and for especially full comments to Pamela Huby, Stephen Menn, Rachel
Barney, Harold Tarrant and Carlos Steel. The translation of 1.6 bene(cid:192) ted from
the comments of Carlos Steel, Dirk Baltzly, and Robbert van den Berg. Ian
Mueller died before he was able to revise 1.7-9 in the light of valuable comments
from Donald Russell and James Wilberding. The editor implemented revisions
on 1.7-9 with the aid of those comments. He thanks Michael Atkinson for (cid:192) nal
comments on 1.5 and 1.7-9, as well as for preparing the Greek-English indexes
and subject indexes for 1.5 and 1.7-9, and collaborating with Michael Share on
the indexes for 1.6. He would also like to thank Sebastian Gertz for compiling
the English-Greek indexes and preparing the volume for press, and Deborah
Blake, the publisher responsible for every volume in the series. The editor also
wishes to thank Janel Mueller and Lucas Siorvanes for their help with proofreading.
Typeset by Ray Davies.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Introduction Richard Sorabji 1
Conventions 13
Abbreviations 14
Translation: 1.5-6 15
1.5 Han Baltussen 17
1.6 Michael Share and Michael Atkinson 30
Departures from Diels’ Text and Bibliography 50
Notes 53
English-Greek Glossary 65
Greek-English Index 71
Subject Index 79
Memorial notice 85
Translation: 1.7-9 Ian Mueller 87
Notes 145
English-Greek Glossary 157
Greek-English Index 161
Subject Index 166
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Introduction
Richard Sorabji
1.5 What is meant by principle?
Aristotle (384-322 BC) here uses his survey of earlier natural philosophy
in Physics 1.1-4 in order to establish what the principles (arkhai: origins
or sources) are of natural change. But what is a principle? He seems to
use interchangeably the terms ‘principle’, ‘element’ (stoikheion: liter-
ally: letter of the alphabet) and ‘cause’ (aition: explanatory factor). But
the ancient commentators did not agree at all that they were seen as
interchangeable, as Simplicius (writing after 529 AD) explained in an
opening discussion at 6,31-7,19 and 10,7-12,3. Plato, we there learn, was
said by Aristotle’s pupil Eudemus to have been the first to distinguish
elementary principles or elements, giving the name to the matter and
form (as his pupil Aristotle would call them) of natural things. According
to Simplicius in a later passage (233,10-14), Plato called matter and
inherent form the two elementary principles, and Simplicius comments
that they are elements in the strict sense because they inhere per se in
what comes to be from them. But Simplicius’ opening passage contrasts
Plato’s divine intellect (the demiurge or craftsman of the universe) and
his goodness as being (again in Aristotle’s terms) the efficient and final
causes of natural things, and, since they are above nature, as being
principles of a non-elementary sort. Eudemus agreed in requiring an
element, like letters of the alphabet, to be inherent or present in
(enhuparkhein) that of which it was an element, but he is said to have
differed from Plato by counting only matter as an element, not inherent
form. From this Simplicius dissented, but five hundred years after
Eudemus, his great fellow-Aristotelian, Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c.
205 AD), agreed that what inheres, being matter, is especially called
‘element’. This restriction of the name ‘element’ to lower principles was
not universal. Proclus, for example, Simplicius’ Neoplatonist predeces-
sor in Athens (c. 411-485 AD), used the term ‘element’ for some of the
highest principles above nature in his work called Elements of Theology
(stoikheiôsis theologikê). Conversely, Plato considered that some mate-
rial constituents were too lowly to count as elements or principles. He
said this of the set of elements that became most famous of all, after
being introduced by Empedocles and accepted by Plato, Aristotle, the
2 Introduction
Stoics and Neoplatonists and much of the Middle Ages: earth, air, fire
and water. According to Plato’s Timaeus, however, they deserve to be
called neither elements nor principles, since, being corpuscles, they
have as principles the triangles that make up their sides and these have
further principles in their turn, 48B-C; 53C-D.
To return to Aristotle’s inquiry, there seem to be two restrictions on
the kind of principle he is looking for here. First, for the time being, he
accepted the restriction of naming only principles that inhered in what
came into being from them. This is not surprising, because Physics is
literally the study of nature (phusis), and Aristotle defines nature as an
internal cause of change, because natural things are distinguished from
artefacts by their changing size, shape, quality, and (in the case of
animals) place through internal causes, unlike artefacts which have to
be acted on from without, Physics 2.1; 8.4. Aristotle postponed, as
Simplicius points out, 8,6-9, till the last chapter of the Physics, 8.10, a
discussion of the ultimate external cause of all motion, God, the un-
moved mover.
The second restriction that Aristotle seems to be accepting, as Sim-
plicius indicates at 1.6, 208,18-19, 1.7, 216,32 and 222,13-16, 1.9,
246,12, is that he is looking not just for constituents, but for principles
of change in natural bodies.
His definition of ‘principle’, much stressed by Simplicius, is given at
1.5, 188a27-30. The principles must come not from each other nor from
other things, and all things must come from them. The requirement that
they must not come from each other is later qualified. In a sense, two of
Aristotle’s principles, form and privation, do come from each other, in
that one replaces the other during the course of a change. For example
at 1.7, 190a21-31, Aristotle allows that cultured comes from uncultured.
Simplicius at 183,32-5 takes the ban at 188a27-30 to mean only that
contraries like form and privation are on the same footing, so one is not
a source for the other. At 221,21ff., commenting on Aristotle’s further
remark at 191a6-7, Simplicius takes his point there to be that the
contrary from which the opposite contrary comes facilitates the trans-
formation only by its absence. This is not the robust sense in which, for
example, a statue comes from bronze, in which the bronze is not
replaced, but remains a component of the statue. Aristotle does not go
so far as to claim that a contrary’s coming to be is only accidentally from
a contrary, though he does later argue for the different claim in 1.8,
191a34-b26, taken up by Simplicius from 236,14-238,5, that coming to
be is only accidentally from being or from non-being.
At 181,10-30, Simplicius reports the ascription by Eudorus, a Platon-
ist of the first century BC, to Pythagoreans of certain views about
principles. On one account, the Supreme One is a principle for them,
whereas the lower One and the Indefinite Dyad (sometimes called the
great and the small) are contraries and only elements. This is further
clarified in a report on Moderatus, a Neopythagorean of the next cen-
Introduction 3
tury, in the commentary on ch. 7, at 230,34, who says that the second
One is the Platonic Forms.
1.6 The exact number of principles
non-empirically determined
In 1.6, Aristotle attempts to establish by ratiocination the exact number
of principles. This would seem crazy if one thinks of modern determina-
tions of the constituents or forces constituting matter, which have to be
empirically determined. Moreover, his predecessors were often trying to
determine, on the basis of explanatory conjecture, what those constitu-
ents might be. Earth, air, fire and water commended themselves as
constituents only insofar as they seemed to explain empirical experi-
ence. But here it is relevant that Aristotle was attempting something
slightly different: the analysis of natural change in natural bodies. This
was more a philosophical analysis than an empirical investigation.
Aristotle first appeals to the history of philosophy, pointing out that
most of his predecessors had cited contraries among their principles. He
then claims rather boldly that there cannot be more than one primary
pair of contraries. He reaches the conclusion that all natural change
involves the passage from one contrary, the privation of form, to an-
other, the form or its possession. But something must underlie privation
and form in order to be acted on by them and in order to provide a subject
that will possess in turn the contrary attributes. We need only one such
underlying thing, matter, if there is only one pair of contraries.
Thus (190b29-191a7, discussed in 221,20-222,28) we may seem to
need three principles, matter, form and privation. But a case might be
made for saying that we need only two, for form is sufficient to produce
change by its presence or absence, and this discussion is continued into
1.7 and later. It turns out in the commentary on 1.9, at 245,26-30, that
Simplicius considers the reduction to two principles to be Plato’s view.
But already at 7,34-8,1, Simplicius, in the course of praising Aristotle
as surpassing even Plato in the philosophy of nature, credits Aristotle
for distinguishing matter from privation. Simplicius follows Aristotle
1.7, 190a15-17; 190b23-7; 191a1-3 and the Aristotelian Alexander in
saying that matter and privation need to be distinguished in being
(einai), form (eidos) and defining character (logos), even if not in num-
ber, 244,29-245,9; 247,20-1. Moreover, Aristotle is concerned at 1.9,
191b35-192a1, that the distinction of privation from matter is needed
for getting clear about the merely accidental sense in which things come
to be from what per se is not. This had been explained in terms of
privation at 1.8, 191a34-b26. Aristotle went on to warn at 1.9, 192a1-2
that those who regard matter and privation as one in number may make
the mistake of thinking them one in potentiality. Aristotle finally
plumps for three principles at the end of 1.8, at 191a20.