I was pondering a bit of Aristotle’s Physics. The part of Book II, Chap. 9 where he ponders whether change is in the thing causing the change or the thing undergoing the change. Aristotle explained all of this in terms of actions and passion, but I thought that a way to make this more intelligible to the modern mind is to frame it in Newton’s terms.
Specifically, Newton’s Third Law. This is pretty clearly related to Aristotle’s action and passion, but the key here is opposite. For example, in the course on Natural Law, the lectures use the example of water being heated. In Newtonian terms, the answer is easy. The water is being heated, because the flame is being cooled. The water is colder than the flame, so if you turn the action around you can see that the water is making the flame colder. Thus the heating must be in the water because the flame is not heating, it is cooling.
This is an interesting proposition to think about: whether change is in the thing causing the change or in the thing undergoing the change.
Perhaps, it would make it easier to divide reality, of which all things undergoing any change or exerting change are a part, into inanimate, animate, and finally animate and endowed with free will and reason. I think this proposition might apply differently depending on which division we are considering. In case of inanimate objects, scientific laws might be most appropriate and even final. However, in case of free, rational beings change seems to be both in that which causes change and also in the person undergoing change inasmuch as the person assents by free will – in this case, I am thinking mostly of cooperation with God in our spiritual life including virtue, prayer, mortification, etc. When it comes to animate beings such as other living organisms and especially animals, I think that the laws of science will apply more accurately. In general, however, since both animate and inanimate objects are undergoing change without their consent but out of necessity, it is up to the rational, free being to discern what change should be exerted or even how change could / should be interpreted. In this view, ethics and ontology always take precedence over science.
Referring to Zeno’s supporting arguments for Parmenides contestation that “all is one” and that the one, we can assume an undivided reality within The Divinity. The question of change then for Zeno, and other Eliatics, is that it exists in the senses or perhaps in the mind or perception, because the one is indeed a, or The, unity and that does not change. An interesting argument in my mind.
Zeno goes on to create paradoxes to argue for his point. And what follows is simply a response to Ben’s comment on Modern Physics, as opposed or complementary to Newton’s Physics, in which quantum theory seems to express early ancient philosophical commentary on the nature of the Universe.
(I have borrowed the following from the Web since I don’t have my “Works of Aristotle” handy with me today. In this, Aristotle refutes Zeno’s paradoxes. I thought perhaps it might add some light to the evolution of these arguments over time.) The following is taken from: http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/zeno.htm
Physics, (Aristotle’s Chapter 9)
re: Zeno’s Paradoxes
“Zeno’s reasoning, however, is fallacious, when he says that if everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always in a now, the flying arrow is therefore motionless. This is false; for time is not composed of indivisible nows any more than any other magnitude is composed of indivisibles.
Zeno’s arguments about motion, which cause so much trouble to those who try to answer them, are four in number. The first asserts the non-existence of motion on the ground that that which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal. This we have discussed above.
The second is the so-called Achilles, and it amounts to this, that in a race the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead. This argument is the same in principle as that which depends on bisection, though it differs from it in that the spaces with which we have successively to deal are not divided into halves. The result of the argument is that the slower is not overtaken; but it proceeds along the same lines as the bisection-argument (for in both a division of the space in a certain way leads to the result that the goal is not reached, though the Achilles goes further in that it affirms that even the runner most famed for his speed must fail in his pursuit of the slowest), so that the solution too must be the same. And the claim that that which holds a lead is never overtaken is false: it is not overtaken while it holds a lead; but it is overtaken nevertheless if it is granted that it traverses the finite distance. These then are two of his arguments.
The third is that already given above, to the effect that the flying arrow is at rest, which result follows from the assumption that time is composed of moments: if this assumption is not granted, the conclusion will not follow.
The fourth argument is that concerning equal bodies which move alongside equal bodies in the stadium from opposite directions–the ones from the end of the stadium, the others from the middle–at equal speeds, in which he thinks it follows that half the time is equal to its double. The fallacy consists in requiring that a body travelling at an equal speed travels for an equal time past a moving body and a body of the same size at rest. That is false. E.g. let the stationary equal bodies be AA; let BB be those starting from the middle of the A’s (equal in number and in magnitude to them); and let CC be those starting from the end (equal in number and magnitude to them, and equal in speed to the B’s). Now it follows that the first B and the first C are at the end at the same time, as they are moving past one another. And it follows that the C has passed all the A’s and the B half; so that the time is half, for each of the two is alongside each for an equal time. And at the same time it follows that the first B has passed all the C’s. For at the same time the first B and the first C will be at opposite ends, being an equal time alongside each of the B’s as alongside each of the A’s, as he says, because both are an equal time alongside the A’s. That is the argument, and it rests on the stated falsity.”
Pax,
David