Ben B. Day's comment on Plato and Aristotle seemed to be saying
that Aristotle was in some sense an absolutist, that there is a
final end to knowledge. I don't see any justification for that
claim.
As for "nature," could the statement "All babies by nature cry,"
be restated as "Babies tend to cry a lot". So if all men by nature
desire to know, he means a tendency, strong perhaps, but not
in principle for every person; he does not have a mathematical
description of nature.
Ed Sarkis
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> From: "ed sarkis" <edsarkis@...>
>
> Ben B. Day's comment on Plato and Aristotle seemed to be saying
> that Aristotle was in some sense an absolutist, that there is a
> final end to knowledge. I don't see any justification for that
> claim.

I think there is some support for this claim (possibly) in Aristotle's
regard for this science of principles and causes. He admits that some might
say this is a science only god may have. However I think he's proceeding
with some optimism about an end to knowledge with respect to his inquiry.

> As for "nature," could the statement "All babies by nature cry,"
> be restated as "Babies tend to cry a lot". So if all men by nature
> desire to know, he means a tendency, strong perhaps, but not
> in principle for every person; he does not have a mathematical
> description of nature.
> Ed Sarkis

As for nature, it has been outlined by another list member. In the Physics
it is described/defined as the source or principle of motion or change in
something. I see no reason to deviate from that as Metaphysics seems to
immediately the Physics.

Dimitrius Rue

> From: "ed sarkis" <edsarkis@...>
>
> Ben B. Day's comment on Plato and Aristotle seemed to be saying
> that Aristotle was in some sense an absolutist, that there is a
> final end to knowledge. I don't see any justification for that
> claim.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "absolutist" here. I certainly didn't
say (or mean) that Aristotle thought we would stop striving for knowledge
at some point in our lives, or in history. I was saying that, for Aristotle,
it is wonder about the nature of things that drives us to philosophize -
and this wonder he equates to the desire to have-known the nature, i.e.
to possess knowledge of it. And this possession is the ends towards which
philosophy strives. The reason we use a syllogism to prove that Socrates is
mortal is so that we can possess it as knowledge, as fact. We no longer have
to wonder if or why Socrates is mortal when we establish it conclusively.
So, this would be an example of the "final end of knowledge" /I/ was talking
about - not an overall intellectual quietism. It follows, of course, from
this position that it would be /possible/ to know all things if one
reasoned through them all, although this would of course take much longer
than any of us has. It seems that Aristotle departs from Plato here. For
Plato there is an /inherent/ difference between mortal and divine knowledge,
and the former is regarded as always tenuous, always consisting in
imperfect hypotheses, such that the wisest of mortals is he who knows
that mortals can know nothing with certainty (i.e. Socrates).

----Ben

Souran,

My current thinking may be of help. I see elements of infinite possibility in a state of fire, which pass into water where they are named or baptized and then move into a crystalline or cube shape where they are detailed and become a form, which suddenly appears in a spherical area where it is observed. ( this is like Shakespeare's concept of a play within a play in which new form can appear within this plane of existence) Observation attaches energy packets which is the time that freezes observables and imparts duration until understanding releases the time energy and existence ceases, leaving a space for the sudden appearance of new forms.

The idea that all which we sense is separated from our senses by an interval of time means that all impressions we receive are existing in the past and the energy that our attention adds to an observable moves it to a new location (Heisenberg) and we can only know what it appears to be or its location; never both. However with this concept we can move a new form or play onto our observed stage and keep it with a cube, then there is the possibility to create and not just observe.

Steve Learnard

----- Original Message -----
From: Soran Mardini
To: aristotle-met@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 10/4/2007 11:46:35 AM
Subject: [aristotle-met] (unknown)


I have some difficulty to understand Aristotle's point
of view of the relationship between the mouvement and
the sudden, unexpected appearance of a God!!
Can you help bridge the gap?
Souran

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