Day 5: Walking With Aristotle

It seems we need to stay within a philosophical system to engage. Unless one of us gives, I don’t see how engagement would work.

Hello from my new mental landscape. I put out the fires, pushed through, and the end is in sight. The thesis page count is met, and I am coasting downhill on conclusions. Relief is good. It would be premature to pop the champagne, but I am satisfied that this rite of passage into Aristotle’s world was worth it. The trick was to let go of what I know and remember that the goal is to see nature as Aristotle and then Aquinas did, no mass spectrometer, no scanning electron microscopes, no time-resolved femtosecond flash photolysis absorption spectroscopy. I am setting chemistry aside for the moment, like the cook who throws away recipes and measuring cups so she can cook from her heart.

I was struck by Aristotle’s distinction of artifacts, i.e., artificial things. Here’s a passage from Physics, Book II, Chapter 1 (192b8-20) on causes.

Of the things that are, some are by nature, others through other causes: by nature are animals and their parts, plants, and the simple bodies, such as earth,…