Abstract
As is often the case in the opening books of Aristotelian treatises, PA I is difficult to interpret because of the way in which all of the elements of the whole argument are anticipated. After some general thoughts on the division of knowledge into different kinds, Aristotle touches upon many of the most seemingly intractable problems to be explored in the analysis of the parts of animals. The issue of whether to examine the common attributes of animals or the more peculiar ones is examined (639a15 ff.), but not answered until the end of Book I. Aristotle contemplates whether one should begin an inquiry into nature by taking up the substantial beings (ousiai) themselves, such as human beings or lions. The issue of the inquiry into animal life turns to a more general reflection on the relation between phenomena that undergo generation and corruption versus things that do not, phenomena that are eternal; this distinction seems to distinguish zoology, or the study of the animate world more generally, from the study of mathematical physics.
Once we recognize the difference between the sphere that is ruled by generation and corruption, and the one that is eternal, we are able to wonder about the causes of generation (639b11). Phenomena that undergo generation and corruption are ensouled things that have certain motions that are to be examined in our study of organic nature. This is all part of a study of nature that requires an examination of matter, substantial being (ousia), moving and final cause (641a26). While it appears as if Aristotle’s predecessors do not adequately appreciate the difference between the organic world and the cosmos, Aristotle presents a history of philosophy in order that we might learn from their missteps.
In addition to the more familiar causes in Aristotle (material, formal, efficient and final), there is an extended discussion of the different meanings of necessity (639b20 ff.) that anticipates the claim that cause can be spoken of in terms of two categories, final cause and necessity (642a2). The relation between the teleological and necessary is one of the most important foci of the PA as a whole, as we shall see.
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Notes
- 1.
Translations of the Greek generally follow Balme (1992a, b) and Lennox (2001). In many ways, Lennox’s translation of this opening passage is superior, but the hyper-literal rendering that is offered here is important to highlight certain connections between the opening lines and the treatise as a whole.
- 2.
As Lennox (2011) argues, Aristotle is a “‘localist’ when it comes to scientific first principles—not just in the sense that each science has first principles peculiar to it but in the sense that those principles will be discovered only by attending to facts that are specific to the domain that they govern” (p. 25).
- 3.
Lennox (2001, p. 121) notes that “PA I makes use of this term [ousia] in a variety of ways, and is one of the more interesting texts in which to explore its meaning.”
- 4.
Aristotle uses the formulation “kata meros” here (639a 23). The translators take it for granted that this formulation is to be rendered “species by species”, implying that meros is used as a synonym for species. A more literal translation would be “according to part” which would draw the reader’s attention to the problem of the relationship between parts-whole analysis and classification. Lennox (1987, p. 115.) renders the phrase as describing in “partial terms” what belongs universally.
- 5.
On this, Balme (1992a, p. 73) notes that “Since [Aristotle] takes for granted that the aim of a zoological logos is not merely to describe but to explain, he may also assume that the first necessary step is to pick out correctly the fundamental generic attributes, because they either are, or point to, the causes of the specific attributes: without the generic attributes, explanation cannot begin. Having once stated a generic attribute, one would obviously not want to repeat the explanation for every instance: that would be absurd because it would show that the expositor had not understood the fundamental character of the cause. If this is what was in Aristotle’s mind it is admittedly odd that he did not say so. But it could be because he was not ready with evidence. So he leaves it with an apparently trivial reason—the tediousness of repetition—which may be ironical.” This is one of the only references that I am aware of in the secondary literature that suggests an ironical aspect to Aristotle! Compare Lennox’s (2001, pp. 122–123) discussion of genos, eidos and diaphora.
- 6.
Plato’s Cratylus suggests, however playfully, some connection of historia with motion and rest: “Let us first take up again the word epistêmê (scientific knowledge) and see how ambiguous it is, seeming to indicate that it makes our soul stand still (histêsin) at things, rather than that it is carried round with them, so it is better to speak the beginning of it as we now do than to insert the epsilon and say epeïstêm; we should insert an iota rather than an epsilon. Then take bebaion (firm), which expresses position and rest, not motion. [437b] And historia (inquiry) means much the same, that it stops (histêsin) the flow. And piston (faithful) most certainly means that which stops (histon) motion” (437a ff.). This is one of only three occurrences of the word historia in Plato—one of the other occurrences is in Socrates’ intellectual autobiography and the other is in the Phaedrus (244c). Cf. the claim in the Physics that the nature of nature is to be understood as the source of motion and rest (192b23ff.).
- 7.
This is especially clear in Metaphysics 984b8 ff.
- 8.
This is not always the case. The mathematically inclined Pythagoreans disregarded the phenomena in their positing, based on rational principles, ten planetary bodies when there are only nine. The Pythagoreans played an important role in the history of philosophy presented in Book I of the Metaphysics: “they regarded the principles of mathematical objects as the principles of all things” (985b26). They are the first people to draw consequences from a pure argument; they disregarded the phenomena, e.g. “they said that the bodies which travel in the heavens are ten; and since the visible bodies are nine, they added the so-called ‘Counter-earth’ as the tenth body” (986a11). The Pythagoreans illustrate an understanding of mathematics in which the worldly phenomena are disregarded.
- 9.
While the beautiful may point to wholes in general, it looks as if it points to the eternal or the perfectly ordered, to the gods. But Aristotle gets to the eternal through a discussion of necessity, as we shall see. See Lennox (2001, pp. 133–134) for a discussion of the ways in which the analogy between artistic and natural production breaks down.
- 10.
Support for this is found in Aristotle’s coinage of the term “entelechy.” In his essay concerning Aristotle’s entelecheia, Ritter (1932) suggests that the term be thought of as wholeness rather than purpose. Such a suggestion is very useful in looking at the PA, and may be what is at work in the present context. The word occurs in the first chapter of the PA at 642a in the talk of animal generation.
- 11.
Broadie (1990) discusses Aristotle’s use of the “craft analogy.”
- 12.
- 13.
cf. Generation and Corruption 337b14.
- 14.
See Lennox (2001, pp. 129–30) for a discussion of the way in which the scientific demonstrations of the necessary governing eternal objects and generated ones differ.
- 15.
The first principle, the material principle, is supposed to be that which does not vary, all is water eternally. Aristotle seems to be showing how physiology or the study of nature ultimately concerns genesis and in this way shows that he is doing something distinct from pre-Socratics. It is not clear whether the contrast we are examining is between the natural sciences and the theoretical ones or whether we are meant to see the difference between these sciences and the crafts. Lennox (2001, pp. 128–130) outlines the various positions defended in the scholarly literature. Like Lennox (2001, p. 129), I see the argument as an examination of the contrast between the natural and theoretical sciences, which is informed and refined by an understanding of generation and necessity.
- 16.
On this, Dudley (2012) claims that Aristotle “is clearly contrasting physics and the (other) theoretical sciences in regard to the mode of demonstration and the type of necessity found in them” (p. 122). Questions regarding types of necessity seem to multiply at turns in the PA.
- 17.
Such a notion is at work in Plato’s Philebus when Socrates examines a genesis eis ousia (26d). The limit imposed on genesis is ousia. But unlike the arts where one can point to a table, it is difficult to pick out any particular moment when an animal has reached the limit of genesis.
- 18.
Dudley (2012) analyzes the Aristotelian notion of chance from many different angles. Thinkers such as Empedocles and Anaxagoras—the “Presocratic universal determinists” as Dudley calls them—“saw no contradiction in holding that a necessary event occurred by chance. Thus for them chance appears to refer to the subjectively unexpected nature of certain necessary events” (p. 3).
- 19.
It might be important to note that this is the second case in which Aristotle appeals to health, the first being at 639b17. Health, as the logos, can be the product of a doctor with the art of medicine, or it can be the product of chance. In the former case we have, in a certain sense, a design (health) with a designer, a doctor. In the latter, we do not have the designer or agent, unless chance is appropriately spoken of as playing this role. Or to use the terminology here, the logos health can have a creator or not. Alternatively, the technê is regarded as the “logos of the work (ergou) without the matter (hulê)” (640a32–34), and so too should we recognize chance as the logos of the work without the matter. In this way, things like health are the work (to ergon).
- 20.
Cooper (1985) has an extended discussion of what he calls Democritean material necessity and hypothetical necessity in the context of the Physics. One of Cooper’s aims is to show that Aristotle “holds, of course, that material necessity operates wherever matter is found, but his claim (as I have interpreted him) that it operates only against the background of hypothetical necessity is limited to the formation and behavior of living things. If, for example, ice forms on a pond as a result of material necessities attaching to the natures of cold air and water, nothing he says in these passages commits him to seek some hypothetical necessity to explain why the air and water in question become conjoined, with that result” (p. 163).
- 21.
Of course this is to abstract from the fact that a particular human being does not have all of the parts that compose the human animal, only those of its particular sex.
- 22.
The closest we get to a discussion of formal cause is the description of the erga, or works, of nature and art (639b21, 640a33); I say this in reference to the way in which ergon will emerge as a crucial characteristic of forms (below 641a2).
- 23.
In her interesting treatment of what she identifies as secondary teleology, Leunissen (2010) notes that, “Aristotle does not deny that natural, materially necessitated processes can have beneficial outcomes. He only denies that they can have such beneficial outcomes on a regular basis without the intervention of goal-directed efficient causes, which (actively) adapt or (passively) co-opt such features in order to support the animal’s well-being” (pp. 34–35). This will be clear in the discussion of certain residues in cephalopods that are put to a good use.
- 24.
“Thales’ ‘water’ is not really water,” Michael Davis (1999, p. 55) claims in his examination of Metaphysics A, “it is a thought thing, not a perceived thing. In a way it is not really material at all. Still, Thales somehow knows that the stuff that is to make everything else knowable to us must itself be known. So, although he cannot explain why the hidden true nature of things should sometimes be visible in things (and so unhidden), he does sense that unless this is the case he will not have succeeded in making the world knowable. In addition, Aristotle adds that perhaps Thales assumed water to be the first principle because of its connection to growth…. But if water as a first principle has within it growth—a hidden cause of change or motion—then Thales’ material cause is, without his realizing it, also an efficient cause.”
- 25.
According to Aristotle, Democritus relied on shape and color. In recognizing color, does Democritus attempt to add a dimension to shape? A corpse does not have the same color. And by dropping a concern with color (640b34), is Aristotle’s argument against Democritus able to progress more smoothly?
- 26.
- 27.
Perhaps we are also pushed to the question, why and how do animals differ at all? It has been suggested (Balme 1987d, p. 301) that Aristotle’s answer to this question “is the double explanation, ‘necessity’ and ‘the better’. Given the necessary limitations of heat and environment, each animal form is the best possible: that is, the form which brings it the most functional advantage, what Aristotle often calls ‘the useful.’” The dialectical relationship between the necessary and the useful can be seen working itself out in what Aristotle would identify as the ergon of organic wholes, their movement and life history. This is something which I explored (Tipton 2006) in relation to Aristotle’s thoughts on two different fishes which are morphologically very similar.
- 28.
Gotthelf (1987, p. 181, n.40) suggests that “identifying what an organ does is not sufficient to explain its presence. One must go on to show why the organisms which have it need something that does what it does (or are otherwise better off for having it rather than not). It seems too that for Aristotle to call what some organ does its function (ergon) is for him to say both that it does that, and that it is necessary (or better) for the organism that it do that”. In my opinion, there is much in Gotthelf’s tantalizing suggestion that needs to be explored. Gotthelf also suggests how this might be a point of contact with contemporary debates, namely those surrounding etiological theories of function. In addition to expanding on this idea of function in relation to the parts of the animal, I will examine the way in which function applies to the organism and its behavior as a whole—ergon as the “work” of the organismal whole. This is a departure from Gotthelf and entails examining what it means for Aristotle to refer to the body as an organon.
- 29.
For a detailed discussion of the way in which form-matter relations require an appeal to function see Cynthia Freeland (1987). Robert Bolton (1987) points out that the account of a thing’s function is to provide basic theoretical information about it. For suggestions on how function may be understood on the organismal level, see Furth (1987, pp. 26–27, p. 29, and esp. p. 39).
- 30.
See Chalmers (2009, pp. 19–41) for a more extended examination of Democritean atomism in the context of the history of science.
- 31.
Gotthelf suggests, “to be ‘teleological’, all will agree, an explanation must have some such form as ‘A is present/occurs because A is necessary or best from some end B.’ Typically an ‘end’ is defined as a good outcome” (Gotthelf 1987, “Postscript” p. 231). For the view that the teleological account was given by Aristotle to draw attention to the material-efficient process (the “as-if” account) see Nussbaum (1978b).
- 32.
Balme recognizes the importance of the passage in which Aristotle indicates that the body as a whole, like any other instrument (organon), is for the sake of some complex activity (praxis) (PA 645b15–18) and stresses the role of activity in Aristotle’s search for the causes (Balme, 1987b, p. 88). As Balme (1987b, p. 88) and Pierre Pellegrin (1986, p. 113) point out, the differentiae are distinguished within the HA under the headings of “parts, lives, activities, character” (HA 487a11). The activities of animals obviously make up their life history characters.
- 33.
Lennox (2001) suggests that his formulation “might refer to the mature stage of each animal, or it might imply a distinction between more and less ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’ kinds of animals. Aristotle is capable of making both points, and occasionally both at once, as at GA II.1, 733a33–b2).” In this investigation, I will argue for the former, but only if “mature stage” is not simply restricted to sexually mature individuals. For an alternative view that stresses the notion of complete or more perfect kinds, see Gotthelf (1987).
- 34.
Lennox (2001) observes that a similar observation is made elsewhere. Understanding the heart as the part that is a mean between mouth and anus helps understand why the issue of blood is of such importance in PA II.
- 35.
Cooper (1987) stresses that, for Aristotle, hypothetical or conditional necessity is always understood relative to an end (pp. 243–244).
- 36.
I understand the “two modes defined in our philosophical treatises” (642a5) to be simple and hypothetical necessity as discussed earlier in PA I. For alternative views, see Balme (1987c, p. 285) and Cooper (1987, pp. 259–260).
- 37.
Freudenthal (1995, p. 182) seems to recognize something like this in his treatment of what he terms the “physiological theory of the functions of nutritive soul.”
- 38.
See also the textually difficult description at PA 662a23 ff. where Aristotle talks of the differentiated workings (tês egasias diaphoras) of the organism. Additionally, in a prelude to the discussion of the variations that occur in uniform and non-uniform parts, Aristotle tells us that the uniform parts contribute either to the ousia of the non-uniform or to the function of the instrumental part (647b25) and that the differentiae are explained as being required for the functions (ta erga) and the ousiai of the animal (648a16; cf. Gotthelf 1987). In these instances the differentiae and erga are juxtaposed in a way that might prompt the question, are the differentiae meant to be seen as erga? Additional evidence for the view I am arguing for is indicated by Aristotle’s discussion of instances when ergon seems to take precedence over the necessary cause in the formation and organization of the material of certain parts (658b23–26).
- 39.
There has to be a point at which matter pre-dates life. The assumption of self-organizing or living matter is Buffonian.
- 40.
While we do not have to agree with the statements regarding the difference between Plato and Aristotle, the relationship between the useful and the search for causes is nicely expressed by Balme (1987c, p. 277): “Aristotle too expresses the distinction between the causes as between necessity and ‘the better’ or the ‘good’, although he makes it clearer than Plato does that ‘good’ is not an extrinsic value-judgment but means the useful or advantageous from the animal’s viewpoint.” Compare also the passage at 639b19 where Aristotle suggests that final cause is more present in the works of art than in the works of nature.
- 41.
Compare Balme’s suggestion: “The directiveness that Aristotle sees in nature is more than natural interactions, so that the teleological explanation coexists with the causal explanation. But he bases the teleology not primarily on directiveness but on the existence of forms. To explain an organ, he says, you must first grasp the complete animal’s form and functions, what it means to be that animal, its ousia” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography, p. 259). Compare this to the view that ousia is somehow moving and formal cause (641a26). Balme does recognize the importance of function in the examination of ousia.
- 42.
Gotthelf (1987) protests that Aristotle never really explains how something comes to be for an end. He suggests that “readers of the corpus will search in vain for a detailed analysis of what it is to be (or come to be) for the sake of something” (p. 204). To examine teleology, not in the case of the generation and development of an animal, but in the case of a functioning being in its environment (cf. Gotthelf 1987, esp. pp. 207–208), one must examine the habits and activities of animal wholes.
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Tipton, J.A. (2014). The Problem of Beginnings (PA I.1). In: Philosophical Biology in Aristotle's Parts of Animals. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 26. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01421-0_2
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