I’m working on learning ancient Greek, and writing a paper on the first book of Aristotle’s Physics.
The Physics interests me for very much the same reasons LW interests me. It’s been said before that, as people trying to discover the truth of things, we don’t live in a wilderness but in a city, built and rebuilt by generations of scientists and philosophers. The greatest of these were people who inaugurated new methods of inquiry and even new ways of living. This, it seems to me, is exactly what LW is trying to do. I’m interested in this kind of a project, and Aristotle is an interesting guy to study in that capacity. He did not live in an ancient city, and he did not substantially build his science from the stones of older theories. Aristotle was one of the founders, one of the people who began to think in an intellectual darkness so complete we have never seen the like.
This particular paper is about Aristotle’s defense of the possibility of change. This possibility was famously challenged by Parmenides in the following, very stupid sounding dilemma: The result of a change has to become something either from ‘what is’ or from ‘what is not’. However both are impossible. Nothing can result from a change from ‘what is’ because it is already (and so there’s no change). Nor can anything result from a change from ‘what is not’, since nothing would underlie the change.
The challenge here, clearly, is to figure out why this isn’t just a very stupid argument, given that we have reason to believe (in spite of appearances) that it’s not. Aristotle’s response to it is not well understood, and I aim to figure it out.
The Greek is coming along. I have class for four hours a day, five days a week. It’s a hard language.
I’m working on learning ancient Greek, and writing a paper on the first book of Aristotle’s Physics.
The Physics interests me for very much the same reasons LW interests me. It’s been said before that, as people trying to discover the truth of things, we don’t live in a wilderness but in a city, built and rebuilt by generations of scientists and philosophers. The greatest of these were people who inaugurated new methods of inquiry and even new ways of living. This, it seems to me, is exactly what LW is trying to do. I’m interested in this kind of a project, and Aristotle is an interesting guy to study in that capacity. He did not live in an ancient city, and he did not substantially build his science from the stones of older theories. Aristotle was one of the founders, one of the people who began to think in an intellectual darkness so complete we have never seen the like.
This particular paper is about Aristotle’s defense of the possibility of change. This possibility was famously challenged by Parmenides in the following, very stupid sounding dilemma: The result of a change has to become something either from ‘what is’ or from ‘what is not’. However both are impossible. Nothing can result from a change from ‘what is’ because it is already (and so there’s no change). Nor can anything result from a change from ‘what is not’, since nothing would underlie the change.
The challenge here, clearly, is to figure out why this isn’t just a very stupid argument, given that we have reason to believe (in spite of appearances) that it’s not. Aristotle’s response to it is not well understood, and I aim to figure it out.
The Greek is coming along. I have class for four hours a day, five days a week. It’s a hard language.