Aristotle Metaphysics

Aristotle Metaphysics

1. part 1

   • all men by nature desire to know
   • The animals born with the faculty of sensation and from sensation is born memory, that with it we can learn quicker than the others that do not remenber
   • Human being lives by art and reasonings
   • From memory experience is produced in men
     • many memories of one single thing produce the capacity for one single experience
     • Experience is equal to science and art because they arrive to men through the experince
       • but the arts belong more to knowledge and understanding
     • The men with experience succed more than the ones that not
   • The reason is knowledge of individuals, art of universals,and actions and productions are all concerned with the individual
   • wisdom depends in all cases rather on knowledge because men with experience knows that the thing is like that, but do noy know why while others knows the why and the cause
   • The wisdom is knowledge about certain principles and causes

2. reflection

   • Aristotle metaphysics can be seen reflected today that also everything has a principle and a cause for example since he defines that wisdom has certain principles and causes this can be seen reflected in that teachers are wise since they know why that happens in their subject, since they studied why, and they know it, and at this moment the students only know that things are just like that but not why then this would be a principle and a cause in perception of wisdom.

3. part 5

   • The pitagoric philosophers said that in numbers they seemed to see many resemblances to the things that exist and come into being-more than in fire and earth and water ; since, again, they saw that the modifications and the ratios of the musical scales were expressible in numbers;-since, then, all other things seemed in their whole nature to be modelled on numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature
     • all the properties of numbers and scales which they could show to agree with the attributes and parts and the whole arrangement of the heavens, they collected and fitted into their scheme; and if there was a gap anywhere, they readily made additions so as to make their whole theory coherent.
   • contraries are the principles of things; and how many these principles are and which they are
   • some suppose that there is one corporeal principle, others that there are more than one, but both put these under the head of matter; and on the other hand from some who posit both this cause and besides this the source of movement

4. part 4

   • among existing things there must be from the first a cause which will move things and bring them together.
   • since the cause of all goods is the good itself.
   • For Anaxagoras uses reason as a deus ex machina for the making of the world, and when he is at a loss to tell from what cause something necessarily is, then he drags reason in, but in all other cases ascribes events to anything rather than to reason.
   • Empedocles, though he uses the causes to a greater extent than this, neither does so sufficiently nor attains consistency in their use. At least, in many cases he makes love segregate things, and strife aggregate them.

5. part 3

   • they tell us that we have to acquire knowledge of the original causes , and causes are spoken of in four senses. In one of these we mean the substance, the essence ; in another the matter or substratum, in a third the source of the change, and in a fourth the cause opposed to this, the purpose and the good .
     • nothing else comes to be or ceases to be; for there must be some entity-either one or more than one-from which all other things come to be, it being conserved.
   • most thought the principles which were of the nature of matter were the only principles of all things.
     • which all things that are consist, the first from which they come to be, the last into which they are resolved , this they say is the element and this the principle of things, and therefore they think nothing is either generated or destroyed, since this sort of entity is always conserved.
   • Anaxagoras of Clazomenae says "the principles are infinite in number; for he says almost all the things that are made of parts like themselves, in the manner of water or fire, are generated and destroyed in this way, only by aggregation and segregation, and are not in any other sense generated or destroyed, but remain eternally."

6. part 2

   • understanding and knowledge pursued for their own sake are found most in the knowledge of that which is most knowable ; and the first principles and the causes are most knowable; for by reason of these, and from these, all other things come to be known, and not these by means of the things subordinate to them.
     • the science which knows to what end each thing must be done is the most authoritative of the sciences, and more authoritative than any ancillary science; and this end is the good of that thing, and in general the supreme good in the whole of nature.
       • For the most divine science is also most honourable; and this science alone must be, in two ways, most divine.
   • The wise man know all things although he do not know each in detail
     • someone wiser is the one who can learn difficult things. and not easy to be known for men
   • in every branch of knowledge and in science also which is desirable on its own account and for the sake od knowiing it is more of the nature of wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its resuts
     • The superior science is more of the nature of wisdom than the anciallary; for the wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise obey him