ARISTOTLE AND THE FIVE ELEMENTS

It can be said that Aristotle’s Physics ought not to be a part of his philosophical examination, because what we know as physics is a natural science, and not a division of philosophy. Such an argument surely misses a couple of key points, one being that, in our pre-Socratic experience, science has always come inseparably from philosophy, and Aristotle clearly belongs to the same tradition; and the other being that what we call physics is not what Aristotle had in mind using this word. The Greek word physis, meaning nature, refers to the potential for growth (phyein=make grow) inherent in all living things striving towards actualization (curiously, the once highly fashionable new-age term ‘self-actualization’ has been rather unceremoniously taken from Aristotle’s vocabulary!), which immediately immerses us in teleology, which in turn belongs to bona fide philosophy, without any doubt about it whatsoever.

In fact, Aristotle treats science just like he treats philosophy, which is why physical, or any other, science is by virtue of this connection an integral part of his philosophy.

The physis of a thing, to Aristotle, is its purpose in the order of things, turning it into a cause, which works for the sake of something, which leads to a discussion of the view that nature works of necessity without a purpose, as Aristotle discusses the survival of the fittest in the form taught by Empedocles. This cannot be right, he argues, because things happen in fixed ways, and when a series has a completion, all preceding steps are for its sake. Those things are “natural” which “by a continuous movement originated from some internal principle arrive at some completion.” (Physics 199^b)

It is very hard today to take such physics seriously, but there is a big difference between taking something on the authority of ipse dixit and contemplating upon a weird theory for the sake of a possible inspiration, that is, a brainstorm. I say that brainstorms happen most frequently when we get off the track of common sense into the strange fields of eccentricity. It is extremely strange to call Aristotle an eccentric or to suspect him of irrationality, when he seems to be the epitome of the opposite, but what makes all the difference is the fact that we are living in a post-Aristotelian world and are no longer subdued by his rationalist thinking into an intellectual submission, which, as we remember, had been the case for two thousand years.

The second part of Aristotle’s physics discussed here, which is the one that has contributed the title of this entry, is expounded in his treatise On the Heavens. There are two physical realities in the universe: one is sublunary, that is, literally, below the moon (relative to our earth, which is, as we remember, spherical and rests right in the center of the universe). All things below the moon are, so-to-speak, mortal, that is, subject to generation, growth, and decay. They all predictably consist of the Heraclitean four elements: earth, water, air and fire. All of them (surprise, surprise!) move rectilinearly. But above all these from the moon upwards  are the heavens, where everything is ungenerated and indestructible. Not only that, but none of the heavenly bodies partake of the terrestrial four elements. All of them are composed of the mysterious fifth element and they move in circles, being attached to heavenly spheres.

With this natural fairytale we have come to the end of the Aristotelian subsection, and whatever derogative stuff can be said about the great Aristotle, the fact that our next magnificent shadow is separated from him by a distance of two millennia speaks volumes in his behalf and makes his critics look mean and ugly.

(This is my last entry of the Aristotle subsection of the Magnificent Shadows section. Beginning tomorrow, my wife’s postings of Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov resume with the chapter Who-R-U, Margarita?)