Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle on the matter of mind 219some things by nature itself, with regard to others by other factors, but in eithercase while certain qualitative changes take place in the body, just as with the useand the activity [of the intellect] when a man becomes sober or wakes from sleep. Itis clear, then, from what has been said, that being changed and qualitative changeoccurs in the perceptible objects and in the perceptive part of the soul, but in noother [part], except incidentally .The passage stands in the context of an argument in which Aristotle istrying to prove that dispositions of the soul are notqualitative changes , and in the case of thinking he even goesfurther to deny that any activity of the intellectual part of the soul is aprocess of ‘coming to be’ , although it is accompanied by suchprocesses taking place in the body, that is, in the perceptual part of thesoul. In the passage quoted it is clearly stated that thinking, while carefullydistinguished from bodily motions, is accompanied by, and is the resultof, these bodily motions. The acquisition of knowledge is compared withthe transition from having knowledge to using it which takes place whensomebody wakes up from sleep or emerges from drunkenness, states whichare said to impede the use of knowledge, namely the transition from ‘first’to ‘second actuality’. 45 This comparison, and the remark about children’sinability to think and judge because of their physical constitution, clearlyindicates that thinking, though not equated with physical movement, isvery much dependent on bodily states and processes; it is said to resultfrom ‘the soul coming to a rest’ or even from ‘reasoning coming to a standstill’. The use of these two terms may be significant:‘soul’ apparently refers to the embodied nutritive and perceptual powers asa whole, and as for dianoia, there are indications in Aristotle’s works thatthis is a wider concept covering a variety of cognitive actions in the borderarea between perceiving and thinking (see below).The idea that thinking consists in ‘rest’ or ‘standing still’ is a traditionalnotion which also occurs elsewhere in Greek literature and which45 In his discussion of this and related passages, Tracy (1969) 274 comments: ‘Now the very natureof thought and knowledge demands that the phantasm upon which they depend be undisturbedand tranquil. For, psychologically, thought and knowledge are not a movement but the terminationof movement, a settling down or repose of the mind in the possession of its object, which dependsupon a corresponding tranquillity in the sense power serving it . . . Thus the original acquisitionand subsequent actualization of intellectual virtues like scientific knowledge or wisdom are broughtabout not by any movement in the intellect itself, but by “something else coming to be present” sothat the intellect “rests” or “halts” upon it. From what we have seen of the intellect and its operationwe may infer that Aristotle has in mind here the phantasm, which presents the universal, – theintelligible form – as embodied in particular sensible qualities . . . Thus the virtue of knowledge andits activation, being dependent upon the phantasm produced by the sense power, are impeded orrendered impossible by the physical disturbances accompanying drunkenness, sleep, disease andgrowth, as well as the dissolution of old age.’