Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle on the matter of mind 223of the body. In this respect, it may be useful to note that dwarfs represent a special human type 60 to which Aristotle refers a number oftimes and which is said to suffer from all sorts of structural cognitive weaknessesand disturbances. Thus at Mem. 453 a 31, dwarf-like people are saidto have poorer memories than their opposites becauseof much weight on their perceptual faculty, which makes it difficult forthem to retain the movements and which also makes it difficult for themto recollect – which is an intellectual process, as he has said in 453 a 10ff. –along a straight line. 61 At Somn. vig. 457 a 22ff., they are said to sleep muchbecause of the great upward movement and evaporation (of hot moisturederived from food). Young children suffer from the same defects, 62 but intheir case growth will bring them to perfection later in their lives.It is not very clear how the idea of agility of thought and common senseis to be reconciled with the statement in the Physics passage that thinkingconsists in rest and stillness. It may be that Aristotle is talking about differentstages of the process, duskinēton referring to a disturbance of the supply ofappearances that provide the intellect with material to thinkabout and to halt upon (although it is hard to read this into the Greek);or it may be that he is speaking about different levels, or different typesof movement, duskinēton referring to a more abstract, less physical typeof movement – although, again, this is not expressed very clearly in theGreek. It may also be that duskinētos, as the opposite of eukinētos, should beunderstood as a disturbance of the balance between movement and stillness(cf. vs. , and that the ideal state consists in a meanbetween two extremes (cf. Mem. 450 b 1–11); however, the difficulty thatremains is that this still presupposes some sort of movement, whereas thePhysics passage seemed to say that thinking depends on the coming to astandstill of bodily motion. Anyway, the passage also seems to commit itselfto a location of thinking at a relatively high part of the body. 63A number of passages briefly allude to incidental disturbances of the intellectby bodily conditions. Thus in his discussion of ‘imagination’ 60 As appears from Gen. an. 749 a 4, they are a deformation . On Aristotle’s views ondwarfs (and their medical background) see Dasen (1993) 214–20.61 For the notion of see 453 a 25; see also below, p. 229.62 Children are also mentioned in Mem. 453 b 4; 450 b 6; Somn. vig. 457 a 18ff.63 The question might be raised why, if the bodily structure of man is supposed to be subservient to theperformance of his ‘most divine’ part, thinking is not located in the brain (as was Plato’s argumentin the Timaeus (90 a ff.), of which the present passage is clearly reminiscent). However, Aristotlemay have had other reasons for not considering the brain as an ideal location (see Kullmann (1982)233–4), and he may have been reluctant to express himself on any location of the intellect (see below,n. 65).