Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

270 THE ULTIMATE CAUSE OF CHANGE: GODnon-everlasting changing things • everlasting changing things •everlasting changeless thingsThis progression from more to less change can be understood in an abstractway, as referring to anything that might fit each of the three descriptions.In that case, we should note, the third description would apply not only tothe ultimate cause of change, which is transcendent, but also to inseparableforms, which are themselves everlasting and changeless. But there is nodoubt that <strong>Aristotle</strong> rather intends it to be understood in a concrete way,i.e. as referring to certain particulars: plants, animals and humans underthe first description; the planets, stars, heavenly spheres and above all theoutermost heavenly sphere under the second description; and the ultimatecause of change under the third.This shows that <strong>Aristotle</strong>’s argument for the ultimate cause of change,although highly abstract, is based on the appeal to concrete particularthings with which we are familiar from experience: plants, animals, humanson the one hand, and planets, stars and the heavens on the other. For whatthe ultimate cause of change is introduced to explain is neither change ingeneral nor a species of change in the abstract, but rather, primarily anddirectly, the motion of the outermost heaven, and indirectly everythingelse in the universe that is either carried by or included within theoutermost heaven. So his argument is based on the accumulatedexperience, extending over centuries and millennia, of starlit skies, and onhis own scientific interpretation, which involves much abstract argument,of these astronomical data. Two conclusions in the area of astronomy andcosmology are central in his argument for the ultimate cause of change.First, the universe is everlasting, i.e. infinite both backwards and forwardsin time (see On the Heavens, I. 10–12; see also §4 of this chapter). Second,the universe is finite in space, for it is perfectly spherical and bounded byan outermost sphere which carries the fixed stars and moves in perfectlyuniform, circular motion—this is the outermost heaven (see On theHeavens I. 5–7).It may strike us as surprising that <strong>Aristotle</strong> combines the belief in thetemporal infinity of the universe with a belief in its spatial finitude. Buthere it is crucial to note that, for <strong>Aristotle</strong>, there is no distinction betweenthe finite universe within space, on the one hand, and space itself, on theother hand. For space, according to <strong>Aristotle</strong>’s conception of space, doesnot surround the universe, rather it is itself bounded by the universe.Figuratively speaking, if one stood on the outermost heaven and the limitof the universe, one would be standing at the limit of space itself, and therewould be no ‘outside’ into which one could stick one’s hand. As Kuhn