On Generation and Corruption
Aristotle
tr. H.H. Joachim

"Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena are more able to lay down principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development; while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations. The rival treatments of the subject now before us will serve to illustrate how great is the difference between a scientific and a dialectical method of inquiry...." (316a5-12) [PSA: this is also true in ethics.]

"Indeed no lunatic seems to be so far out of his senses as to suppose that fire and ice are one; it is only between what *is* right [ta kala], and what *seems* right from habit [to phainomena dia sunetheian], that some people are mad enough to see no difference." (325a20-23)

"The cause, therefore, of the things which exist by nature is that they are in such and such a condition [to houtos echein]; and it is *this* which constitutes the nature of each thing.... Moreover it is *this* which is both the excellence [to eu] of each thing and its good [agathos]." (333b17-19)

"Out of the elements there come-to-be flesh and bones and the like - the hot becoming cold and the cold becoming hot when they have been brought to the mean. For at the mean is neither hot nor cold. The mean, however, is of considerable extent and not indivisible. Similarly, it is in virtue of a mean condition that the dry and the moist and the rest produce flesh and done and the remaining compounds." (334b25-30) [PSA: similar insights might apply to psuche and arete.]

"It is characteristic of matter to suffer action, i.e. to be moved; but to move, i.e. to act, belongs to a different power. This is obvious both in the things that come-to-be by art and in those that come-to-be by nature. Water does not produce out of itself an animal; and it is the art, not the wood, that makes a bed. Nor is this their only error. They make a second mistake in ommitting the more controlling case [kurioteran aitian]; for they eliminate the essential nature, i.e. the form." (335b30-35)

END