Abstract
This contribution focuses on Aristotle’s account of place (not: space) as it is developed in Physics 4, 1–5, a difficult text which has proved to be both influential and a source of problems and discussions in the ancient and medieval Aristotelian tradition. The article starts out by briefly positioning this account within the Corpus Aristotelicum, within the later ancient and medieval Aristotelian tradition, and within the tradition of theories of place and space in general. It goes on to examine the argument of Phys. 4, 1–5, showing that proper attention to Aristotle’s dialectical procedure is crucial for a correct understanding and evaluation of the various claims that we find scattered throughout his text. It then zooms in on the most important questions, problems and loose ends with which Aristotle’s theory confronted his commentators (ancient, medieval and modern): the puzzling arguments for the rejection of the rival conception of place as an independent three-dimensional extension (and of the void); the supposed role of Aristotelian places in the explanation of motion; the supposed role of Aristotelian natural places in the explanation of natural motion; the problem of the required immobility of Aristotelian places; and the problem of the emplacement of the heavens.
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- 1.
Although this paper offers a fresh, synthesizing perspective, it covers a number of items which I have discussed, sometimes at greater length and in more detail, in earlier publications as well. Inevitably, therefore, there will be some overlap (from slight to considerable) with my earlier work, in particular with Algra 1995 in Sections 2.1 and 2.5, and with Algra 2014 in Sections 2.3, 2.4, 2.6 and 2.7.
- 2.
On the character of Eudemus’ work, see Gottschalk 2002 and Sharples 2002. On Theophrastus’ work and the nature of his Aristotelianism , see Gottschalk 1998 and Sharples 1998. Their reactions to Aristotle’s theory of place are discussed in more detail in Algra 2014, 25–29 (Eudemus) and 29–38 (Theophrastus).
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
On the discussion of place in Sextus Empiricus , also in relation to the text of Physics 4, see Algra , 2015.
- 6.
English translations of the commentaries on Physics 4 by Themistius , Simplicius and Philoponus are available in Richard Sorabji’s invaluable series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. For Themistius, see Todd 2003; for Philoponus, see Furley and Wildberg 1991 and Algra and Van Ophuijsen 2012; for Simplicius, see Urmson 1992 and Urmson and Siorvanes 1992. Alexander’s commentary is no longer extant. Fragments are discussed and a reconstruction attempted in Rashed 2011. On the later ancient commentary tradition, in general and in relation to the school practice, see Sorabji 1990. Some of the most important passages on (Aristotle’s conception of) place from the ancient commentary tradition have been conveniently collected and translated, with brief introductions, in Sorabji 2004, 226–243. Much of this material has been discussed at greater length in Sorabji 1988, esp. 125–218.
- 7.
- 8.
A translation of Philoponus commentary on Physics 4, 1-5 is available in Algra and Van Ophuijsen 2012. The philosophically more significant Corollary on Place has been translated separately by Furley and Wildberg 1991. On the relation between the Corollary and the commentary proper, see Algra 2012. Simplicius’s Corollary on Place is available in translation in Urmson and Siorvanes 1992.
- 9.
Text quoted and discussed in Algra 1995, 17, n15.
- 10.
Bergson 1889, a shortish and mainly paraphrasing study.
- 11.
Morison 2002. “Enduring philosophical interest” is a quote from the somewhat over-excited blurb text.
- 12.
The quotation is from Irigaray 1998, 48 (English translation of a chapter from her 1983 Éthique de la différence sexuelle).
- 13.
On concepts of place versus concepts of space see see Algra 1995, 20–21.
- 14.
This threefold typology is further worked out, with references to the relevant texts, in Algra 1995, 15–22. What I here call ‘metaphysical’ conceptions of place or space can be found in the works of some Neoplatonists of late antiquity: Iamblichus , Proclus , Syrianus , Damascius , Simplicius . They all somehow connect place or space with form, causation and creation (dêmiourgia). This is consistent with the Neoplatonic tendency to claim that the lower hypostases are somehow ‘in’ the higher and formative ones. Thus Iamblichus can claim that place is a power that “sustains bodies and holds them apart, raising up those that have fallen [i.e. disintegrated into prime matter, KA] and uniting those that are scattered, filling them up and surrounding them on every side” (Iamblichus ap. Simplicium In Phys. 640, 2–6). On these theories, see Sambursky 1982, 11–29; Sorabji 1988, 202–215, with comments in Algra 1992, 157–162.
- 15.
Cf. Phys. 4, 209b11-13: “That is why Plato in the Timaeus says that matter and space (χώρα) are the same thing.” On ancient and modern interpretations of the receptacle of the Timaeus as either space or matter (or both), and on Aristotle’s critique, see Algra 1995, 72–120.
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
On the reason why Aristotle thinks (perhaps, at first sight, surprisingly) that we might be tempted to identify place with form, see below, p. 26 ff.
- 19.
Phys. 4, 184a16-18. See above, n16.
- 20.
See also below, text 7.
- 21.
The quotation is from Buridan’s Questiones super octo Physicorum libros Aristotelis, Paris 1509 (first printed edition), f. lxxiii rb. Some modern scholars have suggested that the Categories presents us with an early view, and that Aristotle had changed his mind on the subject of place by the time he was writing the Physics. This possibility cannot be excluded, but is less likely, since (i) the underlying conception of place in Cat. does not appear to be very coherent anyway, and (ii) the conception of place as three-dimensional extension also recurs in non-technical contexts in a later work such as the Meteorology; see below, text 7. On this, on the relation between the two treatises and their respective conceptions of place in general, and on some later interpretations of the differences, see Algra 1995, 121–153.
- 22.
Simplicius In Phys. 601, 1–3. Here, and in the rest of this contribution, references to the texts of Themistius , Philoponus and Simplicius use the page and line numbers of the standard editions in the series Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca (CAG).
- 23.
A second, related objection is: “how could a thing move to its own place, if its place was its matter or its form” (210a2-3); presumably the idea is that, if a thing’s form or matter were its place, it would always by definition be in its own place. A third objection (210a5-9) is that form and matter move along with the thing of which they are the form and matter, which would mean that place itself would be moving, and thus changing place.
- 24.
See 208b28: “every perceptible body is in a place;” 209a26 “every body is in a place;” 212b28 “only a movable body is in a place, not everything.”
- 25.
- 26.
They are, briefly: (i) that place is the first thing surrounding that which is in place; (ii) that it is separate from the emplaced object; (iii) that it is neither larger nor smaller than the emplaced object; (iv) that it can be left behind by the object and is separable; (v) that it exhibits the directions ‘above’ and ‘below;’ (vi) [that it helps to explain] that each body should naturally move to its own place. Note, by the way that strictly speaking (i) has by this time not yet been established (the rival conception of place as a separate three-dimensional extension is only eliminated in the course of chapter 4). This illustrates what has been noted in the text above, viz. that the argument in Phys. 4, 1–5 is not ‘linear.’
- 27.
Of course, as we saw, the common conception of place is not confined to the idea of place as a ‘vessel and surrounder.’ But Aristotle seems to be referring back to the revised list of phainomena presented at the beginning of this chapter (and by now the rival conception of place as three-dimensional extension has indeed been eliminated).
- 28.
Theophrastus ap. Simplicium In Phys. 604, 5-11 (= Theophrastus fr. 146 FHSG). On Theophrastus’ position and the interpretation of these aporiai, see Algra 2014, 29-38.
- 29.
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) in his Short Commentary suggests that the main rival views of place as either a surrounding surface or an extension should be presented as alternatives in a hypothetico-disjunctive argument. See Lettink 1994, 313.
- 30.
On which see his discussion in Physics 3, with the excellent introduction in Hussey 1983, xviii-xxvi.
- 31.
See e.g. In Phys. 577, 32-578, 4; and Algra 2012, 9.
- 32.
See Phys. 3, 200b20: “Change seems to be impossible without place and void and time, and in any case place, void and time are pervasive and common to all kinds of change, so for both these reasons we shall obviously have to look into each of them” (transl. Waterfield).
- 33.
Cf. Philoponus In Phys. 567, 8-29. On unorthodox conceptions of place in the Corpus Aristotelicum see Algra 1995, 182–188.
- 34.
Sorabji 1988, 190.
- 35.
Here again, we may note, the focus seems to be on place as a ‘locator’ of static substances.
- 36.
One may compare the earlier claims that place is “different from all the things that by replacement come to be in it,” and something “which they alternately leave and enter” (Phys. 4, 208b1-8), and the fact that Aristotle more than once describes place as a kind of vessel that can be filled, but also left behind (212a14-15).
- 37.
Lettink 1994, 303.
- 38.
Just some examples: Bonaventura Sent. II, dist. 14, pars I, art. III, qu. 2 thinks of place as a moving cause in speaking of “the force of the place that attracts and of the place that expels” (virtus loci attrahentis et virtus loci expellentis). Thomas Aquinas De physico auditu, liber IV, lectio I, objects to such a view by claiming that place rather attracts like a final cause (sicut finis dicitur attrahere). Some modern scholars have taken natural place in Aristotle to figure as a formal cause (Pierre Duhem ); others see it as a final cause (Michael Wolff , Richard Sorabji ). For references and further discussion, see Algra 1995, 195–221, esp. 196–197 and 219–221.
- 39.
Thus Sorabji 1988, 187, n6.
- 40.
More details in Algra 1995, 205–206 and 216–217.
- 41.
For a fuller discussion of the dynamics of natural motion (including the relevant passages in the On the Heavens), see Algra 1995, 195–221.
- 42.
For Simplicius , see In Phys. 533-22-25 where it is argued that “if place is not the same as being in a place […] and the goal of bodies, if anything, is to be in a particular place, then place [itself] is not the final cause.” On Philoponus’ similar position see the reconstruction in Algra 2012, 7–9. On similar qualifications in Averroes and even in Thomas Aquinas , see Algra 1995, 219–220, with n67 and n68.
- 43.
- 44.
On the concepts of formal and material place in the medieval discussions, see Grant 1981b, 63–72.
- 45.
See Morison 2002, 155–161.
- 46.
Morison, appears to support his interpretation by offering a different translation of the words ὁ πᾶς μᾶλλον ποταμὸς τόπος. He takes them to mean: “rather the whole river is a place,” i.e one of the possible ways of identifying the surrounding surface, next, for example, to the identification of this surface as the limit of the surrounding universe. In this reading, in other words, the eventual identification of the surrounding surface as the surface of the surrounding immobile universe is thus at least implied. However, the fact that the noun τόπος here occurs without the article is perfectly normal Greek idiom for nouns in a predicate position. It does not indicate that Aristotle is talking about ‘a place’ rather than ‘the place.’ Indeed the equivalent of ‘a place’ would probably have been something like τόπος τις. The context seems to suggest that we are being told that it is not the immediately surrounding water, but the river as a whole that is said to be the place of the boat.
- 47.
See Cleomedes Cael. 1, 1, 39–43 Todd . More or less the same thought experiment was referred to in the 49th proposition of the famous Parisian condemnation of 1277 issued by bishop Étienne Tempier (which argued against those (Aristotelians ) who claimed that God could not shift the world) and it was taken up by philosophers such as Thomas Bradwardine , John de Ripa and Nicolas Oresme . See Grant 1979, 230–232. In these contexts, the thought experiment was actually used to prove that there is, or can be, an extra-cosmic void space. As Palmerino’s Chapter 12 in this volume documents, this thought experiment plays a central role in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence.
- 48.
Burnyeat 1984, 230, n15.
- 49.
The translation by Waterfield and Bostock 1996, for example opts for (1) and takes the whole of 212a31–b22 to be about the (place of the) universe. Hussey 1983, 119 rather assumes that Aristotle is moving between the various senses of ouranos, as indeed does Philoponus in the various sections of his commentary, on which see Algra and Van Ophuijsen 2012, 118, n201, n202, n203.
- 50.
This is how Averroes describes Alexander’s position in his Long Commentary, as paraphrased by Lettink 1994, 308.
- 51.
On which see above, n24.
- 52.
This additional claim was indeed made by Alexander , on which see below, the text to n56.
- 53.
Cf. Themistius In Phys. 121, 1–5.
- 54.
For the arguments, see Lettink 1994, 297 (Ibn Bajja ) and 309–310 (Ibn Rushd ).
- 55.
See, for example, Philoponus In Phys. 594, 5–10; Simplicius In Phys. 593, 13–15 with reference to Alexander of Aphrodisias .
- 56.
See Simplicius In Phys. 595, 20–21; see also 589, 5–8; 602, 31–35.
- 57.
Simplicius In Phys. 603, 4–16.
- 58.
Morison 2010, 85.
- 59.
This is a subject not discussed in this paper. But the long and the short of it is that Aristotle thinks that (i) the Timaeus leaves it fundamentally unclear whether the ‘receptacle’ can be seen as a separable self-subsistent space in which phenomenal bodies are and move around in the strictly local sense of ‘being in,’ or rather an inseparable constituent factor of the world in which immanent qualities are, in the non local sense of ‘being in’ which we might call ‘inherence;’ and that (ii) its identification of space or place with matter is of no use in a physical context dealing with the locomotion of substances. For a vindication of Aristotle’s critique of the Timaeus and its ‘receptacle,’ with a discussion of the relevant texts, see Algra 1995, 110–117.
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Algra, K. (2018). Aristotle’s Account of Place in Physics 4: Some Puzzles and Some Reactions. In: Bakker, F., Bellis, D., Palmerino, C. (eds) Space, Imagination and the Cosmos from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 48. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02765-0_2
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