1 20 111 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c053028bbf641b5b0450513ddcc24d63.pdf d76082df4a139ff2536318d76bc16819 PDF Text Text ������������������������������������������������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 37 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The axiomatic drama of classical physics Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on December 11, 1981 by Charles Bell at St. John's College in Santa Fe. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bell, Charles G. (Charles Greenleaf), 1916-2010. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981-12-11 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to include this item in its collections. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Physics Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000020 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/48680d0f9a3323a5ed61a08f821844a3.pdf 5a419c7fdc264de9ca6db20c25d5f820 PDF Text Text ����������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 21 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare : (the phoenix and the turtle) Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given in the fall of 1964 by Charles Bell. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bell, Charles G. (Charles Greenleaf), 1916-2010. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1964 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to add this item to its collections. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000021 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e9ef6709017d7f99e6d7e5182c5d0e38.pdf 902c1ec671bd415e52ed8ed021f29445 PDF Text Text ���������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 22 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Satanic math Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given by Charles Bell. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bell, Charles G. (Charles Greenleaf), 1916-2010. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to add this item to its collections. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Mathematics Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000022 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/276fcab53ac6bda03f8f9c082241f562.pdf a90817733c79ae5b32787ac08bc9d5f6 PDF Text Text ������������������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 17 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Three love poems by Robert Frost Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on September 02, 1994 by William Darkey. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Darkey, William A. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1994-9-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to add this item to its collections. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Frost, Robert, 1874-1963. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000297 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3ba36aaaad35823e4f1f69ab2ac9343a.pdf 128b64c6262e25b5dc4aff999f464a58 PDF Text Text A WALK THROUGH ANDREW MARVELL'S GARDEN A Lecture by William Darkey lit O- S/(p St. John's CollegQ - Meem Library- �A WALK THROUGH ANDREW MARVELL'S GARDEN I was introduced to Mr Andrew Marvell and taken to visit his Garden for the first time many years ago by one of my tutors who became my good friend. He was William Gorman. I was a freshman at St John's, very green and quite intoxicated by English poetry, which I was just discovering. Mr Gorman taught me that there were ways to go about understanding what I already knew I loved. I should like here and now to acknowledge my great and longstanding debt of gratitude to him for this. Once in a conversation with Mr Gorman about, I suppose, some tentatively offered enthusiasm of my own — Matthew Arnold, perhaps, or Robert Browning — he asked me if I knew Andrew Marvell. I said I heard of him. He said, didn't. The fact was "You should." So I I'd never went home and read — or tried to read — some of Marvell's poems. I didn't understand them. By a normal mutation, I expressed this to myself as, "I don't like these." Later, when Mr Gorman asked me what I though of the poems, I tried a more diplomatic formulation and said, don't really get them." generously, He said, "I think you will, "I "Hmm." Then he added, if you stay with them." Since then, I have returned regularly in times of certain kinds of need to Mr Marvell's poems. And very often have I visited his Garden. This evening I should like to take you there with me to meet Mr Marvell and to walk through his Garden . A sort of guided tour. Not that I think I understand everything that went into the planning and planting of it. But I have no intention of "explaining" The Garden. That isn't, after all, what one does with gardens (or with poems either, for that matter.) I have, however, paid many visits there over the years, and I have seen some things that you might not notice for yourselves right off on your first visit unless somebody V points them out to you. �Of course, you may hate guided tours and people chattering at you. I do myself. But they ^ often save time. Besides, you can always come back later by yourself. Indeed, you should. For that is the whole point of gardens. (And of poetry, I might add.) I should also tell you before we start that The Garden is much more extensive than it may seem at first glance. I myself have never managed to see all there is to it. GARDENS Before we go into The Garden I must prepare you a little in advance. We ought to think together about What a garden is at all? as the Irish would put it; and about what sort of garden Mr Marvell had in mind when he made his. For there are many kinds of gardens. We have flower gardens and kitchen gardens, truck gardens, botanical gardens, zoological gardens and even kindergartens. But Mr Marvell was thinking of the kind of garden that in his world — which is to say England in the 17th century — was made to perfect a palace or a great country house. Francis Bacon in his essay. Of Gardens writes this: God Almighty first planted a Garden. And it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which buildings and palaces are but gross handyworks; and a man shall ever see that when ages grow to civility and ele gancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection. I shall come back to Bacon, but let me draw my point. The art of gardening — of horticulture — differs from farming — agriculture -- as roses differ from turnips; as flowers differ from vegetables; as labor differs from leisure, as practice differs from contemplation; as work differs from pleasure. Now it is true that if there is to be a garden, work must be performed constantly; but such work is �performed for the sake of leisure. As Michelangelo labored mightily to paint the Sistine ceiling, even though his paintings are perfectly useless. They are good for nothing but to be looked at. Contemplated. And so with gardens, though a garden differs from a painting in that to contemplate it you literally walk into it. But the garden, like the painting, has no use at all, except to be contemplated. I would add another observation about gardens that may not be ordinarily thought of. We can classify the Fine Arts in two groups: (1) those which are realized in Space, as Painting, Sculpture and Architecture; and (2)those which are realized in. Time, as Poetry, Drama, and Music. Now Gardening, which is usually taken to be an adjunct and a part of Architecture, cannot really be so. Gardening is essentially one of the arts of Time. For a garden is composed of living plants which, whether they be trees or shrubs or herbs or the flowers of a day, exist, like ourselves, in Time. Each plant or tree or flower lives in a garden. Each is, so to speak, an actor who comes on stage to perform his solo part in the right season and in consort with lifetime other and his actors l i k e himself. Each has his season. Bacon puts i t this way: I do hold that in the royal ordering of palaces there ought to be gardens for all the months in the year; in which severally things of beauty may be then in season. I quote a little further to let you see what he has in mind: For December and January, and the latter part of November, you must take such things as are green all winter; Holly; juniper; ...rosemary; ivy; bays; lavender.. I have abridged this passage — reluctantly — for i t has its own poetry, as all catalogues have that are composed �with the love of each item that is named. All good gardeners make their own lists for their own climates. The great seed houses mail out to us now in the dark time of the year their own catalogues, lavishly illustrated, to tempt us with visions of spring. Order now! But my point here, which I do not want to lose, is that the fine art of gardening is one of the arts of Time; and that its time, unlike that of, say Music or Poetry, is the Time of the year itself, the Time of the Sun and the Seasons. It is the same Time which counts off the time of our lives. This is why the time in gardens is measured by sundials, which portray Time itself as "the moving shadow of Eternity." And, as Andrew Marvell will say, as "a fragrant Zodiack." EDEN GARDEN One more thing I must mention before I come to Mr Marvell's Garden. I mean, of course, the t i t l e . The t i t l e is, so to speak, the gate, the entrance-way. Titles of books and poems in general are meant somehow to get us into the work. They do this in various ways — by naming the hero, as Tom Jones or Don Quixote or The Brothers Karamazov; the great central event or situation or problem, as The Book of Genesis, Time; or the Iliad or War and Peace or In Search of Lost and so on. I have mentioned here great big poems — or maybe I mean big great poems. But the same thing is true of little great poems: Upon Westminster Bridge, Ode on a Grecian Urn, The Windhover. Frequently the title alludes, either explicitly or obscurely, to one of our great myths. All of the works I have named explore or meditate some central mystery, because that is the nature of many a poetry itself. "Great myths answer mystery." And so with Marvell's Garden. Anyone who has been raised even vaguely in Western culture, upon hearing the title. The Garden, without further context, surely thinks, "0, you mean that garden?" THE Garden, taken generally, is surely Eden Garden. Paradise. �I remind you of Bacon's first sentence, "God Almighty first planted a Garden." It is the place which God made for Adam (which is to say, Man) and which Man was made for. Likewise, it is the place that Adam lost for himself and for us all. Since that loss, we have been permanent exiles. So goes the myth, speaking to the universal feeling of "homesickness for Eden would be, ...another and different world." if there were such a place, sacred place of any on Earth. I the most mean by a sacred place, a place on earth in which an encounter has taken place between God and Man. Many places are thought to be sacred, but Eden as the first shining place, would be the most sacred of all. And even if there is no such geographical place, that place nevertheless dwells in the memory of everyone living. It is a kind of innate memory in our imagination. It is the land of our heart's desire. This universal memory almost assures us of its real existence by a kind of implication that is something like Anselm's ontological argument. And, although this argument may be more dependent upon the Memory and the Imagination and the Heart than upon the Intellect, we may find it the more persuasive for that very reason. Every garden is made in the image of Eden arid every garden remembers Eden. It is, thus, a most powerful image, and the invocation of i t produces a host of associations. is the place where we were innocent, free of toil, with — not at odds with — Nature. A kind of life It at one that we can scarcely imagine except by such negatives as I have just used. According to the myth, when we lost Eden, we had to live by the sweat of our brow. have leisure. And, Yet sometimes we labor in order to strangely, we toil in our gardens to enjoy the image of Eden, to realize that memory. One more thing I would say about gardens. They are places of solitude. Places for solitude. Solitude is not in good repute these days, but i t is a deep human requirement. being alone, but i t is not loneliness. Loneliness is an It is �intense craving for the society of others. Solitude is being alone for thought, or prayer or as Bacon put it, for refreshment of the human spirit. TOPOGRAPHY Suppose we begin with the ground plan of The Garden. You can see on your sheets that i t is laid out with formal elegance, in nine eight-line stanzas which are end-rhymed in couplets. The meter throughout is iambic tetrameter, a hard meter to handle, but don't worry — Mr Marvell handles it as well as any English poet ever did. As I read the poem, it has three principal parts. These are not indicated on your sheets. This is a greater matter than the stanzas, and Mr Marvell has left it up to the reader to discover them for himself. As a tour-guide, however, I must try to say something helpful, so I propose that the first four stanzas comprise the opening movement, the next three the middle movement; final and the last two the movement. By speaking of "movements" I have slipped into a musical analogy here, first of all because the distinctions are heard in the music of the words; second, because the development of the poem seems to me to be quite like that of a concerto — finally, say of certain Mozart piano concertos; and because, as I have already said, I gardening itself, like music, kind of events in think that is an art of disposing its own time. The First Movement seems to me to be a fast, brilliant, witty and complex sonata-allegro with two subjects and ending in a return to its beginning. It is evidently in major. I The Second Movement is the slow movement, an Andante, think, and also in major. It is constructed linearly in three parts. The Third Movement has two sections, beginning in minor and changing to the parallel major. The tempos are moderate. SCENARIO The tripartite structure suggests that the action of the �poem will have a beginning, middle and end. I shall try to show how the action of the poem works itself out in these three movements. I say action because like most good lyrics poems, this one is a drama in small. A scenario of the poem would go something like this: The Poet, work-weary and world-weary, his forces scattered, makes a retreat into a great garden to escape from Society and to refresh his spirits in solitude. As he reflects upon the world he has left and responds to the one he has entered, he undergoes a mystical experience in which he transcends this garden and seems to find himself alone in that other garden that is out of Time and Place and to experience that first state that Adam knew. Then, the vision fading, he finds himself back once more in the garden in England in the 17th century. We are given no account of either translation. I suspect that the Poet himself could not give an account. I think it could not have been through any effort of his own or of any other human agency. Perhaps the Garden did it. The movements then are: Garden; (1) Out of the world and into the (2) Out of the Garden and into THE GARDEN; (3) Back into the Garden and, by implication, back into the world. "The Garden" Let me now read The Garden. Gorman's dictum that, In doing so, I am heeding Mr "a poem exists only in the sounding." For Poetry is one of the arts of Time, and its very nature is to be realized, if at all, only in the passing of time. To be understood, it must come to us by way of the voice and the ear. Properly speaking. Poetry does not exist onfsheet of paper as a drawing does. So let me, as well as I can, try to find a voice and a music for The Garden. �^ The Garden How vainly men themselves amaze To win the Palm, the Oke,or Bayes; And their uncessant Labours see Crown'd from somesingle Herb or Tret. Mean while the Mind, from pleasure less. Withdraws into its happiness: The Mind, that Oceanwhere eachkind Does streight its own resemblance find; Whose short and narrow verged Shade Yet it creates, transcending these. Does prudently their Toyles upbraid; Far other Worlds, and other Seas; While all Flow'rs and all Trees do close Annihilating allthat's made To weavethe Garlands of repose. To a green Thought ina green Shade. Fairquiet, have I found thee here. And Innocence thy Sister dear! Here at the Fountainsslidingfoot. Mistaken long,I sought you then In busie Companies of Men. Your sacred Plants, if here below. Onlyamong the Plants will grow. Society isall but rude, To this delicious Solitude. No white nor red was ever seen So am'rous asthislovelygreen. Fond Lovers, cruel as their Flame, Cut in these Trees their Mistress name. Little, Alas, they know, or heed, How far these Beauties Hers exceed! FairTrees! wheres'eeryour barkes I wound. No Name shall but your own befound. Or at some Fruit-trees mossy root, Casting theBodies Vest aside. My soul into the boughs does glide: There like a Bird it sits,and sings. Then whets, and combs its silver Wings; And, tillprepar'd for longer flight. Waves in its Plumes the various Light. Suchwasthat happy Garden-state, While Man there walk'd without a Mate: After a Place so pure, andsweet. What other Helpcould yet bemeet! But'twas beyond a Mortal's share To wander solitarythere: Two Paradises 'twere in one To live in Paradise alone. When we have run our Passions heat, Love hither makes his best retreat. How well the skilful Gardner drew Of flow'rs and herbes this Dial new; Where from above the milder Sun The Gods, that mortal Beauty chase, Does through a fragrant Zodiack run; Still in a Tree did end their race. And, as it works, th' industrious Bee Apollo hunted Daphne so. Computes itstime as well as we. Only that ShemightLaurel grow. And Fan did after Syrinxspeed, Not as a Nymph, but for a Reed. How could such sweet and wholsome Hours Be reckon'd but with herbs and flow'rs! What wond'rous Life in this I lead! Ripe Apples drop about my head; The Luscious Clusters of the Vine Upon my Mouth do crush their Wine; The Nectaren, and curious Peach, Into my hands themselvesdo reach; Stumbling on Melons, asI pass, Insnar'd with Flow'rs, I fall on Grass. �FIRST MOVEMENT I have already said that in terms of the "scenario" the First Movement is an entry into the garden, although we don't discover that until the second stanza with the words, Fair Quiet, have I At that moment we realize that found thee here the Poet has entered the garden and has been looking around at everything, sinking into the quiet and letting it sink into him. Throughout the movement, he is looking backward, viewing the "busie companies of Men" that he has just fled, and breathing deep sighs of relief. Neither he nor we know how he came to find himself in the garden. This movement develops two themes, the vanity of worldly pursuits and the frustration of romantic pursuits. A word about the style. It is brilliantly witty. Now wit in Mr Marvell's sense is out of fashion with our age which prefers a sequence of "one-liners" followed by guffaws. So a word about wit. It is "a tough reasonableness under a slight, lyric grace", to quote T.S Eliot. It requires thought. It works with imagination and turns on surprise and delight at the unexpected. Marvell, like Mozart, never goes where we expect him to go, but always surprises and delights us with something infinitely better than we could have thought of for ourselves. This leaves me in an awkward spot. thankless enough — Explaining a joke is no one ever laughs when you do. Pointing out the witty is probably even more useless. I shall do my best and try to be brief. For someone should point out these things -- i t ' s what tour guides are for. �stanza 1 How vainly men themselves amaze To win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes; And their uncessant Labours see Crown'd from some single Herb or Tree. Whose short and narrow verged Shade Does prudently their Toyles upbraid; While all Flow'rs and all Trees do close To weave the Garlands of repose. After reading the first stanza a few times it dawns on us that there is something odd about the diction. All the words are quite ordinary words that we all use, and all seem to be used with precision.(The tidy four-foot lines and the neat rhymes of the couplets lend to the effect of precision.) Yet we find ourselves wondering how to take some of the words. Consider. How vainly men themselves amaze Take "vainly." Does Marvell intend "to what little real purpose"? Or does he mean "with what absurd conceit"? Or again take "amaze". It can mean "to astonish", as it does for us; but in the 17th century it also meant "to perplex" of "to bewilder" or "to lead astray", as in a labyrinth or maze. And finally, what about "themselves", the most ordinary word of the doubtful three. As you think about it in its context, you wonder. Is it a reflexive or a reciprocal pronoun? Do men amaze one another in their pursuit of fame — as Achilles amazed Alexander and Alexander, Caesar? Or do they amaze themselves — as in the case of the famous harpsichordist who, after hearing the tape of her most recent recording, exclaimed, "It is incredible how well I play!" Now to write a line in which three out of the five first words are equivocal must mean either that the poet has no ear for language or else that he knows exactly what he is doing and intended everything — that he is using the �10 equivocations brilliantly. We know intuitively that the latter is the case. Twenty-seven differing meanings follow upon the possible combinations of these equivocations. And all are compatible. The Poet means a l l of them. yourselves at leisure — You can work i t out for i t would be tedious to do here. But you don't really need to because you know intuitively that the line works. illustrate I can make an awkward paraphrase to thus: With what futility, or with what conceit, or with how much of both, men astonish, both astonish and or both or bewilder, bewilder themselves themselves and one or or one another another...etc. If you did not see all of this intuitively, Marvell's line would have failed. But it does not f a i l . It succeeds brilliantly, effortlessly. Clearly, then, we hare a masterful and witty poet to work with, a man of virtuosity and imagination. A poet who wants you to think, to be aware, and, as you can, to match his own wit and intelligence. Of course the rest of the poem must be worthy of this beginning. This line is only an opening chord. Stanza 1 The first stanza as a whole, like any good opening,is a statement in b r i e f of the whole work. I t moves from the busyness of the great world, the world of athletic, civic and poetic accomplishments, signified by crowns of Palm, Oke, or Bay leaves, to the crowns braided of all Trees and Flow'rs, which he calls "the Garlands of repose." The motion is from busyness and toil to peace and Quiet. This is a serious piece of wisdom, but one which stated flatly would hardly attract your serious attention. However, without departing from the underlying wisdom, Marvell attracts us and delights us with his invention; which is that Men by toiling unceasingly, discover that their crownin reward is a stingy little wreath of leaves that doesn't even �11 give much shade — which is exactly what anyone in the full glare of fame most desperately needs. If the hero's taste were more catholic, goes the argument, he could have cultivated for himself a more generous crown of all trees and flowers, and could be enjoying peace and quiet. In line six there's a lovely pun. He rhymes ...narrow-verged shade" with ...prudently upbraid. Upbraid, of course, means to reproach and criticize severely, but Marvell pretends — and we delightedly go along with him — that it also means to braid up into a crown. Thus the crown itself tells the hero while he's wearing it, that he has wasted his life's time on such nonsense. There's also a learned joke, that I dare allude to, since you have all have read Herodotus. When Demaratus tells Xerxes that in the Greek games the prize is an crown of leaves, he cannot believe it. "Nothing more than that?", he says and wonders at the strange Greeks who are content with the honor of winning the contest and do not care about golden trophies. Marvell takes Xerxes' part in disparaging the frugal crown, but he gives it another turn by proposing that nicer leaves and flowers would be a far better reward. Observe that Marvell has managed to say all of this in exactly 64 syllables, while I have plodded clumsily through more words than I care to count. Quickness and a flashing insight are the very nature of wit. (His, not mine.) I promise now to move more rapidly — this is, after all an allegro we're talking about — through the rest of the movement, now that you've seen what sort of a Poet we're dealing with. �12 Stanza 2 Fair Quiet, have I found thee here. And Innocence thy Sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busie Companies of Men. Your sacred Plants, i f here below. Only among the Plants will grow. Society is all but rude. To t h i s delicious Solitude. This stanza picks up on the note of repose, the last word of the preceding stanza. The Poet confesses — to himself, and to Quiet and Innocence whom he apostrophizes — his hitherto inveterate error of seeking for the good life in worthy works among his fellow men. Now he professes to recognize that Quiet and Innocence dwell only in the precincts of the Garden, far from from human company. The final couplet is again a splendid — double and courteous -- entendre. Society is all but rude To this delicious Solitude. At first, he seems to mean that Society is barely courteous to those who would desert her for solitude. (You recall Aristotle's remark in the Politics that one who lives to himself is either a beast or a god. And in practice society does feel uneasy with those who go apart. Such withdrawal seems a condemnation.) I think that the lines mean "All Society is merely rude/(compared) To this delicious Solitude." Social condemnation of solitude i s universal, condemnation of solitude i s universal. And notice now the quality of the last line. To this delicious Solitude. It is impossible to articulate this line at all without almost tasting the words in the mouth. It is a taste of what is to come. For the real subject of the poem is Solitude. Stanza 2 raises the question. Can that Innocence which �13 was lost in a garden, be regained? The answer is, If so, only in a garden. Stanza 3 Stanza 3 shifts from the pursuit of fame to the of romantic love. If we flee Society, should we not, pursuit so to speak, consider sharing our Solitude with one other, with a beloved? This thought has, after all, occurred to others. "Come live with me.and be my love/ And we will all the pleasures prove..." Alceste, who is not a true solitary,no matter what he thinks, offers to marry Celimene, if only she will go off with him alone and apart from the "busie companies of Men." But this Poet has already decided against that. And for the astonishing reason that green of the trees is far more amorously engaging than rosy lips and cheeks. No white nor red was ever seen So am'rous as this lovely green. What a surprise again is the first couplet! We have always known that white and red are love's colors. Red lips; rosy cheeks;"white-armed Andromache";"her neck is like the swan." 0 the red rose breathes of passion And the white rose breathes of love. But Marvell sings. No white nor red was ever seen So am'rous as this lovely green. He has already confessed to a love of gardens. Like most other people he loves Trees. But amorously? as he professes? The trees, he says, are more beautiful than any mistress. His wit verges towards extravagance. We think of Orlando solitary, moaning and mooning about the Forest of Arden, carving Rosalind on the beech trees and hollies. And I suppose that Marvell would have us think in fun, of the love-sick Andrew mooning about the garden carving "Beech" and "Holly" in their barks. Of course �14 Orlando will pay no attention to him as Andrew urges that Holly is far more beautiful than Rosalind. Green is a very good color, to be sure, and this is one of the greenest poems in English. For green is the color of Life, of living Nature. Here in "The Garden", under the greenwood tree, we've been dimly imagining green all along. Still, it's not a very good color for a girl. In Twelfth Night Viola tells the lovesick Duke of her pretended sister, She never told her love. But let concealment, like a worm in the bud Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought. And with a green and yellow melancholy. She sat like Patience on a monument, Smiling at grief. You see, green both is and is not amorous. It's a very good color for a tree or an herb, but not so good for a mistress — unless Stanza she be lovesick. 4 Develo^img the theme of the pursuit of love. Stanza 4 concludes the First Movement with a bravura passage, by suggesting that when we have run our passion's race — and presumably — have lost it, the weary and chastened lover should make a retreat into the solitude of the Garden. He reminds us that the gods themselves did so, and cites two parallel examples from Ovid's Metamorphoses to make his point, namely the famous cases of Daphne and Apollo and of Syrinx and Pan. Since we no longer read Ovid in the course of our program, i t is possible that you don't know these stories. I shall condense them for you. Each god had fallen in love with a mortal girl. Both girls were prudently reluctant to yield to the importunacy of their divine lovers. But occasions arose when each god, encountered his beloved alone in the forest. Each pursued her as hard as he could in a running race. And each god both lost and won his race. For as each was on the point of �15 overtaking the girl, she prayed the local water-nymphs to save her. The nymphs responded in the only way they could and metamorphosed the girls beyond even the gods' powers. Daphne was transformed into a laurel tree just as the pursuing Apollo touched her shoulder. Syrinx, her flight impeded by a river, was changed into a clump of reeds growing on the bank. Both gods, having run their "Passion'heat made the best of the situation. Apollo, god of Poetry, vowed that henceforth the Laurel would be sacred to his arts, and that supreme Poets would be crowned with Laurel, that is. Bay leaves. Pan, god of all Nature, is also necessarily a musician; Pan, so that when Syrinx was metamorphosed into reeds. to solace himself, make a panpipe — cut a bunch of them and sat down to still called a syrinx -- on which he mourns his lost love with those melancholy little tunes that you can hear, if you listen carefully, in any upland meadow where the wild goats graze. This is a bravura ending to the First Movement. Notice those the two themes — love — crown that of the pursuits of fame and of have been brought together at the end. The Laurel has not only returned here, but has been explained by an origin myth. The pursuits of the divine passion began indeed amorously, but have in the end been univeralized in those leafy crowns which reward poetic or public virtue. Best of all, those nymphs with their flashing white limbs, their rosy lips and cheeks, have ceased to flee, and have turned a lovely "am'rous" green. And yet. And yet... The Gods, Still Listen carefully. that mortal Beauty chase. in a Tree did end their race. Can you hear in that couplet an echo of Eden in solemn counterpoint to the playfulness joke about Apollo and Pan? ^dam and Eve, like the gods of the Greeks, were immortal Vntil they chose to eat �16 . . . t h e Fruit Of that Forbidd'n Tree, whose mortal tast Brought Death into the World, and all our woe. With loss of Eden... thus ending their race in that Tree. SECOND MOVEMENT Stanza 5 We know at once from the music of the Second Movement that we have entered into a quite different world from that of the First Movement. This world hardly remembers that other one from which we have been so suddenly translated. All that seems to carry over is the continuing rhyme of the preceding couplet, "speed/reed", "lead/head." The Poet here speaks simply, directly, and in the first person. These stanzas are no longer clever. To be sure, we are — again, or perhaps still — in a garden; but this is a very different garden, overflowing with the ripest and most varied fruits. After a moment, we recognize i t as Paradise. What wond'rous Ripe l i f e is this I lead! Apples drop about my head; The Luscious Clusters of the Vine Upon my Mouth do crush their Wine; The Nectaren and curious Peach, Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on Melons as I Insnar'd by Flow'rs, I pass, fall on Grass. The quality of verse that we tasted earlier in Stanza 2, To this delicious Solitude is here sustained almost to the point of cloying. We seem to taste the Fruits as we voice the words. But they do not cloy, because their effect is not achieved for its own sake; and i t has besides its own tang of wit. The Poet sees himself to suffer willingly the urgings of pleasure. all, After i t is the vines and the fruits that thrust themselves ��18 I don't think Marvell made up the color. I am reasonably confident that he simply saw it that way. For him Thought was green. And maybe our thought experiment lends some confirmation to the conceit. But let's return now to the beginning of the stanza. Mean while, the Mind, from pleasure less. Withdraws into its happiness: I think we feel that the Mind, somewhat fastidiously, withdraws for the time being, from any further association with the Body lying there on the grass in such a deplorable condition. The Body's pleasure seriously diminishes the Mind's; and in any case, the Body is not now in any shape to support serious thinking. Probably the Mind is glad to be rid of the Body for a while. But where does the Mind withdraw If into itself, this would mean that the Mind is capable of existence separated from the Body and from the Soul. Its existential status would then seem to be different from that of either the Body ^ or the Soul. The Body, after all, is simply lying there on the ground "at the Fruit-trees mossy root", while the Soul, "like a Bird" ascends into the tree. But where does the Mind go? It seems significant that Marvell says "the Mind" rather than calls Mind." Marvell himself, reflecting on the Mind, it ...that Ocean where each kind Does streight its own resemblance find. To me this suggests an ocean in which the forms of things dwell, and whenever we reach out with the understanding to grasp something in the world, that thing finds its own form in the Mind; and so we know it. For the thing known and its form in the Mind by which it is grasped are formally identical. At least in the Aristotelian teaching i t is so. I remark in passing that the Ocean is often green when we look at its surface, and that, when we see from below the surface, it is a is a cool, green, translucent shade. And of �19 course i t is filled with all sorts of resemblant things, as sea lions, and seahorses, and starfishes. But for Marvell, the Mind has a further faculty. I suspect that i t is Imagination, both sensible and Intellectual, whereby it can (and does) invent other worlds that are quite different from the one created by God and given by Nature. t h a t ' s made and In so doing the Mind may annihilate all construct other worlds of its own imaginings. Such worlds bear a doubtful relationship to the real world. Indeed, they may become confused with real world and under certain circumstances, even be preferred to it. It seems to me that Marvell was here thinking of Decartes' teachings. And I feel a strong contrast between the French Philosopher sitting in his warm Dutch room, shut off from the outer world, wondering about the nature of things, wondering, even, if those things that he can see out of his window passing in the street below are indeed men like himself, or automata made to resemble men in order to deceive him. And then there is Marvell, meditating in his undoubted English garden and seeing somehow in a vision the constituent parts of his own being in terms of the manifest garden. Stanza 7 Here at the Fountains sliding foot. Or at some Fruit-trees mossy root. Casting the Bodies Vest aside. My soul into the boughs does glide: Here all the motion is upward. The Body has stumbled and fallen down. The Mind has withdrawn. But,"Casting the Body's Vest aside,/My Soul into the boughs does glide." The motion of the Soul is swift, graceful and upward. tree, which I Into the take to be the Tree of Life. There like a Bird it sits, and sings. Then whets, and combs its silver Wings; And, t i l l prepar'd for longer flight. Waves in its Plumes the various Light. �20 ^0^ Released from the Body, the Soul takes the form of a winged creature and ascends into the tree, where i t sits and sings. Its singing is the first — and the only — sound in the poem. For Marvell, singing is the proper activity of the Soul. But before we think about what the singing might signify, let us think about activity of the Soul. For Aristotle, the highest activity of the Soul is thinking. I have in mind the wonderful and mysterious passages that most of you know from Metaphysics XII, in which he says that divine thought thinks on thinking. Or again of Descartes, for whom Man is by definition a thinking being. I am not entirely sure what either philosopher means, though I do not think they meant quite the same thing, And I do not believe that Marvell saw i t their way. It may be that this is what the Mind, withdrawn into its happiness, is doing — thinkng on thinking, I mean — but it is not what Marvell sees the Soul to be doing. For the Soul sings. Or i t sings first of all. Marvell has in mind the image of a bird singing and obviously pouring its whole being into the act of song. Birds singing look like that. And so do human singers. Art does not deliberate. It simply does. A singer fully engaged in song is not thinking, but singing. She has become the music while the music lasts.(I think, for instance, of Elly Ameling.) The Bird here is the figure of Soul simply being what it is. Or doing what i t is. I think that, like the Bird, the Soul sings without words, for words are the product of the Mind and serve as go-betweens between ourselves and the world. But the Bird here is not thinking, i t is only aware, and aware not of itself and the world as two things, but aware of the being of everything. Of the world and of itself, not separately, but a l l at once. In such a state one i s not lost in the self, isolated and withdrawn, but the self is discovered along with all of the other beings in the world. And all are �21 felt to be a universe, a one-in-many. It is not same and other/ but everything together in a whole. I think the reason Marvell felt the Mind had to withdraw is because Mind cannot get up into that tree. Nor does it sing. It does not get you all the way to being. The Bird does other things too besides singing.. It dresses its plumes/ and reflects and refracts in its wings the different colored lights. For a moment, the color of the poem is no longer green, but iridescent. The Bird, no longer wholly beneath the Green shade (under the greenwood tree), has gpne up into fuller light where it plays with the colors of the rainbow. All seven colors. A pleasure of seeing. Of vision. The Bird is silver. And i t is preparing for longer flight. To a place, I take it, beyond the earthly paradise. THIRD MOVEMENT Stanza 8 Now, in another abrupt transition, we find ourselves back in the English garden where we began, and we don't know how we got there. But in terms of the myth, we know what has happened. Paradise has been lost again, as Paradise always is, and we are left in the world with memories of Eden. To follow once more our musical analogy, this third movement is in two parts, the first in the minor, and the second in the parallel major. I believe, though I am not absolutely sure, that the minor is rather slow, another andante, followed by an easy allegro. Their subjects are, first, a reflexion on the middle movement, and then a turning to the English garden and a resolution of the melancholy in a reflection on Time again and on works. �22 Such was that happy Garden-state, While Man there walked without a Mate: After a Place so pure and sweet, What other Help could yet be meet! But 'twas beyond a Mortal's share To wander solitary there; Two Paradises 'twere in one To live in Paradise alone. It is often assumed that this stanza is an easy essay at wit, this time the tired conventional jibe by a man at Eve and at women in general. Marvell allows you to think that, if you want to miss the point. But it isn't really likely that a poet of Marvell's gift would fail so easily. The error arises from another equivocation, but this time we are required to reject one meaning of the equivocal word. Mate, namely, a spouse, and to take its other meaning, a fellow-worker, a companion, an assistant. Marvell's plaint in the second couplet is not at all that Eve was a woman, but that she was another. AN OTHER. All of the distresses and perturbations of life in Society arise from other people, by no means only from other people of an opposite sex. and No, the issue here is between Society Solitude. Solitude was restored temporarily to our Poet in his ecstasy and now has been lost again. For he will have to leave the garden. Residence in any garden is at best but temporary, for always the curse of work lies upon us. Our only solace is that we can sometimes retreat from Society, put the world behind us for a while, and recover a kind of wholeness. It is quite true that the world would have you believe that there is something perverse about such behaviour. It is called anti-social, so-called leisure This stanza, I and this is why our must be crammed with distractions. think, does not need further commentary. �23 Stanza 9 Another abrupt change/ but here we see quickly that the Poet has simply turned from the memory of the other Garden to the present/ and is looking around him. He eyes fall on a sundial which/ as he considers it/ becomes allegorical. How well the skilful Gardner drew Of flow'rs and herbes this Dial new: Where from above the milder Sun Does through a fragrant Zodiack run; And/ as i t works/ th'industrious Bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholsome Hours Be reckon'd but with herbs and flow'rs! But a word about the Dial is needed. A correctly mounted sundial tells the time of day by casting the shadow of a small gnomon upon the numbers of the hours marked around its circumference. In Marvell's garden the Gardner has made a circular flowerbed centered on the column that supports the dial/ and has divided the circle into pie-shaped sectors. He has planted these with flowers of different hues and scents/ so that as the Sun moves the shadow of the column moves too from bed to bed and tells the time of day. Thus/ in Marvell's witty perception/ the Sun runs through a fragrant Zodiack. Instead of Ram/ Bull/ Twins/ we might have carnations, lavender and sweet Williams. We could tell the time of day by smelling the flowers, and the season of the Year as well by the scents of the blossoms. At first it seems strange — perhaps even irrelevant — to conclude this poem with this stanza about "th'industrious Bee who works by the hour around the flow'ry Zodiack. But, puzzling on not, the stanza feels right — or perhaps I mean sounds right in its music and its images. And it is right. Who is the Bee? He is, of course, a personification of industry. Marvell has told us that much. And his work, his proper act, if I may put it so, is to make honey. Unlike human toilers, he works not by mechanical and clock time. �24 but by the hours and the seasons of the year. Which is to say that he computes his time, not only as well as we do, but far better. Furthermore, the Bee is the most social of animals. In his own society, which seems not to be onerous to him, his labour work is to gather nectar from the flowers, elaborate i t into quintessential sweetness, and store i t for the use of himself and his fellows. His work is sweet to him, whereas ours by Adam's curse has been made bitter and often vain as well. We cannot live alone nor can we avoid the curse of labour, but we can, perhaps, temper these limitatations in some measure by rejecting vainglorious pursuits and by acknowledging only the legitimate claims of society. Or to put it more simply, we should retreat often into a garden, which "is the purest — note well — the purest of human pleasures ...and the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man." And I think a real garden is meant, no figurative one, By the end of the poem I think Andrew Marvell is ready to accept his exile from Eden and to go back to work in the world. Where, by the way, — worked, first, and I haven't said this — he in the civil service and then for the last twenty years of his life was a member of Parliament. He was a man of impeccable honesty for all that. He did not write his poetry for publication, and it was not published until after his death. Very probably he would not have wished this. If there is any more to be said about The Garden -- and of course there is, as I cautioned you at the beginning — much more —let us see what we find to ask and say about it in the Question Period. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A walk through Andrew Marvell's garden Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given in 1997 by William Darkey. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Darkey, William A. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to add this item to its collections. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Marvell, Andrew,1621-1678 -- Criticism and interpretation. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000316 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ec85bdc7b9d94de0b94e3b276b46d4a9.pdf b176bca3c0e75e831c733124f6274bd1 PDF Text Text ������������������������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Translation as a liberal art : notes toward a definition Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on November 14, 1975 by William Darkey. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Darkey, William A. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-11-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to add this item to its collections. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Translating and interpreting. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000385 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/240c3f6f9899b43d2f792e5d862b55e7.pdf c37973a100aa67f7088ca37898ff51ca PDF Text Text ���������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 22 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Euclid's V.5 Description An account of the resource Transcript of lecture given on February 23, 1973 by Dean Haggard. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Haggard, Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-02-23 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to add this item to its collections. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Euclid, Elements Irrational numbers Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24003857 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8001fd8534b8966b3d4ff2f8aa8df68f.pdf d0f5db502c0d7d300a17f0673c7e1129 PDF Text Text ������������������������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The broaken [sic] staff Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on September 23, 1983 by Robert Sacks as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sacks, Robert D. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983-09-23 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Tempest. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000170 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/35d538bd69cf3d8bbe3e28469560669a.pdf 7806a8291c1296557ea6dac9952db604 PDF Text Text �������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 20 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Leo Strauss's reading of the Bible and its implications Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on December 1, 1990 by Robert Sacks. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sacks, Robert D. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990-12-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Strauss, Leo. History (Theology) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000171 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/33ac127c661dc2a951e92c41e69540a0.pdf 9d581acc37222d8717b56137d973149a PDF Text Text �������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 26 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Readings and random thoughts from the book of Job Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on January 29, 1993 by Robert Sacks as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sacks, Robert D. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-01-29 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Bible. Job Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000172 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/22d637bda662f96acd2e8dabee299aa1.pdf f5507bb9d23b516e1ee09fbfbaf32035 PDF Text Text ���������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 16 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samson's riddle Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given by Robert Sacks. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sacks, Robert D. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Bible. Genesis Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000173 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0b3a8cdc2d42ba167d69e9b6f615bf71.pdf 3a3e1f44fd7f17bb44c770927e0de8f0 PDF Text Text ������������������������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 23 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A ghost story Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on April 26, 2002 by Robert Sacks as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sacks, Robert D. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-04-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Lobachevskii, N. I. (Nikolai Ivanovich), 1792-1856. Apollonius, of Perga. Plato. Meno. Euclid. Elements. Geometry -- History. Language A language of the resource English. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000640 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2bc31e414cc4957196e2623bf3c978f3.pdf d30fcde5225a89eec6d7846b06ad829b PDF Text Text ������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 19 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faraday's electric eel, part 1 : the body electric Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on March 29, 2006 by Howard Fisher as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard J. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006-03-29 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24003318 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8100038e13dd03ba823194df19c6177c.pdf 02be2d7b79cacc31c275cc81e03211b7 PDF Text Text ����������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 17 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faraday's electric eel, part 2 : an undulatory life Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on April 26, 2006 by Howard Fisher as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard J. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006-04-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24003320 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1a135bd3b37632671bd685e6783aff92.pdf 8340866e44df736be5798caad20b9287 PDF Text Text �������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Leo Strauss and classical political philosophy Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on January 1, 1990 by David Bolotin. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bolotin, David, 1944- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990-01-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Strauss, Leo. Politics Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000036 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/838edbf1365f7a1dc3cd2352142a4c8f.pdf 9b716a27fb427ec2207176abff91afc5 PDF Text Text THE QUESTION OF FINAL CAUSALITY IN ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS _( . David Bolotin I • I St. John's College, Santa Fe April 3, 1992 �t ee _g0s &J' 63~ ..... , '""' ... .- " . • �From the time that I first read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as a sophomore in college, I fell in love with it, and I looked to it for guidance as to how I should live. It appealed to me by its presentation of the moral life as a life of fineness, rather than of mere obedience to law, and also by its encouragement to the striving for excellence. was intrigued by its suggestion, so unlike anything I had heard before, that taking pride in one's excellence is not a vice but a virtue, which as such can coexist with and.which ( even enhances the comprehensive social virtue of justice. And above all, the E1b.ics. struck a chord in me by its claim that activity in accordance with virtue is both the natural end of man and the core of happiness; for although I scarcely understood this claim at the time, I was moved by its promise of a meaningful and happy life, a life that seemed beautifully reflected, moreover, in the discussions of friendship and contemplation with which the book concludes. But as I continued to study, and became more and more persuaded by Aristotle's teaching about human life, I began to be troubled by the fear that this teaching might depend on an obsolete and indefensible view of nature. For how can virtuous activity be the natural end or purpose of human life if, as I had been 1 \,. taught to believe, modern natural science has shown that there are no such things in nature as ends or purposes? Must we not say, therefore, that ends are not given to us �2 by nature, but that we give ourselves our own ends and create our own meanings? For a time, I tried to ignore this difficulty by telling myself that natural science was not relevant to an understanding of human life, and by giving it, accordingly, as little thought as possible. But this evasion could not go on forever, and I eventually had to face the challenge that modern, natural science presents for anyone who wants to return to the Aristotelian teaching about man. I therefore welcomed the opportunity as a tutor at St. John's to study this science in some detail. At the same time, I began to study Aristotle's Physics, and in particular his arguments for the existence of ends or purposes in nature, to try to see whether his natural philosophy, on which his moral philosophy at least in part seems to depend, might possibly be true. . But enough of this talking about myself. Instead, let me proceed by discussing the question of natural ends - or_of teleology, as it has come to be called - directly. My discussion will focus primarily on Aristotle's treatment of this question in his Physics. For the modern objections to teleology are already present, and responded to, in the Physics itself. And modern science, it turns out, has nothing conclusive to say about the matter. Contrary to what I had been told in school, modern science has nm shown that there are no purposes in nature. Indeed, it has not even attempted to do so. What it does, rather, is systematically to disregard the possibility of their existence. As Jacques Monad, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist, has written in his work Chance and. Necessity, The cornerstone of the scientific method is the postulate that nature is objective. In other words, the systematic denial that "true" knowledge can be got at by interpreting phenomena in terms of final causes -- that is to say, of "purpose." An exact date may be given for the discovery of this canon. The formulation by Galileo and Descartes of the principle of inertia �3 laid the groundwork not only for mechanics but for the epistemology of modern science, by abolishing Aristotelian physics and cosmology. ..... science as we understand it today ... required the unbending stricture implicit in the postulate of objectivity -- ironclad, pure, forever undemonstrable. For it is obviously impossible to imagine an experiment which could prove the nonexistence anywhere in nature of a purpose, of a pursued end. But the postulate of objectivity is consubstantial with science; it has guided the whole of its ~ digious development for three centuries. There is no way to be rid of it, even tentatively or in a limited area, without 1 departure from the domain of science itself. I will not bother to quarrel here with Monad's contention that the systematic denial of purposes in nature is a requirement of science. What is important, rather, is his clear awareness that this denial is merely a postulate of modern science, not the assertion of an evident truth. And Monad's statement to this effect, far from being the unmasking of ( a hitherto unseen limitation of modern science, is only the restatement of a thought that was well understood by its originators. Indeed, some of the founders of modern science appear personally to have believed in purposes in nature, even as they excluded all reference to them from their strictly scientific work. As Descartes put it in his Fourth Meditation, in addressing the question whether it is for the better that God made him subject to error, l ... it occurs to me in the first place that I should not be astonished if my intelligence is not capable of comprehending why God acts as he does; ... knowing that my nature is extremely feeble and limited, and that' the nature of God is on the contrary immense, incomprehensible, and infinite, I have no further difficulty in recognizing that there is an infinitude of matters in His power, the causes of which transcend my knowledge; and this reason suffices to convince me that the species of cause tem,ed final finds no useful employment in physical [or natural] things; for it does not appear to me that I can without temerity seek to investigate the [inscrutable] ends of 2 God. �4 Now questions have been raised about whether Descartes' professions of piety are wholly sincere. But at all events, his argument against the attempt to explain natural things in terms of ends or purposes is compatible -- to say the least - with there being such purposes in fact. Or to take another example, Newton himself, whose account of the motions in the solar system remainsu ne of the greatest achievements of modern science, claimed that the solar system was originally put together by an intelligent God acting for a purpose. For although the planets and the comets, he wrote, may, indeed, continue in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws . ... This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of 3 an intelligent and powerful Being. Newton's claim, however, about the origin of the solar system appears only in a General Scholium that he appended to his Principia twenty-six years after its first publication. And these theological reflections play no role in the body of the work, just as they have played no role in the subsequent history of modern physics. More generally, modern science from the beginning has sidestepped the question of ends or purposes in nature, while encouraging people to take less and less seriously the possibility of their existence, by trying to formulate laws that would encompass as many phenomena as possible without any reference to such ends. And even in the case of those phenomena that it does encompass, the claim that it has understood them adequately is dubious. For its laws are mathematical idealizations, idealizations, moreover, with no immediate basis in experience and with no evident connection to the �5 ultimate causes of the natural world. Newton's First Law of Motion, for instance, the law of inertia, requires us first to imagine a body that is always at rest or else moving aimlessly in a straight line at a constant speed, even though we never see such a body, and even though according to his own theory of universal gravitation it is impossible that there could be one. This fundamental law, then, which begins with a claim about what would happen in a situation that never exists, carries no conviction except insofar as it helps to predict observable events. Thus, despite the amazing success of Newton's laws in predicting the observed positions of the planets and other bodies, Einstein and lnfeld are correct to say, in I.he Evolution Qf Physics, that "we can well imagine that ( · another system, based on different assumptions, might work just as well." Einstein and lnfeld go on to assert that "physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world." To illustrate what they mean by this assertion, they compare the modem scientist to a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. If he is ingenious, they acknowledge, this man "may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes." But they add that he "may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the 4 meaning of such a comparison. " In other words, modern science cannot claim, and it will never be able to claim, that it has the definitive understanding of any natural �6 phenomenon. And accordingly, we should not allow ourselves to be so dazzled by it as to suppose that it has refuted Aristotle's teaching about natural ends. Let me now turn to my discussion of Aristotle and begin by reminding you of his doctrine of the four causes, among which the end or final cause is included. In trying to explain anything, or to answer the question "why?" about it, there are four ways, according to Aristotle, that we can respond. These four kinds of responses , these four ways of saying "because," are each a kind of cause of the matter in question. In one sense, we speak of the cause of something as the constituent or constituents from which it comes into being and of which it is composed. Thus, for instance, we call the bronze in a statue a cause of it, because the statue could not exist without the bronze that it is made of. In another and more important sense, however, we say that the cause of something is its form, since it is the form, rather than the constituent material, that explains why the being is what it is. Thus the bronze constitutes a statue because it has the form of a statue, not because it is bronze. And by the "form" of a being we do not mean its visible shape alone, but rather its whole character, a character that we may not be able to articulate clearly at first, but that we must already understand to a considerable degree simply to identify the being as what it is. To take our example again, we call a statue a statue because of its form , by which we do not mean its shape alone, but more impertantly its being the sculpted image of some other being, such as a man or a god. Similarly, we call a human being a human being because of its form, by which we mean �7 above all that we are animals capable of reason. Now in addition to the constituent cause and the formal cause, a third kind of cause, which helps to explain coming into being as well as all other changes or motions, is the source from which a given change begins. Hence, for example, the sculptor is a cau·se of the statue's coming into being, and therefore also, in a sense, of the statue itself, as the parent is a cause of the birth of its offspring and the wind is a cause of rustling in the leaves. This principle of change, which Aristotle sometimes calls the moving cause, can also, however, be a cause of a state of rest, as when a man decides to stop running and to remain still. Finally, a fourth kind of cause is the end or purpose for which something comes into being or for which it exists. Thus health, for instance, can be a cause of walking by being the purpose for the ( sake of which someone might take walks. Or to return to our first example, giving honor to a god or perhaps pleasure to the human beholders might be the end - or the final cause, as it is also called - for the sake of which the sculptor produced the statue. To focus specifically now on final causality, the examples I have just given, like those that Aristotle gives himself, suggest a definite manner in which the end of a motion operates as a cause. First, it is present in thought to the agent who begins the motion, and it is thought of as being good, and as being attainable by his own efforts. And as a consequence, the agent proceeds to try to realize in deed the end that he originally had in mind. In these cases, then, the final cause is itself a factor, together with what we have called the moving cause, in initiating the motion that leads up to it as an end. And �8 most of us would agree, I think, that this is a true account of such motions as that of a statue being sculpted, for it is the craftsman's anticipation of the completed work that directs his hands and tools. But Aristotle says explicitly that the end is a cause of natural motions, such as the growth and reproduction of living beings, and not only of motions initiated by human art. 5 Indeed, he justifies his use of analogies from the arts to help explain natural processes by claiming that art imitates nature; and he means by this not merely that some arts are representational, but more broadly that all the arts 6 derive their own directedness toward ends from that already to be found in nature. He even goes so far as to speak of Nature herself as a kind of artisan who makes all things for a purpose and nothing in vain. 7 Yet we have no clear evidence to suggest that na- ture is an intelligent or even _a con~c_ic,us being, and so it is difficult for us to understand how it can act for a purpose. Nor is it easy to conceive of a way, other than as the object of intelligent forethought, that the end of a motion could play any role at all in first bringing that motion about. So couldn't it be, instead, the result of accident that natural processes often turn out in a manner that seems to suggest motion for the sake of an end? Now this is not, as it might appear, an anachronistic or post-Darwinian question, but is in fact a central question that Aristotle explicitly confronts throughout his account of purposes in nature. To see how he responds to it, let us look more closely at the text of the Physics itself. �9 Aristotle discusses accidental causation immediately after his account of the four causes, and he indicates the tremendous scope of the question about it by noting that some men had attributed the existence of this world, and indeed of all ordered worlds, to chance. Now by "this world" Aristotle does not mean the hypothetically expanding uni~ verse of contemporary science, but rather this perceptible world, the world in which we live, along with other animals and plants, upon the earth and under the heaven. The beauty and grandeur of this world have always aroused in men a sense of wonder, and many have felt, as Newton did, that it must be the product of intelligent forethought. 8 I Yet according to some of the early philosophers, this world of ours came into being, like many other worlds, merely by chance. Now in response to these philosophers, Aristotle begins by saying that their claim is worthy of wonder. For those, he says, who attribute the world and the most divine of the manifest beings (L.e..., the stars) to chance do not speak of animals and plants as coming into being by mere luck, but rather by nature or mind or some other such cause, on the grounds that each kind of seed typically produces some definite kind of result. And on precisely these grounds, he continues, what they say about the world as a whole is especially strange, since we see nothing in the heavens coming into being by chance, whereas we see many things resulting from luck 9 among the perishable beings here on earth. Now at this point, it would certainly be possible for us to raise objections to Aristotle's argument, and some of these may have occurred to you already. But I would suggest that we defer our objections and consider �10 instead that Aristotle has not said, at least not yet, that those who attribute the world to chance are wrong, but merely that their assertion is wonderful and strange -- as I venture to say it is. And he adds that if what they say is true, this very fact deserves careful attention, as indeed it does. Rather than assume, then, that Aristotle has already rejected the view in question about the origin of the world - whether on adequate or on inadequate grounds - we would do better to follow him as he goes further into the matter by investigating more generally what chance is and what its relation is to nature. Aristotle begins his account of chance by first discussing what he calls luck, and by observing that we do not speak of luck as a cause of those things that come into being always or for the most part in the same way, but rather of those that come about contrary to any such necessary or usual patterns. Yet it is not simply the unusualness of an occurrence that makes it a case of luck. It is also necessary that it be the kind of occurrence that mi.gb1 have been brought about for the sake of something and from intelligent choice. Such a result, when it comes about, however, merely by concomitance, is what is properly said to be from luck. Aristotle offers an example to help clarify what he means in saying that luck is a cause of its results by mere concomitance. A certain man, he says, would have gone to the marketplace to recover the money he was owed if only he had known that his debtor was there. But he did not know, and so he did not go to the market for that purpose; it was merely a concomitant of his going for some other reason that his trip served the purpose of recovering his debt. Thus, the �11 result came about from luck, and the man is said to h~ve gone to the marketplace from luck. If, however, he had chosen to go to the market for the sake of this result, or if he always or for the most part recovered money when he went there, neither his going nor its result would be from luck. To speak of luck as a cause, then, is not to deny that there must always be some definite, particular cause of a lucky result. Indeed, in keeping with the fact that luck is responsible only for the kinds of outcomes that might have resulted from intelligent choice, only agents who are capable of such choice can be said to act from luck. But we attribute the result to luck when the agent's action merely happens to serve a purpose without his having intended it to do so. After preparing the way with this account of luck, which has the merit of being ( immediately intelligible, Arist~tle turns to the discussion of chance, or spontaneity, as we ' might also translate the Greek term. Chance is a broader class that includes luck as a subclass. Like luck in particular, chance in general belongs to the over-all category of moving causes. 10 And it too is a cause of something which, while it is the kind of thing that might have been brought about for a purpose, does not in fact occur for the sake of what results. The greater extension of the term "chance" is due largely to the fact that the particular cause of what we call a chance outcome need not be an intelligent agent, as it must in the case of luck, but can be any being, whether animate or even inanimate. Yet Aristotle suggests more of a difference between chance in the wider sense and luck in particular than this. He also suggests that chance results need not be of such a kind �12 as even normally to require an intelligent agent, but that in some cases they are ones that might have been brought about by nature, where nature is understood as a power, distinct from intelligence, that nevertheless also acts for a purpose. 11 This suggestion, however, is a difficult one. For as I have already mentioned, it is hard to see what it can /4,. mean to act for a purpose if not to act from intelligent forethought, and so it is hard to understand what that nature could be that Aristotle is contrasting with chance. The examples, moreover, that he gives as illustrations of chance serve to highlight this difficulty. Let me mention only one of these examples, in which the difficulty becomes explicit. Aristotle says that a stone fell by chance when it hit a man who was passing by below; and the reason he gives for attributing its fall to chance is that it might have fallen •·through someone's agency, and for the sake of striking the man, although in fact it did not. In other words, to explain what he means by a chance event, he contrasts it, not with one that might have come about from nature, but with one that might have been chosen by an intelligent, if in this case an unfriendly, being. 12 Now Aristotle is aware that his examples do not fulfill our expectation that chance results are sometimes to be contrasted with what nature, as distinct from intelligence, might have brought forth. And so he adds that chance in the wider sense is most distinct from luck in the sphere of natural generation, when an animal or plant comes into being contrary to nature, i.£, maimed or with some deformity. In such cases, he says, we do not speak of luck, but rather of chance, and this not merely, it seems, �13 because these particular beings have not been produced by intelligent agents, but also because the nature that might have produced them, and done so for a purpose, ·is itself not an intelligence. Aristotle adds, on the basis of a consideration that we will come back to later, that these impairments and deformities are not precisely even from chance. Nevertheless, his reference to them serves to support the suggestion that chance, as distinct from luck, can be a cause of what might have arisen from the purposive action of nature. The question remains, however, of what it can mean for nature to act for a purpose. And Aristotle again calls our attention to this difficulty, in the course of a renewed attempt to answer the question about the cause of the world. What he says is this: since chance and luck are causes by mere concomitance of what either mind or nature might have caused, they cannot be prior to mind and nature themselves; so that even if chance is responsible for the world, mind and nature are necessarily prior causes, both of many other things and of this whole. 13 , Now it is not immediately clear, of course, how Aristotle arrives at this conclusion, or how it is to be understood. But what I would first like to emphasize is his claim that b.Q1h mind and nature must be prior to chance, even on the assumption that chance is responsible for the world. That he makes this claim about mind, in particular, comes as a surprise. For the assumption about a chance origin of the world can refer, and almost certainly does refer, to chance in the wider sense, as distinct from luck. After all, the philosophic position to which �14 Aristotle is responding claims that our world came into being through the blind interaction of the elements, not from the lucky or unlucky actions of an intelligent being. Yet if we assume that chance in this sense is responsible for the world, one might have supposed,· perhaps, that nature is a still prior cause, on the grounds that chance is a cause of what might have been produced by nature, which must, therefore, already be at work. But what Aristotle says, to repeat, is that nature arui mind must b.Q1b. be prior causes of the world. And if mind, as well as nature, must already exist for there to be chance in .the wider sense, this would seem to imply that nature is not capable of acting for the sake of ends - those ends that are presupposed whenever we speak of chance - unless it is somehow accompanied by intelligence. And however much this view of nature might help us to understand how nature can act for a purpose, it is at odds with Aristotle's earlier suggestion that it can do so on its own. And yet perhaps this new suggestion, that nature depends on intelligence in order to do its work, is an intentional modification of the earlier one; and in fact, the very next chapter tends to support this modified view of nature. Aristotle says there that a natural being has two sorts of moving causes, one of which is not natural itself, since it is wholly unmoved. He then identifies this unmoved mover with the being's end, or final cause, and also with its form; but the form he is referring to cannot be the form as it exists in perishable beings, since we have already been told that these forms are perishable themselves, and hence not entirely unmoved. 14 The reference must therefore be to ·, �15 some other kind of form, and the only other kind that Aristotle believes to exist is the form as it exists in thought, whether in human thought or divine thought. If natural change, then, is to be initiated in part by final causes that are also unchanging forms, it seems that these forms must be present in a divine mind, a mind that somehow solicits natural beings to move to~ard the perfection of their exemplars. 15 And indeed, Aris- totle has already suggested something like this earlier in the Physics. where he said that the two highest principles of nature include one that is divine and good and aimed for and another that naturally aims for and reaches toward the first one. 16 And there are quite a few passages scattered throughout Aristotle's works that speak of a divine mind as the prime mover and ultimate source of all life and nature. 17 ( And yet despite the attractiveness of this suggestion about the subordination of nature to a divine mind, it does not yet allow us to see how natural motion as such can be for a purpose. For purposive motion, at least as we understand it, presupposes more than the mere existence in some mind of the form that is to be aimed for as its end. It also presupposes that this form exist in the mind of an agent, such as a craftsman, that can set itself in motion with a view to that end. Thus, for instance, if the heavenly spheres are intelligent, living beings, as Aristotle says they are, it is at least conceivable that they might set themselves in motion in order to approximate the perfection of the divine forms. 18 But unless even the seeds of natural beings here on earth are self- moving, intelligent agents, or unless they are tools in the hands of some other such �16 agent, the assertion that the forms exist in a divine mind does not yet make it intelligible how natural growth, for instance, can be purposive. Perhaps, then, the claim that led us to these speculations about the divine mind, the claim that .Q.Q1b. mind .and. nature must necessarily be prior to chance, allows for another interpretation. In particular, in saying that mind. must be prior to chance, even if chance is responsible for our world, Aristotle may not be trying to help us to see how nature could act for a purpose, Le.., in conjunc- tion with mind, but rather to indicate something about mind and chance in themselves. And in fact, there is such a way of interpreting the claim about mind being prior to chance. For according to Aristotle, there are different senses of priority, not all of which need apply to the same member of a given pair. In particular, if knowledge of one thing • is presupposed by that of another, the former is said to be prior in terms of knowledge, and yet it is not necessarily prior in other senses, such as that of existing earlier in 19 time. Thus, if we assume, as Aristotle invites us to do, that the world emerged through chance, it might still be true, as he claims, that mind must be a prior cause of it; but perhaps this is only because of priority in terms of knowledge. At all events, Aristotle would have good grounds for saying that mind is prior to chance in this sense, for chance results are defined as those that might have been brought about for a purpose, and we understand purpose as that for the sake of which an intelligent being would act. Knowledge of chance, then, presupposes a prior knowledge of mind, or, more precisely, of the kind of minds that are capable of choice. 20 Moreover, if being in the paramount �17 sense is what is true, or what is truly understood by some intelligence -- and Aristotle makes this claim in the Metaphysics - then this priority of mind to chance in terms of 21 knowledge also implies a certain priority in terms of being. Chance would not be fully what it is if it were not understood, understood, that is, in its relation to the ends pursued by intelligent beings. And to say all this is indeed compatible with the possibility that such intelligent beings may have come into existence, as our world itself may have done, through chance. In trying to account for the priority of mind to chance, I said that the definition of chance contains the notion of purpose, and that purpose is understood as that for the ( sake of which an intelligent being would act. And yet we cannot forget Aristotle's earlier suggestion that what is for a purpose is what might have been done filthfil from intelligence .Q.C ~ from nature.22 Thus, it seems that I have been ov.erhasty in claiming that we need to understand intelligent choice, as distinct from nature, in order to understand chance. However, the difficulty of even conceiving what it can mean for nature to act for a purpose has been our chief puzzle all along. And so let me suggest that natural ends themselves, like the ends that just happen to result from chance, can not be understood without a prior understanding of those ends that are pursued through intelligent • 23 choice. l Now it is true that when Aristotle first speaks of purpose in the Physics, he makes no explicit reference to intelligence or choice. What he says, rather, is that "nature," by which he means the form of a natural being, "is an end and [that] for the sake �18 of which; for in the case of those beings whose motion is continuous and has some end, this last stage is also that for the sake of which. " 24 And yet he has to add immediately that not just .a.D¥ last stage of a being's continuous motion is a true end or purpose; after all, he observes, it was ridiculous of the poet - presumably a comic poet -- to say that • death was the purpose for which a certain man had been born. Aristotle goes on to explain that only the best kind of last stage wishes to be an end; and he speaks repeatedly of ends or purposes as being, or as wishing to be, what is better or best. 25 But to be better or best presupposes a range of alternatives, and some being with the intelligence to compare these alternatives and to choose among them . Accordingly, all knowledge of what it is to be an end, including a natural end, depends on knowledge of the features of intelligent choice. My argument has now shown, I think, how Aristotle could justify his claim that even on the hypothesis that our world emerged through chance, mind would still be prior in causality to chance. But it has not made sense of the other half of Aristotle's claim, namely, that nature would also, on this hypothesis, be prior to chance. For I have not relied on the assumption that nature, as distinct from mind, acts for the sake of ends. But unless nature does act in this way, it is not even clear how it differs from chance, let alone how it must be prior to it. After all, chance happenings themselves are of such a kind that they m.igb1 have come about for the sake of ends. Now there is one difference between nature and chance, which I alluded to earlier, when I said that congenital �19 impairments and deformities in natural beings are not precisely from chance. For Aristotle's definition of chance included a criterion that I have not yet mentioned, namely, that the causes of chance results must be external. 26 Congenital impairments and deformities, by contrast, are said to have an internal cause. And it is not only such h deformities in natural beings that can be distinguished from chance results on the basis of this criterion. Their normal development is also said to originate from a cause within themselves. 27 Thus, the normal growth of living beings is said to be from nature, rather than chance, since it begins from a parental seed, which has within itself, as the parent did already, the power to initiate those motions that lead to a mature animal or plant. On the other hand, Aristotle thinks, rightly or wrongly, that in some species of living beings the usual mode of generation is spontaneous, La., from chance. Such generation comes about, he says, because the material, such as putrefying slime, from which these animals or plants begin their development can be moved by itself with the kind of motion that more typically must be caused in maternal residue by a paternal seed. 28 In generation from chance, then, the original source of motion is something other than the kind of being that results from it; and in general, we can distinguish nature, as an internal -source of change, from all external causes such as chance. Still, however, this criterion by itself does not suffice to explain why natural motion is said to be for a purpose. And neither does it allow us to understand Aristotle's claim that nature must be prior to '--. chance. Indeed, the view that nature is only an internal cause of motion adds an �20 additional reason for doubt on this score. After all, the survival, growth, and reproduction of natural beings are dependent on a great many external conditions. Accordingly, nature, or at least the nature of each kind of perishable being that we know of here on earth, must depend for its very existence on something else - either on some higher &> 29 principle of order or else on chance. And on the hypothesis that our world as a whole emerged through chance, chance would seem to be prior to nature, rather than the other way around. If, moreover, one holds that the world as a whole emerged through chance, it becomes all the harder to see how there could be a purpose behind the internal development of particular natural beings. And some of Aristotle's philosophic predecessors had in fact argued that there was none. Aristotle recasts their argument in the form of a perplexity, as follows. Zeus does not cause rain, the argument begins, in order to make the crops grow, any more than it rains in order to damage the crops on some poor farmer's threshing-floor; rather, the rain falls by necessity as the evaporated moisture rises and then cools, and it just happens to be advantageous or harmful for human beings. And if such blind causality is the truth behind the apparently benevolent order of the world as a whole, what prevents there being the same kind of causality at work in the formation of particular natural beings? This argument acknowledges that the parts of organic beings are suitably arranged for the activities through which they survive and reproduce. But it claims that these arrangements first originated from blind necessity, as �21 did many others, and that it merely turned out that these were serviceable, as the others were not, for survival and reproduction. The animals and plants that we see around us continue to survive because their parts turned out as. if they had been organized for a purpose; but they were not organized for any purpose in fact. Aristotle admits that one might be perplexed by this attempt to explain away the apparent purposiveness in the structure of organic beings, but he denies that things could have happened in the way that it suggests. He offers in rebuttal a whole series of arguments that nature is truly a cause for the sake of something. And at least the first of these arguments suggests that natural purposiveness is not limited to the internal ( structure of organic beings. For instead of granting the premise that the causes of rain are indifferent to good and bad, and arguing that the parts of living beings are nevertheless arranged for a purpose, he disputes even about the rain, or at least about its seasonal pattems. 30 Apparently, then, he agrees that it does not make sense to think of nature as acting for a purpose within a limited realm unless the world as a whole is ordered for the sake of ends. Unfortunately, however, this first in his series of arguments for natural' purpose is extremely problematic. And yet partly for this very reason, it is of such importance that I wish to go through it in detail. Aristotle begins by saying that "these things, and indeed all things that are by nature, come into being either always or for the most part in the same way," but that "nothing that is from luck or from chance does so." In support of �22 this assertion about luck and chance, he adds that "it is not believed to be from luck or from coincidence" - which latter term appears to be a synonym for chance -- "when there are frequent rains in winter, but [only] if they come during the dog days [~. in summer]." Similarly, he says, "heat during the dog days is not [believed to be from luck or from coincidence], but [only] if [it happens] in winter." 31 Now it is noteworthy that the explicit basis for Aristotle's claim that normal weather patterns are not from coincidence is what is commonly believed. For those who make the argument against him, and who speak of a temporal origin of the various species of living beings, would object that common opinion has too limited a time frame, and that the patterns whose regularity it is struck by exist only for a short time, in the light of eternity, as does our world itself. 32 They would say that even if the persistence of these regular patterns is not merely coincidental, but a necessary consequence of the elements in their juxtaposition, the whole order within which these patterns exist is the temporary and unintended aftereffect of an original coincidence. And yet despite the obviousness of this objection, Aristotle does not even attempt to justify, at least not here, his reliance on the common perspective regarding the permanence of our world; and by being explicit about this reliance, he calls attention to the question of whether that perspective is adequate. Aristotle continues his argument as follows: "If, then, [things] are believed [to be] either from coincidence or for the sake of something, and if it is not possible for these things to be either from coincidence or from chance, they would be for the sake of some- �23 thing." 33 Now this conclusion follows, of course, if its premises are sound. But the premise that things must be either from coincidence or else for the sake of something is open to doubt. For what about the bad things that happen always or for the most part? In particular, what about the death that comes inevitably to all living beings here on earth? The fact that birth is followed by death is no mere coincidence, if anything is not, and yet it is hard to see a purpose for it. Aristotle helps us, moreover, to see the dubiousness of the claim that being from coincidence or else being for a purpose is an exhaustive alternative by explicitly basing this premise too on common opinion. And a further sign that he is aware of its weakness is that he dqes not go on to claim that everything by nature is for a purpose, even though he had begun his argument by asserting that everything by nature comes about always or for the most part in the same way. For if nothing that happens with such regularity can be from coincidence, as he asserts, and if being from coincidence and being for a purpose are the only alternatives, it would follow that everything by nature is. for a purpose. And yet, to repeat, Aristotle does not even claim that this is true. What he says, rather, is that if the particular things in question, such as normal weather patterns or the arrangement of parts in living beings, cannot be from coincidence or from chance, then ~ things would be for a purpose. By thus retreating from the full implications of his argument, Aristotle suggests that this more limited conclusion, regarding the parts of organic beings and the like, is not meant to rely wholly on the reasons that have been made explicit. Finally, Aristotle �24 concludes his over-all argument by observing that all such things are by nature, so that there is purpose, or "the for the sake of something," among the beings that come into being and that are by nature. But this final conclusion, since it is based on the previous one, can also not be justified by the explicit argument alone. The disregard, in Aristotle's explicit argument, of natural evils such as death is closely related to its other difficulty, its failure to respond to his adversaries' contention about the origin of the world. For whatever weaknesses there may be in the doctrine that our world order, and in particular its species of living beings, emerged through chance and ne_cessity alone, this view certainly allows for a straightforward account of death and other natural evils. And so by pointing to his awareness that he has failed to acknowledge these evils in his own argument, Aristotle calls still further attention to his having left it open, at least for now, that his adversaries might be right about the question of ultimate origins. But what, then, is the basis for Aristotle's emphatic assertion, throughout this whole series of arguments and elsewhere, that the end or purpose is a cause of natural development? For if there is no evidence that such development is initiated by a selfmoving, intelligent agent, and if the possibility must even remain open that life itself first emerged through chance and blind necessity alone, how can he speak with such confidence of purposes or ends in nature? Now to answer this question, we must begin by noting that whatever the origin of life, if it had an origin, and whatever the more �25 immediate moving causes of natural development may be, it remains.true.that this motion issues regularly, throughout human experience, in living beings whose parts work wonderfully well together in carrying out their life activities. These activities, such as nutrition, reproduction, perception, locomotion, and thought, are the manifestations of the form, or soul, of the being in question, and this form cannot be understood in the light of its material conditions alone. Rather, it is only in the light of the form that the material conditions can be seen as what they are. The bodily organs of a living being must be seen as instruments for performing its characteristic activities, activities. without some of which, at least, the body itself would cease to exist; and even the more ultimate conditions of life must be understood, at least in part, in the light of their contribution to ( this end. 34 Accordingly, even if in general the term of natural development plays no role at all in initiating it, as it would do if.it were a purpose in the strict sense, the notion of purpose, or of what something is good for, remains central to the proper understanding of natural beings. And since living beings become what they most truly are by attaining their mature form, their typical growth toward maturity must also be seen in the light of this end. This is not to deny that mature development may indeed result from the same kind of blind necessity, given certain conditions, as does deformity or premature death, given certain others. But as words like "deformity," "mature," and "premature" themselves already suggest, we nonetheless see·these outcomes either as successes or as failures of a tendency toward a natural goal. We can disregard, or pretend not to �26 notice, this privileged status of the mature form; but it remains an inescapable fact of the world as it presents itself to our experience. Now these conclusions, to repeat, are independent of the question whether the world as a whole emerged through chance. And thus the centrality of form to the understanding of natural beings also allows us to make sense of the claim that even if the world did emerge through chance, nature would still be a prior cause of it. For the world consists primarily of natural beings, and of living beings in particular, which are properly seen as what they are in the light of their forms. Hence knowledge of these natural forms, and of these forms as the normal ends of growth, is presupposed by the very question of whether the beings they characterize, or even the world as a whole, first .originated through chance. Nature as form and as the end of motion is necessarily prior to chance, at least in the sense that chance can not be understood without a prior knowledge of this nature, just as we saw that it could not be understood without a prior knowledge of the features of intelligent choice. 35 This notion of the mature form as the end of natural development is a far cry from the strict sense of purpose, according to which the end is anticipated by thought and thus helps to initiate the motions that lead up to its realization. And much of the difficulty in understanding Aristotle's account stems from the fact that he has blurred the distinction between these two senses of final cause. Now it would have been easy enough for him to insist on this distinction, and so I conclude that he chose not to, even though it is �27 only the weaker sense of final cause that he regards as being applicable to nature in general. In other words, I contend, he consciously wrote in such a way as to mislead his readers. Now I know that it will strike many of you as an odd suggestion that Aristotle would thus mislead his readers, and especially in what seems to be a purely theoretical account of the natural world. And yet there is considerable support for this suggestion, at least in general, among the ancient and medieval commentators. Themistius, for instance, writing in the fourth century of our era, practically begins his paraphrase of the Posterior Analytics by saying that "many of the books of Aristotle appear to have been 36 contrived with a view to concealment ...." Simplicius, writing two centuries later, concludes the introductory section of his commentary on the Physics with a fuller statement of the same thought. He says, and I quote, that [Aristotle's) writings are divided into two classes, into the exoteric ones, such as those in the form of inquiries and dialogues and in general those that are not concerned with the highest accuracy, and into the esoteric ones, [or those that are meant for hearing onlyJ, which include this treatise [i..e.., the Physics]; and in the[seJ esoteric ones, he deliberately introduced obscurity, repelling by this means those who are too easy-going, so that it might seem to them that they had not even been written. 37 And still later, in the tenth century, the Islamic philosopher Alfarabi wrote in his "Harmonization of the Opinions of Plato and Aristotle" that whoever inquires into Aristotle's sciences, peruses his books, and takes pains with them will not miss the many modes of concealment, blinding and complicating in his approach, despite his apparent intention to explain and clarify.38 �28 This consensus, then, across the centuries, that Aristotle deliberately concealed some of his thought should help make it at least conceivable that my interpretation of his account of natural purpose is correct. But why, you will ask, would Aristotle write books in which he deliberately concealed his thought? Now the primary answer to this question, an answer that will seem surprising only to those who are unfamiliar with political conditions in the ancient world, is the fear of persecution. We are told, in fact, that despite all his precautions, Aristotle was indicted on the charge of impiety late in his life and that he had to flee Athens in order to escape the fate of Socrates. And underlying this charge against Aristotle is the fact that the study of nature was not in his time a respectable pursuit. Those who devoted themselves to natural philosophy were suspected of being atheists and corruptors of the young, and even Plato's Socrates did not try to dispel this suspi•cion at his trial, choosing instead to deny that he had ever been a natural philosopher himself. 39 Now in this precarious situation for the study of nature, Aristotle undertook the project of trying to make it a permissible, and even a respectable, activity. And largely for this reason, I think, he exaggerated the extent of his agreement with popular beliefs about the world - such as the popular belief that things happen, in general, for a purpose - and he concealed from his less careful readers much of his deepest thought about nature and the divine. He was, moreover, quite successful in this project of _winning respectability for the study of nature. One measure of his success is the unbroken tradition of commentary on his works that extended for several millennia after �29 his death, a tradition to which we largely owe the little that still survives from the writings of his predecessors in natural philosophy. However, fear of persecution and concern for the respectability of natural science are not the only reasons for Aristotle's willingness to accommodate the expression of his thought to popular opinion. T~'1ere are also educational reasons, which stem from his insight that natural science, unlike mathematics, is necessarily an ascent from what is more familiar to us, in all its confusion, toward what is clearer or more knowable by na40 ture. Given our remoteness from the ultimate causes of things, natural philosophy can not be taught as a deductive science, but must begin, at least, as an ascent from common opinion. Thus, for instance, insight into the truth that natural beings become what they most truly are by attaining their mature form emerges more or less directly as a refinement of the common belief in higher purposes. 41 And one of the surest ways to prevent access to this insight is dogmatically to reject that common belief or dogmatically to pretend that it doesn't matter whether its claims are true. For these reasons as well, then, Aristotle first presents himself as being in fuller agreement with that belief than he really is. In conclusion, let me return briefly to the question of the origin of the world. For although my account of why Aristotle speaks of nature as an end is compatible - as is the bulk of the Physics - with the possibility that our world emerged through chance, the fact remains that the final book of the Physics and the first book of Qn the Heavens contain elaborate arguments for its being eternal. And since Aristotle also claims, as I mentioned earlier, that the highest principle of the world is a divine mind, he holds out �30 the hope that natural motion is somehow, in a way that we may never perhaps be able to understand, activity for a purpose in the strict sense of the word. Yet I do not think that Aristotle himself could have placed much stock in a suggestion that anything other than a self-moving, intelligent agent - which the divine mind of his theology is not - can act for a purpose in the strict sense. 42 And at all events, there is a more importanF reason for his attempt to show that the world as we know it is eternal, and dependent on an intelligence more or less like our own. For if it is not, this does not necessarily mean that it is the product of natural elements that have come together by chance; there is also the possibility that it owes its existence to the will of a mysterious god or gods. And in that case, what we call nature would be at most a subordinate order whose continuance depends on the sufferance of this god or these gods; 43 and so science, or the attempt to understand nature in the light of its intelligible principles, would be a questionable and perhaps even a wholly misguided_pursuit. Accordingly, Aristotle's own theology, and the associated doctrine of the eternity of the world, serves above all as a response to this radical challenge to the scientific enterprise. It is not, however, an adequate response to it, since his arguments for the eternity of the world, at any rate, are inconclusive. Indeed, some of the deficiencies in these arguments are so manifest, it seems to me, that Maimonides must surely be correct to say, in The Guide Qf too Perplexed, that Aristotle himself did not regard them as genuine demonstrations. 44 Aristotle either had some other way, then, of justifying the life of science, and its first premise that the world is a natural one, or else he too must have been perplexed by this fundamental question. �31 ENDNOTES 1. Chance aruf. Necessity. Jacques Monod, translated from the French by Austin Wainhouse (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), p. 21. The claim made in this passage is significantly qualified on p. 41 (which should be read in connection with p. 104, along with the slightly more tentative remarks on pp. 112-113). The original claim is restored, however, on pp. 176-177. Note also the quotation marks around the word "true" on pp. 21 and 176. 2. Ib.e Philosophical Works Qf Descartes. translated by Elizabeth Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, Volume One (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 173; contrast. however, p. 194. 3. Principia. Volume ll, JJN System Qf ~ Wfill.d., Motte's Translation Revised by Florian Cajori (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1934), pp. 543-544. Compare p. 546 and pp. 668-670. 4. Ihe Evolution SJf Physics, Albert Einstein and Leopold lnfeld (New York: Touchstone Books. 1966), p. 31 . 5. See, for instance. Qn ~ Sm!.l 415a22-b21; Qn 1lle. E.ar1s. Qf Animals 641 b23-33; Qn ~ Generation Qf Animals 730b8-32; Physics 199a20-b14. 6. Physics 194a21-22; 199a 15-17. 7. Qn ~ J:.am. of Animals 641b10-12; Qn ~ Heaven 291b13-14, 271a33; Politics 1256b20-22; Posterior Analytics 94b36. I 8. See Qn ~ Eans. Qf Animals 641 b10-23; compare Plato, Philebos 30a9-c8; ~ 885e 7-886a4. • • 9. Physics 196a24-b5. 10. Physics 198a2-4. 11 . Physics 196b21-22; 198a3-6; cf. 197a5-6 and 197b18-22. 12. cf. Aristotle's "Physics" (Books 1aruf.11), translated with introduction and notes by W. Charlton (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 109-110. 13. Physics 198a5-12. 14. Physics 192a34-b1; 198b1-4 (but contrast 224b5-6). �32 15. Physics 194b26; Compare Charles H. Kahn, "The Place of the Prime Mover in Aristotle's Teleology," in Aristotle .Qil Nature and .LMng Things: Philosophical and Historical Studies Presented tQ D.aYid. ~ Balme (Pittsburgh: Mathesis Publications, 1985), pp. 182-205. See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, 0 .2, A.3; 1-11, O.40, A.3. 16. Physics 192a16-19. 17. See, for instance, Metaphysics 1072b13-14; Qn the Heaven 279a22-30. 18. Qn too Heavens 292a14-22; 285a29-30; Qn the Motion Qf Animals 700b25-32; Metaphysics 1072a19-b4; 1073a22-b1. 19. Compare Metaphysics 1018b14-37; Categories 14a26-b8. 20. Compare Wolfgang Wieland, Qie. aristotelische Physik, 2nd edition (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1970), pp. 259-260. 21. Contrast Metaphysics 1051a34-b6 with 1027b18-1028a6. See also Qntb.eSo.ui 426a15-26; 430a19-22; 431a1-4; and compare Physics 223a16-29. 22. Physics 196b21-22; cf. endnote 10. 23. Physics 194a28-30 ff. Translations from the Greek are my own. 24. Physics 194a32-33; 195a23-26; 198b8-9; 198b16-17. 25. Physics 197b18-22; 197b35-37; 196b34-197a2. 26. Physics 192b8-32: 199b14-17; and contrast 197a1-2. 27. Metaphysics 1034b4-7; cf. 1032a25-32; Qn the Generation of Animals 715b25-30; 762a8-763b16; History of Animals 539a21-25; 547b18-23. 28. Consider Posterior Analytics 95a3-6. 29. Cf. David Furley, "The Rainfall Example in Physics ii 8," in Aristotle QD Nature and .Living Things: Philosophical and Historical Studies Presented tQ DaY.k1 ~ Balme (Pittsburgh: Mathesis Publications, 1985), pp. 177-182. 30. Physics 198b34-199a3. 31. John M. Cooper claims that Aristotle's argument is based on the premise of the eternity of our world. See his "Hypothetical Necessity and Natural Teleology," in ebikc sophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology, ed. Gotthelf and Lennox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 243-274, especially pp. 246-253. Compare, however, Meteorology 347a5-6, where Aristotle himself says that the season.al cycle of the rains �-' •,::-_... ~ 33 merely "wishes (emphasis mine) to be perpetual in its order," ... Kat TouT' iv8EAEXES l0EAEL -yt-yvEa0at KaTci 'YE TTJV Tci{tv. 32. Physics 199a3-5. 33. Physics 199b34-200a32. See also 199b5-7. 34. Cf. Qn 1b.e .P.ar:ts. 2f Animals 646a8-647a3. 35. See above pp. 16-18. 36. See above p. 15. Cf. Maimonides, The~ .Qf tw Perplexed, translated by Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), Part II, Chapter 20, pp. 313=314. 37. TTOAA.a µev oov EOLKE TWV 'AptaTOTEAOIJS' ~l~AlWV ELS ETTlKpU!pLV µEµT)xavficr0m ... Themistius, Analyticorum Posteriorum Paraphrasis, in Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, Volume 5, Part 1, ed. M. Wallies (Berlin: 1900), p. 1. 1 38. ALxfj 8€ 8t1JpT)µEVWV airrou TWV crunpaµµciTWV ELS TE Ta E~WTEPLKCl ola TO. 'taTOpLKCl Kal Ta 8taAO)'LKCl Kat CAWS Ta µT) aKpas rucpt~Etas cf>poVTL(OVTa Kai. ElsTa ciKpoaµanKci, wv Kal OVTTJ foTlv ,; rrpayµaTEta, lv To1s dKpoaµaTtKo1S cia<icf>ELaV ETTETT}8EUOE Sta TOUTTJS TOUS p<;t6uµOTEp01JS' QTTOKpouoµEvos-. rrap' ws Simplicius, 1n Aristotelis Physicorum Ubros Quattuor Pciores Commentana, in Commentana in Aristotelem Graeca. Volume 9, ed. H. Diels (Berlin: 1882), p. 8. lKetvots µT)BE -yEyp<icf>0m 8oKE1v. 39. Alfarabi, "Harmonization of the Opinions of Plato and Aristotle," unpublished translation by M. Galston, p. 9. Quoted with permission of the translator. 40. Plato. Apology of Socrates 18b4-c3; 19b2-d7; 26d 1-e2; contrast, however, Phaedo 96a6-99d2 ff. 41 . Physics 184a16-21; cf. Posterior Analytics 71 b33-72a5; Topics 141 a26-142a 16. 42. Compare the relation between Socrates' youthful hopes that he would learn from Anaxagoras how nature as a whole is ordered for the better and his mature effort to understand the beings in the light of their forms; Plato, Phaedo 97b8-1 00a 7. 43. Given the political constraints that I mentioned earlier in the text, and in the light of Aristotle's project to make science respectable, the evidence that he had a genuine concern with this radical alternative is necessarily sketchy. But one might note an astonishing example that he gives in Book One of the Physics to illustrate his response to those philosophers who had denied the possibility of becoming. The difficulty that led to their denial arose on the basis of a premise that Aristotle speaks of as being common to all the students of nature, namely that nothing comes into being from non-being. For •: . . �.,. 34 the only other alternative is coming into being from being, and yet this too seems impossible, since being already is. Aristotle's first response to this argument is that becoming is neither from being nor from non-being, except by concomitance; what comes into being does so from a being, to be sure, but not insofar as that being is a being, but rather insofar as it is not the being that comes from it. This is, of course, a plausible claim. But to illustrate it, he gives the example of a dog coming into being from a horse, and the example is so fantastic that modem editors have surmised, with no manuscript support except for a single variant reported as such by Simplicius, that the text needs to be emended. What I suggest instead is that Aristotle uses the strange example on purpose, in order to hint that this first, or "formal," attempt to show that becoming is possible fails to meet the underlying challenge, which is to show, rather, that becoming is limited to what is possible by nature. At any rate, he goes on to supplement this first argument with a second one, based on the distinction between possibility and actuality, and he adds that he has given a more precise account of this distinction elsewhere. [See Physics 191 a23-b34, ·especially 191 b20-21 , and compare 187a26-b1 and 188a31-34. On the distinction between possibility and actuality, see Metaphysics e.J Another indication of Aristotle's concern with the theoretical challenge that the question of the gods presents for science is found in the first chapter of Book Two of the Posterior Analytics, at the beginning of a long and difficult discussion of how we come to know the first principles of science or demonstration. Aristotle includes in that chapter, seemingly as a mere example of the "what is?" questions that must be answered for there to be science in the strict sense, the question "what is a god?" [See Posterior Analytics 89b23-35.J 44. Ib.e. Guide Qf ~ Perplexed, Part 11, Chapter 15, pp. 289-293. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 34 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The question of final causality in Aristotle's Physics Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on April 3, 1992 by David Bolotin as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bolotin, David, 1944- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-04-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Aristotle. Physics. Causality (Physics) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000038 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d415186b7e840ea65d8b1a36c06d2ab3.pdf 37282093349aa636f0e2b7a98c24f11c PDF Text Text ��������������������������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 45 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Thucydides : circa 460-400 B.C. Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on May 19, 1986 by David Bolotin. 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Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Thucydides Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000273 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a354a0adfdb1da43adcc827bfefa35c1.pdf 4487c49e4f4e32224cb6383a1b64338d PDF Text Text ����������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 22 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Aristotle on the principles of natural beings : Physics, book 1 Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given in 1995 by David Bolotin. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bolotin, David, 1944- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Aristotle. Physics. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000280 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bf1141512bb6534e0dfce68c50fba7d6.pdf dd8731522da0db58e3717aabedd03046 PDF Text Text ��������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 26 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The discussion of time in Aristotle's Physics Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on March 1, 1996 by David Bolotin as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bolotin, David, 1944- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-03-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Aristotle. Physics. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000304 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c1ae03052355f66c0c8b35ef9fb75eaa.pdf bf3dd4c34ee36dbfc5a427ff08c81eac PDF Text Text ������������������������������������������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 41 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The life of philosophy and the immortality of the soul : an introduction to Plato Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given in 1997 by David Bolotin. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bolotin, David, 1944- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Plato. Phaedo. Philosophy Immortality (Philosophy) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000443