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Location: Chemistry/Physics Building, MUN

Time: 8:00 pm

Present: 24

1. Fred's Intro:

"Dr. John Scott is a graduate of Memorial (BA in Classics) 1960-64, and of Cambridge (BA & MA Classics & English) 1964-68, and of Edinburgh (Ph.D Philosophy). He has taught in the Philosophy Department at Memorial since 1966, and is a Professor and former Head of the Philosophy Department. Dr. Scott was also the founding Director of Studies of the Master of Philosophy in Humanities programme. His areas of research include Plato and Aristotle, philosophy of scientific method, and philosophy of place."

2. Speaker: Dr. John Scott. "The Straight story on Aristotle's Heavenly Curves." Aristotle has gotten some bad press according to Dr. Scott. He has been charged and found guilty, but of the wrong two charges. Dr. Scott began with some of the early history of Aristotle and Heraclitus ("Everything is change."); Aristotle inquired into what is the nature of that change. In particular, in the heavens, "what dynamic change keeps the heavens the "same", ie. gives it its own peculiar character. Some of Aristotle's ideas can be seen to parallel Einstein's in the General Theory of Relativity. Aristotle focused on the "place" of an object, which is a much more concrete term in his use than the view of location used by Newton or Descartes. Locating an object by Cartesian coordinates makes use of the concept of "space" as being something "in-itself" and completely independent of the objects and their properties, that it may contain. Aristotle, however, combined geometry and matter, not altogether unlike Einstein, to define an object in terms of the boundary between it and its material environment. In other words, the body determines its geometry of location in relation to other bodies, and not in relation to an abstract, independent, infinite space. There is in some sense a continuity, as opposed to the Cartesian notion of a void between bodies.

Aristotle has been blamed as being too dogmatic and of classifying subjects in a manner so inflexible as to petrify the subject. In addition, he supposedly failed to find the right balance between logical deduction and induction. Despite this, he was a brilliant observer in many fields of endeavor and often claimed "there is no knowledge that is not from the senses". This presents a paradox with the Western conception of Aristotle (as opposed to the Arabic, who seemed to have understood him). Dr. Scott feels Aristotle's delineation of the 24 moods of the syllogism has been misunderstood by Western culture. This may explain why Aristotle was such a boon to Islamic culture during his period of influence, and somewhat of a bane to Western culture, particularly in astronomy.

For Aristotle, predicates were accusations, "I accuse the world of being round". We are speaking with our eyes and ears, and in some sense waiting for a response. It is odd that although in several places he proudly states that his work on the syllogism is his greatest achievement, he never uses it in any of his other works. This may be due to a conflict with Plato ("use my Dialectics or else"), who may have suppressed his ideas. However, there is the view that Aristotle's viewpoint on the use of logic was less a matter of building up a body of knowledge through the use of logic, but more one of questioning and checking what is now presented to us. There may be myriads of causes for our effect, thus making a logical body of knowledge very difficult to build. In the West it was thought Aristotle meant we must match the correct cause to its effect. Dr. Scott proposes that both Plato and Aristotle did not reason this way and that they have been misunderstood. We are looking for causes that are more commensurately universal. However, if we abstract the most universal causes, we can now use the syllogism to check the argument, as a methodology for critiquing expositions. This was the original intent. In other words, Aristotle was not about proving things, but critiquing expositions.

In light of this, we may have to re-evaluate Aristotle's concepts of the heavens. His concept of location can be seen as a forerunner of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. His statements on simple bodies having simple motions (circular and rectilinear with respect to a centre) can also be seen as trying to elucidate the nature of heavenly motion. This was an effort in which he failed, but not for the reasons so often touted.

The nature of scientific inquiry is in trouble. We are not dealing with issues of evidence properly.

(Some other side-trips were made: Islamic Sharia law: evidence and judgement. Metaphysics: this whole field is Andronimicus' fault [spelling?], for placing Aristotle's extra, untitled works after the physics section. A visit to Yemen to view the huge collection of Aristotelian manuscripts hidden away for the past one thousand years or so (machine guns in back). In addition, a sheet of quotations was passed out, and there were some lively discussions.)

[Its been a long while since I studied any philosophy. I hope I didn't change the substance of the talk too badly.]

2. Break.

3. Observations. Fred noted the magnetic flip of the poles of the sun. A few people managed to have a look at the bright planets.

4. Robert Babb on the "Sky Next Month". Mars is visible at 2 am. Jupiter and Saturn. Maybe we could try to organize a Messier Marathon in the snow? Comet is visible at magnitude 9.1. April 20: Lyrids, early in the morning. April 3: Jupiter will appear almost moonless.

5. Randy. The End is Mir. Randy spoke about the impending doom of Mir, and showed some computer generated video of the breakup. There were some questions and answers.

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Please send any additions or corrections to:

David Bourgeois: mailto:dbourgeo@nl.rogers.com