Aristotle

PHYSICS A, B

The Greek title ta physika (akroamata) denotes "(lectures) on nature".

For Aristotle, nature (physis) includes not only living beings but all physical things (stones, elements, celestial bodies) so far as they are:
(a) subject to change
(b) inseparable from matter
(c) set in motion by themselves

Note: The study of physical things, as practiced by Aristotle, obviously stretches over the realm of both modern physics and biology and includes also what would be today the subjet matter of chemistry, optics, mineralogy and astronomy. However, Aristotle's approach is purely philosophical, not empirical.

Being (Greek: to on) = This substantive is derived from the verb "to be" and represents the most general term for whatever occurs as the subject of language or thought; it denotes everything that exists, all that is. Consequently, do not limit its meaning to living beings, only!

Principle (Greek: arche) = The source of something, the determining beginning, the defining origin.

Cause (Greek: aition) = That which is responsible (literally: "blameworthy") for changing something else or setting it into motion; a reason which accounts for something else.

Elements (Latin: elementa) = The simple constituents of a complex.

Something pale can come to be only from something non-pale, not from anything else, like "being musical". This is both an ontological and logical necessity.
But "what is not-pale", although a correct logical designation for the source of something pale, is too broad and unspecific ontologically, for the "not-pale" could be anything, and something pale cannot emerge from anything. Therefore the right designation for the state from which the pale emerges is its contrary: something dark. (The dark is narrower than the not-pale.)
The same holds true of something musical, which comes to be from the not-musical itself being specified as un-musical (or not yet musical). ("Musical" is here taken in the sense of being educated in general including being knowledgeable about music or being trained to play an instrument.)
However, if the dark is a person who happens to be musical as well, we can say that the pale has come to be from the musical (person) coincidentally.
Passing away (perishing) is regulated in the same (reversed) way.

Opposites (Latin: oppositus) = the most general relation of different properties (for instance, black versus yellow).

Contraries (Latin: contrarius) = the more specific relation between two properties that are logically opposed (like black and white). They cannot be both ascribed at the same time, but they can be both denied of the same subject.

Contradiction (Latin: contradicere) = the most strict relation between two properties that exclude each other (for instance: black and not-black). They cannot be both true or both false.

Coincidentally = occuring with something else at the same time and in the same place (or in the same subject) without being logically or necessarilly connected with it.

Substance (Latin: substantia) = a separate entity that exists on its own and upon which everything else depends for its existence; that of which something (a quality, attribute, relation) may be affirmed or denied; that what a thing is to be, its nature.

Subject (Latin: subjectum) = the underlying ground, that in which something can be said to inhere (substratum).

Property (Latin: proprium) = that which is proper to a thing (characteristic or feature, attribute); unlike substances and individual entities a property can be shared by many different things; but properties cannot exist by themselves, independently.

(i) "Simple thing coming to be F" (1 and 2).
(ii) "Simple thing that comes into being" (= the musical thing).
(iii) "Compound" (= both the thing that comes into being and what comes to be that thing) = (3).

Simple Things

(a) A man comes to be musical.
(b) The not-musical thing comes to be musical.

(c) The not-musical man comes to be a musical man.

If something comes to be from being G, where G is opposite to F and G does not remain, we can say both that something comes to be F from being G and that G comes to be F (a man comes to be musical from being unmusical and the unmusical man comes to be musical).

Coming to be simply

Substance comes to be without qualification

The unmusical

If natural things come to be from their principles and causes according to their essence and not coincidentally, then everything (in nature) comes to be from the subject and the shape. (matter and form)

(a) In one way there are two principles of change - the contraries: the musical and the unmusical, the hot and the cold, the ordered and the disordered. This only if we conceive these opposites as entities and not mere properties.

Question 2:

The Eleatics were the first to explore the problem philosophically (i.e. logically as opposed to physically). But they were led astray by the lack of experience (the knowledge of nature).

Another way of solving the puzzle of change is to introduce the distinction between potentiality and actuality. What actually is could potentially not be (be not), and the other way round. Something could be many things in many different respects potentially. It is therefore mistaken to think that if a thing is actually one in number (numerically) it is also one potentially.
Note: The concepts of potentiality and actuality are discussed extensively in book Theta of the Metaphysics.

- One principle is divine (good): form

- The second is the contrary: privation

- The third strives for the first: subject

In the first book of the Physics Aristotle was using the expression "nature" mostly in the sense of an "underlying stuff" or subject. He has provisionally defined nature as the realm of constant though regulated change. Consequently, "natural things" were those that were subject to change in any of its types.
But this first determination of "nature" was very general and vague. We still do not quite understand what does it mean to exist "by nature" and to be "nature".
Note: It is obvious that the ancient usage of the word "nature" strongly deviates from ours. As indicated at the beiginning of this outline, "nature" for Aristotle is not a totality of living objects studied only by biology but something much more complex and comprehensive which includes the principles and the forms of coming to be. More specifically, in the second book of the Physics Aristotle is primarily concerned to explicate what does it mean for something to possess "a nature" (to be natural, to have an essence).

Methodology:

Aristotle now addresses this issue first by pointing out that existing "by nature" is a special case of being (existing) in general and then by explaining the "nature" of natural existence. What follows is something like the philosophy of life sciences or a study in the methodology of explanation in the sciences of nature.

Everything that exists is a being.

Exhaustive Delineation:

"Among things that are (ta onta = beings), some exist by nature, some from other causes (aitia)."

Natural Things

- those things that have a principle of motion and self-production in themselves.

Things which are not constituted by nature - things that do not have a principle of change in themselves except coincidentally:

Examples:

products of art, artifacts (coat, bed)

motion in space (local movement)
coming-to-be - passing away (becoming/decay)
increase - decrease (quantitative change)
alteration (qualitative change)

We speak about natural things while assuming that they exist. Is it a justified assumption? Physical studies would be impossible if there were no subjects to study. Thus it makes sense to ask first whether nature exists at all. But the existence of natural objects is so obvious that any (syllogistic) proof (if possible at all) could only give a lesser amount of evidence for the existence of nature than what we obtain by simply looking around. In general, one needs to discriminate what is known "of itself" from what is derived and not to deduce the former from the latter. By the same token any proof regarding colors would be only about the names of colors without supplying any additional understanding of them. Unless we want to be like blinds discussing colors we can skip the question of existence and proceed directly to the question of essence:

Specific Determination:

Having a nature is equal to being a substance (relatively independent, discernible and recognizable entity, bearer of identity, essential form underlying attributes).

Affection (Latin: affectum): That which belongs to something as its characteristic.
State: The mode of being of something.
Disposition (Latin: dispositio): The tendency to behave in a certain way.

What is the nature of matter? Since ultimate elements are not made out of anything else, we cannot determine their nature by reference to their constituents. In addition, by applying solely the "made of" criterion we do not pay justice to the fact that the nature of natural things is determined by their self-regulated motions.
Some motions of natural things are due to the matter they are made of, but many are manifestations of their substantial form.

Formalist Answer:

(I) The concept and the name of something are based on the actual form. Comparison with artifices and their materials. What exits only potentially does not have its full nature and cannot be called or defined as the final product. Matter exists only potentially with regard to that what it is supposed to be at the end. To obtain its nature, it has to receive its form specified in the definition. Only then it becomes actually what it is by its name and concept. Form is the substance of naming and defining things as to what they are both in art and in nature.
Therefore, the form is the nature.

(II) The form determines natural reproduction. Analogy with art.  Man is born from (another) man, not from earth or from a bed. A bed cannot beget another bed. It can perhaps produce another wood. But wood is not a bed. What makes one bed a bed are its form and function. Antiphon is right in claiming that what reproduces itself is characteristic for substance, but his example points to the shape or naturalness of the form. Artistic production is determined by the form as well as natural generation. But man produces man as organized structure, not simply as flesh and bones. If capacity to reproduce itself makes a thing have a nature, then what gives regularity to that process is the form which regulates development.
Therefore, the form is the nature.

(III) The form determines the end of becoming. Contrast with art. Becoming (growing) is a road of a nature towards the nature. In difference to artifice (doctoring), which does not lead to itself but to something else (health), a natural thing stands both at theonset and at the end of reproduction. Moreover, the growing being is the same as the mature (grown) being, because what grows is basically what it is growing into - a form. (The form as an inner principle is the same in both the genitor and the offspring, although they are two different individuals of the same kind.)
Therefore, the form is the nature.

The nature is an end that something is for.
"In a sense we are an end", because "we use everything as if it was for our sake."
This does not mean that the last stage in development is the end for the sake of which one being is born and lives. Aristotle would not accept the existentialist view that man is a being-toward-death:
"The poet was carried away into making an absurd statement when he said: /on the occasion of someone's death/ 'He has /reached/ the end for the sake of which he was born.'"
Aristotle makes a distinction between the factual terminus of life and the end in the sense of fulfillment of our potentials. In view of this distinction it is ridiculous to equate inevitable death with our human purpose. Although death comes of necessity to living beings, but is not for the sake of something. It is only something which follows from the perishable character of matter.
Although he extols man as the beneficiary of all other living beings Aristotle does not entrust humans with the mastership over the whole of nature in the sense of modern large scale manipulation and global dominance.

Hylomorphism: The theory that the universe is composed of matter and form in inseparable unity throughout.

Teleology: the study of final causes or of phenomena exhibiting purposes.

Existentialism: a view that existence precedes essence, that is, forms do not determine existence to be what it is.

"Man is begotten by man and by the sun as well."  The nature of an organism as instantiated in one actual individual gives us an idea as what it is to be that organism. At the same time it is operative as a dynamic force pushing for its realization and reproduction. As such it determines the outcome of natural self-reproduction: man can only give birth to a man, not to a horse or to a dandelion. Man's offspring has the same form as its parents, the identity of species is being preserved despite all possible individual differences.
This does not mean that in the process of natural generation only internal (formal) factors are involved. Many external factors play a big role as well and that is indicated with the strange mention of the sun. The sun represents a whole range of accidental material factors that are responsible for individualization of particular organisms.

The Physics is not a theory of nature in its entirety, but a theory of natural beings as such. It extricates the essence of nature from the natural form itself. But natural form is not separable except theoretically (in statement). Therefore "the student of nature is concerned only with things whose forms are separable indeed, but do not exist apart from matter". It is a task for first philosophy to determine what is separable and what it is like.

Physics is second philosophy and as such should be distinguished from mathematics, which (as geometry) studies physical forms separated from matter ("not as the limits of a natural body").

The material cause points to "that from which, as a constituent, an object comes into being." (For instance, the bronze of a statue.)

The formal cause embodies the essential nature (all essential attributes) and represents the model or archetype of the outcome; conceptually it is expressed in the definition (logos). (It is the idea of the statue as present in artist's head.)