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4 ideas
| 16173 | Coming to be is by shape-change, addition, subtraction, composition or alteration [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things that come to be without further qualification do so either by change of shape (a statue) or by addition (growing things) or by subtraction (a carving) or by composition (a house) or by alteration (things changing their matter). | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190b06) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Aristotle observes that in each case there is clearly some 'underlying thing'. |
| 17042 | Natural things are their own source of stability through change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The obvious difference between natural and non-natural things is that each of the natural ones contains within itself a source of change and of stability, in respect of either movement or increase and decrease or alteration. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192b14) | |
| A reaction: This is the reason why Aristotle places so much emphasis on lives, though elements also have persistence in a similar way. We now have atoms and molecules as well. |
| 16691 | A day, or the games, has one thing after another, actually and potentially occurring [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: When we say 'it is day' or 'it is the games', one thing after another is always coming into existence. …There are Olympic Games, both in the sense that they may occur and that they are actually occurring. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 206a22) | |
| A reaction: This is, according the Pasnau, the origin of the scholastic concept of an 'entia successiva'. I haven't seen much discussion of this in modern metaphysics, but in what sense does a day exist? |
| 16574 | Coming-to-be may be from nothing in a qualified way, as arising from an absence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We agree that nothing can be said without qualification to come from what is not, …but it may in a qualified sense. For a thing comes to be from a privation, which in its own nature is not-being - this not surviving as a constituent in the result. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 191b13) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but it seems to say that genuine creation from nothing at all is impossible. |