The Form and the Substance How Aristotle turned Plato upside down

Have you ever had a teacher who you just completely didn’t agree with? “Billy, you twit, this is a terrible strategy for Oregon Trail! Your kids are going to be bit by a rattlesnake while you try to trade for a wagon tongue!” So did Aristotle….

People are born with innate ideas! Aristotle was a student of Plato. While he shared many beliefs with his mentor, they disagreed on several key issues. Plato Changes in the natural world are very significant!! Changes in the natural world aren’t significant!! YOU have a stupid beard!!! We need our senses to discover truth!! Our senses are not terribly important for determining truth! Your beard is stupid!!! People are born with innate ideas! Aristotle People are NOT born with innate ideas!

The idea of the chicken sandwich The primary disagreement between these two involved the nature of matter and ideas. The idea world The natural world The idea of the chicken sandwich But Aristotle thought Plato had mixed up the order. He believed that the idea of an object is simply a concept that humans form after seeing a certain number of that object. Aristotle agreed with Plato on certain parts of this… that matter changes in the natural world and that the form of the matter is eternal… You’ll recall that Plato believed that all objects in the material world originated from a perfect version in the ideal world.

To put it another way, to Plato, the idea of “chicken” came before either egg or chicken itself. To Plato, the ideal world was perfect and eternal and the material world was flawed and changing. This helps explain how something that may seem near perfect devolves into something… less than perfect.

Nature is the Real World… For Aristotle, "Nothing exists in the mind that has not first been experienced by the senses." Simply, "There is no such thing as a separate world of ideas."

Causality in Nature Modern/popular notion of cause: how something came to be example: RAIN - the moisture in the clouds cools and condenses into raindrops that are drawn to the earth by the force of gravity. For Aristotle, this is incomplete.

Causality in Nature THERE ARE ALWAYS 4 CAUSES OF A THING: 1. Material Cause - material component 2. Efficient Cause - that which makes the thing (external agent) 3. Formal Cause - that which makes a thing what it is 4. Final cause - purpose for which the thing is made.

Example: RAIN 1. Material Cause - moisture 2. Efficient Cause - cooling air 3. Formal Cause - form or nature of water – to fall to earth 4. Final- its purpose is to nourish the earth and its dwellers.

Plato and Aristotle in General True knowledge is found “here” in the world of things True knowledge is found “above” in the world of ideas