Aristotle and the Ladder of Learning

          Aristotle's theory of learning is like a ladder, it begins with experience, but experience which must be understood as external sensation.  This kind of experience is an event specific experience.  The next step in the ladder is that of memory, animals without this capacity are ephemeral.  After this step he moves on to experience again, but this is experience of a different kind from that already mentioned.  It is experience as a quality, and not simply as an event, it can be called unified experience.  This is the first of the crucial stages of unification.  Next on the ladder of knowledge is art, the fine arts, or skill.  Art is more penetrating than quality experience because it penetrates to the universal, which enables one to know the patterns or rules behind things.  One is an artist because he has collected experience and has reflected upon it with reason.  Above art is science, practical and productive, and theoretical science which leads to the grasping of the universal.  This science is wisdom, which is the final step on the ladder of knowledge, and it deals with the first causes and principles of being.

          A distinction must be made in reference to Aristotle's use of the word experience, in the first case he uses the word to signify the sense experience of a single event.  The more events experienced the more it affects the memory which remembers them and which then unites them into a single unified experience.  It is the difference between experiencing a single sensory event and the unification of many events into a single unified qualitative experience.

          The Taylor and the Hope translation are better in my opinion in that the express in a more concise way the sense of experience at the higher level as a unified reality, while the Ross translation could be misunderstood to mean simply a capacity for this quality, and the word ‘single’ used in this translation in coordination with the word ‘capacity’ could add to the confusion.  In English the word experience can be used for a single event like a loud noise, or it can be used in the sense Aristotle intends, as when a person writes down their work experience on a job application.

          The capping stage of unification can be seen by looking at the example of the physician, if he has the theoretical knowledge of medicine in addition to experience, he is then considered to be skilled in the art of medicine.  Thus theory and experience united into one produce skilled craftsmen.

Aristotle and the Marks of Wisdom

          The marks of wisdom as Aristotle enumerates them are:  (1) scope, the wise man's knowledge is universal in scope; (2) depth of knowledge, the wise man's knowledge is not superficial; (3) precision, the wise man's knowledge is exact; (4) teaching, the wise person possesses the ability to teach; (5) theoretical, the wise man seeks knowledge for its own sake; (6) he has a more commanding view, the wise man sees things as they really exist in the world; and (7) mastery, the wise man has mastery over things, he knows how to assemble things, but this knowledge is not for the sake of production, it is for its own sake.  Divine science can be called an eighth mark of wisdom, and it can be divided into the sciences possessed by God and the science about God.  The precision Aristotle speaks of in reference to wisdom is connected to formal causation, and his views concerning its pursuit for its own sake is connected to final causation.

          Aristotle views metaphysics as the paramount science because it deals with the ultimate reality, with the first principles, and it is pursued for its own sake, as he says, ". . . it is clear that we do not seek it for the sake of any ulterior application . . . it alone of the sciences exists for its own sake" [Taylor, 76].  Aristotle calls the science of metaphysics by three names:  (1) wisdom, (2) theology, and (3) first philosophy.  He normally calls it by the last of the three names, first philosophy, because it deals with the first principles of being.  The name Metaphysics came to be attached to this science because the book of Metaphysics appeared after the book of the Physics, thus the name meta (beyond) physics, but this is not one of the names Aristotle himself gave to this science.  The other name for this science is ontology and this again is not a name which Aristotle used, it means the science of being, but it is of more recent origin.

          The term "First Philosophy" is not used by Aristotle to indicate that which must be studied first; instead, he uses the term to refer to the order of being itself, it is first in that it deals with the first principle causes of being.  It is first in the sense of the ultimate.  The opening of the book of the Physics can be helpful in that it gives a preliminary foundation to the study of the four causes.  The Physics as natural philosophy studies the four causes of change or motion in physical being.  Physical being is also called mobile being, not simply in the sense of movement from one location to another, but in a broader sense of a change from one determination to another, in other words a change in a things attributes or characteristics.  This information is helpful in gaining a deeper understanding of the teaching on the four causes found in the first book of the Metaphysics.

          This is two fold as I see it, first one sign of the possession of wisdom is the ability to teach others what one knows, for it shows that one grasps fully the subject matter learned.  The second element deals with the two kinds of wonder that a man may possess, the first is wonder (perplexity) which is overcome by learning, the second is what can be called the wonder of beholding, of coming to understand something.  This second kind of wonder continues in the one beholding, it is not overcome, because it is not a form of ignorance.

Aristotle and the Ionians

          Cornford in his account emphasizes the concept of efficient causality in early Ionian thought, while Aristotle in the book of Metaphysics emphasizes material causality, but each author is approaching the issue with a different emphasis and thus structures his information for a different purpose.  Cornford is doing a modern historical investigation of the philosophical thought of that period of time and does so from the perspective of 2,500 years of reflection on the events.  While Aristotle on the other hand is historically much closer to the individuals involved the events and to their thought, and in addition to this he is also a participant in the development of the philosophical tradition of ancient Greece.  Though I favor Aristotle's emphasis on material causality because of his proximity to the events; it should be noted that Cornford's view is quite legitimate because the Ionians did not distinguish clearly the different types of causality in their speculations.  For the Ionians material causality in some way possessed a type of latent efficient causality, so it appears that they saw matter itself in some sense as a passive agent.  But as Aristotle points out there is a need for an active agent, and the idea of matter alone as a passive agent is not sufficient, as he said, ". . . the substrate, surely, is not the agent which effects its own transformation" [Taylor, 83].  Cornford in his book concentrates on the historical development of thought on this topic, which moved from efficient causality in the 6th century B.C., to material causality in the 5th century before Christ.  Aristotle structures his text along different lines, because he is moving in a dialectical progression from material causality to efficient causality.  Thus both ways of approaching the subject matter are effective merely differing in emphasis, and this is true partly because the Ionians were not as precise as later philosophers were in their way of explaining it these types of causality.

          In the final paragraph of chapter three Aristotle discovers a third type of causality, which is called formal causality.  The way he writes about it could be mistaken for final causality because he talks about both "goodness and beauty" which could be mistaken for a reference to final causality which is identified with the good, i.e. the end for which the thing exists.  But although he speaks at this point of the good, he is not referring to the final cause, and the way to determine this is by looking two sentences later, where he speaks of "order and arrangement" from this it becomes clear that he is speaking about formal causality.  Aristotle later indicates that an earlier school of philosophy, the Atomists, had a principle of formal causation, because they held that there were among the atoms three differences, shape, order, and position.  The atoms were different shapes and this difference in shape enabled them to form larger bodies as the fell through the void thus changing their position, and from this change order arose.  In addition to the Atomists, the Pythagoreans saw numbers as a formal cause, because they create ratios of harmony and order.

Aristotle on Socrates and Plato

          Aristotle in a sense puts Plato midway between Heraclitus and Socrates.  Plato accepted the Heraclitean doctrine that ". . . all things perceived by the senses are in incessant flux, and there is no such thing as scientific knowledge of them" [Taylor, 100].  Aristotle states that Plato held to this idea to the very end, but that he was also influenced by Socrates, who had limited his own examination of things to the moral sphere, and as Aristotle says, "[Socrates] was the first to concentrate his attention on definitions" [Taylor, 100].  Plato accepted this emphasis on definitions into his system, but held that it was not possible to define sensible things, because they are constantly changing.  He held that the definitions were Ideas which exist beyond the sensible realm and that the sensible things are named from them.  Aristotle next points out that Plato took the Pythagorean emphasis on numbers and brought it into his own system as a realm between the sensible things that the Ideas.  The mathematical realm is ". . . an intermediate class beside the Ideas and the sensible things.  They differ from sensible things in being eternal and immutable, and from the Ideas in this, that there is a multiplicity of similar mathematical objects, but each Idea is a single, self‑subsisting entity" [Taylor, 102].  Because Plato regards ". . . the One as a substance and not as a predicate of some other entity, his doctrine resembles Pythagoreanism, and also [resembles that system] in holding that the numbers are the causes of Being in everything else" [Taylor, 102]  Definition attempts to capture the formal cause of things, thus the Ideas are the forms or patterns of the sensible things, which ". . . exist by the side of them and are named after them" [Taylor, 101].

          Aristotle explains that Plato goes beyond the Pythagoreans by claiming that the Numbers are distinct from sensible things, Plato does this because of his logical studies which led him into a form of duality.  Plato held that ". . . each Form is only productive once for all" [Taylor, 104], but as Aristotle points out a man can make many tables by impressing the form on the material from which they are constructed.  Thus Plato divides the Ideas from the sensible things which are patterned after them.  It also follows that since Plato sees the Forms as self‑subsisting and unchanging, and at the same time he sees sensible things as in constant flux, it is not possible that the Ideas could be in things which undergo change and corruption. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aristotle.  Aristotle on His Predecessors.  (La Salle:  The Open Court Publishing Company, 1962).

          Translator:  A.E. Taylor

Aristotle on Wisdom, on the Ionians, and on Socrates and Plato

by Steven Todd Kaster

San Francisco State University

Philosophy 301:  Ancient Philosophy

Professor Glanville

30 November 2000

Copyright © 2000-2025 Steven Todd Kaster