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Giraffes

Giraffes. And other ousiai. Detective Challenge. Murder in the Library. Thinking about thinking. You know my methods…apply them Logic – excluding possibilities Logic – noticing inconsistencies Observation and evidence Making hypotheses and testing them

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Giraffes

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  1. Giraffes And other ousiai

  2. Detective Challenge Murder in the Library

  3. Thinking about thinking • You know my methods…apply them • Logic – excluding possibilities • Logic – noticing inconsistencies • Observation and evidence • Making hypotheses and testing them • There is a close relationship between words, ideas and things. • But where do our ideas come from? Where do our ideas exist?

  4. A Crash Course in Ancient Philosophy ScienceLogos and OusiaWord and Being

  5. Plato (5th/4th Century BC) 28 = 256

  6. Method (2) From observation to idea • Reason moving from observation to IDEA or FORM (induction) for Plato a stable, or changeless reality. From the senses through the mind to the idea The Craftsman: From the Idea, through the mind to the physical reality.

  7. But where are the forms? • Plato said the forms (ideas) existed in a realm beyond the material world that we could only get to by a journey of the mind… Archetypes in the world reached by the mind: Goodness-itself, justice-itself, the table-itself, the human-being itself, the giraffe-itself Material examples in the world of the senses: A good person, a just person, a human being, a giraffe

  8. Aristotle (his pupil) says… • Sorry, Plato, I know you’re a mate, but truth is bigger than friendship. There is no world of the forms. There is no ‘human-being-itself’ there is no ‘giraffe-itself’, there are just individual human beings and giraffes.

  9. Aristotle’s Science Four material elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water Aristotle: 384 – 322 BC

  10. Aristotles’ Big Idea about everything that exists (ousiai) • The material elements can combine in different ways and can then be ‘shaped’ by nature or by human art to become more complicated beings, with their own ‘form’ or structure. • Thus everything in nature can be described from two points of view, the point of view of its Form (the sort of thing it is: a man, a tree, a drop of water) or from the point of view of its Matter (the material from which it is made, flesh and blood, bark and wood, water)

  11. What is a being (ousia)? • The Statue of Poseidon has to have all the features that identify the god Poseidon – that is its form: A superhuman; male; has a beard; holds a trident. But it would not exist as an individual in nature unless it was cast in bronze – this is its material

  12. The same with animals… • Matter-that-makes Form-that-makes • It-a-real-individual- it-the-sort-of-thing • In-nature it-is • Flesh, bone • Muscle, blood, • Hair, etc…

  13. First big word: ousia • An ‘ousia’ is a ‘Being’ but for Aristotle we can mean three things when we use the word ‘ousia’. • 1. We can mean its form, nature or essence or its definition – the things that make a giraffe a giraffe. • 2. We can mean its material – the lower level matter that it is made out of and makes it an individual. • 3. We can simply mean ‘this individual giraffe’.

  14. Second Big Word: ‘logos’ • Greek ‘logos’= • Argument, proof, description, account, reason, speech, definition • Related to: • Ideas, forms, plans, blueprints, schemes, commands, instructions, shapes, logic • Thinking, planning, commanding, shaping, having ideas, reasoning

  15. This word ‘logos’ relates to • Ousia (1) Nature – essence - form - what it is to be a giraffe. The ‘logos’ is the definition. • ‘We say we understand something when we can give a ‘logos’ (an explanation or account) about it’ • ‘The universe can be understood’ means that there is a ‘logos’ that runs through the universe

  16. Our ancient scientific vocabulary for talking about everything that exists • Ousia – form – nature – essence – definition • Ousia – material of which a thing consists and that makes it an individual • Ousia – an existing individual made of form and matter.

  17. Detective Challenge 2 What does John mean when he says ‘and the Word was God?’

  18. A Stoic vision of the word as the instrument of God: The whole world wheeling round earth obeys you wherever you lead it, and by you it is willingly mastered. Such is the instrument you have in your unconquerable hands, the twin-edged, fiery, ever-living thunderbolt. Beneath its blows all works of nature have gone forth, and by it you direct the word, common to all, that goes to and fro, mingling with the great and the little lights.

  19. Wisdom and Word Heracleitus Genesis 1:3 Plato Proverbs 8:22 Aristotle Isaiah 55:11 Cleanthes Wisdom 7:22 “Through whom all things” Philo of Alexandria John’s Gospel Letter to the Colossians

  20. The puzzle • Is the Father of the same ousia as the Son? • = is the Father ‘homo-ousios’ with the Son? Or = (Latin) is the Father ‘con-substantialis’ with the Son? • How?

  21. Alexandria 321

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