PHILOPONI IN PHYSICORUM I Prooemium

a 1r and he also wrote On Metals this is also the fourth book of the Meteorology, in which he taught about the properties of inanimate things. All the treatises concerning animals and plants, on the other hand, are either about those things that accompany animate but non-sentient beings, such as those On Plants, or about those 30 that accompany animate and sentient beings, such as all the treatises and histories regarding animals. To these same animals, some things belong as wholes, and others belong to their parts. He has discussed those things that belong to animals as wholes in On Animals, while he discussed those that belong to their parts in On the Parts of Animals and in On the Movement of Animals. The works On Sleep and Waking, On Life and Death, and those similar to them pertain to the study of animals, as does On the Soul. Such is the entirety of Aristotle’s treatise on nature. 35 The present book, as mentioned, is about those things that accompany all natural objects in common, which is why he named the treatise Physics specifically. These are five: matter, form, place, time, and motion. He teaches about the first four in the first four books, and about motion in the last four; for the discourse on motion is complex, and it has many consequences. Hence, he often calls the entire treatise On Motion, saying "It has been said by us 40 in On Motion," meaning in the Physics, naming the whole treatise after a part. According to some natural philosophers, both the vacuum and the infinite accompany all natural objects. For Democritus said that all natural things consist of atoms and the void, and Anaxagoras, in turn, said that there are infinite homoeomeries parts similar to the whole in everything. But Democritus also assumed that atoms were infinite. However, Aristotle demonstrates in the fourth book of the present treatise 45 that the vacuum cannot exist anywhere, and that the infinite cannot exist in actuality or as a whole at once, but only in potentiality and as consisting of parts. For there are such things in the universe that cannot exist as a whole, but they subsist in parts. Just as we say the day subsists, not by being whole at once, but by parts; similarly, we say the contest e.g., boxing or wrestling subsists, not by being whole at once, but by parts. 5 Thus, he shows that the infinite is in one way and is not in another; for he shows it does not exist as a whole, but by parts through the constant coming-to-be of things to infinity. Privation also accompanies natural things, though not all, but only those in generation and corruption; for these are by nature adapted to participate partly in form and partly in privation.