Seite - 76 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

The difference between the two ways of changing in place is that what is undergoing locomotion changes with respect to place as a whole (ὅλον ἀλλάττει τόπον) while what is growing or diminishing does not do so.12 The change undergone by the latter, Aristotle tells us, is similar to some- thing that is beaten or driven out (τὸ ἐλαυνόμενον). This is usually taken to refer to a piece of metal that is worked on while being fixed.13 As an example, one might think of traditional bowls or plates made of metal and ornamented by being “beaten out” with a hammer and chisel. The object on which the craftsman works remains in the same place because it is fixed, while parts of it are driven out during subsequent stages of the work so that its shape changes and the place occupied by the object so to speak expands in virtue of these parts’ changing in place.14 For Aristotle something similar seems to happen in things that grow— e.g. in the case of the young oak tree. If the tree is not replanted it will basi- cally remain in the same place, but its specific or primary place will change as the tree grows. ‘Place’ here is used in both a stricter and a looser sense it seems: as Aristotle puts it, the tree “remains” (μένοντος), that is, roughly speaking the tree remains in the same place and does not leave its original position by moving away as would something undergoing a change in place as a whole. One could say that it still remains in its original place insofar as this place metaphorically speaking is incorporated by the tree’s new place, or, as Code puts it, that which is growing “comes to occupy a larger place of νόμενον· τούτου γὰρ μένοντος τὰ μόρια μεταβάλλει κατὰ τόπον, […] τὰ δὲ τοῦ αὐξ- ανομένου ἀεὶ ἐπὶ πλείω τόπον, ἐπ᾽ ἐλάττω δὲ τὰ τοῦ φθίνοντος, GC I 5, 320a20–25. 12 As in the passage from Phys. IV 4, locomotion here, too, does not stand for change in place in general as it usually does. But in GC φορά is not exclusively used in this specific sense, as is clear for instance from l. 319b2 in GC I 4, in which Aristotle tells us that a change is a locomotion, when it occurs with respect to place (ὅταν δὲ κατὰ τόπον, φορά). 13 Neither Philoponus, Simplicius, nor Averroes in the Middle commentary on GC, expli- citly state that τὸ ἐλαυνόμενον refers to an object made of metal. Aquinas seems to be the first who explicitly does so by saying that τὸ ἐλαυνόμενον, among other things, refers to metal which by beating (metallum per malleationem) changes in the manner described (see In Gen., L.1, l. XI, 85). Indeed ἐλαύνω was used in this sense (see LSJ, 529). There is a con- sensus among modern commentators on this question: Joachim (1922), 112–113, Williams (1982), 103, Code (2004), 173, Kupreeva (2005), 107, and Buchheim (2010), 337, agree on this reading, which also makes sense to me. Rashed (2005) does not seem to say anything about this. 14 Of course, as was noted by Philoponus (and Joachim (1922), 112–113, and Williams (1982), 103, following him), the case of the metal that is beaten out is analogous to that of an object undergoing growth only to a certain degree, and there are significant differences between the two processes (In Gen. 1, 71, 25–31). Yet, the analogy serves its purpose by show- ing in what way something may be said to change in place with respect to its parts, while the whole stays put. 76 Locomotion necessarily accompanies each of the other kinds of change ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen