Page - 70 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

on rejecting a possible objection against the priority claim, namely that growth, by being one of the basic processes living beings undergo as self- sustaining organisms, seems to precede locomotion or even might be neces- sary for this kind of change to occur in general. But by showing that the contrary is true and that change in place is necessary for alteration and growth to occur in living beings, I have also shown that locomotion, in vir- tue of being prior to the changes caused by living things, is also prior to all other changes caused by living beings that are self-movers, i.e. to all changes in the cosmos apart from those that are caused by superlunary phe- nomena. In showing that locomotion must precede any change in quantity or quality that occurs in a living being, but also that the converse does not hold, Aristotle establishes that locomotion has what one might call ontologi- cal priority over the other two kinds of non-substantial change in living beings, and accordingly over all changes caused by living beings that are self-movers. In this way the argument presents an important reason for locomotion’s primacy, which finds its expression in the fact that locomo- tion must precede the other kinds of change in the sense stated above. The argument, therefore, may be considered a successful one, though in a differ- ent sense than one may expect at first glance. The discussion, however, has also made clear that more arguments are necessary if the truth of the prior- ity claim is to be established. 70 Change in quality and quantity of living beings ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen