Page - 89 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

4.3 What undergoes generation or corruption changes with respect to place 4.3.1 Overview The second of the three sub-arguments is stated in the following lines: πύκνωσις δὲ καὶ μάνωσις σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις, καθ᾽ ἃς γένεσις καὶ φθορὰ λέγεται τῶν οὐσιῶν. συγκρινόμενα δὲ καὶ διακρινό- μενα ἀνάγκη κατὰ τόπον μεταβάλλειν. (260b11–13) But condensation and rarefaction are [1] aggregation and segregation, on the basis of which we speak of generation and corruption of substances.35 [2] But what undergoes aggregation and segregation necessarily changes in place. This argument is supposed to show that what undergoes a change in sub- stance changes in place, which means that both generation and corruption are necessarily accompanied by locomotion, but not vice versa. This shows that locomotion has priority over substantial change in much the same way that it has over change in quantity, namely it is ontologically prior to change in substance. For, as with change in quantity, change in substance cannot occur without locomotion, while the converse does not hold. I take the fol- lowing to be the basic structure of the argument: (1) What undergoes generation or corruption undergoes aggregation, or segregation, or both. (2) What undergoes aggregation, or segregation, or both also undergoes change in place. (3) Therefore, what undergoes generation or corruption undergoes change in place. (1, 2) The core idea behind this argument, as I see it, is that the fundamental pro- cesses of aggregation and segregation (σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις), which are an essential part of any process of coming to be or perishing, involve the locomotion of the basic material components of substances, i.e. of their elemental bodies. 35 It is hard to find an appropriate translation of the phrase καθ᾽ ἃς γένεσις καὶ φθορὰ λέγεται and, as we will see, a lot depends on this translation, since Aristotle here certainly does not want to make the claim that generation and corruption are nothing more than this, and thus may be reduced to σύκγρισις and διάκρισις, although this passage has been read this way (see p.95, n.62). See the discussion in Morison (2010), 93–94, for a similar usage of κατά in Theophrastus. What undergoes generation or corruption changes with respect to place 89 ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen