Page - 95 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

of a segregation or aggregation of the underlying material does not explain the coming to be of an animal or a plant, i.e. a being with a specific form— although this, at least according to Aristotle, is exactly the view held by some of the Presocratics, who reduced generation and corruption to changes of the material of the respective subject and were not aware of the fact that an appropriate explanation must also involve the principle of form.58 Thus, what Aristotle means by saying that “unqualified change in substance is not through segregation and aggregation”59 and cannot be defined in terms of the two processes is not that σύγκρισις and διάκρισις do not play any role in this kind of change, but that for a substantial change to occur it is not enough for the respective thing to undergo nothing but segregation or aggregation.60 In other words, it is a necessary, but not a suf- ficient condition for generation and corruption that aggregation or segrega- tion occur. But, as I said before, this is only true if one has a correct understanding of what it means for Aristotle that something undergoes aggregation or seg- regation, and if one does not take these processes to be of the sort (οἵαν) that Aristotle’s predecessors thought they were, because then indeed gen- eration cannot possibly involve aggregation (and corruption, not segrega- tion, one might add) as is explicitly stated at the end of GC I 2.61 This, how- ever, is the mistake interpreters of Aristotle make when they claim that it cannot be Aristotle’s own view that we speak of generation and corruption of substances in terms of segregation and aggregation.62 But, contrary to what most interpreters say, Aristotle’s claim about the connection between change in substance and aggregation or segregation that is made in the second argument may be read as stating his own view, although he makes use of his predecessor’s terminology here.63 The pro- 58 Again see Phys. I 2, 194a18–21. 59 GC I 2, 317a20–21. 60 That this must be wrong, even if aggregation and segregation are understood in the Aristotelian sense, is clear from the fact that there are instances of the two phenomena that do not result in generation or corruption in the subject—for instance the διάκρισις that occurs when heated water expands. 61 GC I 2, 317a30–31. 62 Apart from those already mentioned, see also Carteron’s translation, which mistakenly renders σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις, καθ᾽ ἃς γένεσις καὶ φθορὰ λέγεται τῶν οὐσιῶν as “[o]r condensation et raréfaction sont concrétion et séparation, et on y réduit la génération et la destruction des substances.” 63 See GC I 2, 317a30–31. This situation is different for GC, as scholars seem to agree more or less that there is a connection between substantial change and σύγκρισις and διά- κρισις: Williams (1982), 80, Rashed (2005), 111, n.5, and Buchheim (2010), 274 and 295, agree that Aristotle GC I 2 does not say that it is wrong in general that generation is aggrega- tion, but that it cannot be aggregation “of the sort some people [i.e. some of the predecessors] say it is” (οἵαν δή τινές φασιν) (Transl. Williams). Yet, Williams at the same time does not What undergoes generation or corruption changes with respect to place 95 ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen