Page - 127 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

to be preferred to the second one, since only the eternal change that is one and continuous can be the change which is directly caused by the first unmoved mover. In fact, as we will see, Aristotle addresses this problem later on in Phys. VIII 7 and 8 and in doing so shows that the only change which in principle can be one, continuous and eternal is locomotion, or, to be more specific, circular locomotion, while this is impossible for any of the other kinds of change. But if the argument which Aristotle presents for this claim (and about which I will say more later on in section 5.3) proves suc- cessful, it will ultimately show not only that the first of the two ways in which there can be eternal change is to be preferred, but also that locomo- tion as the argument claims is primary.33 5.2.4 What is better is the case in nature As I said before, Aristotle seems to take it for granted that it is clear why the first of the two ways in which change may be eternal is to be preferred over the second, and, as I have started to show and will continue to show after this section, against the background of Phys. VIII he has very good reasons for doing so: preferring option (2), i.e. that there is one single and eternal change, fits better with what was stated in the previous chapters of Phys. VIII and therefore is the “better” (βέλτιον) of the two options. Aristotle’s next step is to make use of an assumption he also applies in many other places, namely that “the better is always the case in nature, if it is possible.”34 I will not say very much about Aristotle’s reasons for making this assumption here; for my purposes it should suffice to say that this typi- cal Aristotelian assumption is one of the general principles of his theory of nature in which the concept of teleology plays an essential role, and which, to give another example, also finds its expression in facts like the one that nature does nothing in vain.35 That the assumption that the better, if possi- ble, is the case in nature, is a fundamental truth for Aristotle is also clear from many other passages in which the same thought is explicitly expressed.36 A scientific understanding of nature simply would not be pos- sible without presupposing that there is some kind of rational order that is governed by and finds its expression in general principles like the one stat- 33 See Phys. VIII 7, 260b25–26. 34 τὸ δὲ βέλτιον ἀεὶ ὑπολαμβάνομεν ἐν τῇ φύσει ὑπάρχειν, ἂν ᾖ δυνατόν, Phys. VIII 7, 260b22–24. 35 ἡ φύσις οὐθὲν ποιεῖ μάτην, IA 2, 704b15. 36 See for instance IA 2, 704b12–18, Phys. VIII 6, 259a10–12, GC II 10, 336b26–28, PA II 14, and 658a23–24, where Aristotle makes similar claims. For more passages related to this assumption see Bonitz’s Index 836b28ff. The unity of the eternal change 127 ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen