Page - 156 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

In what way the sun may be involved in the coming to be of living things like human beings was indicated in the passage from GC II 10 to which I have already referred: the generator, i.e. the sun, by undergoing locomotion moves closer to or farther away from the object that is affected by it, and this movement is what is (at least partly) responsible for the occurrence of generation. This thesis is confirmed by observation, as we “see that when the sun comes closer there is coming to be, and when it retreats, perish- ing.”37 And indeed it makes sense to say that the sun as the heavenly body which is the main source of heat and light is necessary for there being life on earth at all and by its movement therefore plays an essential role in the coming to be and perishing of living things.38 By undergoing its eternal motion along the ecliptic the sun causes not only night and day, but also the cyclic recurrence of the seasons, a cycle which in turn accounts for the cycle of life and death on earth.39 Yet, the eternal locomotion of the sun, as well as all the other eternal motions that occur persistently in the superlun- ary sphere must all, “in spite of their plurality, be in some way subordinated to a single principle”, namely the one unmoved mover.40 This then explains more precisely in what way there is a causal connec- tion between the coming to be of perishable things like living beings and the change which the eternal things undergo. For, it is the movement of the course, which are neither matter nor form nor privation nor of the same species with man, but moving causes.” (Transl. Ross with mod.). For the λοξὸς κύκλος see n.39 of this chapter. 37 ὁρῶμεν γᾶρ ὅτι προσιόντος μὲν τοῦ ἡλίου γένεσις ἔστιν, ἀπιόντος δὲ φθίσις, GC II 10, 336b17–18. Note that, as the context makes clear, φθίσις here obviously stands for a change in substance, namely perishing; although this is certainly a meaning to which the Greek term φθίσις may refer, it usually is applied by Aristotle in speaking of decrease in size. 38 Also in Mete. I 9, 346b20–23, the locomotion of the sun is presented as being responsi- ble for the processes of generation and corruption (αἰτία τῆς γενέσεως καὶ τῆς φθορᾶς). 39 See GC II 11, 338a17–b5. Also Wieland (1992), 237–238, points to the passages from Phys. II 2 and Met. XII 5 and emphasizes the essential role that the sun as a necessary condi- tion of generation plays for Aristotle in virtue of being responsible for certain natural phe- nomena, such as the seasons or the winds (see p.238, n.7). Yet, it is important to note that generation and corruption as well as the seasons do not occur alone in virtue of the sun’s con- tinuous circular locomotion, but are only possible because the sun’s movement is also one of an “oblique circle” (κατὰ τὸν λοξὸν κύκλον) to which Aristotle also refers in the passage from Met. XII 5 that I quoted above (see p.155, n.36). Only this can account for the change in distance between the sun and the earth that occurs in the course of a year (for this see GC II 10, 336a31–b9). For more on this see Buchheim (2010), 535–537. 40 πλείους μέν, πάσας δέ πως εἶναι ταύτας ὑπὸ μίαν ἀρχήν· GC II 10, 337a21–22 (Transl. Joachim). That the principle (ἀρχή) about which Aristotle talks here must be the first unmoved mover of Phys. VIII is clear from what is stated in 337a17–20. Aristotle argues for what seems to be a different position in Met. XII 8 where he states that there must be a plural- ity of unmoved movers by means of which the different motions of every single sphere may be explained (see 1073a22–b1). I will not discuss this here any further. 156 Locomotion has temporal priority ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen