Page - 212 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

that of the three different kinds of non-substantial change locomotion must have ontological priority over the other two kinds, when they occur in liv- ing beings and the living being in question (by having a nature) is responsi- ble for these changes to a certain degree. For, cases in which some living thing undergoes alteration, or growth and diminution always presuppose the occurrence of a preceding locomotion, while the converse does not hold. Yet, in this way the argument also made clear that locomotion by being prior to the changes living things are responsible for is also ontologi- cally prior to all other changes that are caused by living beings, i.e, to all changes in the sublunary sphere apart from those that are caused by sources of change that lie outside this realm. Next, my study showed that Aristotle in the second argument focuses on what happens on the material level when something undergoes one of the four different kinds of change and in this way makes clear that locomotion has ontological priority in another way: any change in quality, quantity, or substance entails the occurrence of a locomotion in the sense that whenever x changes in one of these respects, then necessarily a part or parts, namely basic material components of x change in place, so that one may say that each of these changes is always necessarily accompanied by change in place. But as my discussion also pointed out, x undergoing locomotion in the strict sense does not entail that x changes in any other respect apart from that of place, so that locomotion was shown to have ontological priority in this respect as well. As my discussion showed, this finds its expression in the fact that change in place is special insofar as the inner order of that which undergoes such a change in the strict sense—in contrast to any of the other three kinds of change—is left completely untouched. In discussing this second argument, which therefore needs to be considered successful, I also made clear that, contrary to how this argument is usually taken, it and the premises on which it is based are clearly Aristotle’s own. After that I turned to the third argument. As we have seen, Aristotle there shows a third way in which change in place is ontologically prior to the other three kinds of change. It first of all became clear that the only kind of change that in principle can constitute one single and eternal change is change in place. Therefore, locomotion—at least in this respect—is the only appropriate candidate for the change that is directly caused by the first unmoved mover and which is responsible for the occurrence of any other change in the cosmos. In virtue of the fact that this very first change needs to be a change in place, it again became clear that locomotion has ontologi- cal priority over the other changes, since they cannot occur without this locomotion, while the eternal change in place of the primum mobile, in hav- ing its direct source in the first unmoved mover, does not presuppose any other change. Accordingly, Aristotle also here comes to the conclusion that without change in place, none of the other three kinds of change are possi- 212 Conclusion ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen