By John Philoponus
Aristotle's account of position, within which he outlined a thing's position because the internal floor of its nearest motionless box, was once supported via the Latin center a while, even 1600 years after his loss of life, notwithstanding it had now not confident many old Greek philosophers. The 6th century commentator Philoponus took a extra common sense view. For him, position was once an motionless 3-dimensional extension, whose essence didn't hinder its being empty, no matter if for different purposes it had constantly to be packed with physique. despite the fact that, Philoponus reserved his personal definition for an excursus, already translated during this sequence, The Corollary on Place. within the textual content translated right here he sought after as a substitute to provide an explanation for Aristotle's view to straightforward scholars. the new conjecture that he needed to draw younger fellow-Christians clear of the authentic pagan professor of philosophy in Alexandria has the advantage of explaining why he expounds Aristotle the following, instead of attacking him. yet he nonetheless places the scholars via their paces, for instance whilst discussing Aristotle's declare that position can't be a physique, or our bodies may coincide.
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Extra resources for Philoponus: On Aristotle Physics 4.1-5
Sample text
If place is what immediately surrounds the individual thing, place is evidently a limit. For it limits what is in it. And form is also like that. 15 20 25 520,1 5 10 209b2 So place would seem to be the form by which the magnitude and the matter of the magnitude are defined; for this is the limit of each thing. By the magnitude he means the compound of matter and form. He says, then, that the compound too is defined by the form; for the fact that it is a definite thing is due to its form. And the matter of the compound, which is indefinite in itself, is being defined by the form.
The wine in the jar. Only in this way can a thing be in itself, in virtue of a part, as I have said, and by an improper use of the term. Common speech, as we already said, knows this usage of calling things as a whole after a part of them too, as when we say that Socrates is shod or sees, or that Socrates is knowledgeable. For it is in virtue of the fact that his soul is knowledgeable, or his eye sees, or his foot is shod, that the whole of him is named after a part. In this way then, here too, the whole can be said to be in itself in virtue of the fact that one of the parts of the whole is in something, though not in something else apart from this whole.
For if he calls matter space, and space is nothing other than place, then it is clear that place is the same as matter. Whereas all others say that place exists, but none of them what it is, Plato alone has left an account of what place is, namely matter. But we have said that he did not identify matter with the kind of place which we are discussing now, but called it thus by analogy, because just as place is a receptacle for bodies, just so is matter a receptacle for forms. 209b20 For {the question} anyway requires the keenest examination, and apart from each other it is not easy to gain knowledge of them {sc.