I know that part of the reason for why I had a hard time following Aristotle was that I didn't save myself enough time to really make sure that I was concentrating while reading.
When reading Artistotle's "Intellectual Virtue," I became a bit frustrated by "Let one of these parts be called the scientific and the other the calculative; for to deliberate and calculate are the same thing" (138). The reason for my frustration was primarily to my misreading of this sentence's context. However, even after a closer reading, I'm not sure how Aristotle can say that the scientific and calculative are different. The scientific, as Aristotle uses it here, is the contemplation of the invariable while the calculative is the contemplation of the variable. I suspect that by invariable he means scientific fact, but when conducting a science experiment, is not the scientist concerned with the change of results due to the variable, thus making the scientific a contemplation of the variable? One can argue that the experiments are based on concrete facts, but of calculus it can also be said that equations begin with concrete numbers.
I tried to make Aristotle's idea work in my mind by saying that science was concerned with getting a concrete result of x when calculus was not concerned with getting some numeric result but with developing a reliable formula. The problem then became that the concrete result of x of science could also be a formula or rule.
Well what about deliberation, it being equivalent to calculative, according to Aristotle? Well, deliberation is maybe a little more fluid than calculus, but essentially it too is trying to overcome problems. It's process is perhaps not as clean cut as calculus and has a greater chance of error.
Well what about deliberation, it being equivalent to calculative, according to Aristotle? Well, deliberation is maybe a little more fluid than calculus, but essentially it too is trying to overcome problems. It's process is perhaps not as clean cut as calculus and has a greater chance of error.
Later, Aristotle "expands" on these terms:
"...no one deliberates about the past, but about what is future and capable of being otherwise while what is past is not capable of not having taken place" (139).
"Scientific knowledge is, then a state of capacity to demonstrate, and has the other limiting characteristics which we specify in the Analytics; for it is when a man believes in a certain way and the starting-points are known to him that he has scientific knowledge, since if they are not better known, to him than the conclusion, he will have his knowledge only incidentally" (141).
All right, so by these standards, calculus is probably lumped in with the scientific.
If science is a demonstration, then isn't rhetoric scientific? Rhetoric demonstrates through words that one side of a case is better or more right than the other.
[sidenote: "No one deliberates on the past?" I understand what he's getting at, there's nothing probably about the past, but what does it mean then when we go back in the past and change one thing and play out in our minds or on our pages what could have happened as a result of that change?]
"The origin of action...is choice, and that of choice, desire and reasoning with a view to an end." These are things that rhetoric must include.
Also how is making and acting different? I'm sure he isn't meaning performing like Shakespeare, but instead acting upon some idea. So making vs. doing? They are both creation processes, and in some ways making is a form of doing. This sort of thing makes me think of Vandread. Vandread is an anime where the people of "earth" have evacuated and created new planetary homes for themselves and due to some disagreement between the genders, the survivors decide to make homes on two different planets where the women live on one planet and the men on the other. The two genders were then viewed as enemies of one another for many years. When this story starts, an accident occurs and a small collection of men then end up on a ship run by a whole bunch of women. For the rest of the show, the two gender groups begin to figure out how to work together and coexist and by the end it is revealed that they are all part of one human race (this eventually helps the two planets reintegrate themselves).
If science is a demonstration, then isn't rhetoric scientific? Rhetoric demonstrates through words that one side of a case is better or more right than the other.
[sidenote: "No one deliberates on the past?" I understand what he's getting at, there's nothing probably about the past, but what does it mean then when we go back in the past and change one thing and play out in our minds or on our pages what could have happened as a result of that change?]
"The origin of action...is choice, and that of choice, desire and reasoning with a view to an end." These are things that rhetoric must include.
Also how is making and acting different? I'm sure he isn't meaning performing like Shakespeare, but instead acting upon some idea. So making vs. doing? They are both creation processes, and in some ways making is a form of doing. This sort of thing makes me think of Vandread. Vandread is an anime where the people of "earth" have evacuated and created new planetary homes for themselves and due to some disagreement between the genders, the survivors decide to make homes on two different planets where the women live on one planet and the men on the other. The two genders were then viewed as enemies of one another for many years. When this story starts, an accident occurs and a small collection of men then end up on a ship run by a whole bunch of women. For the rest of the show, the two gender groups begin to figure out how to work together and coexist and by the end it is revealed that they are all part of one human race (this eventually helps the two planets reintegrate themselves).
From this, in my mind, one gender is making and one gender is doing, but they are both part of one human race.
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