GIRAFFESAnd other ousiai

Detective ChallengeMurder in the Library

Thinking about thinking You know my methods…apply them

Logic – excluding possibilities Logic – noticing inconsistencies Observation and evidence Making hypotheses and testing them

There is a close relationship between words, ideas and things.

But where do our ideas come from? Where do our ideas exist?

A Crash Course in Ancient Philosophy Science

Logos and OusiaWord and Being

Plato (5th/4th Century BC)28 = 256

Method (2) From observation to idea

Reason moving from observation to IDEA or FORM (induction) for Plato a stable, or changeless reality.

From the senses through the mind to the idea

The Craftsman: From the Idea, through the mind to the physical reality.

But where are the forms? Plato said the forms (ideas) existed in a

realm beyond the material world that we could only get to by a journey of the mind…

Archetypes in the world reached by the mind: Goodness-itself, justice-itself, the table-itself, the human-being itself, the giraffe-itself

Material examples in the world of the senses: A good person, a just person, a human being, a giraffe

Aristotle (his pupil) says… Sorry, Plato, I know you’re

a mate, but truth is bigger than friendship. There is no world of the forms. There is no ‘human-being-itself’ there is no ‘giraffe-itself’, there are just individual human beings and giraffes.

Aristotle’s Science

Four material elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water

Aristotle: 384 – 322 BC

Aristotles’ Big Idea about everything that exists (ousiai) The material elements can combine in different

ways and can then be ‘shaped’ by nature or by human art to become more complicated beings, with their own ‘form’ or structure.

Thus everything in nature can be described from two points of view, the point of view of its Form (the sort of thing it is: a man, a tree, a drop of water) or from the point of view of its Matter (the material from which it is made, flesh and blood, bark and wood, water)

What is a being (ousia)? The Statue of Poseidon has to have all the features that

identify the god Poseidon – that is its form: A superhuman; male; has a beard; holds a trident. But it would not exist as an individual in nature unless it was cast in bronze – this is its material

The same with animals… Matter-that-makes Form-that-

makes It-a-real-individual- it-the-sort-of-thing In-nature it-is

Flesh, bone Muscle, blood, Hair, etc…

First big word: ousia An ‘ousia’ is a ‘Being’ but for Aristotle we can

mean three things when we use the word ‘ousia’.

1. We can mean its form, nature or essence or its definition – the things that make a giraffe a giraffe.

2. We can mean its material – the lower level matter that it is made out of and makes it an individual.

3. We can simply mean ‘this individual giraffe’.

Second Big Word: ‘logos’ Greek ‘logos’= Argument, proof, description, account,

reason, speech, definition

Related to: Ideas, forms, plans, blueprints, schemes,

commands, instructions, shapes, logic Thinking, planning, commanding,

shaping, having ideas, reasoning

This word ‘logos’ relates to Ousia (1) Nature – essence - form - what

it is to be a giraffe. The ‘logos’ is the definition.

‘We say we understand something when we can give a ‘logos’ (an explanation or account) about it’

‘The universe can be understood’ means that there is a ‘logos’ that runs through the universe

Our ancient scientific vocabulary for talking about everything that exists

Ousia – form – nature – essence – definition

Ousia – material of which a thing consists and that makes it an individual

Ousia – an existing individual made of form and matter.

Detective Challenge 2What does John mean when he says ‘and

the Word was God?’

A Stoic vision of the word as the instrument of God:

The whole world wheeling round earth obeys you wherever you lead it, and by you it is willingly mastered.

Such is the instrument you have in your unconquerable hands, the twin-edged, fiery, ever-living thunderbolt.

Beneath its blows all works of nature have gone forth, and by it you direct the word, common to all, that goes to and fro, mingling with the great and the little lights.

Wisdom and WordHeracleitus Genesis 1:3Plato Proverbs 8:22Aristotle Isaiah

55:11Cleanthes Wisdom

7:22 “Through whom all things”

Philo of Alexandria

John’s Gospel

Letter to the Colossians

The puzzle Is the Father of the same ousia as the

Son?

= is the Father ‘homo-ousios’ with the Son?

Or = (Latin) is the Father ‘con-substantialis’ with the Son?

How?

Alexandria 321