Vous êtes sur la page 1sur 12

1

Klein on Aristotle on Number Edward C. Halper University of Georgia

Let me begin with a story. The year was 1976, and I was writing a dissertation on Aristotles Metaphysics. For reasons I can no longer recall, I decided to spend the summer in London working at the British Museumas it was still called. After some weeks on my own, I began to look around for people who were working in my area. Richard Sorabji was in London; he was too busy to see me, but we did have a long telephone conversation about mathematics in Aristotle. Julia Annass commentary on Metaphysics M and N had just appeared, and I had a chance to see her in Oxford. So what did these two luminaries of the Oxford Analytic scene have to tell me? Both instructed me to read Jacob Kleins Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra. Why was it that at a time when the split between Analytic and Continental philosophy was as sharp as it ever would be, a time when the scholarship on ancient philosophy was never more partisan, two Oxford philosophers would be recommending a man who had been Dean of St. Johns College and a student of Heidegger? Apart from Kleins obvious authority and mastery of the subject, there was one notion that he emphasizes that surely struck a chord with Annas and Sorabji: he insists that the Greek philosophical concept of number is rooted in counting. Speaking of Plato, Klein claims:

The arithmos indicates in each case a definite number of definite things. It proclaims that there are precisely so and so many of these things. If intends the things insofar as they are present in this number, and cannot, at least at first, be separated from the thing at all (p. 46).

Turning to Aristotle, Klein notes that here [in respect of number], as always, [he] refers to that which is really meant in speech (p. 47), and this, Klein explains, is counting things. It seems, then, that Klein takes Plato and Aristotle to be analyzing ordinary language in order to grasp philosophical concepts. To

2
be sure, Plato abandons things for form-numbers, and Aristotle comes to emphasize the souls process of counting more than the things counted. But, no matter. Each roots numbers in ordinary language about things, in the best Oxford tradition. Or, so, I surmise, Annas and Sorabji understood Klein. Could this be what Jacob Klein really means to say? Let me suggest that the emphasis on things is indeed Kleins and that there is a genuine affinity with Analytic philosophy. Both took their start from a rejection of Hegel. It seems to me that Kleins Greek Mathematical Thought should be read with Cassirers account of the development of number in Substance and Function (orig. pub. 1910). Cassirer traces the development of number from mental acts of abstracting numbers from concrete objectsMill is as far back as he considersto a full blown conceptual system in which individual numbers, now thoroughly separated from things, derive their entire meaning from their relations with other numbers and conceptually defined relations between them. That is to say, ultimately a number must be understood through the conceptual system of which it is nothing but a part. This is a decidedly Hegelian account that Cassirer meant to mark the progress of mathematical thought at the time he wrote it. Klein is telling something of the same story, though he begins and ends before Cassirer starts. More importantly, Kleins account has something of Heideggers interest in returning to the concrete particularity of Greek thought and in, thereby, rejecting the increased conceptualization that Cassirer celebrates. It is, Klein claims, the problem of calculating with fractions that provokes even ancient thinkers to revise the Platonic scheme and, ultimately, later mathematicians to resort to the symbolization that has become predominant in modern mathematics. It is an important transformation, but Klein scarcely sees it as a positive one. On this global issue, we find nothing in Annas. She does, though, follow Klein in claiming that Plato distinguishes between theoretical arithmetic and theoretical logistic as well as their practical counterparts (Aristotles Metaphysics: Books M and N, 9-11), she claims that Aristotles treatment of number in terms of counting is his best treatment of number (35-36), and she considers his designation of units (39-41). All this is indeed from Klein (though she does not often credit him), but Annas misses the more important issues. As I read Kleins account of Aristotle, there are two central issues. In order that mathematics be a science, there must be mathematical objects that can be known, that is, thing that are unchanging and, thus, always of the same nature and properties. These objects of mathematics are noetic

3
entities. Mathematics is put to use in counting sensibles, but sensibles are changing and, thus, not proper subjects of knowledge. In order to count a collection of sensible objects, we must have prior knowledge of numbers, and we must somehow be able to grasp each sensible object as a noetic unit. So the issues are these: (1) How does the intellect come to grasp a sensible as an intelligible unit? (2) What is it that makes a collection of these intelligible units into one number? Kleins answer to both questions is abstraction. He understands abstraction as a process of regarding the sensible in such as way that the mathematical objects that are within it can be read off or lifted off the sensible. The key to the process is to ignore everything sensible within the sensible. As Klein explains,

In each case we disregard certain attributes of the thing in question, ignoring the nexus of their being which links them all to one another. This disregarding of . . . is able to produce a new mode of seeing which permits something to come to light in the aistheta which . . . remains always in the same condition, thus fulfilling the demand that it can be an object of some science (102).

The mystery is how disregarding some attributes of a sensible object can transform it from a sensible and, thereby, changing object into an unchanging, noetic entity whose nature is expounded in discourses that are eternally true. Imagine the following analogy: I am emptying my pocket. I remove a rumpled keenex, a wallet, a phone, and car keys. Then, reaching still deeper, I take out justice, truth, and then the unit. This is roughly the way Klein understands abstraction. He proposes abstraction as the disregarding of all sensible characters so that what remains are either items or mere bodies (p. 104). Emptied of all sensible content, the object is neutral and, thereby, a noetic object. We see the monad in the sensible object by being indifferent to everything else that is there (p. 105). How, though, did a noetic object come to be in the midst of a sensible one? Klein seems to have begged the important question: explaining how we come to see the intelligible object within the sensible,

4
he ignores the question of why we should think an intelligible object is there, within the sensible, to be known. Why is a neutral object a noetic object? Kleins account seems disappointing. Let me suggest, though, that Klein is drawing on the basic doctrine of the Metaphysics that forms are not separate but present in sensibles. They need to be in sensibles in order to unify the material constituents, and they cannot themselves be material, for if they were, it would be necessary to have still another thing unify it with the other material constituents, and we face an infinite regress. The regress is avoided if the principle of unity is something of an entirely different sort from the matter it unifies. This principle is the form. Thus, within the sensible object, there is an intelligible entity, an entity that is unchanging even if cannot be eternal. Is this the form that the mathematician sees in the sensible thing when he disregards the sensibles? It scarcely seems that it could be, for we come to grasp this intelligible form through its unifying the plurality of sensible constituents. If we disregard the sensible constituents, what can we say about the form? The form would seem to disappear with the sensible to unite. But this is not right. We know that the form is present and that there must be a form present to make the thing be what it is and to make it be one. It is the form of dog that makes this conglomeration of organs into a dog. We use nothing of its doggy nature in treating it as unit. What matters is that it is one indivisible instance of its kind. That it belongs to this kind enable us to count it as a unit. Thus, Aristotle says, man is one and indivisible insofar as he is a man, and this is the way the arithmetician treats him, asking what belongs to him insofar as he is indivisible (M.3.1078a23-25). Unity is not separate from the nature of man, but to treat man as indivisible is to treat his unity as if it were separate from his other characteristics. In almost the same breadth, Aristotle claims that the geometer treats man insofar as he is a solid (1078a25-26). This case is different because solidity is not mans essential nature. Indeed, solidity has a sensible meaning. Clearly, though, this sensible character is not what the geometer is interested in. He treats man as a three dimensional object. This solidity or three-dimensionality is as intelligible as the essential nature of man that the arithmetician relies upon. It, too, is a form. How do we know that man has this attribute? Mathematical solidity is presupposed by every sensible object by virtue of its existing in space. The geometer is able to extract this form from the sensible in much the way that the

5
arithmetician extracts unity, by disregarding the sensible characters. And, again, he would not be able to do so were it not necessary for the intelligible character to be present in the first place. Without the intelligible forms of unity and solidity, there would be no sensible entity. It is thoughts such as these that motivate Platonists to separate mathematicals. However, Aristotle insists that the indivisibility of man in respect of man and, indeed, the indivisibility of anything in respect of itself is common to all and a shortcut (Z.17.1041a14-20). He is, I think, acknowledging that everything is one, but also insisting that there is nothing significant that is common to every such one. What is prior to unity in each case is the form that the particular thing is indivisible in respect of. If the form that makes a thing one is proper to that thing and to others of the same kind, then to say all things are one is only to recognize a superficial similarity between them. Thus, there is a sense in which everything is one for the same reason, but this is only an analogy. On a deeper level, it is the particular form a thing has that makes it the particular nature it is. One man and one horse are each one, but they are different ones. This distinction is important for the second main problem Klein addresses: what holds an assemblage of units together as a single number? (p. 105). This is a central problem for Plato, and Klein devotes a good bit of his discussion of Plato to proposing an answer. Platos answer, Klein claims, lies in a doctrine of eidetic numbers. As I understand Klein, Plato thinks that each number or, rather, every number from 2 through 10 is a genus that somehow encompasses the same number of distinct species, yet inseparable species that fall under it. Paradigmatically, the eidetic two consists of Being that encompasses two species, Motion and Rest. These latter are distinct from each other and even, apparently, opposites; but neither is conceptually possible without the other, and together they comprise the whole of Being. Insofar as Motion and Rest comprise Being, the latter is two; but the units of this two are inseparable from each other and derive their unity from their genus, Being. In general, Platos principle of unity lies in the genus, and the genus makes its species one. Thus, what we know as three of the great kinds in the Sophist serve as Kleins model for the eidetic two. In constructing this ingenious solution to the problem of the unity of number, Klein not only draws on Platos texts but also on Aristotles criticism of eidetic numbers in Metaphysics M and N (and, I suspect, Plotinuss account of

6
number in Ennead VI.6). From Aristotles point of view, Platos account is fatally flawed because it explains, at best, the unity of the eidetic number but not at all the unity of sensible numbers, the numbers we use to count sensible objects. For, the close (conceptual) connection that exists between the units, that is, the species forms, in the eidetic number cannot exist in sensibles, nor is there the least chance that anything imitating such a connection could exist in sensibles. Moreover, Aristotle argues that if the pure units are indeed absolutely indivisible and self-subsistent, there is nothing that could possibly unite them (M.7.1082a20-26). As Klein puts it, these monads, . . . , just do not offer any natural articulation . . . which might serve as the original source of delimitation and unification productive of . . . definite numbers (p. 106). At this point, having advanced a Platonic solution and explained why Aristotle rejects it, Klein makes a move that I find baffling. Although he sees that Aristotle is criticizing Plato for not being able to account for the unity of number, Klein holds that Aristotle himself regards numbers as heaps of units (p. 107).1 It is almost as if Aristotle shows Platos account leads to absurdity but then accepts the absurdity of Platos position as his own! I say almost because Klein does explain how these heaps of units can be distinguished from each other (pp. 107-8). They are distinguished by counting. This involves first recognizing that the assemblage of sensibles are all sheep or men, that is, that they belong to the same genus. Second, we must identify a unit, that is, some instance of the genus that can be regarded as one and indivisible in respect of what it is, one horse or one man. Third, the soul uses this measure to count the objects in the assemblage. The result is some number that is, first, a number of men; but, by again disregarding its sensible characters, this number can be seen as a noetic entity that is composed of noetic pure units. That is to say, number comes to be by an act of the soul, specifically, the souls

1. Still another reason to conclude that Klein recognizes the importance of the unity problem is his account (Jacob Klein, Lecture and Essays [Annapolis: St. Johns College Press, 1985], 4748) of how the Pythagoreans explain the unity of number by arranging points into a shapes. Later in the essay (p. 52), Klein denies that Aristotle even sees the real problem with numbers.

7
counting what are pure units because the soul has posited them as such. This posited character of the unit is crucial for Kleins overall account in Greek Mathematical Thought because if units exist insofar as they are posited, then even fractional parts of units can be posited and, thus, Aristotle has the resources to solve the problem of fractions that so plagues Neoplatonist mathematicians (such as Nicomachus and Theon) that they relinquish the notion of theoretical logistic in order to avoid them. Or so Klein. Crucial for Kleins account is a distinction that Aristotle makes in the Physics between two kinds of numbers, that by which we count and that which is counted (.11.219b5-7).2 For Klein, the former is the primary sense of number; for arithmos refers to the act of counting, and it is counting that allows us to distinguish one number from another. This primary sense conflicts with Platonic numbers which are collections of pure monads and, thus, belong among that which is counted. Klein notes that for Aristotle, both sorts of numbers are heaps. The assemblage of units has nothing within itself to unify the units. We might have thought that they are unified by the act of counting, but this latter, too, has nothing to unify it. We simply continue to add one thing to the assemblage until we exhaust what is being counted. Hence, that by which we count has as little unity as what is counted (pp. 106-7). Yet, Aristotle distinguishes between what is prior to us and what is prior in nature. If we do come to learn about numbers by learning to count, counting would be prior to us, but if it is like other cases, posterior in nature. Let us, though, ask a different question: could numbers exist only in our count? There are decisive reasons that they could not. First, numbers that existed only in our mindsas they would if the things counted were heapswould have no counterpart in the world. Aristotle claims that knowledge is possible because a form that exists in things comes to be in the soul or, rather, that the soul comes to be that form. If, though, the things counted are a heap, then they possess no form, and number exists only in the counters soul. This is not knowledge. Still worseand this is the second reasonas Klein describes number, it is not a form at all. In general, Aristotle thinks that to be is to be some form and every form is one. Obviously, this poses a problem for numbers, a problem that needs to be

2. Klein references this passage (p. 107), but does not quote it.

8
overcome, not set aside. There is a form of white, the form of place, and a form of every other instance of a categorial genus. There must be a form of each number. Klein suggests as much, but he does not think Aristotle can give a form. In any case, there is one passage that leaves no doubt that Aristotle does not regard numbers as heaps (H.3, 1043b32-1044a13), a passage Klein refers to (p. 107) but does not seem to have understood properly. It begins with the proposal that ousiai are numbers, only not as the Platonists say. An ousia is, rather, a number in the way a definition is a number. Both are divisible into indivisible parts, altered by the least addition or subtraction, and require something to make them one:

It is necessary that there be something by which a number is one, but now they are unable to say by what it is one, for either a number is not one but a heap or, if it is one, it is necessary to say what makes it one out of many. A definition is one, but they are likewise unable to explain this. And this likely follows, for by the same account ousia will be one in this way, not as some say by being some unit or a point but each ousia is some actuality and nature (1044a3-9).

Lest there be any doubt where Aristotle stands, we should note that he accounts for the unity of definition in Z.12 and the unity of a composite ousia in H.6. This passage is claiming that a number is one in the same way. Evidently, he thinks a number is not heap but that Platonists make it so. Interesting, and surprising, that Klein reverses Aristotles claim to insist that Plato does account for the unity of a number generically and that it is Aristotle who makes numbers heaps. There is a topic in the quoted passage that Klein overlooks, a topic that no one with a catholic educationsuch as myself, at the Pontificial Instititute of Mediaeval Studies in Torontocould miss. An

9
ousia is an actuality, as is a number.3 This is, I submit, the key to understanding Aristotles account of number. Aristotle thinks that Zenos paradoxes arise from the ontological mistake of supposing that points are prior to lines. Zeno sees that he must traverse an infinite number of points and denies that it is possible to traverse an infinity. Aristotle claims that the points are infinite only potentially, that is to say, it is possible to continue to mark off points in the line, but there are never an actually infinite number of points. The line is prior to the point; the point comes to be as division of the line. Local motion requires being able to traverse a distance. In M 2 Aristotle argues that geometrical objects cannot exist in ousiai nor can they exist apart from ousiai. M 3 resolves this aporia by showing that geometric objects exist in ousiai potentially. They require an act of the intellect to be actualized, just as the points on the line come to be through an act of the intellect. In the Categories Aristotle claims that everything else is either present in or said of a primary ousia. This is an ontological claim that no one should have appreciated more that Jacob Klein. Aristotle is saying that universals and properties reside somehow within concrete things. Numbers present a direct and obvious challenge to this ontology because a number belongs to multiple things. Just where do they reside? In the soul of the one counting, Klein seems to be saying. But this cannot be right for the reasons I have said. An essential clue to understanding number lies in Aristotles account of the infinite in the Physics. Plato has one infinite that he equates with the large and the small, the indefinite dyad. Aristotle insists there are two infinites, both of which are potential. In the process of showing why, he explains Platos dyad. Start with any line. It is possible to divide it into two indefinitely. As the divided segments grow smaller and smaller, the number of those segments grows larger. Hence, Plato thinks that larger and smaller go hand in hand. No, Aristotle insists, number grows larger as magnitude grows smaller. Hence,

3. Of course, Klein recognizes this point about ousia, Jacob Klein, ed., Burt C. Hopkins, Aristotle (I), The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 3 (2003): 311, ed. Burt C. Hopkins; Klein and Burt C. Hopkins, Aristotle (I), 311.

10
there are two potential infinites, infinite in number and infinite (or, rather, infinitesimal) in magnitude. What is crucial here is that the number being counted is a number of parts of a line and, thereby, parts of an ousia. Hence, a number can belong to a single ousia, and this must be its primary mode of existence if Aristotle is to maintain the doctrine of the Categories. The number that is used to count distinct things is a multiple of some measure and, thereby a relative ( ) rather than a quantity. (Incidentally, as a relative, number belongs to things in the same way that the character being a member of group belongs to each member of the group.) As Klein notes, in order to count, we need a preknowledge of numbers by which we count (p. 107). He means that we must have learned our numbers. But there is another sort of preknowledge: the number form needs to exist. Insofar as a number belongs to an individual ousia, it can have its own form. This form unifies the units, and it is prior to the units. The units are potentially separable from the number. A number is also one in another way; it belongs to a single ousia. That is to say, the principle of unity that Aristotle speaks about and Klein dismisses too quickly is the unity of the individual ousia in which a number resides as a potentiality, a potentiality that is actualized by an act of intellect. Just as we come to see a line or a surface by dividing a solid ousia, so too we come to see a number by dividing an ousia. Numerical units are intrinsically fractions. This conclusion actually reinforces Kleins overall claim that Aristotle was able to deal with fractions in a way that Plato could not. Indeed, I cannot see how Aristotle could stipulate a fraction as a unit, as Klein imagines, until he has a fraction to work with, and for that he needs to divide an ousia into a determinate number of intelligible parts. The account I am proposing explains how there can be intelligible parts. No one has written about Aristotles account of number more cogently or insightfully than Jacob Klein. He recognizes the significance of mathematics for Greek metaphysics, he understands that the crucial problem for both is how a plurality can be one, he is able to take seriously form-numbers and the indefinite dyad, he recognizes the importance of counting for Aristotles notion of number, and, perhaps most importantly, he grasps the significance of numbers being things. I have learned a great deal from Kleinmuch more from his 14 pages on Aristotles than from many a lengthy tome. So, I find it somewhat baffling that he did not fully develop his own insights. It was from Klein that I learned that

11
numbers are things, things whose matter is unified by a form, but Klein himself concludes that they are heaps. What happened? I can only speculate, but I want to propose a reason. Klein was a student of Heidegger, and that opened up one fruitful way of thinking about numbers at the same time it closed off other fruitful lines of thought. As I said at the beginning, Kleins Greek Mathematical Thought should be read in conjunction with Cassirers Substance and Function. Both see the development of mathematics as a rise of conceptualization, but they differ radically on how they value conceptualization. Under Husserls and Heideggers influence, Klein affirms the value of concrete things.4 That is what makes Greek mathematics so important. It is a way of dealing with the concrete in contrast with the conceptual schemata that dominate modern mathematics. However, this line of thought led Klein to focus on mathematicals as things or, more properly, as ways of grasping concrete physical things. Numbering is a way we are in the world with things. It is a way things manifest themselves to us and make themselves part of our world; it is a way we give these things use value, and a way we mark off our own existence in time. The Heideggerian impetus is to focus on the concreteness of numbering. What is lost or, perhaps, intentionally ignored is the conceptual component that we put into the construction of even the most primitive of things, the things whose being we are supposed to let emerge by stepping back, as Heidegger would have it. The workshop filled with tools is a world we have constructed. Klein recognizes that the Greeks thought of numbers as things and that these things belong

4. See Kleins discussion of sedimentation in Aristotle (I), The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 3 (2003): 298. Husserl discusses sedimentation in Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. David Carr, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 362. Klein affirms the Husserlian character of his thoughts on mathematics in Jacob Klein, Lecture and Essays (Annapolis: St. Johns College Press, 1985), 78.

12
to Greek metaphysics. To oversimplify, the metaphysical project of Greek thought is to find the things that are themselves self-subsistent and upon which everything else depends. Whether these things were named the one, the forms, or ousiai matters less than the notion that what is primary is some primary, individual thing. The primacy of primary things is the key idea for western metaphysics for nearly two millennia until, with the rise of modern science, it is replaced with primary relations (causal relations or scientific laws). This is not the place to lament or praise this transformation. My point is more basic: the notion of a primary thing is as much of an intellectual creation as a scientific law. The slogan of the phenomenologists, back to the things themselves, has an element of disingenuousness. From the moment man recognized himself in nature, that is, from the moment he grasped that it was his role to name the things in nature, to give them their identity, an identity which was, therefore, not only theirs but his as well, man put himself into things and the things were part of man. My point is that what Klein wants to call the concrete things are already pervaded with the concept that they are either primary individuals themselves or depend on something else. These primary individuals must somehow be the basis for numbers. Just how something one could account for something intrinsically many is the central problem I have been discussing. It is a problem because numbers do belong among noetic entities. Again, how could something intrinsically many be rooted in a single entity, something intrinsically one. That is what Klein wrestles with and what I have tried to explain here.

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi