"The process [of thinking] is like that in which the air modifies the pupil in this or that way and the pupil transmits the modification to some third thing (and similarly in hearing), while the ultimate point of arrival is one, a single mean, with different manners of being."
— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Author
Work Title
Date
w. 350 B.C.
Metaphor
"The process [of thinking] is like that in which the air modifies the pupil in this or that way and the pupil transmits the modification to some third thing (and similarly in hearing), while the ultimate point of arrival is one, a single mean, with different manners of being."
Metaphor in Context
To the thinking soul images serve as if they were contents of perception (and when it asserts or denies them to be good or bad it avoids or pursues them). That is why the soul never thinks without an image. The process is like that in which the air modifies the pupil in this or that way and the pupil transmits the modification to some third thing (and similarly in hearing), while the ultimate point of arrival is one, a single mean, with different manners of being.
(431a15, p 233)
(431a15, p 233)
Provenance
Reading On the Soul
Citation
Some text from The Complete Works of Aristotle, The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton UP,1984).
Reading in Aristotle, Introduction to Aristotle, trans. R. McKeon. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1973).
Reading in Aristotle, Introduction to Aristotle, trans. R. McKeon. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1973).
Date of Entry
06/12/2003
Date of Review
10/23/2003
