This electronic edition is funded by the National Library of Medicine History of Medicine Division. This text has been proofread to a high degree of accuracy. It was converted to electronic form using Data Entry. (Medical Information Disclaimer:
It is not the intention of NLM to provide specific medical advice but rather to provide users with information to better understand their health and their diagnosed disorders. Specific medical advice will not be provided, and NLM urges you to consult with a qualified physician for diagnosis and for answers to your personal questions.)
ON THE NATURAL FACULTIES Book I
PART 2
[p. 7]thing moist becomes dry, or dry moist. Now, the common term which we apply to all these cases is alteration.
This is one kind of motion. But there is another kind which occurs in bodies which change their position, or as we say, pass from one place to another; the name of this is transference.
"Conveyance," "transport," "transit"; purely mechanical or passive motion, as distinguished from ateration(qualitative change).
These two kinds of motion, then, are simple and primary, while compounded from them we have growth and decay,
"Waxing and waning," the latter literally phthisis, a wasting or "decline;" cf. Scotch dwining, Dutch verdwijnen.
as when a small thing becomes bigger, or a big thing smaller, each retaining at the same time its particular form. And two other kinds of motion are genesis and destruction,
Becoming and perishing: Latin generation et corruptio.
genesis being a coming into existence,
"Ad substantiam productio seu ad formam processus" (Linacre).
and destruction being the opposite.
Now, common to all kinds of motion is change from the preexisting state, while common to all conditions of rest is retention of the preexisting state. The Sophists, however, while allowing that bread in turning into blood becomes changed as regards sight, taste, and touch, will not agree that this change occurs in reality. Thus some of them hold that all such phenomena are tricks and illusions of our senses; the senses, they say, are affected now in one way, now in another, whereas the underlying substance does not admit of any of these changes to which the names are given. Others (such as Anaxagoras)
"Preformationist" doctrine of Anaxagoras. To him the apparent alteration in qualities took place when a number of minute pre-existing bodies, all bearing the same quality, came together in sufficient numbers to impress that quality on the senses. The factor which united the minute quality-bearers was Nous. "In the beginning," says Anaxagoras, "all things existed together-then came Nous and brought them into order."
will have it that the qualities do exist in it, but that they