Aristotle

=== Translation of Aristotle ===
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/precursors/precursnatsel.html#r1
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.2.ii.html
1Aristotle's Physics, Book II, 8, para. 2, according to the translation on-line by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye, publication details not given. See Magner 1989 for a full discussion on the Greek precursors.
:A difficulty presents itself: why should not nature work, not for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just as the sky rains, not in order to make the corn grow, but of necessity? What is drawn up must cool, and what has been cooled must become water and descend, the result of this being that the corn grows. Similarly if a man's crop is spoiled on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for the sake of this--in order that the crop might be spoiled--but that result just followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in nature, e.g. that our teeth should come up of necessity -- the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food -- since they did not arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts in which we suppose that there is purpose? Wherever then all the parts came about just what they would have been if they had come be for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish, as Empedocles says his 'man-faced ox-progeny' did.1
== Mr. Clair Grece translation ==
Link this to Buchner from http://tautology.wikia.com/wiki/Paul_Janet, Materialist Paul Buchner rephrased Aristotle.
Darwin wrote: OoS "...Passing over allusions to the subject in the classical writers (Aristotle, in his "Physicae Auscultationes" (lib.2, cap.8, s.2), after remarking that rain does not fall in order to make the corn grow, any more than it falls to spoil the farmer's corn when threshed out of doors, applies the same argument to organisation; and adds (as translated by Mr. Clair Grece, who first pointed out the passage to me),
:So what hinders the different parts (of the body) from having this merely accidental relation in nature? as the teeth, for example, grow by necessity, the front ones sharp, adapted for dividing, and the grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating the food; since they were not made for the sake of this, but it was the result of accident. And in like manner as to other parts in which there appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever, therefore, all things together (that is all the parts of one whole) happened like as if they were made for the sake of something, these were preserved, having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity; and whatsoever things were not thus constituted, perished and still perish.
We here see the principle of natural selection shadowed forth, but how little Aristotle fully comprehended the principle, is shown by his remarks on the formation of the teeth.), the first author who in modern times has treated it in a scientific spirit was Buffon. But as his opinions fluctuated greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or means of the transformation of species, I need not here enter on details......."
=== Empedocles ===
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/empedocles/
:Here sprang up many faces without necks, arms wandered without shoulders, unattached, and eyes strayed alone, in need of foreheads (B 57)....Many creatures were born with faces and breasts on both sides, man-faced ox-progeny, while others again sprang forth as ox-headed offspring of man, creatures compounded partly of male, partly of the nature of female, and fitted with shadowy parts. (B 61)
Stanford comments:"...Whether this phase also produced non-fantastic creatures, e.g., ox-headed oxen, is not clear. Aristotle seemed to think it did, because he says some of these combinations were fitted to survive (Aristotle, Phys. II 8, 198b29)....."
==== Notes on Stanfords view ====
What Aristotle meant with those 'fitted' to survive, were those who 'spontaneously' assembled into a constituted Irreducible Functionality mechanism in PunkEek fashion. The same IC /gradualism debate was held back then using different terminology.
A person who rejects Irreducible Functionality will engage in history revisionism with Aristotle to fit with his gradualistic world view. Darwin understood Aristotle as being PunkEek and disagreed with this in his comments on teeth, thus he did not misrepresent Aristotle's position.
Aristotle understood that the mouth forms an IC system, the sharp teeth must be in front and molars in the back for the most functional system.
Both gradualism and PunkEek use fitness , yet have a different concept with the term.
== Ernst Haeckel ==
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22430/22430-h/22430-h.htm#I
Aristotle's views of Nature[3] seem to have been more definitely evolutionist than those of his predecessors, in this sense, at least, that he recognised not only an ascending scale, but a genetic series from polyp to man and an age-long movement towards perfection. "It is due to the resistance of matter to form that Nature can only rise by degrees from lower to higher types."
"Nature produces those things which, being continually moved by a certain principle contained in themselves, arrive at a certain end."
NOTES: moved <=> arrived at end says the same thing twice.
==Aristotle's influence on Aquinas ==
Darwin wrote: OoS
"...Passing over allusions to the subject in the classical writers (Aristotle, in his "Physicae Auscultationes" (lib.2, cap.8, s.2), after remarking that rain does not fall in order to make the corn grow, any more than it falls to spoil the farmer's corn when threshed out of doors, applies the same argument to organisation; and adds (as translated by Mr. Clair Grece, who first pointed out the passage to me),
So what hinders the different parts (of the body) from having this merely accidental relation
in nature? as the teeth, for example, grow by necessity, the front ones sharp, adapted for dividing, and the grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating the food; since they were not made for the sake of this, but it was the result of accident. And in like manner as to other parts in which there appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever, therefore, all things together (that is all the parts of one whole) happened like as if they were made for the sake of something, these were preserved, having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity; and whatsoever things were not thus constituted, perished and still perish.
We here see the principle of natural selection shadowed forth, but how little Aristotle fully comprehended the principle, is shown by his remarks on the formation of the teeth.), the first author who in modern times has treated it in a scientific spirit was Buffon. But as his opinions fluctuated greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or means of the transformation of species, I need not here enter on details......."
Note what Aristotle wrote: '......but it was the result of accident.......'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquinas had a belief in "spontaneous generation" which he got from the works of Aristotle. The specific passage that must have influenced Aquinas was also cited by Darwin: "...... having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity .....". Elsewhere in this document it is shown that the passage by Aristotle was a type Tautology3 or rhetorical tautology - the conclusion "result of accident" 
and "spontaneous generation" were non-sequiturs. Darwin saw in the passage the "...for shadowing of natural selection ..." as he put it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelianism#cite_note-sep-thomas-19 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomism
PierreMaupertuis gave a different word for internal spontaneity or spontaneous generation: fitness. In the context of 1874 when John Tyndall said NS1 and/or fitness as in SoF he was referring to spontaneous generation, which in turn referred to Democritus Atomism. Today other authors could mean something different with the same word.
The same mistake Aquinas made is perpetuated today with scholars trying to reconcile Aristotle's tautological3 narratives with modern information theoretic concepts. Philosophers like Dennet have been peddling Epicurean tautological3 thinking under different terms. The ancient ideas of Lucretius are the same today: there is nothing new under the sun. In the Bible it is written: "...... the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord ...." Not a single rhetorical tautology3 can be found in scripture, only pleonasms or tautological2 expressions,used for poetic purposes.
".. All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind...." this is probably the only sensible thing that Aristotle has written. We can see it with university professors who have to say "selection-for" and "selection-about" instead of design and pattern. They are being paid to have their minds degraded by the Empedoclean pagans in the US federal government.
== books ==
See G. J. Romanes, "Aristotle as a Naturalist," Contemporary Review, Vol. lix. p. 275, 1891;
 G. Pouchet, La Biologie Aristotélique, Paris, 1885;
 E. Zeller, A History of Greek Philosophy, London, 1881, and
"Ueber die griechischen Vorgänger Darwin's," Abhandl. Berlin Akad. 1878, pp. 111-124
=== j ===
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality states ".... The actuality-potentiality distinction in Aristotle is a key element linked to everything in his physics and metaphysics....". If Aristotle didn't use actuality-potentiality as the metaphor for the Pattern or design Platonic opposites, then he would have formulated Meaningless sentences.
=== a single and indivisible principle of unity ===
See Irreducible Functionality the Thompson discussion interpreting Aristotle as an expounder of Behe's IC concept and that IC is an ancient doctrine.
http://search.conduit.com/ResultsExt.aspx?ctid=CT3072253&SearchSource=2&q=a+single+and+indivisible+principle+of+unity
http://www.walterthomasbrooks.com/Introductory%20Page-2.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-mind/
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.3.iii.html
(7) Besides this, even if the genera are in the highest degree principles, should one regard the first of the genera as principles, or those which are predicated directly of the individuals? This also admits of dispute. For if the universals are always more of the nature of principles, evidently the uppermost of the genera are the principles; for these are predicated of all things. There will, then, be as many principles of things as there are primary genera, so that both being and unity will be principles and substances; for these are most of all predicated of all existing things. But it is not possible that either unity or being should be a single genus of things; for the differentiae of any genus must each of them both have being and be one, but it is not possible for the genus taken apart from its species (any more than for the species of the genus) to be predicated of its proper differentiae; so that if unity or being is a genus, no differentia will either have being or be one. But if unity and being are not genera, neither will they be principles, if the genera are the principles. Again, the intermediate kinds, in whose nature the differentiae are included, will on this theory be genera, down to the indivisible species; but as it is, some are thought to be genera and others are not thought to be so. Besides this, the differentiae are principles even more than the genera; and if these also are principles, there comes to be practically an infinite number of principles, especially if we suppose the highest genus to be a principle.-
But again, if unity is more of the nature of a principle, and the indivisible is one, and everything indivisible is so either in quantity or in species, and that which is so in species is the prior, and genera are divisible into species for man is not the genus of individual men), that which is predicated directly of the individuals will have more unity.
Further, in the case of things in which the distinction of prior and posterior is present, that which is predicable of these things cannot be something apart from them (e.g. if two is the first of numbers, there will not be a Number apart from the kinds of numbers; and similarly there will not be a Figure apart from the kinds of figures; and if the genera of these things do not exist apart from the species, the genera of other things will scarcely do so; for genera of these things are thought to exist if any do).
But among the individuals one is not prior and another posterior. Further, where one thing is better and another worse, the better is always prior; so that of these also no genus can exist. From these considerations, then, the species predicated of individuals seem to be principles rather than the genera. But again, it is not easy to say in what sense these are to be taken as principles. For the principle or cause must exist alongside of the things of which it is the principle, and must be capable of existing in separation from them; but for what reason should we suppose any such thing to exist alongside of the individual, except that it is predicated universally and of all? But if this is the reason, the things that are more universal must be supposed to be more of the nature of principles; so that the highest genera would be the principles.
=== Links ===
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/alt.talk.creationism/EAfBsexlyr4[1-25]
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Talk/talk.origins/2009-10/msg08017.html
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.talk.creationism/browse_thread/thread/1007c1b1ec65cabe/dfdf29c4a7e6f256 Add this original post about Aristotle from talk.creationism I posted 2 years ago or merge it into this page .
http://evolvingthoughts.net/2014/01/how-to-argue-with-silly-thing-believers/
And my favourite case of core reinterpretation is the reaction of the Catholic church to Daltonian atomism and chemistry: change the interpretation of a core belief in substance in the doctrine of transubstantiation from a physical reality to a metaphysical reality (thereby partly conceding to their Lutheran critics of 400 years earlier).
Category:TauTology
Category:Aristotle