Let us
explicate the concept of “λογος”, a notion whose importance cannot be
overestimated. Logos can mean word, story, account or proportion,
depending on the context. Everything produced by art or nature exists in
virtue of some logos or proportion (analogia) of opposites.[1] “Logos belongs
to, and is identified with, ousia (beingness), to ti ein einai
(“that which it was meant to be” or “what it means to be that thing”) eidos
[“form” in Plato’s sense], or phusis as the object of definition of a
thing.”[2] “The ‘good’ of
each compound lies in the logos among its opposing constituents.” (Parts of Animals,
639b12-21, p. 995) “It is according to the state of its composition as
determined by logos that a thing is well or ill disposed.”[3] It is worth
reading Joachim’s excellent summary of Generation and
Corruption (333b16-20):
“The
‘formula expressing the essential nature’ of an omoiomeres (a composite,
e. g. a hand) is the logos tes mixews of its constituents, i. e., the
scheme of proportions constituting the plan of the combination. This
‘combining formula’ adequately expresses the ‘form’ (eidos) and is
therefore the scientific definition of the omoiomeres, and also states
the normal or perfect development of its phusis in the sense of to telos
tes geneseos i. e. its ‘good’.[4] Still, the phusis, eidos
and essence (ousia)
of the animal as a whole is primary and this whole determines (is the arche
of) the proportion of elements in the formation of its individual parts.” [5]
In other
words, logos is the principle of both a) the correct function and structure of
composite parts and b) the possibility of recognizing and naming a kind of
animal; it governs the particular composition of the whole animal body[6] and therefore grounds
both the physical condition and the empirical identifiability of the animal.
And corresponding to the different formulae for combination of elements, each
animal will enjoy health in a different way; eels are at their best when moist,
and scorpions when dry.
In the Topics, we find
again that health is determined by its inherence in heat or coolness, wetness
and dryness.[7] This is in the Physics too
(210a20 p. 62), where health is said to be “in” the hot and cold, a habit (exis)
that results from balance; these relations are not identical to, but causal in
relation to health. (Topics, 145b7ff.
p. 245) Any sort of excellence requires a state of symmetry[8]; the key to logos in
its sense of a formula for binding elements into functional wholes is balance.
Health is a state of symmetry in and stability in which appropriate responses
to changing qualitative conditions occur, and disease is the failure to
maintain balance (A. Po., 78b18-20 p. 128); in sickness, too much or too little
of a quality afflicts the body: “Hot, cold, moist, and dry elements are in
constant contact with their opposites in the animal body”, which must resist
being broken down and dissolved into those elements. (On the Soul,
407b33-408a26 pp. 25-6) “The maintenance of the body requires that the
active powers (dunamei) temper each other in proportion (analogon)
and dominate the passive so that coction (pepsis) and blend (mixeis)
can take place.” (Tracy, p. 168) Blending and mixing occur when the dunamei
of two elements are approximately equal.[9] These elemental
qualities, “if equally balanced, will form a third substance when brought to
the mean”. (Gen & Corr., 334b23-6, p. 547) The result is “a new
substance which combines the qualities of the two” (Tracy, p. 175), such as
bone. Logos in this context is the principle of both of rightly
functioning homeomerous substances (like bone or blood) and of definition, for
each kind of natural being is an instance of a specific formula for blending, a
desperate and temporary binding of volatile elements into a recognizable
creature.
Medicine
is wrapped up with another level of logos, too: it is inherently
discursive, or language dependent. The body is like language in an
essential way, for it is composed of elements:
“An element
means the first inherent compound out of which a thing is constructed and which
cannot be analyzed formally into a different kind (eidos); for example,
the elements of speech are the parts of speech of which speech consists and
into which it is ultimately divided, whereas they cannot they cannot in turn be
divided into forms of speech different from them in kind...a part of a syllable
is not a syllable.” (Metaphysics
1014a25-8, pp. 90-1)
Rhetoric
and medicine are sciences which use knowledge of the proper combination of
elements into “higher” complex wholes for specific ends, persuasion and health,
respectively. An element that is impossible to reduce into simpler forms
is a true element, but the word “element” (stoikeion) also has the
looser sense of the materiel or hylic term in a hylomorphic definition. (Metaphysics,
1015a7 pp. 92-3) For example, an argument may be analyzed as a complex of
elements, like a series of metaphors, which in turn would be composed of
“elementary” resemblances and symbols, and so on. By continuing the
analysis, we would reach a level at which meaning disappears into elementary
syllables[11] Such syllables cease to resemble
language, for they carry no meaning apart from their participation at a higher
level of organization. That is exactly the same relation which the
organism has to the materiel elements (earth, air, fire, water) which compose
it.
Medicine
works with a language already spoken by nature, composed of the articulations
and pains of the body; “To the exhaustive presence of the disease in its
symptoms corresponds the unobstructed transparency of the pathological being
with the syntax of a descriptive language: a fundamental isomorphism of the
structure of the disease and of the verbal form which circumscribes it.”[12] In medicine, logos, as the form
and fulfillment of the intellective soul, gathers its own condition of
possibility into itself: φυσις. By the doctor’s intelligence, sickness is
made into a language, transformed into a system of meaningful signs-that is,
symptoms-and thereby made to disclose and defeat itself. As the techne
which stands between language and phusis, medicine contains elements of
both; it investigates the body’s qualities as signs, but aims at exactly the
same telos (goal or end) as the living creature it was meant to save.
Through medicine this mixed half living-half speaking creature, the human,
struggles against imbalance and dissolution. All animals strive for life,
but it can be said in this case that language itself struggles to maintain
itself in existence; the doctor (unless a veterinarian) is caring for a being
whose essence is to be language-using.
But, why
the need for medicine at all, an art which runs parallel to and supplements phusis?
Why is life necessarily in mortal danger? Because living things are
profoundly delicate; sickness and decay are easy, health and integrity
difficult. At this point, we approach a deep paradox: in Aristotle’s
thought, life is
contrary to nature. There is a split in phusis between the
elements and life. From the viewpoint of elementary matter, tecne
and phusis are equally unnatural, equally a wrenching interruption of
the natural tendency of matter to stay in it’s appropriate place (topos)
(fire, for example belongs up, and earth belongs down). If we unlock the
etymology of the word “perverse” (diastrophein), it translates into
“turning against,” exactly descriptive of the relation which the elemental and
the biological realms bear to each other. Matter, from the point of view
of the creature, exerts a passive potency (or dunamis), a resistance to
remaining in the creature’s form. The passive dunamis of matter
appears as the principle of decay. Decay is a result of the natural
movement of elements to their original place (topos), a unique location
in the world determined by the qualitative state specific to the element.
The telos of a living thing is to maintain the mixture which is its very
substance, the telos of the element is to make it back to the special
location proper to it, and one cannot have it both ways; the double telos
is tension itself, the tension of powerful dunamei which are in
opposition.
In the
language of modern physics, organic matter is the outrageous reversal of the
third law of thermo-dynamics, entropy. As time passes, systems generally
fall apart, decay, and become less complex. The exception to that law is
the organic world, where (at least during generation and growth) systems grow
in complexity and become more organized with the passage of time-the only
example of such an exception. Life in that sense is a rebellion against
matter, against time; the organic is the insanity, the dream of matter,
inherently quixotic, essentially perilous, ultimately futile, even pitiful, but
finally heroic. It is unparalleled in all of the vast, silent void
in its delicacy and complexity.
So far, it
has become clear that medical knowledge operates between the visible, specific
patient and the intelligible formulae for combination which underlie health and
sickness. Medicine seeks to produce health, a state which is intimately
tied to phusis, and at the same time accessible to the mind, rather than
the senses. It is an art which lies at the intersection of language and
“nature”: medicine is language turned back on itself, a techne which
uses a discursive knowledge of nature to bring about what phusis cannot
always achieve itself, health. Medicine is the human logos harnessed by
the natural imperative to survive, a response to fundamental terror; it is the
cry of human life, the reasoning power of the doctor struggling to defend
fellow rational beings from the dynamism of the matter in which they are
grounded.
References
[1]. Aristotle, Sense and
Sensibilia 436a20 J. I. Bearne, trans. p. 693; see also Posterior
Analytics 72a1-6, pp. 115-6 in The Complete Works of Aristotle ,
vol. I Jonathan Barnes, ed. Princeton, 1984 pp. 14-5 (references from the
biological works and the Organon are drawn from this volume) and Metaphysics
1029b ff. Richard Hope, trans. Columbia, 1952 p. 134
[4]. Allan Gotthelf and James G.
Lennox (contributing eds.) Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology
Cambridge, 1987 p. 5
[7]. Aristotle, Parva Natura (On
Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration) 479a8-9 G. R. T. Ross,
trans. p. 760
[9]. Aristotle, Metaphysics
1037b29-1038a35 p. 157 and Posterior Analytics 97a29 Barnes, trans. p.
161
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