“By nature animals are born with the faculty of sensation…”
Aristotle, Metaphysics
Perhaps of all the wonders of the natural world none is as magnificent as this: some creatures can see. One almost shudders to ask: what does it mean to see something? Here perhaps we should just stop and ponder in reverent silence.
Some material beings are actually aware of the world around them. In some sense they can take it all in–or maybe not it all, but much. Seeing is a way of having what is actually there. How can one even begin to put a valuation on such a thing?
To be able to open one’s eyes and see: see anything! Or to be able to hear, and to touch. In a sense, what else is there? Perception is the defining feature of the animal’s life. Here the masterpiece that is the world begins to come to unique fruition.
An animal moves across the landscape as somehow above all that is around it. Literally in its organs, matter can do what perhaps most transcends the ordinary limits of the material world.
Never to be understood fully; never to be repeated artificially; always an occasion for wonder, and for gratitude: vision!
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), student of Plato, tutor of Alexander the Great, has been considered by many to be the greatest ancient philosopher. Metaphysics is his study of the deepest aspects of reality.
Rediscovering Wonder Mini-Series
III. Some Matter Can See!
Image: Albrecht Duerer (1471-1528), German: Young Hare.
Note: I have to skip a VIDEO this week–so as to rest the over-taxed matter of the organ of speech, which is a little under the weather.
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Quaeritur: Given that animals cannot abstract universals, but they clearly have the capacity for memory, does this mean that their thoughts are purely “nominal” like ours is rational? What would that look like if so?
Ambrose, You ask a great and difficult question. Here is a thought that might help. I presume here that ‘nominal’ means this: the tokens they have in their interior sense powers–which powers surely can retain images of what they have sensed with their external senses–do not refer to any universal ways of being. Put otherwise, the animal does not apprehend the meanings of various ways of being, or the natures of things. But, they can retain images that point to individual aspects of things. Rational thought, on the other hand, grasps universal ways of being, and so our concepts are not purely ‘nominal,’ or placeholders or tokens for various things we have sensed. There is my brief stab at your question.
Having worked with dogs and horses which are two totally different mentalities ( predator and prey) I am impressed by their special abilities. The horse can detect and respond to the turn of an ear by another horse 100 yards away. The working sheep dog responds to signals from his master who may be more than 200 yards away. Simply amazing. We humans have these abilities too but tend to bury them through the over depending on language. Thing about how we can detect strong emotions like anger in stranger a block away just by watching body language
Dick, You point to some truly amazing aspects of animals–human and non-human! I’m actually planning to make a post next week on those amazing dogs. Thanks for this. I wish I knew more about horses.