Energeia Information

In philosophy, Potentiality and Actuality^{[nb 1]} are principles of an important dichotomy used extensively by Aristotle to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics and De Anima (which is about the human psyche).^[1]

The concept of potentiality, in this context, generally refers to any "possibility" that a thing can be said to have. Aristotle did not consider all possibilities the same, and emphasized the importance of those that become real of their own accord when conditions are right and nothing stops them.^[2] Actuality, in contrast to potentiality, is the motion, change or activity that represents an exercise or fulfillment of a possibility, when a possibility becomes real in the fullest sense.^[3]

This dichotomy, in modified forms, remained very important into the middle ages, influencing the development of medieval theology in several ways. Going further into modern times, while the understanding of nature (and deity) implied by the dichotomy lost importance, the terminology has found new uses, developing indirectly from the old. This is most obvious in words like "energy" and "dynamic", but also in examples such as the biological concept of an "entelechy".

Potentiality

Potentiality and potency are translations of the Ancient Greek word Dunamis or dynamis (δύναμις) as it is used by Aristotle to contrast with actuality. Its Latin translation is "potentia", root of the English word potential, and used by some scholars instead of the Greek or English variants.

Dunamis is an ordinary Greek word for possibility or capability. Depending on context, it could be translated "potency", "potential", "capacity", "ability", "power", "capability", "strength", "possibility", "force" and is the root of modern English words "dynamic", "dynamite", and "dynamo".^[4] In the late 17th century, John Locke used the English word "power".^[5]

In his philosophy, Aristotle distinguished two meanings of the word dunamis. According to his understanding of nature there was both a weak sense of potential meaning simply that something "might chance to happen or not to happen" and a stronger sense, to indicate how something could be done well. For example, "sometimes we say that those who can merely take a walk, or speak, without doing it as well as they intended, cannot speak or walk". This stronger sense is mainly said of the potentials of living things, although it is also sometimes used for things like musical instruments.^[6]

Throughout his works, Aristotle clearly distinguishes things that are stable or persistent, with their own tendency to a particular action, from things that appear to occur by chance. He treats these as having a different and more real existence. "Natures which persist" are said by him to be one of the causes of all things, while natures that do not persist, "might often be slandered as not being at all by one who fixes his thinking sternly upon it as upon a criminal".^[7] This is also related to Aristotle's theory of four causes and his distinction of accidental causes from other types of cause.

Actuality

Actuality, is often used to translate both energeia and entelecheia (sometimes rendered in English as "entelechy"). "Actuality" comes from Latin actualitas and is a traditional translation, but its normal meaning in Latin is "anything which is currently happening".

The two words energeia and entelecheia were coined by Aristotle, and he stated that their meanings were intended to converge.^[8] In practice, most commentators and translators consider the two words to be interchangeable.^[9][10] They both refer to something being in its own type of action or at work, as all things are when they are real in the fullest sense, and not just potentially real. For example, "to be a rock is to strain to be at the center of the universe, and thus to be in motion unless constrained otherwise".^[1]

Energeia

Energeia is a word based upon ergon, meaning "work".^[9][11] It is the source of the modern word "energy" but the term has evolved so much over the course of the history of science that noting the etymology of the modern term is not very helpful in understanding the original as used by Aristotle. It is difficult to translate his use of energeia into English with consistency. Joe Sachs renders it with the phrase "being–at–work" and says that "we might construct the word is-at-work-ness from Anglo-Saxon roots to translate energeia into English".^[12] Aristotle says the word can be made clear by looking at examples rather than trying to find a definition.^[13]

Two examples of energeiai in Aristotle's works would be pleasure and happiness (eudaimonia). Pleasure is an energeia of the human body and mind whereas happiness is more simply the energeia of a human being a human.

Energeia is also sometimes compared to kinesis (movement or in some contexts translated as change). See below.

Entelechy or entelechia

Entelechy, in Greek entelécheia, was coined by Aristotle and transliterated in Latin as entelechia. According to Sachs (1995), p. 245:

Aristotle invents the word by combining entelēs (complete, full-grown) with echein (= hexis, to be a certain way by the continuing effort of holding on in that condition), while at the same time punning on endelecheia (persistence) by inserting telos (completion). This is a three-ring circus of a word, at the heart of everything in Aristotle's thinking, including the definition of motion.

Sachs therefore proposed a complex neologism of his own, "being-at-work-staying-the-same".^[14] Another translation in recent years is "being-at-an-end" (which Sachs has also used).^[1]

Entelecheia, as can be seen by its derivation, is a kind of completeness, whereas "the end and completion of any genuine being is its being-at-work" (energeia). The entelecheia is a continuous being-at-work (energeia) when something is doing its complete "work". For this reason, the meanings of the two words converge, and they both depend upon the idea that every thing's "thinghood" is a kind of work, or in other words a specific way of being in motion. All things that exist now, and not just potentially, are beings-at-work, and all of them have a tendency towards being-at-work in a particular way that would be their proper and "complete" way.^[14]

Sachs explains the convergence of energeia and entelecheia as follows, and uses the word actuality to describe the overlap between them:^[1]

Just as energeia extends to entelecheia because it is the activity which makes a thing what it is, entelecheia extends to energeia because it is the end or perfection which has being only in, through, and during activity.

Motion

Aristotle discusses motion in his Physics quite differently than modern science does. Aristotle's understanding of motion is closely connected to his actuality-potentiality distinction. Taken literally, Aristotle defines motion as the actuality (entelecheia) of a potentiality (dunamis) as such.^[15]

What Aristotle meant however is the subject of several different interpretations. A major difficulty comes from the fact that the terms actuality and potentiality, linked in this definition, are normally understood within Aristotle as opposed to each other. Sachs (2005) lists three major interpretations:

1. The interpretation of Averroes, Maimonides, and W.D. Ross.

This interpretation is, to use the words of Ross that "it is the passage to actuality that is kinesis” as opposed to any potentiality being an actuality.^[16]

The argument of Ross for this interpretation requires him to assert that Aristotle actually used his own word entelecheia wrongly, or inconsistently, only within his definition, making it mean "actualization", which is in conflict with Aristotle's normal use of words. According to Sachs (2005) this explanation also can not account for the "as such" in Aristotle's definition.

2. The interpretation of St Thomas of Aquinas.

Sachs (2005) explains that in this explanation "the apparent contradiction between potentiality and actuality in Aristotle’s definition of motion" is resolved "by arguing that in every motion actuality and potentiality are mixed or blended". Motion is therefore "the actuality of any potentiality insofar as it is still a potentiality". Or in other words:

The Thomistic blend of actuality and potentiality has the characteristic that, to the extent that it is actual it is not potential and to the extent that it is potential it is not actual; the hotter the water is, the less is it potentially hot, and the cooler it is, the less is it actually, the more potentially, hot.

As with the first interpretation however, Sachs (2005) objects that:

One implication of this interpretation is that whatever happens to be the case right now is an entelechia, as though something that is intrinsically unstable as the instantaneous position of an arrow in flight deserved to be described by the word that everywhere else Aristotle reserves for complex organized states that persist, that hold out against internal and external causes that try to destroy them.

3. The interpretation of Sachs.

Sachs (2005) proposes that the solution to problems interpreting Aristotle's definition is to be found in the distinction Aristotle makes between two different types of potentiality, with only one of those corresponding to the "potentiality as such" appearing in the definition of motion. Sachs gives the example of a man walking across the room and says that...

• "Once he has reached the other side of the room, his potentiality to be there has been actualized in Ross’ sense of the term". This is a type of energeia however, is not a motion, and not relevant to the definition of motion.
• While a man is walking his potentiality to be on the other side of the room is actual just as a potentiality, or in other words the potential as such is an actuality. "The actuality of the potentiality to be on the other side of the room, as just that potentiality, is neither more nor less than the walking across the room."

Sachs (1999), in his commentary (pp. 78–79) of Aristotle's Metaphysics book III gives the following results from his understanding of Aristotle's definition of motion:

The genus of which motion is a species is being-at-work-staying-itself (entelecheia), of which the only other species is thinghood. The being-at-work-staying-itself of a potency (dunamis), as material, is thinghood. The being-at-work-staying-the-same of a potency as a potency is motion.

The importance of actuality in Aristotle's philosophy

The actuality-potentiality distinction in Aristotle is a key element linked to everything in his physics and metaphysics.^[17]

Aristotle describes potentiality and actuality, or potency and action, as one of several distinctions between things that exist or do not exist. In a sense, a thing that exists potentially does not exist, but the potential does exist. And this type of distinction is expressed for several different types of being within Aristotle's categories of being. For example, from Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1017a:^[18]

• We speak of something being "seeing" whether it is currently seeing or just able to see.
• We speak of someone having understanding, whether they are using that understanding or not.
• We speak of corn existing in a field even when it is not yet ripe.
• People sometimes speak of a figure being already present in a rock which could be sculpted to represent that figure.

Within the works of Aristotle the terms energeia and entelecheia, often translated as actuality, differ from what is merely actual because they specifically presuppose that all things have a proper kind of activity or work which, if achieved, would be their proper end. Greek for end in this sense is telos, a component word in entelecheia (a work that is the proper end of a thing) and also teleology. This is an aspect of Aristotle's theory of four causes and specifically of formal cause (eidos, which Aristotle says is energeia^[19]) and final cause (telos).

In essence this means that Aristotle did not see things as matter in motion only, but also proposed that all things have their own aims or ends. In other words, for Aristotle (unlike modern science) there is a distinction between things with a natural cause in the strongest sense, and things that truly happen by accident. He even says that for any possibility (dunamis) to be become real and not just possible, requires reason, and desire or deliberate choice.^[20] Because of this style of reasoning, Aristotle is often referred to as having a teleology, and sometimes as having a theory of forms.

While actuality is linked by Aristotle to his concept of a formal cause, potentiality (or potency) on the other hand, is linked by Aristotle to his concepts of substance and material cause. Aristotle wrote for example that "matter exists potentially, because it may attain to the form; but when it exists actually, it is then in the form".^[21]

Post-Aristotelian usage

New meanings of energeia or energy

Already in Aristotle's own works, the concept of a distinction between energeia and dunamis was already used in many ways, for example to describe the way striking metaphors work^[22], or human happiness. Polybius about 150 BC, in his work the Histories uses Aristotle's word energeia in both an Aristotelian way and also to describe the "clarity and vividness" of things.^[23] Diodorus Siculus in 60-30 BC used the term in a very similar way to Polybius. However Diodorus uses the term to denote qualities unique to individuals. Using the term in ways that could translated as "vigor" or "energy" (in a more modern sense); for society, "practice" or "custom"; for a thing, "operation" or "working"; like vigor in action.^[24]

Neoplatonism

Plotinus was a late classical pagan philosopher and theologian whose monotheistic re-workings of Plato and Aristotle were influential amongst early Christian theologians. In his Enneads he sought to reconcile ideas of Aristotle and Plato together with a form of monotheism. Plotinus taught that The One, or Monad was force while its emanation, the demiurge or nous, was energeia, as that which is motionless but sets all (as force or dunamis) in motion. This, it was proposed, reconciled Plato's good and beautiful with Aristotle's Unmoved Mover as energeia.^{[citation needed]}

Essence-energies debate in medieval Christian theology

In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, St Gregory Palamas wrote about the "energies" (actualities) of God in contrast to God's "essence". This was in his defense of the Eastern Orthodox ascetic practice of hesychasm. According to tradition, Gregory and the time that he wrote his defense do not represent a new and innovative expression of God, rather St Gregory is the one who gave the traditions a defense and established these teachings as Orthodox theological dogma. Gregory wrote that God has realities Father, Son and Holy Spirit and these realities effect the created world as do the energies of God - all being in essence uncreated.^{[citation needed]}

Western Medieval Christianity, in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, relied on Aristotle's concept of entelechy, when it defined God as actus purus, pure act, actuality unmixed with potentiality. This led to conflict with Eastern Orthodox theology, because of their acceptance of uncreated essences, in contrast to the Western Christians belief that energies (actualities) and essences were of the same substance and that they were always created.^{[citation needed]}

Influence on modal logic

The notion of possibility was greatly analyzed by medieval and modern philosophers. Aristotle's logical work in this area is considered by some to be an anticipation of modal logic and its treatment of potentiality and time. Indeed, many philosophical interpretations of possibility are related to a famous passage on Aristotle's On Interpretation, concerning the truth of the statement: "There will be a sea battle tomorrow".^[25]

Contemporary philosophy regards possibility, as studied by modal metaphysics, to be an aspect of modal logic. Modal logic as an named subject owes much to the writings of the Scholastics, in particular William of Ockham and John Duns Scotus, who reasoned informally in a modal manner, mainly to analyze statements about essence and accident.

Influence on modern physics

The definition of energy in modern physics as the product of mass and the square of velocity, was derived by Leibniz, as a correction of Descartes, based upon Galileo's investigation of falling bodies. He preferred to refer to it as an entelecheia or "living force" (Latin vis vida), but what he defined is today called "energy", and was seen by Leibniz as a modification of Aristotle. Instead of physical things having their own tendencies, like the entelechies of Aristotle, Leibniz said that instead, force, power, or motion itself could be transferred between things of different types, in such a way that there is a conservation of this energy. In other words, Leibniz's entelechy or energy (by its modern definition) has its own law of nature.^[26] Leibniz wrote:^[27]

the entelechy of Aristotle, which has made so much noise, is nothing else but force or activity ; that is, a state from which action naturally flows if nothing hinders it. But matter, primary and pure, taken without the souls or lives which are united to it, is purely passive ; properly speaking also it is not a substance, but something incomplete.

For Leibniz, like Aristotle, this law of nature concerning entelechies was also understood as a metaphysical law, important not only for physics, but also for understanding life and the soul. A soul, or spirit, according to Leibniz, can be understood as a type of entelechy (or living monad) which has distinct perceptions and memory.

Entelecheia in modern philosophy and biology

As discussed above, terms derived from dunamis and energeia have become parts of modern scientific vocabulary with a very different meaning to Aristotle's. The original meanings are not used by modern philosophers unless they are commenting on classical or medieval philosophy. In contrast, entelecheia, in the form of "entelechy" is a word used in technical senses in recent times.

As mentioned above, the concept had occupied a central position in the metaphysics of Leibniz, and is closely related to his monadology in the sense that each sentient entity contains its own entire universe within it. But Leibniz' use of this concept influenced more than just the development of the vocabulary of modern physics. In German Idealism, entelechy may denote a force propelling one to self-fulfillment. Entelechy is also referred to by Hegel in The Phenomenology of Mind.^{[citation needed]}

In the biological vitalism of Hans Driesch, living things develop by entelechy, a common purposive and organising field. Leading vitalists like Driesch argued that many of the basic problems of biology cannot be solved by a philosophy in which the organism is simply considered a machine.^[28]

Aspects and applications of the concept of entelechy have been explored by the American critic and philosopher Kenneth Burke (1897–1993) whose concept of the "terministic screen" illustrates his thought on the subject.

See also

Notes

1. ^ The words "potentiality" and "actuality" are one set of translations from the original Greek terms of Aristotle. Other translations (including Latin) and alternative Greek terms are sometimes used in scholarly work on the subject.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Sachs (2005)
2. ^ Sachs (1999) page lvii.
3. ^ Durrant (1993) page 206
4. ^ Click here for Perseus dictionary references.
5. ^ Locke, John (1824) [1689], "Book II Chapter XXI "Of Power"", The Works of John Locke in Nine Volumes, 2 (12th ed.), Rivington
6. ^ Metaphysics 1019a - 1019b. The translations used are those of Tredennick on the Perseus project.
7. ^ Translation from Sachs & 1995 (p.45) from Physics 192a18
8. ^ Metaphysics 1047a30, in the Sachs (1999) translation: "the phrase being-at-work, which is designed to converge in meaning with being-at-work-staying-complete". Greek is: ἐλήλυθε δ᾽ ἡ ἐνέργεια τοὔνομα, ἡ πρὸς τὴν ἐντελέχειαν συντιθεμένη
9. ^ ^{a b} Bradshaw (2004) page 13
10. ^ Durrant (1993) page 201
11. ^ Metaphysics 1050a21-23. In Tredinnick's translation "For the activity is the end, and the actuality (energeia) is the activity (ergon); hence the term "actuality" is derived from "activity," and tends to have the meaning of "complete reality (entelecheia)." Greek: τὸ γὰρ ἔργον τέλος, ἡ δὲ ἐνέργεια τὸ ἔργον, διὸ καὶ τοὔνομα ἐνέργεια λέγεται κατὰ τὸ ἔργον καὶ συντείνει πρὸς τὴν ἐντελέχειαν.
12. ^ Sachs (1995), Sachs (1999), Sachs (2005)
13. ^ Metaphysics 1048a30ff.
14. ^ ^{a b} Sachs (1995)
15. ^ Physics 201a10-11, 201a27-29, 201b4-5
16. ^ Physics, text with commentary, London, 1936, p. 359, quoted by Sachs.
17. ^ Sachs (1995) p.245.
18. ^ Tredennick's translation, with links to his footnote cross references, using the Perseus online resources: "For we say that both that which sees potentially and that which sees actually is "a seeing thing." And in the same way we call "understanding" both that which can use the understanding, and that which does ; and we call "tranquil" both that in which tranquillity is already present, and that which is potentially tranquil. Similarly too in the case of substances. For we say that Hermes is in the stone, (Cf. Aristot). Met. 3.5.6. and the half of the line in the whole; and we call "corn" what is not yet ripe. But when a thing is potentially existent and when not, must be defined elsewhere.[Aristot. Met. 9.9."
19. ^ Metaphysics 1050b. Greek: ὥστε φανερὸν ὅτι ἡ οὐσία καὶ τὸ εἶδος ἐνέργειά ἐστιν.
20. ^ Metaphysics 1048a. The Greek words are orexis for desire and proairesis for deliberate choice.
21. ^ Metaphysics 1050a15. Greek: ἔτι ἡ ὕλη ἔστι δυνάμει ὅτι ἔλθοι ἂν εἰς τὸ εἶδος: ὅταν δέ γε ἐνεργείᾳ ᾖ, τότε ἐν τῷ εἴδει ἐστίν
22. ^ Rhetoric 1411b
23. ^ Bradshaw (, p. 51)
24. ^ Bradshaw (, p. 55)
25. ^ See copy of W.D. Ross's translation scanned on Internet Archive.
26. ^ Klein (1985), and Sachs (2005): "Leibniz, who criticized Descartes’ physics and invented a science of dynamics, explicitly acknowledged his debt to Aristotle (see, e.g., Specimen Dynamicum), whose doctrine of entelecheia he regarded himself as restoring in a modified form. From Leibniz we derive our current notions of potential and kinetic energy, whose very names, pointing to the actuality which is potential and the actuality which is motion, preserve the Thomistic resolutions of the two paradoxes in Aristotle’s definition of motion."
27. ^ Leibniz, Gottfried (1890), "ON THE DOCTRINE OF MALEBRANCHE. A Letter to M. Remond de Montmort, containing Remarks on the Book of Father Tertre against Father Malebranche. 1715.", The philosophical works of Leibnitz, p. 234
28. ^ Mayr E (2002) The Walter Arndt Lecture: The Autonomy of Biology, adapted for the internet, on [1]

Bibliography

• Aristotle (1999), Aristotle's Metaphysics, a new translation by Joe Sachs, Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion Books, ISBN 1888009039
• Bradshaw, David (2004). Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521828659. http://books.google.com/books?id=xZPsSG75uCUC&pg=PA13.
• Burton, Robert (2001). The Anatomy of Melancholy [1621]. Book I. New York.
• Durrant, Michael (1993). Aristotle's De Anima in Focus. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415053402. http://books.google.com/books?id=3RcOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA206.
• Klein, Jacob (1985), "Leibnitz, an Introduction", Lectures and Essays, St Johns College Press
• Leibniz, Gottfried (1715), "On the Doctrine of Malebranche. A Letter to M. Remond de Montmort, containing Remarks on the Book of Father Tertre against Father Malebranche", The philosophical works of Leibnitz, p. 234
• Sachs, Joe (1995), Aristotle's physics: a guided study
• Sachs, Joe (1999), "Introduction by Joe Sachs", Aristotle's Metaphysics, a new translation by Joe Sachs, Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion Books, ISBN 1888009039
• Sachs, Joe (2005), "Aristotle: Motion and its Place in Nature", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-mot/
• Warnock, Mary (1950). "A Note on Aristotle: Categories 6a 15". Mind. New Series (59).

Old translations of Aristotle

• Aristotle (2009). "The Internet Classics Archive - Aristotle On the Soul, J.A. Smith translator". MIT. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html.
• Aristotle (2009). "The Internet Classics Archive - Aristotle Categories, E.M. Edghill translator". MIT. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/categories.html.
• Aristotle (2009). "The Internet Classics Archive - Aristotle Physics, R.P. Hardie & Gaye, R.K. translators". MIT. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.html.
• Aristotle (1908). Metaphysica translated by W.D. Ross. The Works of Aristotle. VIII. Oxford: Clarendon Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=UrrWAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR9.
• Aristotle (1989). "Metaphysics, Hugh Tredennick trans.". Aristotle in 23 Volumes. 17, 18. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; (London: William Heinemann Ltd.). This 1933 translation is reproduced online at the Perseus Project.

Categories: Aristotle | Aristotelianism | Modal logic | Possibility | Philosophical terminology | Scholasticism

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