Change and alteration

Use in the book

The Aristotelian classification describes change from hot to cold or sweet to bitter as qualitative, alongside quantitative increase and local motion. Porphyry treats bodily being-affected as alteration but calls psychic affections activities, denying that they resemble heating or cooling. Posidonius’ account of growth adds a further distinction between changing material and persisting individual quality.

Places to read

1. I.19.1.5Qualitative alteration is distinguished from other forms of motion.
2. I.49.21.1Bodily alteration is distinguished from incorporeal activity.
3. I.20.7.3The individually qualified being persists through material change.

Translation in this edition

“Motion” remains broad enough to include more than locomotion. “Alteration” does not imply destruction of the changing subject.

Use in the book

Philoponus’ A41 opens by saying that Empedocles contradicts appearances through denying evident alteration. He then alleges a contradiction internal to the system: roots declared unchangeable nevertheless lose their proper character in the Sphairos. The two charges should be distinguished. One appeals to ordinary perceptible change; the other asks whether a reported unified state is compatible with the system’s own rules.

Aëtius at A44 groups Empedocles with Anaxagoras and atomist thinkers who explain generation through aggregation rather than qualitative alteration. This broad classification cannot establish that all grouped thinkers had the same account of qualities or of composition. Nor does it mean that Empedocles denied the manifest differences among flesh, bone, water and fire. The issue is how such differences arise while ultimate constituents remain what they are.

Galen’s A34 similarly begins from unchangeable elements and illustrates their mixing by pulverized minerals. This provides a model of preserved ingredients, but the chosen substances and the precise simile belong to Galen. The entry therefore keeps the invariant-root thesis distinct from each critic’s proposed consequence.

Places to read

1. A 41 (polemical)Philoponus, In De generatione et corruptione 19,3 Vitelli. Contrasts manifest alteration with invariant roots and alleged loss of qualities in the Sphairos.
2. A 44 (testimony)Aëtius I 24,2 (D. 320). Classifies generation as quantitative aggregation rather than qualitative alteration.
3. A 34 (testimony)Galen, In Hippocratis De natura hominis XV 32 K. Describes compounds made by mixing unchangeable elements.

Translation in this edition

The edition flags alteration as Peripatetic vocabulary. Its contextual reference to B8 is not a full verse quotation in this section and should not be cited as one.

Use in the book

The question is how thought can occur both in alteration and through the like, since like is not altered by like. If a cognitive event requires a change in the recipient, the mere presence or encounter of matching constituents seems insufficient to explain the event's occurrence. This differs from the earlier spatial problem of how a pore's occupant moves aside: here the critic asks about the very kind of change involved in thinking.

The passage does not set out an independently elaborated Empedoclean theory of mental alteration, nor prove that Empedocles accepted the critic's premise about what like can do to like. It is best read as an internal or dialectical test of the report's commitments. Keeping alteration as a separate headword prevents it from being lost under the much broader physical themes of mixture and motion.

Places to read

1. A 86 §§ 22–23 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 23. Asks how thought can be both alteration and an effect of like on like.
2. A 86 §§ 14–15 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 14. Provides the related but distinct demand for an account of change when perception begins.

Translation in this edition

The translation's “both in an alteration and by the like” preserves the question's two conditions. Neither should be rewritten into a verbatim Empedoclean assertion beyond what the witness reports and infers.