Growth

Use in the book

Posidonius’ account distinguishes the persistence of the individually qualified being from gains and losses of its material. Dion or Theon remains individually qualified from generation to destruction. A Hermetic passage instead considers growth before animal life: movement in the womb is fitted by harmony to receive the life of thought. The first concerns continued identity; the second the ordering of development.

Places to read

1. I.20.7.3The individual persists through growth and diminution.
2. I.41.7.4Growth in the womb is prepared for further living activity.
3. I.1.34bLunar waxing and waning are linked to changes on earth.

Translation in this edition

“Growth” is used for the living process; “increase” can express the more general quantitative contrast. The two passages should not be treated as one theory.

The moon’s waxing

Auxēsis is increase or growth, and in lunar contexts waxing. I.1.34b pairs the moon’s waxing with its diminution as part of a claim that earthly conditions respond to celestial changes. The translation “waxing” marks the context without implying that the moon’s entire material body grows larger during each phase.

Use in the book

The statement that whatever cannot grow dwindles is immediately followed by “Is that true?” Its status as a tested thought is essential. Another entry finds people whose opinions cannot grow or diminish poorly fitted for society: inflexibility prevents mutual influence. Bodily growth can also expose a person to embarrassment, censure, and judgment. These witnesses give growth both productive and vulnerable aspects.

Places to read

1. I, p. 120, entry 6, ¶1The proposed opposition of growth and decline is openly questioned.
2. II, p. 573, entry 13, ¶1Fixed opinions resist social interaction.
3. I, p. 416, entry 3, ¶1Physical growth brings exposure and embarrassment.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps the immediate question and the grow/diminish pairing. The lexicon must not promote the queried sentence into Joubert’s settled law of growth.

Use in the book

A77 assigns separate conditions to maintenance and enlargement: akin material settles in to nourish a creature, while heat enables it to grow. The absence of both produces diminution and wasting. In plants, A702 gives heat within earth a lifting role and relates downward and upward growth to constituent tendencies, an explanation criticized by Aristotle and Theophrastus for failing to account adequately for the living whole. These notices show that growth is both quantitative increase and organized extension into different bodily parts. The surprising A77 comparison of current humans with infants beside the first humans does not settle whether size, strength, maturity, or some other difference is intended. It therefore cannot establish the edition's further claim that the cosmos itself remains in mid-growth. An analogy about human generations is not automatically a universal developmental law.

Places to read

1. A 77 (testimony)Aëtius. Makes growth dependent on the presence of heat and contrasts present people with primordial people as infants.
2. A 70 (testimony)2Aëtius; Aristotle, On the Soul; Theophrastus, On the Causes of Plants. Offer and criticize accounts of the direction and causes of plant growth.

Translation in this edition

The edition's interpretation of present humanity as immature rather than diminished is possible but not forced by the infant comparison. The report gives the comparison without explaining its precise scale.