Automatic puppets, Toy Carts, and Robots. Aristotle's Metaphysics of Artefacts and the Question of Automata (original) (raw)

in T. Bur, M. Gerolemou, and I. Ruffell (eds.), Technological Animation in Classical Antiquity, Oxford University Press, Oxford

metaphysics of artefacts Aristotle draws a sharp line between natural and artificial things. In Book II of the Physics and elsewhere, he claims that natural and artificial things are different on the grounds that natural things have an internal principle of motion and rest, while for artefacts such a principle is external. Φύσις is the internal principle of motion and rest for natural things, while τέχνη is the external principle of motion and rest for artefacts 1. The way the distinction between φύσις and τέχνη intersects with Aristotle's metaphysics of material objects is rather complex. In the Categories and in the Physics, Aristotle calls 'primary substances' or simply 'substances' the entities on whose existence the existence of all other things rests. (Primary) substances are, on Aristotle's characterisation, those entities that are particular instances of kinds and bearers of accidental properties 2. On this criterion, artefacts seem to qualify as substances. For particular tables, beds and carts are certainly instances of (artificial) kinds and have a number of accidental properties, and so should be included in the list of substances. In the Metaphysics, however, Aristotle becomes more and more restrictive about what counts as a substance. In several places, he states that only natural things are substances, while artefacts either are not substances at all or are substances only in a derivative sense 3. What is more, it is organic wholes and living things in particular, and not just natural things, that function as paradigmatic instances of substances. So, artefacts are demoted to the role of secondary entities when compared to natural substances in general and to living things in particular 4. Interpreters disagree on what makes natural things (and especially living things) substances and artefacts non-substances on Aristotle's mature account of substance in the Metaphysics 5. On reflection, it is not difficult to point to a number of crucial respects in which artefacts score poorly when compared to their organic