The Nature of Things
Aristotle postulates a theoretical framework for the inherent connectivity of the natural world through a perhaps surprising aesthetic. The simile creates a comparison easily understood, but deceptively profound in its eventual implications:
“the observed facts show that nature is not a series of episodes, like a bad tragedy.”
Philosophical Philosophizing
This being Aristotle writing about philosophy, one cannot expect all metaphorical references to be quite so simple and accessible. In fact, for the most part, Aristotle follows a line of complex reasoning when developing his metaphors. The following is an excellent example and, not coincidentally, one of the easier ones to follow through to its conclusion:
“Since that which is compounded out of something so that the whole is one, not like a heap but like a syllable—now the syllable is not its elements, ba is not the same as b and a, nor is flesh fire and earth”
Wisdom
What is wisdom? Well, in one sense, it is the fundamental structure of philosophy which is all about the pursuit of knowledge. Another example, fortunately, of a simple and straightforward metaphor is made more complex by the fact that in Aristotle’s mind, wisdom really only exists within the realm of metaphor:
“Wisdom is knowledge about certain principles and causes”
Worldly Parentage
In describing certain beliefs among certain Greeks at the time, Aristotle introduces into the concept of metaphysics the idea of the creation of the world. He hands off this particular theory of creation to vaguely identified “some” but still manages to distill the creation of the world down to a remarkably succinct metaphorical image:
“Some think that even the ancients who lived long before the present generation, and first framed accounts of the gods, had a similar view of nature; for they made Ocean and Tethys the parents of creation”
Truth
The question of what is truth is even more simply clarified than the question of what is wisdom. Of course, the full measure of this metaphor remains slightly ambiguous if one is ignorant of the proverb to which Aristotle refers:
“the truth seems to be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit”
