Aristotle - index for METAPHYSICA Book 1 Part 8

Critique of Pythagoreans

Paragraph 1 Those, then, who say the universe is one and posit one kind of thing as matter, and as corporeal matter which has spatial magnitude, evidently go astray in many ways.

Paragraph 2 So much, then, for those who posit one cause such as we mentioned;

Paragraph 3 As regards Anaxagoras, if one were to suppose that he said there were two elements, the supposition would accord thoroughly with an argument which Anaxagoras himself did not state articulately, but which he must have accepted if any one had led him on to it.

Paragraph 4 But these thinkers are, after all, at home only in arguments about generation and destruction and movement;

Paragraph 5 The 'Pythagoreans' treat of principles and elements stranger than those of the physical philosophers (the reason is that they got the principles from non-sensible things, for the objects of mathematics, except those of astronomy, are of the class of things without movement);

Paragraph 6 Further, if one either granted them that spatial magnitude consists of these elements, or this were proved, still how would some bodies be light and others have weight?

Paragraph 7 Further, how are we to combine the beliefs that the attributes of number, and number itself, are causes of what exists and happens in the heavens both from the beginning and now, and that there is no other number than this number out of which the world is composed?

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Paragraph 1	Those, then, who say the universe is one and posit one kind of thing as matter, and as corporeal matter which has spatial magnitude, evidently go astray in many ways.
Paragraph 2	So much, then, for those who posit one cause such as we mentioned;
Paragraph 3	As regards Anaxagoras, if one were to suppose that he said there were two elements, the supposition would accord thoroughly with an argument which Anaxagoras himself did not state articulately, but which he must have accepted if any one had led him on to it.
Paragraph 4	But these thinkers are, after all, at home only in arguments about generation and destruction and movement;
Paragraph 5	The 'Pythagoreans' treat of principles and elements stranger than those of the physical philosophers (the reason is that they got the principles from non-sensible things, for the objects of mathematics, except those of astronomy, are of the class of things without movement);
Paragraph 6	Further, if one either granted them that spatial magnitude consists of these elements, or this were proved, still how would some bodies be light and others have weight?
Paragraph 7	Further, how are we to combine the beliefs that the attributes of number, and number itself, are causes of what exists and happens in the heavens both from the beginning and now, and that there is no other number than this number out of which the world is composed?