Page 12 - GALIET BEING´S KALEIDOSCOPE: The First Unmoved Mover: Aristotle IV

«agency», within or without, that is the cause of motion,8 and as humans are the source of motion, so is the Universe capable of being its own source. Third, if motion exists without a first cause, it will be infinitely continuous and what is continuous cannot be limited or bounded by contraries, contraries being the very essence of motion or change (kinesis). If it were otherwise, it would deny Aristotle's observation that «the nature of all change is such that it proceeds from something to something, so that every change must be bounded by the contraries that mark its course, and no motion can go on to infinity» (Phys. 8, 252b1, 10-12).
Lastly, if a first mover is moved by something else 3⁄4 a moved first mover 3⁄4 it will, then, logically follow that it is not a first mover. Instead, the first mover will be part of a series of antecedent movers which, by their very nature, would regress to infinity causing an infinite regression9 of atencedents. Infinite regression is unacceptable and rejected by Aristotle on the grounds that it has to stop at some point for that which is «the sake of which». If we have an infinite series of causes, any cause shall be the effect of another cause which in turn shall be the effect of another cause, and thus, successively, to infinity. Hence it is necessary that in a series of causes, there must be
8 However, we ought not treat this as the equivalent of affirming a mechanical or purely efficient type of determinism
9 Infinite regression is where one antecedent is always followed by another antecedent, and the next one by another one, thus continuing in succesive order to infinity.
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