[Milton-L] Knowledge, free will, etc.

[Michael Gillum]

I'm probably not qualified to argue with Dennis Danielson about anything,
but as I understand it, for Aristotle, things are attracted to their natural
places (where they belong). Terrestrial fire rises because it wants to get
to the sphere of fire above the atmosphere. In suggesting that Sin's
attraction to fallen Earth was "pretty much Aristotelian physics," I just
meant to draw an analogy to this principle of natural place. I also wanted
to relate her behavior to a broad pattern in the poem-- that Milton often
treats things that might be attributed to God's special intervention as
though they have natural causes or are governed by general law. Even though
God decrees the expulsion from the Garden, it conforms to the principle of
natural place in that fallen A&E no longer belong there.

Michael


On 11/7/08 2:12 PM, "Dennis Danielson" <danielso at interchange.ubc.ca> wrote:

> Surely it's wrong to attribute Aristotelian physics to Milton. First,
> although we rather carelessly refer to Aristotle's physics as being
> geocentric, they're really centro-centric. Yes, earth is there in the
> centre by virtue of its heaviness (heavy things are drawn toward the
> centre); but it's the centre, not the earth, towards which things are
> drawn. Secondly, for Aristotle, natural motion is either vertical motion
> towards or away from the centre (sublunary motion), or circular motion
> about a centre (superlunary motion). So the drawing of something towards
> the centre takes place only in the sublunary sphere.
> 
> However, in Milton's world, Sin's starting place is not only
> SUPERlunary; it is extra-cosmic. So even if Milton's physics were
> Aristotelian, one lacks any grounds for imagining Sin's PHYSICAL
> attraction to earth or earth's location.
> 
> Dennis D
> 
> Michael Gillum wrote:
>> Regarding Sin¹s compulsion to move toward Earth, isn¹t this pretty much
>> Aristotelian physics, where things move toward their natural places,
>> just as Dante, once purified at the top of Purgatory, rises
>> spontaneously to Paradise?