Aristotle's Dreams

When Alan Lightman wrote Einstein's Dreams, he was writing as an artist not as a scientist, he says. It's fiction. But he's getting into something miraculous, something deeply connected to the nature of the science of the scientist: the dreams of Einstein without which (the reader begins to believe) there could have been Einstein's waking thoughts - all part and parcel of Einstein's coming to believe in his theory, of relativity. Now, that's some science.

Elsewhere, I've noted how Lightman must concede that the translation of his novel, into say Japanese, must be as much art as it is science and, therefore, must be as much science as it is art - if it is to be any good at all, relatively speaking.

Aristotle understood Lightman's concession. So Aristotle was not fond of translation of his original, scientific Greek texts into some bar-bar-ic (and therefore lesser) mother tongue. It would necessarily be too womanly, too rhetorical. Because it was not good Greek, it would certainly have ambiguity, contradiction, emotion, evasiveness, fluidity and flux, hyperbole, hyperphysics (that is, the "supernatural" and the "miraculous" and such), metaphor, motion, parable, paradox, poetics, subjectivity, vagueness, and wetness. It would fall by the wayside of the author's intent.

Aristotle would not at all have liked, for example, that J. I. Beare presumes in En-Glish to represent what he writes in Hellene, on dreams. And, if you are a dreamy illusive female reading, then that's even worse: "So much at least is plain on all these points, viz. that the faculty by which, in waking hours, we are subject to illusion when affected by disease, is identical with that which produces illusory effects in sleep." For the dreamy, especially those presuming to prophesy miraculously by dreams, are as atrabilious as the readers of "the poems of Philaegides, e.g. the Aphrodite." One must note, likewise, that "Persons, too, who have fallen into a deep trance, and have come to be regarded as dead, say many things while in this condition." Reality, nature, and logic, in contrast, are all fixed. (Following the author, then, J. I. Beare wants his translation fixed to the nature of the original text.) Reality, nature, and logic (and Mr. Beare's very awake translation) are absolutely fixed (we notice in our barbaric readings) to Aristotle's advantage.

When Aristotle wrote about the reality of the rule in the household, he used logic. When Aristotle criticized Plato's and Socrates dialectic, he used logic. When Aristotle defined rhetoric (as a counterpart to dialectic), he again used logic. When Aristotle went to Lesbos to research animals, animal sleep, animals having dreams, animal sex, and animals having sex - he used logic. (And I just have to throw this in: he was fascinated that the Lesbians, those living in Mythilene in particular, would praise the poet "Sappho, though she was a woman" - and he says so in the Rhetoric). Women change, and wet females change too much. Males, especially the Greek boys of Aristotle's Academy, therefore in contrast are rather fixed in their nature.

But I imagine Aristotle dreaming nonetheless, and remembering his own subjective dream upon waking. Here he is observing objectively but then falling, falling asleep as he looks at the fixed cocoon of a caterpillar. He ripped up this page from The History of Animals, but Christian hippie rocker Larry Norman sang it anyway (as a mere bonus track, on the album "So Long Ago the Garden," called "Butterfly"):

Saw you underneath the leaf,
And that's when I decided to be a thief
I said, "Honey, you're a pretty cocoon,
I just know you're gonna come out soon.

You're a butterfly,
Yes I know, and I love you,
pretty butterfly,
won't you let it show?
pretty butterfly,
won't you come out just for me?
Yeah.

You're a butterfly
You're beautiful
But you did not know it.
You're a butterfly
You're beautiful
But you did not show it.

You needed warmth.
You needed love.
You needed Nature
to give you a shove.

If you wanna start livin'
Then you've gotta start tryin'
Spread your wings
And fill the sky.

You're a butterfly,
Yes I know,
pretty butterfly,
you gotta let it show,
pretty butterfly,
won't you come out just for me?
Yeah.
won't you come out just for me?

Now look at you
(and Norman & his boys
play a bit without words
here).

You're a butterfly,
Yes I know,
pretty butterfly,
But it's time to go
pretty butterfly,
Yeah
it's time for me
to set you free.

....
One more thing,
before you go
(It's something
I never let anyone know):

I am so lonely
so confused

But I never will forget the day
I dreamed today
and passed along your way

. . .
Saw you underneath the leaf,
And that's when I decided to be a thief
I said, "Honey, you're a pretty cocoon,
I just know you're gonna come out soon.
You're a butterfly
and I love you
pretty butterfly
but it's time to go
pretty butterfly
Yeah
It's time for me to set you free.

(bye bye
baby).