Psychology (Little Physical Treatises)

[Eiuol]

These works are not normally given this name, but it seems appropriate because everything here is about psychology in particular.

Sense and the Sensible translated by J. I. Beare

A lot of this involves discussing the elements in relation to the nature of the sense organs themselves, like the eye being moist. I suppose this is the closest thing to looking at the organic chemistry and cellular composition of the sense organs.

Aristotle spent a lot of time figuring out if more than one object can be perceived at the same exact moment in time. He eventually concludes that we can. 

He also speaks of magnitudes where intervals might be imperceptible because they are so small. I think of this like the way you can't literally see things in a constant stream. There are in fact gaps. Logically, it would seem that you can never really perceive wholes. The solution is that the dimensions of an object are not immediately present, in the sense you can see 5 feet ahead but don't actually know that it is 5 feet. The reasoning here is confusing but ultimately it seems that the point is if you happen to see 5 feet ahead, you don't need to say that you perceive with exact precision 5 feet ahead to actually perceive 5 feet ahead. You don't need the exact dimensions to say that you see something.

Memory translated by Joe Sachs

All things thought about are given a quantity even when none is given to start. This is possible through the primary power of perception, the sort that makes perception of motion and time possible. Memory always has an image. Since memory requires the perception of time, images are an attribute of the perceiving power.

Recollection is a type of reasoning about experiences one had before.

Sleep translated by J. I. Beare

Aristotle thought that all organs must lose power when they work beyond their time limit, and this is when sleep is necessary. Since all the senses go off at the same time, it is a common and controlling organ of perception that causes sleep or makes possible for it to happen at all. This organ is the heart, but digestion starts sleep as a process.

Dreams translated by J. I. Beare

Dreaming is an activity of the faculty of sense perception, but in terms of presentation. Illusion caused by disease affects the same faculty that produces the same effects in dreams.

When we perceive something, a remnant remains afterwards, such as colors remaining in the sensory field after looking at the colored thing. After this, people are easily deceived by sense perception in the case of emotions affecting the way one judges what they see. This happens during waking, and since during sleep the senses are powerless, sense perception is displayed anyway. The result is how dreams come about. All of this amount to what I would say is a theory of dreams based on psychological reasoning.

Divination in Sleep translated by J. I. Beare

God doesn't send dreams of divination because commonplace people receive them but not the best people. And it can't just be from reasoning out what will necessarily occur at a very specific location because it surpasses the wit of man. So these dreams can only be causes, signs, or coincidences. They can be signs in the sense of hearing a bomb go off in your dream but it was actually only something small that felt. They can be causes in the sense of being inspiration for things when you are awake.

Length and Shortness of Life translated by G. R. T. Ross

Aristotle doesn't say anything especially notable other than he thought that longevity was about a ratio of moisture and size.

Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration translated by G. R. T. Ross

Respiration is usually just treated as a way to reduce the heat in an animal. Larger animals have more need of cooling. Animals like fish that live in the water don't need to respire because the water cools them down enough. But not cetaceans and whales because they have lungs so they cool themselves with air. I'm surprised that other thinkers understood that fish do breathe by means of the gills and taking in air that is in the water, but Aristotle argued that fish do not.