Aristotle on Number Theory

Reason the question came up in the Categories:

Does Aristotle view counting as an activity, and not as a number line?
Does Aristotle view numbers as sets, groups of objects?
Plato would say hes not talking about number here, since it is not about ideal numbers having
independent existence. Is Aristotle orienting number to objects?
What are the characteristics of number evident from Categories 4b20 - 6a35?
Number is (from ): separate, having-been-distinguished,
having-been-removed-across-the-frontier.
"The parts of a number have no common boundary at which they join together," e.g. two '5's of 10
are not joined at any boundary.
The parts do not have towards each other, or are situated somewhere but have a type of
order (): 1 is counted before 2, 2 is counted before 3, etc. (cf below: knowledge of the
number line.)
As a quantity, it does not admit of more or less: one three is not more three than another three, nor
more three than five.
Called unequal and equal.
Part of the difficulty of determining whether he is talking about abstract numbers or
things-as-quantified is the phrase . It could be translated as five or five things. Is he talking
about mathematical objects? Ideal numbers? Physical objects? None of these? Physical objects certainly
hold some manner of position () towards each other - Aristotle denies that number does so he cant be
talking about physical objects qua physical objects. Aristotle seems to say that numbers as mathematical
objects has an ordering (), so is his theory of number about non-ideal mathematical objects?1
In Physics 219b5-9, Aristotle distinguishes 2 senses of number: (1) what is counted or countable
[physical referent] and (2) what we count with [mathematical object]. (Annas, 97)
(1) seems to mean some element of a things, or a group of things, existence, inhering in the objects
themselves and enabling it to be counted.
1

Can we make an assumption that there is a unified theory of number in Aristotle? Annas thinks so: All these passages
show a consistent attitude to the question of the existence of numbers. (Annas, 99)

1 | Peter Atkinson

One element of a things existence is its unity - its one-ness (which Aquinas in Questiones de
Veritate takes to be a transcendental). But Aristotle says that Unity is not itself a number:
We should generally say by any number except unity but a unit here is excluded from the meaning of number.
According to Aristotle, the unit is not a number: cf. Metaph. N. I. 1088a4-8: The term one means that it is a
measure of some multitude, and number that it is a measured multitude, or a multitude of measures. It is only
reasonable therefore that one is not a number, for neither is a measure measures, but the measure and the one
are the beginning, i.e. the unit if the beginning of number but not a number. (Heath p.84)

To count, we need to pick something out as our unit. This unity we pick is what numbers measure. One is
the measure of number. (Annas, 99) Counting is then the notation of unified beings.
One, unity, and unit all indicate the same element: a measure picked out by the mind to
measure a multitude. We focus on a particular unity and make that the measure by which we count: If we
have 10 sheep and 10 men, we have two species of the genus 10. Counting then, is the measuring of
ones and all numbers are derivative from counting.2
In sense (1) then, numbers are measures of the unities of a group of objects. Numbers are
derived from counting and are identical with measure and measuring: Aristotle is quite happy to
interchange number and counting with measure and measuring. (Annas 98) Since counting is - in
every instance - concerning with a unit, and every unit is a definite thing, then counting will always be of
specific things:3 When we have 10 dogs and 10 sheep we have different units and therefore different tens
(because they are tens of different kinds of thing) but we still have the same number. (Annas 107)
Therefore definite numbers have species, depending upon what you are counting.
Exempli gratia: 1000 is the measure of the body of students. 1000 is impossible to be had apart
from counting the number of students who go here. 1000 is not a thing itself, but a measure of the unit
we have chosen: student, which is itself recognizable by the fact that the substance man unifies each
student. Therefore our genus is 1000 and our species is students.
Is there any difference between numbers and counting? Yes, since numbers are accidents of things
and counting is an activity of the mind. Numbers, though derived from counting, can be considered apart
and their various aspects may be considered (such as equal and unequal). Their ontological status is
questionable, since Aristotle does not want to grant them independent status as numbers and since they are
2

Measure is that by which quantity is known and quantity qua quantity is known either by a one or by a number, and all
number is known by a one. 1052b20 (Ross translation)
A number is several ones or a certain quantity of them. Hence number must stop at the indivisible two and three are
derivative words, and so is every other number. (Phys. III. 7.207a33-b34, cf. Heath p110)
3
Numbers are derived from one, and one is - in every kind - a definite thing: In a sense, unity means the same as being.
[...] To be one is just to be a particular thing. (Metaphysics 1054a10-19)

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differentiae. Which brings us to sense (2).

(2) seems to mean the numbers themselves - quantity qua quantity [mathematical objects].
Julia Annas takes Aristotles account in Physics and in Metaphysics I to be decidedly anti-Platonic in
motive. Number, Aristotle wants to show, is inseparable from the being of definite objects. It is not out
there apart and above the objects. In counting, the objects quantity is not compared to an independent
number-being. Insofar as they have independent existence from the mind, Aristotle nails down numbers
to the countability of physical objects. The matter of mathematical objects is the , intelligible
matter as distinct from sensible matter. (Heath 224)
Interestingly, because they are derived from counting, numbers cannot have infinitely great
magnitude. Whatever [a numbers] size potentially, that size it can be actually hence, since there is no
sensible magnitude that is infinite, it is not possible to have an excess over every determinate magnitude if
it were, there would have to be something greater than the universe.4 This implies that all number - actual
numbers - are known by abstraction from physical objects.5 Numbers are, for Aristotle, inseparable
from the real existence of the thing from which it is derived: Aristotle goes on to say that he holds, as
before stated, and that it is obvious, that the objects of mathematics are not separable from sensible
things. (Heath 220)
Numbers above one, considered as what we count with, are the result of the human activity
of counting. This seems evident from Aristotles reluctance to posit an infinitely great number. Annas
writes, in describing the implications of calling time a number,
[Aristotles] point is that since time is a kind of number it has the sort of existence appropriate to
a number: that is, it has no existence independently of activities of counting. The clear implication
of this is that (as with number) it is misleading to say that time exists if this is taken to imply that
the existence of time is independent of that of human activity - in this case the activity of
time-keeping. (Annas 101)

The possible bisections of a magnitude are infinite in number this infinite is potential, not actual, but you can always
assume a number (of such bisections) exceeding any assigned number. But this number is not separable from the process of
bisection, and its infinity is not a stationary one but it is in process of coming to be, like time and the number of time. With
magnitudes the contrary is the case for the continuous magnitude is divisible ad infinitum, but in the direction of increase
there is no infinite. Whatever its size potentially, that size it can be actually hence, since there is no sensible magnitude that
is infinite, it is not possible to have an excess over every determinate magnitude if it were, there would have to be
something greater than the universe.
(Phys. III. 7.207a33-b34, cf. Heath p110)
5
Even the definition of an odd number sounds physical. In the Topics he speaks of a contemporary definition - which he
rejects - of an odd number as a number having a middle. Unclear in what way odd could mean having a middle
except as a physical object. (Heath p.91)

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All numbers above one are derivative of one, and - it seems to me - have only res cogitans status (a mental
idea that we have in organizing the world).6 The meaning of statements about numbers is exhausted by
statements in which no such apparent reference [to number] occurs, which involve reference only to
counting and measuring. (Annas, 99) Number is not counting. Counting is the measuring (and therefore
creation/abstraction) of number based on unity in being. (Annas 103) It seems that Aristotle must - if he
were to systematically write on number - place numbers ontology in thought. But thought is not in one of
his categories so where does it belong?
Which leaves us with a question: where/how do we get our knowledge of the number sequence?
Numbers are derivative of multitudes of unities and dont have real existence outside of counting, but it is
very unclear how we get our idea of the number sequence. Aristotle would presumably call it by
abstraction, but how can the number sequence be abstracted from a group of physical objects? How do we
know that 2 is after 1, and 3 after 2? Where does this come from in Aristotle?
Say that number is a res cogitans. It remains that number is itself objective (and not arbitrary) in
some degree. Yes, we can have different base systems (binary vs. Hindu-Arabic ten-base-system) but there
is a consistent order to it. No culture counts randomly. This is what I take Aristotle to mean by a
certain order () if not the certain position towards other parts (). One comes after
another, but it doesnt lie anywhere, so that it cant have position. The ontological status of the number
sequence is unclear.
Aristotle thinks that number is discrete (i.e. parts without a common boundary, discontinuous,
definite). [For not one of the parts of number is a common boundary. (Cat 4b25)] Numbers, as discrete
quantities, have an order (), but not position () towards each other.
But, at any rate, concerning number, one cant observe its parts holding some position
towards each other or pick out where it lies. Nor can you pick out which of the parts join together
with others. (Cat 5a23-26)
Similarly with a number also, in that one is counted before two and two before three in this
way they may have a certain order, but you would certainly not find position. (Akrill)
A number line - insofar as it shows the - is accurate, but insofar as it seems to show that numbers
border each other is a misrepresentation. As a number sequence, it is accurate.
What then would Aristotle do with decimals?

I am unsure as to whether Aristotle would have had the concept of res cogitans. It is certainly anachronistic to read that
back into Aristotle (it is Latin, after all), but it seems that it is the correct category for where Aristotle would place it had he
had access to this concept.

4 | Peter Atkinson

Ultimately, Annas sees these two sense of number as a confusion: This distinction of two sense of
number seems to rest on a confusion of number with numbered group. (Annas 111) Whether or not she
is correct, Aristotles understanding of the relationship between number and numbered group is clear:
number (sense 2) is derived from the activity of counting a numbered group (sense 1). Heath writes:
Mathematica have no separate existence apart from things in nature, physical objects. (Heath 224)

Aristotles View:
If, he says, mathematical objects exist, we have to consider the alternatives: (a) they may exist in
sensible objects as some maintain, (b) they may be separate from existing things (a view which also has its
supporters), or (c) they must exist in some other way. [...] You may have arguments about moving objects
without reference to what the moving objects are or what attributes they possess, but treating them merely
as moving objects, it is not necessary to assume that there exist any movable entities separate from sensible
ones, or that these have in them some natural character separate from their matter. In like manner you may
have a science dealing with these same sensible moving objects not qua moving but qua bodies, and again,
qua planes only, qua lengths only, qua divisible [...] This science is mathematics. (Heath 225)
Perhaps an anachronistic reading, but Aristotle seems to think of mathematics as the science of
manipulating the res cogitans/mental realities of number, which are derived from - and ultimately have to
existence separate from - the counted objects. Heath makes an interesting note about the incarnate nature
of Aristotelian number theory:
But algebra in our sense was impossible for Greeks in Aristotles time, because no symbols has been invented,
and such problems as are equivalent to the algebraic solution of quadratic or cubic equations the Greeks could
only solve by geometry. (Heath 223-4)

Pater Edmund recently blogged:

In Greek science, concepts are formed in continual dependence on natural, prescientific experience, from which
the scientific concept is abstracted. (Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, p. 120) The nature
of this abstraction is of course conceived of quite differently by different thinkersfor Platonists what is really
going on is a kind of reminder of the eternal forms, whereas for Aristotle forms present in concrete things are
literally abstracted and received into the mind. But the important point is that for all of them scientific
concepts are something received from reality. For all Greek thinkers abstraction is something very different
from what it comes to mean in modern thought. Cartesian symbols are something unknown in Greek
mathematicsthey do not intend any concrete object, but are indeterminate quantities that are treated as
determinate objects. (Charles De Koninck, Jacob Klein, and Socratic Logocentrism)

5 | Peter Atkinson