Movement versus Actuality

Potentiality is related to movement. What is actuality?

Actuality is the Other Side of Potentiality and Vice Versa

The potential is the potency of something to move something else, or to be moved by something else.

Actuality, then, is the existence of a thing not in ‘potentially’.

For instance:

• a statue of Hermes is “potentially” in the block of wood because such a statue might be actually made out of the wood.
• a man who is not studying is “potentially” a man of science, if he is capable of studying.

The thing that stands in contrast to each of these exists actually.

Our meaning can be seen in the particular cases by induction.

We must not seek a definition of everything. Instead, we must be content to grasp the analogy:

• A person building is someone capable of building
• Waking comes from sleeping
• Seeing is something that has its eyes shut but has sight
• Something which has been shaped from matter comes from that matter
• Something which has been wrought comes from the unwrought.

The actuality is defined by one member of this antithesis.

THe potentiality is defined by the other.

But all things do not exist actually in the same sense.

Instead, they only exist by:

• A is in B or to B
• C is in D or to D
• some are as movement to potency
• some are as substance to some sort of matter.

The infinite and the void and all similar things exist potentially and actually in a different sense from that which applies to many other things.

For example, the seen is called the seen:

• sometimes because it is being seen
• sometimes because it is capable of being seen.

But the infinite does not exist potentially in the sense that it will ever actually have separate existence.

• It exists potentially only for knowledge.

The process of dividing never ends.

• This ensures that this activity exists potentially, but not that the infinite exists separately.

The actions which have a limit or end are all relative to the end.

For example, dieting to be thin are all relative to the goal of being thin. It means the goal has not yet been achieved. Therefore, it is an incomplete action. It is a movement – a potentiality.

This is different from an actuality:

• we have seen while we are seeing
• we have understood while we are understanding
• we have thought while we are thinking
• we have lived well while still living
• we have been happy while still being happy

This is different from an actuality that has no more movement:

• we have learnt and so we have stopped learning
• we have been cured and so we have stopped being cured

Of such processes:

• one is ‘set movements’
• the other is ‘actualities’.

Every movement is incomplete: making thin, learning, walking, building.

For it is not true that at the same time a thing is

We do not say

• a thing currently walking has walked the complete distance
• an engineer currently building has built what he is building
• a compeleted existence is still emerging into existence
• a thing that has been moved is being moved

Instead, we say:

• what is being moved is different from what has been moved
• what is moving is different from what has moved.

The following are examples of movements:

• seeing
• thinking

The following are examples of actuality:

• has seen
• has thought.