Kitap 10
8
There is no reason why one should not be fewer than something, e.g. two; for if it is fewer it is not therefore few. Plurality is, as it were, a genus of number, since number is a plurality measurable by one. And in a sense one and number are opposed; not, however, as being contrary, but as we have said some relative terms to be; for it is qua measure and measurable that they are opposed.
9
(Hence not everything which is one is a number—e.g., a thing which is indivisible.) But although the relation between knowledge and the knowable is said to be similar to this, it turns out not to be similar. For it would seem that knowledge is a measure, and the knowable that which is measurable by it; but it happens that whereas all knowledge is knowable, the knowable is not always knowledge, because in a way knowledge is measured by the knowable.Cf. Aristot. Met. 10.1.19.
10
Plurality is contrary neither to the few (whose real contrary is the many, as an excessive plurality to an exceeded plurality) nor in all senses to one; but they are contrary in one sense (as has been said) as being the one divisible and the other indivisible; and in another as being relative (just as knowledge is relative to the knowable) if plurality is a number and one is the measure.
1
Since there can be, and in some cases is, an intermediate between contraries, intermediates must be composed of contraries; for all intermediates are in the same genus as the things between which they are intermediate.
2
By intermediates we mean those things into which that which changes must first change. E.g., if we change from the highest string to the lowest by the smallest gradations we shall first come to the intermediate notes; and in the case of colors if we change from white to black we shall come to red and grey before we come to black; and similarly in other cases.
