Book 11
6
I mean that they posit the objects of mathematics as intermediate between the Forms and sensible things, as a third class besides the Forms and the things of our world; but there is no third manThis phrase has no technical sense here; cf. Aristot. Met. 1.9.4. or horse besides the Ideal one and the particulars. If on the other hand it is not as they make out, what sort of objects are we to suppose to be the concern of the mathematician? Not surely the things of our world; for none of these is of the kind which the mathematical sciences investigate.)
7
Nor indeed is the science which we are now seeking concerned with the objects of mathematics; for none of them can exist separately. But it does not deal with sensible substances either; for they are perishable.
7
In general the question might be raised, to what science it pertains to discuss the problems concerned with the matteri.e., intelligible matter (cf. Aristot. Met. 7.10.18). This problem is not raised in Book 3. of mathematical objects.
8
It is not the province of physics, because the whole business of the physicist is with things which contain in themselves a principle of motion and rest; nor yet of the science which inquires into demonstration and
8
scientific knowledge, for it is simply this sort of thing which forms the subject of its inquiry. It remains, therefore, that it is the science which we have set ourselves to find that treats of these subjects.
