Weaving Basketry

Weaving Basketry

What is Aristotle's basket-weaving parable?

I've read that Aristotle explained his theory of time by drawing an analogy to basketry, but I can't find the original parable online. Can anyone provide a reference to the source text and perhaps an analysis of the parable?
I can't find a reference to this parable after searching all of Aristotle's surviving works. Could it exist as a reference in the work of another philosopher?
I can't find a reference to this parable after searching all of Aristotle's surviving works. Could our present knowledge of the parable originate from the work of another philosopher?

The "other philosopher" about whom you ask is Plato.

The reference to weaving and "the warp and woof" metaphor (you say parable) of measurement is in Plato's Statesman, arguably beginning at 279a and proceeding through 285c. The "parable", which is arguably better described as an analogy, is about "wool weaving" rather than basket weaving, although it is possible that Aristotle may have mentioned basket weaving. But that is dubious because the Greeks were more inclined to pottery than to woven baskets. At any rate, an "Eleatic Stranger" makes the analogy (metaphor/parable) to wool weaving in discussion with Socrates-the-younger (not the elder Socrates) who is a fellow geometry student of Theaetetus, in attempting to distinguish a Statesman from a sophist or a philosopher

279a STRANGER:- Well then, what example is there, on a really small scale, which we can take and set beside Kingship, and which, because it comprises an ACTIVITY common to it and to Kingship, can be of real help to us in finding what we are looking for? By heaven, Socrates, I believe I know one. Do you agree that, if there is no other EXAMPLE ready to hand, it would be quite in order to choose the ART of WEAVING --- if there is nothing else obviously suitable? If you agree, we will not take the whole of weaving, for I think that a part of it, the art of weaving woolens, will prove adequate for us. I suspect that just this section of the weaver's art, if it were chosen as our EXAMPLE, would give the evidence we require concerning the statesman.

SOCRATES (the younger): It might well prove to be so [279b]...

... 285c STRANGER: Clearly we should divide the art of measurement into two on the principle enunciated by dividing it at this point. One section will comprise all arts of measuring number, length, depth, breadth or velocity of objects by relative standards. The other section comprises arts concerned with due occasion, due time, due performance, and all such standards as have removed their abode from the extremes and are settled about the mean.

Aristotle, in contrast to Plato, simply lays it down in both The Categories and The Metaphysics that time is a species of QUANTITY (per The Categories; Quantity; Ch. 6 "Quantity is either discrete or continuous. Moreover, some quantities are such that each part of the whole has a relative position to the other parts; others have within them no such relation of part to part. Instances of discrete quantities are speech and numbers; (instances/examples) of continuous (quantity/ies) lines, surfaces, solids, and besides these, TIME and place. etc.). In the Metaphysics Aristotle describes TIME as either motion or an attribute of motion at 1071b line 10, quote

ARISTOTLE:- But it is impossible that movement should have either come into being or cease to be (for it must always have existed) or that TIME should [come into being or cease to exist KB] For there could not be a before and an after if time did not exist. Movement is also continuous, then, in the sense that TIME is; for TIME is either the same thing as movement or an attribute of movement. [Metaphysics Book XII, Ch. 6, 1071b lines 6 through 10]

The above is part of Aristotle's argument for the eternity of both "time" and "the world", along with the eternity of a motionless "prime mover" which moves things by attraction. Aristotle, in general, doesn't rely too much upon either myths or "wool/basket-weaving" analogies/parables.

Kevin

Basket Weaving Video #10--Securing the Rim in Place and using a Rim Filler