Physics of Aristotle

Physics of Aristotle Two of Aristotle's writings, Physics and On the Heavens, are what I plan to discuss in this chapter. There is a strong relationship between these two novels; the second picks up the debate where the first left off. Both had a great deal of influence and controlled science up to Galileo's time. Terms like "sublunary" and "quintessence" come from the beliefs presented in these texts. Because of this, the history of philosophy ought to examine them, even if very few of their ideas can be justified in the context of contemporary science. Understanding the creative foundation of the Greeks is essential to comprehending Aristotle's and most of their perspectives on physics. Every philosopher has another, much simpler system that he may not be aware of, in addition to the formal system that he provides to the world. If he is aware of it, he presumably knows it won't completely work. So, he hides it and presents a more complex theory that, in his opinion—because it is similar to his rudimentary system—cannot be refuted. He then urges others to adopt this theory. Refutation of refutations is where sophistication enters the picture, but this technique by itself can never provide a satisfactory outcome—it can only, at most, suggest that a theory may be correct rather than conclusively. Though the philosopher may not know it, his creative preconceptions—or what Santayana refers to as “animal faith”—are the cause of the favorable outcome. Aristotle's creative basis in physics differed greatly from a current student's. These days, a boy starts with mechanics, which implies machines by definition. He is used to driving automobiles and flying airplanes; he does not, not even in the deepest corners of his mind, believe that a car has a horse inside of it or that an airplane soars because its wings are like those of a bird with magical abilities. In our idealized visions of the universe, where man is relatively alone as the lord of a mostly lifeless and submissive material environment, animals have lost their significance. With the exception of a few exceptional individuals like Democritus and Archimedes, the strictly mechanical perspective barely ever occurred to the Greeks when they were trying to provide a scientific explanation of motion. The motions of the celestial bodies and animals appeared to be two major categories of occurrences. The body of an animal is seen by current scientists as an extremely complicated machine with an incredibly intricate physicochemical structure; each new finding serves to blur the line that appears to separate animals and machines. The Greeks believed that it was more natural to associate animal motions with seemingly lifeless ones. Aristotle, among many other Greeks, saw this characteristic as the foundation for a comprehensive theory of physics. A youngster can still tell live creatures apart from other objects because they can move on their own. What about the celestial bodies, though? Their motions are more regular than those of animals, although this might just be because of their higher level of perfection. All Greek philosophers, regardless of their later beliefs, were raised to believe that the sun and moon were deities; Anaxagoras was charged with heresy because he believed that the gods were inert. It was only fitting that a philosopher, unable to see the celestial bodies as divine in and of themselves, should consider them to be influenced by the will of a Divine Being endowed with a Greek sense of order and geometric simplicity. Therefore, Will is the ultimate source of all movement: the immutable Will of the Supreme Artificer in heaven, but the erratic Will of humans and animals on earth. I do not imply that this is true for all of Aristotle's arguments. What I do propose is that it provides him creative context and reflects the kind of information he would anticipate discovering when he sets out on his research. Let's look at what he really says after these introductions. According to Aristotle, physics is the study of what the Greeks termed "phusis" (or "physis"), a word that is roughly translated as "nature" but does not have the same meaning as ours. Although the terms "natural science" and "natural history" are still used, "nature," by itself—despite its great ambiguity—rarely conveys the same meaning as "phusis." "Phusis" referred to growth; if one were to argue that it is an acorn's "nature" to mature into an oak, then one would be employing the word in its Aristotelian sense. According to Aristotle, an object's "nature" is its purpose, or the reason it exists. The term implies teleology as a result. Certain things are natural, whereas others have different origins. Simple bodies (elements), plants, and animals all have an innate principle of motion that allows them to exist. (The term "motion" or "movement" in translation has a broader meaning than "locomotion"; it can also refer to changes in size or quality.) One can find movement or repose in nature. If anything possesses this type of inherent principle, it is said to "have a nature." "According to nature" describes these items and their fundamental characteristics. (This viewpoint is how the word "unnatural" came to be used to describe responsibility.) Nature is not in stuff, but in form; that which has the potential to be flesh or bone has not yet taken on its own nature, and once anything reaches fulfillment, it becomes more of what it is. Biology seems to support this entire viewpoint, according to which an acorn is "potentially" an oak. Nature is a type of cause that acts in order to achieve a certain goal. This brings up the idea that nature exists only because of necessity and without intention, and it is in this context that Aristotle addresses the theory of the survival of the fittest—as taught by Empedocles. He argues that this cannot be true since events follow predetermined paths and all actions leading up to a series' conclusion serve that series' objectives. Things that "by a continuous movement originated from an internal principle, arrive at some completion" (199b) are considered "natural." Even though this idea of "nature" would have seemed like a brilliant way to describe how plants and animals grow, it ultimately proved to be a major barrier to scientific advancement and the root of many unethical practices. It is nonetheless detrimental in the latter regard. We are informed that motion is the realization of potential. In addition to its inherent flaws, this viewpoint contradicts the relativity of movement. It makes no sense to claim that one of the two is moving while the other is stationary when A moves relative to B and B moves relative to A. It would seem common sense that when a dog snatches a bone, it is moving while the bone is at rest (until it is snatched) and that this movement has a purpose, which is to fulfill the dog's "nature." However, it has come to light that this viewpoint is inapplicable to dead matter, that no notion of a "end" is helpful for the purposes of modern physics, and that no motion can, in the strictest sense of the word, be regarded as anything other than relative. Aristotle disagrees with Leucippus and Democritus' view of the void. He then moves on to a really interesting talk about time. According to him, there is a possibility that time doesn't exist because it is made up of the past and the future, both of which are nonexistent at this moment. But he disapproves of this viewpoint. He claims that time is motion that can be quantified. (It's unclear why he believes that numeration is crucial.) He goes on to say that since time requires numeration and nothing can exist without a soul, it is reasonable to wonder if time might exist without it. It appears that he perceives time in terms of hours, days, or years. He continues, saying that certain things are eternal in the sense that they do not exist in time; he is probably referring to concepts like numbers. Motion has always existed and will continue to exist as time cannot exist without motion, and everyone, with the exception of Plato, believes that time is uncreated. Christian Aristotlenian adherents were required to disagree with him on this issue since the Bible teaches that the universe had a beginning. The argument for an unmoved mover, which we examined in relation to the Metaphysics, concludes the Physics. A circular motion is directly caused by the one unmoving mover. The only basic type of motion that can be both continuous and limitless is circular motion. The first mover is at the center of the globe and possesses neither parts nor magnitude. Now that we have arrived at this point, we move up into the sky. A nice and straightforward hypothesis is presented in the work On the Heavens. Everything is formed and prone to deterioration below the moon, while everything above the moon is ungenerated and unbreakable. The spherical earth is at the center of the cosmos. The five components that make up the celestial bodies are different from the four elements that make up the sublunary sphere, which are earth, water, air, and fire. The fifth element moves in a circular manner by nature, whereas the other elements move in rectilinear fashion. The top parts of the sky are more divine than the lower, and they are completely spherical. The motion of the spheres to which the stars and planets are linked causes them to move; fire is not the fifth element that makes up the stars and planets. (Dante's Paradiso has lyrical renditions of all of this.) The four terrestrial elements are not everlasting; rather, they are created from one another. Earth is definitely heavy, while fire is completely light in the sense that it moves upward by nature. Water is comparatively heavy, whereas air is relatively light. Many challenges were presented by this hypothesis for later centuries. Initially classified as part of the sublunary sphere because to their destructive nature, comets were discovered in the seventeenth century to describe orbits around the sun, seldom coming as close as the moon. Given that terrestrial entities move in rectilinear motion by nature, the theory said that a projectile discharged horizontally would first travel horizontally before abruptly starting to descend vertically. Galileo's revelation to his Aristotelian colleagues that a projectile travels in a parabola startled them. In order to prove that the earth revolves once a day and moves around the sun once a year, Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo had to argue against Aristotle as well as the Bible. In summary, Aristotelian physics is incompatible with Newton's "First Law of Motion," which was first proposed by Galileo. According to this law, any body that is left on its own will, if it is already moving, keep moving forward at a constant speed in a straight path. Therefore, external factors are needed to explain changes in motion, whether in direction or velocity, rather than to explain motion itself. A force that is directed toward the center of the circle, as in Newton's law of gravity, is necessary for circular motion, which Aristotle believed to be "natural" for the celestial bodies since it entails a constant change in motion direction. Ultimately: It has been necessary to give up the idea that the celestial bodies are unchanging and everlasting. Although they have lengthy lifetimes, the sun and stars eventually die. They emerge from a nebula and eventually either burst into flames or freeze to death. Every aspect of the observable universe is susceptible to alterations and deterioration; the Aristotelian doctrine stating otherwise, however acknowledged by Christians in the Middle Ages, originated from the heathen veneration of the sun, moon, and planets.