Philosophy: Ancient: Physics

The Physics is one of Aristotle's masterpieces--a work of extraordinary intellectual power which has had a profound influence on the development of metaphysics and the philosophy of science, as well as on the development of physics itself. This collection of ten new essays by leading Aristotelian scholars examines a wide range of issues in the Physics and related works, including method, causation and explanation, chance, teleology, the infinite, the nature of time, the critique of atomism, the role of mathematics in Aristotle's physics, and the concept of self-motion. The essays offer fresh approaches to Aristotle's work in these areas, and important new interpretations of his thought.

This book considers the concepts that lay at the heart of natural philosophy and physics from the time of Aristotle until the fourteenth century. The first part presents Aristotelian ideas and the second part presents the interpretation of these ideas by Philoponus, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, John Buridan, and Duns Scotus. Across the eight chapters, the problems and texts from Aristotle that set the stage for European natural philosophy as it was practiced from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries are considered first as they appear in Aristotle and then as they are reconsidered in the context of later interests. The study concludes with an anticipation of Newton and the sense in which Aristotle s physics had been transformed."

This examination of Aristotle's concept of natural substance and its implications for change, process, agency, teleology, mathematical continuity, and eternal motion illustrates the conceptual power of Aristotle's metaphysics of nature along with its scientific limitations and internal tensions.

These two volumes of essays by outstanding Aristotelian scholars, philosophers of science, and scientists explore the relevance of Aristotle's thought to developments in contemporary science in such diverse fields as Newtonian and quantum mechanics, relativity theory, mathematics, cosmology, biology, psychology, philosophy of mind, logic, ethics, politics, poetics, and economics. In addition, they offer original and enlightening perspectives on how Aristotle's thinking can help us solve problems concerning scientific knowledge and method, demonstrative science, explanation, mechanistic determinism, teleology, and realism. Although not all the contributors are in accord as to Aristotle's success in answering questions of our own day, their exploration of the Stagirite's thought contributes to a deepening of our understanding of such fundamental concepts as time, infinity, continuity, matter, causation, mind, soul, life, and potentiality and shows why Aristotle is so very alive today.<BR> These volumes are the result of the 1997 Aristotle and Contemporary Science International Conference held at the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece. The conference was host to eighty scholars from Belgium, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Volume I includes essays initially presented in the plenary sessions, while volume II is a collection of selected papers presented at the conference.

Aristotle's account of place, in which he defined a thing's place as the inner surface of its nearest immobile container, was supported by the Latin Middle Ages, even 1600 years after his death, though it had not convinced many ancient Greek philosophers. The sixth century commentator Philoponus took a more common-sense view. For him, place was an immobile three-dimensional extension, whose essence did not preclude its being empty, even if for other reasons it had always to be filled with body. However, Philoponus reserved his own definition for an excursus, already translated in this series, The Corollary on Place. In the text translated here he wanted instead to explain Aristotle's view to elementary students. The recent conjecture that he wished to attract young fellow Christians away from the official pagan professor of philosophy in Alexandria has the merit of explaining why he expounds Aristotle here, rather than attacking him. But he still puts the students through their paces, for example when discussing Aristotle's claim that place cannot be a body, or two bodies would coincide.This volume contains an English translation of Philoponus' commentary, as well as a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography.

Chapter 1. On the principles of the natural beings -- Chapter 2. The question of teleology -- Chapter 3. On continuity and infinite divisibility -- Chapter 4. The question of place -- Chapter 5. The doctrine of weight and lightness -- Chapter 6. On Aristotle's manner of writing