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= [[PHI130]] [http://www.jj5.net/data/uni/mq/course/phi130/content/week05/ Week 5]: Aristotle =


== [http://www.jj5.net/data/uni/mq/course/phi130/lecture/PHI130%20Lecture%2009.mp3 Lecture 9]: Aristotle's physics ==
== [http://www.jj5.net/data/uni/mq/course/phi130/lecture/PHI130%20Lecture%2009.mp3 Lecture 9]: Aristotle's physics ==

Revision as of 09:52, 7 August 2008

PHI130 Week 5: Aristotle

Lecture 9: Aristotle's physics

Critique of Plato's doctrine of forms

Substance (ousia) versus ideas and forms (idea and eidos)

Actuality vs potentiality

Priority of actuality over potentiality

Lecture 10: Aristotle's physics (cont.)

Implications for physics

Towards Descartes: The Galilean challenge

Readings

Aristotle, Metaphysics

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Theta, sections 6, 7 and 8.

Aristotle, Physics

Aristotle, Physics, II, 3, 194b15-195a3; III, 1, 200b10-201b15.

Shapin, Scientific Revolution

S. Shapin, The scientific revolution and the origins of modern science (University of Chicago Press, 1996), p.14-29

Reading Questions

Aristotle, extract from the Metaphysics

  • What is Aristotle's distinction between actuality and potentiality?
  • What is Aristotle's distinction between an action done for the sake of some end outside itself and true or complete actions?
  • What does Aristotle mean by saying that actuality is prior to potentiality:
    • in formula?
    • In time?
    • In substance?

Aristotle, extract from the Physics

Aristotle identifies four causes, which can be thought of as four ways we might explain why a certain thing is as it is.

  • Give an example of each of Aristotle's four senses of "cause":
    • material cause
    • formal cause
    • cause of change / efficient cause
    • final cause
  • Give examples of the four kinds of motion or change identified by Aristotle:
    • alteration
    • increase and decrease
    • coming to be and passing away
    • locomotion

S. Shapin, extract from The Scientific Revolution

  • Why were Galileo's views a challenge to Aristotelian physics?
  • Why were Galileo's contemporaries unwilling to accept that the sun was 'blemished'?
  • What did Ptolemy's geocentric system have in common with ancient Greek views of nature (such as that expressed in Plato's Timaeus?