The Order Of Nature In Aristotles Physics

In this book Helen S. Lang enters into the point of view of the ancient world to explain how they saw the world and to show what arguments were used by Aristotle to support this view. Lang demonstrates a new method for reading the texts of Aristotle by revealing a continuous line of argument running from the Physics to De Caelo. The author analyzes a group of arguments that are almost always treated in isolation from one another and reveals their elegance and coherence. She concludes by asking why these arguments remain interesting even though we now believe they are absolutely wrong and have been replaced by better ones. The author establishes that we must rethink our approach to Aristotle's physical science and Aristotelian texts. In so doing, her book will provoke debate and stimulate new thinking among philosophers, classicists, and historians of science.

This book enters into the point of view of the ancient world in order to explain how they saw the world, and to show what arguments were used by Aristotle to support this view. Lang demonstrates a new method for reading the texts of Aristotle by revealing a continuous line of argument running from the Physics to De Caelo, and analyzes a group of arguments that are almost always treated in isolation from one another to reveal their elegance and coherence. She establishes the case that we must rethink our approach to Aristotle's physical science and Aristotelian texts.

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.

Exploration of Aristotle's philosophy of nature in the light of scholarly insights.

What is the relation between time and change? Does time depend on the mind? Is the present always the same or is it always different? Aristotle tackles these questions in the Physics, and Time for Aristotle is the first book in English devoted to this discussion. Aristotle claims that time is not a kind of change, but that it is something dependent on change; he defines it as a kind of 'number of change'. Ursula Coope argues that what this means is that time is a kind of order (not, as is commonly supposed, a kind of measure). It is universal order within which all changes are related to each other. This interpretation enables Coope to explain two puzzling claims that Aristotle makes: that the now is like a moving thing, and that time depends for its existence on the mind. Brilliantly lucid in its explanation of this challenging section of the Physics, Time for Aristotle shows his discussion to be of enduring philosophical interest.

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 collection of groundbreaking new essays show how Aristotle's natural science illuminates fundamental topics in his philosophy.

Monte Johnson examines one of the most controversial aspects of Aristiotle's natural philosophy: his teleology. Is teleology about causation or explanation? Does it exclude or obviate mechanism, determinism, or materialism? Is it focused on the good of individual organisms, or is god or man the ultimate end of all processes and entities? Is teleology restricted to living things, or does it apply to the cosmos as a whole? Does it identify objectively existent causes in the world, or is it merely a heuristic for our understanding of other causal processes? Johnson argues that Aristotle's aporetic approach drives a middle course between these traditional oppositions, and avoids the dilemma, frequently urged against teleology, between backwards causation and anthropomorphism. Although these issues have been debated with extraordinary depth by Aristotle scholars, and touched upon by many in the wider philosophical and scientific community as well, there has been no comprehensive historical treatment of the issue. Aristotle is commonly considered the inventor of teleology, although the precise term originated in the eighteenth century. But if teleology means the use of ends and goals in natural science, then Aristotle was rather a critical innovator of teleological explanation. Teleological notions were widespread among his predecessors, but Aristotle rejected their conception of extrinsic causes such as mind or god as the primary causes for natural things. Aristotle's radical alternative was to assert nature itself as an internal principle of change and an end, and his teleological explanations focus on the intrinsic ends of natural substances - those ends that benefit the natural thing itself. Aristotle's use of ends was subsequently conflated with incompatible 'teleological' notions, including proofs for the existence of a providential or designer god, vitalism and animism, opposition to mechanism and non-teleological causation, and anthropocentrism. Johnson addresses these misconceptions through an elaboration of Aristotle's methodological statements, as well as an examination of the explanations actually offered in the scientific works.

This volume provides cutting-edge research on Aristotle's Physics, taking into account recent changes in the field of Aristotle.