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Was it Aristotle who said that more massive objects will fall faster than lighter objects? This leads me to wonder: why didn't he just experiment with this idea to see that he was wrong? 
honestrosewater said:How does Aristotle differ from modern theoretical physicists?
For instance?? He was operating under a different paradigm? Telescopes hadn't been invented yet? No stopwatches or cameras? Did he accept the four elements (fire, air, water, earth) thing?loseyourname said:I could think of about a hundred thousand different ways.
You could say that about many people. I wouldn't blame Aristotle any more than I'd blame Newton.russ_watters said:The worship of Aristotle is largely responsible for holding back scientific advancement until the scientific revolution.
arildno said:I've read excerpts of Aristotle concerning the evolution of a chicken within the egg.
From these, it is obvious that Aristotle performed observations (by opening the egg at different times) and in this manner was an empiricist.
I haven't read any excerpts of Aristotle that can be likened to what it is said he said about physics. If anyone knows where to look in his works, please inform me.
You're right. Hmmm, it must've been a typo. Damn! If only we'd discovered that 2400 years earlier! Gah!selfAdjoint said:His law of falling bodies is true under water!
Aristotle's science was mostly rubbish, but his writings on ethics, politics, and poetics were, and are, brilliant. I'm afraid a lot of people hear examples of his bad science and dismiss him without recognizing the value of his purely philosophical works.honestrosewater said:Great, I don't like blind devotion any more than I like blind contempt. I'm just trying to avoid, as much as possible, an inaccurate picture of him.
Well, I don't know much about his work in science; I know him from philosophy and logic (and am quite fond of him too). I started browsing through Physics today, and so far he seems to spend most of his time refuting other people's arguments. I want to search around for the best translation before reading more. If he was wrong, I'd still like to know why - it looks like there are some good lessons and arguments in there.jma2001 said:Aristotle's science was mostly rubbish, but his writings on ethics, politics, and poetics were, and are, brilliant. I'm afraid a lot of people hear examples of his bad science and dismiss him without recognizing the value of his purely philosophical works.
I would make a comparison between Aristotle and Ptolemy. Both wrote influential scientific works that have been largely discredited in modern times. Yet, Aristotle is still being read while Ptolemy is forgotten. Why? Because of the quality of his philosophical works. No one reads Aristotle for his science, they read him for his philosophy.
I'm not blaming Aristotle, (though I'm not a big fan), I'm blaming those who worshiped him.Smurf said:You could say that about many people. I wouldn't blame Aristotle any more than I'd blame Newton.
honestrosewater said:For instance?? He was operating under a different paradigm? Telescopes hadn't been invented yet? No stopwatches or cameras? Did he accept the four elements (fire, air, water, earth) thing?
He did use logic to explain observations. Don't theoretical physicists still do that?
Great, I don't like blind devotion any more than I like blind contempt. I'm just trying to avoid, as much as possible, an inaccurate picture of him.
He did things that ended up - not by his actions alone - hurting modern science. Is there any reason to think that he did so intentionally, maliciously? If it was an honest mistake, have we learned the lesson?
Did he do anything that ended up helping modern science? Trying to construct a logically consistent model of the physical world - is that not something he did that helped modern science? Are people still doing the same thing?
He was a teacher - can anyone else at least give him that?
No, not his physics, his philosophy. Thomas Aquinas created a hybrid of Aristotelian philosophical concepts and Church doctrine that, as Dava Sobel put it, helped "...the word of Aristotle gain the authority of holy writ..."loseyourname said:It was medieval scholastics and the Church that adopted their views as dogma that did so by adapting Aristotle's archaic, early attempts at doing physics as gospel truth.
zoobyshoe said:No, not his physics, his philosophy. Thomas Aquinas created a hybrid of Aristotelian philosophical concepts and Church doctrine that, as Dava Sobel put it, helped "...the word of Aristotle gain the authority of holy writ..."
I don't know. What I can tell you is that no one in the Church was particularly upset by Galileo disproving Aritotle's notions of falling bodies. It wasn't till his discoveries started to cast doubt on the accepted cosmologies that the church became concerned.loseyourname said:Aristotelian physics was official Church dogma for a very long time, though, was it not?
Yes, there's confusion. What the church adopted was his notions about the perfection of the heavens, their immutability, and things like that. This may well better be termed "metaphysics" than "philosophy", I don't know.To call this his "philosophy" seems a bit misleading, anyway, as Metaphysics was only a very small part of his work, plus his physics was part of his philosophy. There was no distinction between disciplines at the time he was writing.
zoobyshoe said:I don't know. What I can tell you is that no one in the Church was particularly upset by Galileo disproving Aritotle's notions of falling bodies. It wasn't till his discoveries started to cast doubt on the accepted cosmologies that the church became concerned.
Yes, there's confusion. What the church adopted was his notions about the perfection of the heavens, their immutability, and things like that. This may well better be termed "metaphysics" than "philosophy", I don't know.