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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? 
I could think of about a hundred thousand different ways.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.
Physica (Physics) and De Caelo (On the Heavens) as far as I'm aware contain his physics related contributions. For general info probably better to read it from some compilation or so, at least for myself tough pointing out specific sections out of those. Sure they are far more imaginative what comes to the actual physics in them and influenced (very) heavily by the religious aspects, but somehow don't consider that really surprising (+ the "Platonic/Greek like scientific method"). Got to start doing physics somewhere though, and although his mechanics for one don't comply with Newton, Galileo etc at all it's still an attempt to formulate general understandings of physics.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.
In the case of g, scientists have indeed gone looking for the thing that was posited not to exist.honestrosewater said:Today, if a theory predicts that something is impossible or cannot exist [...] do scientists go looking for it?
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.
See, right there are three differences and one similarity between him and modern theoretical physicists.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?
He was one of the foremost and most prolific of all western philosophers. He was the first western advocate of the 'middle way' in ethical theory, and invented bivalent logic. He was also arguably one of the greatest asthetic philosophers we've ever had.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.
Sorry, it was mostly arguments from Metaphysics they adapted, not Physics. I just grouped them in with his Physics because many of them constitute a cosmology. Aristotelian physics was official Church dogma for a very long time, though, was it not?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.
To be accurate, it's not like the Church adapted faithfully Aristotle's cosmology. The idea of the intelligences became the idea of heavenly spheres on which the orbits of the planets were planted, God's complete perfection was adapted to Christian dogma, and the argument from first cause became the major argument for the existence of God put forth by Aquinas. Final causation probably provided philosophical grounding for the idea of a purposeful universe, but I'm not sure about that one. There are still many notable differences, however. Aristotle's God was neither the creator of the universe nor a person, for one thing. Aristotle also never went into any detail about the physical geography of the heavens. It was Ptolemy that did so, starting from the idea of a geocentric universe and then developing all of his cycles and epicycles to make the theory fit the observation, something that Aristotle himself never bothered with. Final causation, also, if it was indeed adapted, could not have been done so faithfully.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.
Well, metaphysics is a part of philosophy. What I mean is that the arguments that scholastics used were the arguments that Aristotle laid out in his book titled Metaphysics. I only meant that it's misleading to call this his 'philosophy' as that seems to suggest that the content of this one work constitutes the whole of his philosophy, when in fact he wrote many treatises on a great many diverse subjects, all of which were considered 'philosophy.'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.