An Approach to Aristotle's Physics : With Particular Attention to the Role of His Manner of Writing

164 Pages·1997·7.72 MB·English

by  David Bolotin

AN APPROACH TO
ARISTOTLE'S
PHYSICS
With Particular Attention
to the Role of
His Manner of Writing
DAVID BOLOTIN
State University
of New York
Press

Published by
State University ofNew York Press, Albany
Production bySusan Geraghty
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Bolotin, David, 1944-
An approach to Aristotle's physics: with particular attention to
the role of his manner of writing / David Bolotin.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN0-7914-3551-2 (hardcover: alk. paper). - ISBN0-7914-3552-0
(pbk.)
1.Aristotle. Physics. 2. Physics-Early works to 1800.
3. Greek language-Style. 4. Philosophy, Ancient. 1.Aristotle.
Physics. II.Title.
Q151.A8B65 1997
530-dc21 96-38143
eIP

Chapter 1 On the Principles of the Natural Beings 13
Chapter 2 The Question of Teleology 31
Chapter 3 On Continuity and Infinite Divisibility 53
Chapter 4 The Question of Place 77
Chapter 5 The Doctrine of Weight and Lightness 115
Chapter 6 On Aristotle's Manner of Writing 149

The bulk of this work was completed during the academic years
1991-94, while I was on an extended leave of absence from St.
John's College. I am grateful to St. John's for granting me this
leave of absence, and also to the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foun-
dation and the National Endowment for the Humanities for the
financial support that made it possible for me to accept it.
Chapter 2 isa slightly revised version of a lecture that I deliv-
ered at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung in Munich on June
2, 1992. Chapter 3 is a slightly revised and shortened version of
my previously published "Continuity and Infinite Divisibility in
Aristotle's Physics," Ancient Philosophy 13 (1993): 323-40.
Modern natural science emerged in the seventeenth century in
explicit opposition to Aristotle's natural science, that branch of
his philosophy that he called "physics." That the earth is not at
rest in the center of the universe, but a mere satellite orbiting
around the sun; that the stars and the planets are inanimate bod-
ies made up of the same elements as bodies here on earth, and that
their motions are subject to the same laws; that natural motion
does not tend toward ends or fulfillments, but that every body in
motion would continue indefinitely in a straight line if it were not
for the action of external forces; all these and other such funda-
mental notions were regarded from the beginning as contradict-
ing key doctrines of Aristotle's physics. The reigning belief in the
truth of Aristotle's physics was the chief intellectual obstacle to
the acceptance of the new science. And in the light of the success
that this science has since enjoyed, it has generally been assumed
that Aristotle's physics has been refuted, and that it is thus of lit-
tle importance except as an object of historical inquiry.
Recently, however, a widespread and growing critique of
modern science has led to a renewed interest in Aristotle's physics
as something that can still teach us about the natural world.! This
is not to say that any of the conclusions of modern science have
been simply rejected in favor of the opposing Aristotelian claims.
Even in the one most conspicuous instance in which a conclusion
of modern science is rejected-namely, the Darwinian claim about
evolution and its causes-those who deny that the origin of
species can be explained on Darwinian principles alone do not
propose a return to the Aristotelian doctrine that the species are
eternal. And in any case, the rejection of the Darwinian account
of evolution stems mostly from older and different sources than
does the prevailing critique of modern science. More typically, we
see an acceptance of the results of this science, combined, how-
ever, with a criticism of the ordinary interpretation of these
results; and this criticism has led to the view that modern and
Aristotelian science, when both are rightly understood, are not
opposed, but complementary to one another. The criticism to
which I am referring begins by arguing that modern scientists
themselves and other interpreters of their results are wrong to
claim to have seen beneath the apparent world of our experience
in the direction of its true or underlying being. For instance, Sir
Arthur Eddington has frequently been taken to task for claiming
that his solid and familiar writing table was largely illusory, and
that the only table "really there" was a second, "scientific table,"
consisting "mostly of emptiness," through which "numerous
electrical charges [are] running about with great speed."2 The crit-
ics of such views acknowledge that modern science has succeeded
in relating the particular events and particular objects of our
experience to more general laws, laws that involve entities not
accessible to direct experience. But it is denied that these laws or
these indirectly accessible entities provide the answers as to what
the world, or the events and objects of our primary experience,
really are. To the argument that the beings as we think that we
perceive them are merely relative to our own way of perceiving,
it has been replied that the new entities disclosed by modern sci-
ence are themselves relative to a sophisticated mathematical tech-
nique, and that this technique is dependent for whatever mean-
ingfulness it has on a prior grasp of the world as it appears
directly.3 It is thus argued that only philosophy, as distinct from
modern science, can tell uswhat the world most truly is.Now the
philosophic inquiry that is called for by this critique is not tradi-
tional metaphysics: it is not an attempt to explain the world in
terms of eternal and absolutely first causes.4 Indeed, this critique
renounces such an attempt as being incapable of success or even
meaningless. What is called for, rather, apart from reflection on
the acts of awareness, is a careful examination of the world as it
appears with the aim of describing this world, or its primary phe-
nomena, instead of "explaining" them in terms of anything else.5
And Aristotle isturned to because his natural science has come to
be seen as a masterful description along these lines. The tradi-
tional interpretation of Aristotle's science has been accused of
concealing this fundamental feature of it, by misconstruing it as
an attempt to derive the natural phenomena from ultimate causes.