Aristotle's Physics: A Guided Study (Masterworks of Discovery)

529 Pages·1995·1.16 MB·English

by  Joe Sachs

Aristotle's Physics : A Guided Study
title:
Masterworks of Discovery
author: Sachs, Joe.; Aristotle.
publisher: Rutgers University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0813521920
print isbn13: 9780813521923
ebook isbn13: 9780585034843
language: English
Aristotle.--Physics, Physics--Early works to
subject
1800.
publication date: 1995
lcc: Q151.A8S23 1995eb
ddc: 530
Aristotle.--Physics, Physics--Early works to
subject:
1800.
Page i
Aristotle's Physics
A Guided Study
Joe Sachs
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick and London
Page ii
Second paperback printing, 1998
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sachs, Joe.
Aristotle's physics ; a guided study / by Joe Sachs.
p. m. -- (Masterworks of discovery)
Includes index.
"A new translation, with introduction, commentary, and an
explanatory
glossary."
ISBN 0-8135-2191-2 (cloth). --ISBN 0-8135-2192-0 (pbk.)
1. Aristotle. Physics. English. 2. Physics--Early works to 1800. I.
Aristotle.
Physics. English. II. Title. III. Series.
Q151.A8S23 1995
530--dc20 94-46477
CIP
British Cataloging-in-Publication information available
Copyright (c) 1995 by Joe Sachs
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Page iii
About the Author
Joe Sachs has taught for twenty years at St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland, where from 1990 to 1992 he held the NEH Chair in
Ancient Thought.
Page v
Contents
Note: The titles of the sections of the Physics have been added
by the translator.
Series Editor's Preface vii
Introduction 1
Note on Aristotle's Central Vocabulary 31
Book I Beginnings 33
Book II, Chapters 1-3 Causes 49
Chapters 4-9 Chance and Necessity 59
Book III, Chapters 1-3 Motion 73
Chapters 4-8 The Infinite 81
Book IV, Chapters 1-5 Place 95
Chapters 6-9 The Void 107
Chapters 10-14 Time 119
Book V Motions as Wholes 134
Book VI Internal Structure of Motions 147
Book VII Relation of Mover and Moved 173
Book VIII, Chapters 1-6 Deduction of Motionless First 188
Mover
Chapters 7-10 The First Motion 212

Page vi
Appendix (Book I, Chapters 3-4; Book V, Chapters 5-6) 232
Glossary 242
Index 257
Masterworks of Discovery
Guided Studies of Great Texts in Science
Harvey M. Flaumenhaft, Series Editor
Page vii
Series Editor's Preface
We often take for granted the terms, the premises, and the methods
that prevail in our time and place. We take for granted, as the starting
points for our own thinking, the outcomes of a process of thinking by
our predecessors.
What happens is something like this: Questions are asked, and
answers are given. These answers in turn provoke new questions, with
their own answers. The new questions are built from the answers that
were given to the old questions, but the old questions are now no
longer asked. Foundations get covered over by what is built upon
them.
Progress thus can lead to a kind of forgetfulness, making us less
thoughtful in some ways than the people whom we go beyond: hence
this series of guidebooks. The purpose of the series is to foster the
reading of classic texts in science, including mathematics, so that
readers will become more thoughtful by attending to the thinking that
is out of sight but still at work in the achievements it has generated.
To be thoughtful human beingsto be thoughtful about what it is that
makes us humanwe need to read the record of the thinking that has
shaped the world around us and still shapes our minds as well.
Scientific thinking is a fundamental part of this record, but a part that
is read even less than the rest. It was not always so. Only recently has
the prevalent division between "the humanities" and "science" come
to be taken for granted. At one time, educated people read Euclid and
Ptolemy along with Homer and Plato, whereas nowadays readers of
Shakespeare and Rousseau rarely read Copernicus and Newton.
Often it is said that this is because books in science, unlike those in
the humanities, simply become outdated: in science the past is held to