historical periods greek hellenic: 500 – 300 bce greek hellenistic: 300 - 50 roman empire: 1 st c...
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Historical PeriodsGreek Hellenic: 500 – 300 BCEGreek Hellenistic: 300 - 50 Roman Empire: 1st C BCE – 476 CEEarly mid ages: 500 - 1000Byzantine empire: 4th C – 15th CIslamic Golden Age: 8th C – 13th CLate middle ages: 1000 - 1500Renaissance: 14th – 17th CScientific Revolution: 17th CEnlightenment: 18th CIndustrial revolution: 19th CModern period: 20th - ???
Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy
I. Life (384 – 322 BCE) and Works
Lyceum
II. The Origin of Natural PhilosophyIII. Metaphysics and EpistemologyIV. Aristotle’s Metaphysics and EpistemologyV. Aristotle’s CosmologyVI. MotionVII. BiologyVIII. Achievements
II. The Origins of Natural Philosophy
• Democracy, sophists
• Philosophy of knowledge
• Competition
• Greek Gods
• Prosperity, slave state
• Contact with other cultures
Why Greece?
Parmenides(520 – 480)
• Being and not being
• All change is a logical impossibility
Zeno of Elea(490 – 430)
• Change of place (motion) is impossible (Zeno)
Zeno’s paradoxes
Significance:
• Everyone following Parmenides must address
• Led to questioning how we know what we know (epistemology)
• Led to a confrontation: logic versus the senses
A. The question of change
III. Metaphysics and Epistemology
B. The question of knowledge
Epistemology • the senses versus the intellect• senses unreliable
• auditory illusion
• Real truth through the exercise of reason aloneImportance: attention directed to reasoning, argumentation
C. The Question of the Stuff“ That of which all things consist, from which they first come and into which they are ultimately resolved … the element and origin of all things.” Aristotle
Thales (624 – 546 BCE)
1. Water
• Mechanistic• Deterministic
2. Atoms
Democritus(460 – 370 BCE)
3. Numbers: The Pythagoreans
Pythagoras(580 -500 BCE)
a2 + b2 = c2
Pythagorean theorem
Music of the spheres
Significance: application of mathematics to Nature
4. Earth, air, water, fire
Empedocles (490 -430)
Love Strife
solid, gas, liquid, energy
Dominant paradigm until 19th Century
Love and Strife Resolve quesitonOf change
• Forms are the true reality
•characteristics
• characteristics1. Eternal (Changeless)2. Incorporeal (No physical
body)3. True reality
1. Mathematician (geometer)2. Benevolent3. Rational 4. Not omnipotent: Only a creator
god
• Carpenter analogy
4. Templates for the sensible world
• Demiurge: the divine craftsman
D. Plato (427-348 BCE) 1. The Two Worlds: Sensible and Forms
2. Plato’s Stuff• Construction of the Cosmos based on geometric principles
• Earth, air, water, and fire not basic elements
• Made of five platonic (regular) solids
Tetrahedron = Fire
Octahedron = air
Icosahedron = water
Cube = earth
Dodecahedron = aether
• First three can change by rearrangement of equilateral triangles
For example: 2 tetrahedrons (fire) = 1 octahedron (air)
IV. Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Epistemology
A. Metaphysics: Plato versus Aristotle1. Plato: properties of physical things from the Forms (external)
2. Aristotle: physical is reality; internal properties = form and matter
• Form = properties (weight, color, etc)
• Matter = structure (substance)
B. Epistemology1. Start with
senses
2. Leads to knowledge
Example: observation of dogs
Common sense!
3. Induction leads to deduction
• Form and matter cannot be separated
C. Nature and Change1. Change happens
Form changes; matter stays the same
2. 3 categories of beingNot, potential, actual
C. Nature and Change3. Cause of change
• All natural things behave according to their nature• Biological: inner driving force
• Four causes• Formal cause: properties that can change• Material cause: unchanging matter• Efficient cause: agent of causation• Final cause: goal, purpose (teleology)
• Examples:
• Statue • Newborn baby
(compare to atomists)
• The 4 elements: earth and water- down; air and fire- up
Hot
Cold
Dry Wet
D. Aristotle’s Stuff
Fire Air
Earth Water
• Reducible • Not geometrically
• Sensible qualities
Cold and dry =
Hot and dry = = Hot and wet
= Cold and wet
• Changeable
Natural places:
Earth and Water: down
Air and Fire: up
Fifth element (quintessence) = aether
• Cosmos completely filled with the aether
• No void (argument against void)
Other properties of the 4 elements
• Heavy or light• Earth heaviest – water – air - fire lightest• Heaviest falls to center
• Proof Earth is at center of universe• Proof Earth is spherical
• Lightest ascend to lunar sphere• If
unimpeded:
• Proof that Earth is stationary
• Physical reality:• Movements blocked• Mixtures of things
V. Aristotle’s Cosmology
• 2 (concentric) sphere model
• Problem with planetary motion
A. Eudoxus – Plato Model (student of Plato’s)
• Greeks not concerned with physical reality
• Greeks concerned with circles
Zodiac
Celestial equator
Solstice
Ecliptic
Equinox
Equinox
Solstice
The Celestial Sphere
V. Aristotle’s Cosmology
A. Origin of CosmosB. Properties of the
Universe1. Sphere divided into upper and lower regionsa. Celestial
region• Unchanging cycle
• Perfect circular motion• Filled with
aether• Celestial spheres
• Change and degeneration
• Unmoved mover (prime mover)
“in the whole range of time past … no change … of the outermost heavens”
“all motion involves a mover”b. Sublunar region
• Made up of the 4 elements
VI. MotionA. No motion without a mover
B. Two types of motion
1. Natural motion (internal force)
• Up: fire and air
• Towards natural place in a straight line
• Down: water and earth
2. Forced motion (external force)• Not in a straight
line• Motion stops when external force removed• Problem: projectiles
C. Celestial motion1. Unchanging
2. Perfect, circular motion3. Problem with seven wandering stars: sun, moon,
5 planets
• Retrograde motion of Mars
• Solution: each “star” given own sphere (Eudoxus)• 55 circles plus fixed star sphere
4. Ultimate cause of motion: unmoved (prime) mover
• Celestial spheres seek to emulate perfection of p.m.
VII. Biology
A. History of Animals1. Father of Biology, Zoology, Invertebrate Zoology
2. Over 500 species described
3. Begin with description, then explain
B. Classification
1. Red blooded
• Oviparous quadrupeds
• Viviparous quadrupeds
• Marine mammals
• Birds
• Fish
C. Souls (Internal organizing principles)
1. Nutritive soul- nourishment, growth, reproduction
• All that plants have
2. Sensitive soul – sensation and motion
• Animals have this plus nutritive soul
3. Rational soul
• Only humans have
• Souls do not survive death
VIII. Achievements1. Nature of Stuff and how to know it2. Change and causation3. Structure of Cosmos4. Nature of deity (prime mover)5. Authority on disciplines
a. Terrestrial dynamicsb. Meteorologyc. Planetary astronomyd. Geologye. Physiologyf. Chemistryg. Biology
i. Zoology ii. intertidal marine
invertebrates6. Immediate problems: projectile and planetary motion
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