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I'd say you're overstating the extent to which Aristotle was "hopelessly wrong" in his physical theories. It's more that the things he was right about have beco
by dcre 10y ago
I'd say you're overstating the extent to which Aristotle was "hopelessly wrong" in his physical theories. It's more that the things he was right about have become so deeply ingrained in us that we don't even consider them questions of physics — they're just "how things are".
For example, his breaking down of the 4 types of causes: what a thing is made out of (material), what makes it what it is (formal), what process or force made it that way (efficient), and its purpose (final). What we today mean by "cause" usually only includes the efficient cause, so calling the rest "causes" can confuse more than it illuminates (at least at first). But everyone of course understands how to analyze things in terms of their matter, form, and purpose, even though we don't call them "causes" and we don't consider it "physics."
- charles-salvia 10y agoWith Aristotle in particular, I was thinking mostly of his statements about gravity and objects moving towards their natural place.
- foldr 10y agoThis is an interesting take on how Aristotle's physics was more correct than he is usually given credit for: https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057 https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057
- adrusi 10y agoThe point is that yes, there are some things he was wrong about, and when we think of the questions that "physics" amswers, those are the ones that come to mind. But that ignores the contributions he made that we don't think of as contributions at all because we take them so for granted that it's not at all clear to us that people could ever have thought otherwise. I don't know if the aitiai are the greatest examples of this, but the entire approach of questioning why objects move and change the way they do and trying to reduce it to a concise set of rules? My understanding of history is that that was very novel.
- charles-salvia 10y agoI agree. I don't downplay Aristotle's massive contribution to the development of human knowledge. I just claim it is more of historical significance than practical significance. I mean, Aristotelian physics has no real technological applications in the same way that Newtonian physics is used by rocket scientists or Einsteinian physics is used by your GPS.
- dcre 10y agoAbsolutely! I was actually thinking of the change and movement stuff too but I couldn't think of a concise way to express it like you can with the causes.
- agumonkey 10y agoHow far of Lagrangian mechanics this is ?