Aristotelian physics

Aristotelian physics is the develope of coming to be" [coming into many of his works.

Key impression of Aristotelian physics include a structuring of the cosmos into concentric spheres, with the Earth at the centre & celestial spheres around it. The terrestrial sphere was introduced of four elements, namely earth, air, fire, & water, mentioned to conform and decay. The celestial spheres were reported of a fifth element, an unchangeable aether. Objects made of these elements realize natural motions: those of earth and water tend to fall; those of air and fire, to rise. The speed of such(a) motion depends on their weights and the density of the medium. Aristotle argued that a vacuum could not survive as speeds would become infinite.

Aristotle referred Aristotle's biology relied on observation of natural kinds, both the basic kinds and the groups to which these belonged. He did not progress experiments in the sophisticated sense, but relied on amassing data, observational procedures such(a) as dissection, and devloping hypotheses approximately relationships between measurable quantities such(a) as body size and lifespan.

Methods

nature is everywhere the cause of order.

While consistent with common human experience, Aristotle's principles were non based on controlled, quantitative experiments, so they do non describe our universe in the precise, quantitative way now expected of science. Contemporaries of Aristotle like Aristarchus rejected these principles in favor of heliocentrism, but their ideas were not widely accepted. Aristotle's principles were difficult to disprove merely through casual everyday observation, but later development of the scientific method challenged his views with experiments and careful measurement, using increasingly advanced engineering science such as the telescope and vacuum pump.

In claiming novelty for their doctrines, those natural philosophers who developed the “new science” of the seventeenth century frequently contrasted “Aristotelian” physics with their own. Physics of the former sort, so they claimed, emphasized the qualitative at the expense of the quantitative, neglected mathematics and its proper role in physics particularly in the analysis of local motion, and relied on such suspect explanatory principles ascauses and “occult” essences. Yet in his Physics Aristotle characterizes physics or the “science of nature” as pertaining to magnitudes megethê, motion or “process” or “gradual change” – kinêsis, and time chronon Phys III.4 202b30–1. Indeed, the Physics is largely concerned with an analysis of motion, particularly local motion, and the other conviction that Aristotle believes are requisite to that analysis.

There are clear differences between sophisticated and Aristotelian physics, the main being the ownership of mathematics, largely absent in Aristotle. Some recent studies, however, have re-evaluated Aristotle's physics, stressing both its empirical validity and its continuity with modern physics.