Aristotle 's Theory Of Falling

Ancient cultures did not believe the Earth to be the spherical object we know Earth to be

There have been many philosophers in our world’s history, perhaps the most famous of them would be Aristotle. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who contributed to many different sciences including, logic, metaphysics, mathematics, biology, and countless others. Although Aristotle is famous now, he wasn’t very famous in his own time. Aristotle’s beliefs contradicted many of the modern beliefs in his time. Ben Waggoner, a professor at the University of California Museum of Paleontology, states, “Where Aristotle differed most sharply from medieval and modern thinkers was in his belief that the universe had never had a beginning and would never end; it was eternal.” Aristotle received much criticism for his divergent beliefs but is well-known

He was the first to study formal logic, founded called the Lyceum and tutored kings. He influenced Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions and beliefs. The Catholic Church took his view of a universal hierarchy and added the divine, the heavenly and the demonic to make their “Great Chain of Being.” Aristotle even had a basic idea of evolution based on God’s plan for the world (IEP). It is possible that he was the last person to know everything there was to know in his own time (Neill 488). His contributions to our understanding of the world are innumerable, despite that only about a third of his work survived. He contributed to philosophy as much as Plato, if not more. He took Plato’s theory of forms and changed it, making it his own, and in the process resolved the problems that he had noted, as well as those pointed out by Plato and others. He called his new theory he called Hylomorphism. Hylomorphism’s way of thinking stands directly opposite that which Plato’s forms encourage. Aristotle did not see the world as a reflection of another filled with forms but as the physical embodiment of the forms. The substances are created by the innate forms in the matter and are the only way we can perceive forms. This means that to Aristotle a substance did not have form only in an abstract world of forms but was contained by the object in and of

The Renaissance era can also be arguably in tune with nature and how we are woven into the world. While love can destroy us from the inside, the Earth can destroy our very being. Humans survive because of the Earth. We eat what is grown, and travel the along the soil. The world we know has such and impact on our live, that just the vastness of it causes fear and speculation. A speculation that has been promoted about the Earth was whether the Earth was flat or round. This has caused many speculations that even "The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) argued in his writings that the Earth was spherical, because of the circular shadow it cast on the Moon, during a lunar eclipse."(Stern). With new ideas came fear of the unknown, and what

Many ancient civilizations had their own beliefs about the stars and the universe. Some examples of these intelligent civilizations were the Ancient Babylonians, Middle Eastern civilizations, Central American civilizations, Ancient Chinese, and the Ancient Greeks. The Ancient Babylonians studied patterns on Venus which were later continued by Galileo and Copernicus. People from the Middle East, Central America, and China watched the skies and made many observations and predictions of movement in the heavens. There were many famous Philosophers and Astronomers from the Ancient Greek civilizations who studied the sky. They searched for patterns and numbers to find something fundamental. Thinkers attempted to come up with combinations of uniform circular motions that would prove their already observed irregular motions. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who thought that the moon, sun, and other planets rotated around the stationary Earth. But, as we know today, his theory was incorrect. Some other Greek philosophers attempted to measure the distance to the moon and even tried to find the size of the universe! They found the universe to be finite. On the other and, Claudius Ptolemy believed that the heavens (skies) were not made of rocks, metal, or other Earthy materials, but that they were made of

In Physics II, particularly parts 4-6, Aristotle asserts that all of nature is ultimately teleological: everything is organized towards some final end. The four main elements, earth, fire, water, and air, hold a natural purpose to move towards the center of planet earth. For example, the natural place for water is the surface of planet earth. These elements move and change the way they do, due to their forms. This is how their natural places in the world have been determined.

Lastly in terms of his understanding of causation, the final cause of a thing or object was its purpose (telos). The purpose of the statue is aesthetic in that it is admired; the purpose of my laptop is to help me do my work well. Aristotle uses the example of health being the cause of walking, 'Why does one walk?' he asks, 'that one may be healthy'. This is perhaps the most important of all the causes. Yet his understanding does not end here. Once something has achieved a state of actuality it is also in a state of potentiality. In this sense we can see that Aristotle saw that the universe was moving constantly between ‘potentiality’ to ‘actuality’ back to ‘potentiality’ once again. This idea required Aristotle to explain things further still because in order for this theory to work it must explain everything in the universe, including the universe itself.

A century after Aristotle, around 250BC, another Greek mathematician and philosopher named Eratosthenes made his claim to fame with a new alleged proof of a spherical Earth. Eratosthenes noted that at noon, during the summer solstice at Syene, the sun cast no shadows and the rays could reach straight to the bottom of his well, yet meanwhile in Alexandria, a vertically standing metal rod cast a significant shadow, by factoring the length of the shadow with his assumed distance to the sun, Eratosthenes recorded a measurement of Earth’s circumference close to what heliocentrist astronomers use today. The fact of the matter is Eratosthenes’ calculations were made assuming the sun to be millions of kilometers away so that its rays would fall perfectly

Since an essential idea of the medieval perspective toward the structure of the universe was the perfection of the planets and the position of God and his realm above them, Newton’s notions of bodies throughout the universe operating and functioning similarly dismantled this entire structure. If all other planets were governed by the same natural laws that Earth was governed on, these planets could not have been perfect nor led a hierarchy of perfection as the medieval philosophers and astronomists arranged. The medieval people were able to classify these planets as flawless celestial spheres based on the observation from their limited sight, which deems this system problematic. To Newton, this idea of a universe unified by its all encompassing

Aristotle believed all bodies and objects in the sub-lunar world, or the world beneath the moon, were made up of four elements or simple bodies; Earth, Water,

He believed that the world was composed of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. Earth, the heaviest, belonged to the lowest position in the hierarchy of the universe; water was next, then air and fire. Aristotle stated that if any of these were out of its order, then its natural motion would be to return. For instance, when there are water and earth (dirt) in a glass, water rise while dirt falls.

Free fall sets back to the times of the Aristoles. During that time Aristotle had the idea that more heavier object would fall faster than objects that weigh less. He came up to this conclusion due to examining a rock, and a feather, and saw how the rock fell faster, While the feather took a longer time than the rock to hit the ground. After quite sometime, there was a clear explanation that Aristotle was incorrect with his hypothesis.

The Greek philosophers did not explain the world using Gods. Instead, they preferred to explain the world using principles. These principles were fundamental in how the philosophers taught their students. Three philosophers, Plato, Epicures, and Aristotle, used different principles to help them explain the world and the universe around them. In this essay, the principles of these three philosophers will be explained and then compared with each other.

Aristotle uses observation quite often, just as the Empiricists do, to begin his arguments. They specifically believe that knowledge of the world comes from our senses, past experiences, and observations (Galen, 1985). When introducing a point Aristotle says, “The heaviest thing will be that which sinks to the bottom of all things that move downward, and the lightest that which rises to the surface of everything that moves upward” (Aristotle, 1922, p. 3). Here, Aristotle is using what he has observed in the world to base his argument. This, for all intents and purposes, is what Empiricists believe should be used and nothing more can be reliably used. This is one of the best way to support your

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist who lived from 384-322 B.C who was born in Stagira, Macedonia. His father played a major role in society as a physician in the royal court. Young Aristotle took a liking to Plato and decided to go to his academy at the age of seventeen. For the next twenty years, Aristotle remained there first as a student then as a teacher. After the death of Plato, Aristotle moved to Assos in the Asia Minor where he tutored his friend Hermias who was the ruler there and decided to marry his niece. After his death he then tutored Alexander the Great at the capital of Macedonia known as Pella. Later in his life, Aristotle decided to move back to Athens, Greece to open up his own school known as Lyceum.