Aristotle’s Physics

3 credits · Undergraduate

The Physics defines nature and its study both for Aristotle and for much of the development of science and philosophy of nature in the west. The class will treat the dialectic which Aristotle finds in earlier thinkers on nature, the definition of nature, the causes, chance and necessity, time, the void, infinity and limit in nature and place. Finally, it will consider the understanding of change which is at the heart of the work as a whole. Problems in earlier considerations of nature in the ancients generally and especially in the Pre-Socratics and Plato will be treated, as well as the relation of Aristotelian arguments to the social and technological context of his time. FORMATS: Lecture | Tutorial