![]() ![]() The possibility of change he saved by distinguishing being into ten categories and into actual and potential being. Beause of his historical milieu, Aristotle had first to justify the possibility of motion by assigning principles that would account for motion in the face of the Eleatic denial. thomas aquinas, whose commentary on Aristotle's Physics is the fullest account of a philosophy of motion. ![]() ![]() It remained for aristotle to give the first reasonably complete analysis ( Physics 200b 12 –231a 20 250b 11 –267b 26). Yet he was constrained to think even of the movement of reason as similar to the local motion of a sphere and its relatively immobile central point ( Laws 898A cf. He also defined soul as "the motion which can move itself" ( Laws 896A), and he listed psychic operations as examples of motion ( Laws 897A). ![]() In Theaetetus (181C –182A), however, he introduced the concept of qualitative change or alteration ( ἀ λ λ ο ί ω σ ι ν) as one of the two types of motion. Plato distinguished motion from becoming ( γ έ ν ε σ ι ς Theaetetus 152D –153E), although he usually understood motion as local motion ( Laws 893B –894A). They reduced all change to local motion, that is, to the redistribution of atoms in space (see atomism greek philosophy). The subsequent atomists were one in denying the possibility of absolute coming into being. Because his concept of being was absolute, Parmenides himself denied that anything could come to be. The famous paradoxes of zeno of elea, for example, purported to disprove the intelligibility of local motion. The only philosophers to deny the possibility of change were parmenides and his Eleatic school. From the beginning they spoke of the process of becoming in this terminology: things came into being by being "separated" from an original mass, by condensation and rarefaction, or by a downward and upward path. Since the early Greek philosophers lacked precise concepts of the different kinds of being, they reduced all changes to the simplest type of motion, local motion or change of place. This analysis forms the conceptual background against which the characteristic approach of modern science, as well as further contributions by modern philosophers, are most easily discussed.Įarly Greeks. Originating among the early Greeks, the philosophical analysis of motion reached its fullest development in the thought of Aristotle and the scholastics. Accordingly, the present article treats motion under two aspects, the first part dealing with it from the standpoint of philosophy, the second from that of psychology. It is also of interest to psychologists, for the perception of motion -examined in scholastic and modern psychology alike -has given rise to several theories on this subject. This notwithstanding, motion constitutes the first and enduring problem of philosophy, and through the study of it philosophers come to significant insights into material being and into the nature of being itself. Aristotle held that it is unnecessary to prove the existence of motion, since the fact is evident. In a strict sense it means successive and continuous change, usually spoken of as movement. In the wide sense it stands for any change, for any transition from one state or condition to another. motus ) can be taken in a wide and in a strict sense. ![]()
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