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19 - Change, time, and place

from III - Natural philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2014

Cecilia Trifogli
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Robert Pasnau
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder
Christina van Dyke
Affiliation:
Calvin College, Michigan
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Summary

For Aristotle, the natural world is the world of things subject to change. Accordingly, Aristotle’s natural philosophy essentially consists in a philosophical investigation of change. Aristotle deals with the most fundamental philosophical issues about change in the Physics. Here he determines the intrinsic constituents of a thing that make it possible for it to be subject to change (matter and form), he classifies the types of explanatory factor at work in the natural world (the distinction of the four causes), and in particular he argues for the claim that nature acts for an end (teleological explanation). He also gives a general definition of change, which relates the notion of change to the more basic notions of act and potency, he shows that every change is continuous, and he proves the existence of an eternal motion and an unmoved mover. In addition, he provides a philosophical treatment of the notions of time, place, the void, and the infinite, which are thought to be necessary parts of a complete discussion of change. Because of its extremely rich philosophical content, the Physics was intensely studied by medieval philosophers and became the focal text for the assimilation of Aristotle’s natural philosophy.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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References

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Trifogli, Cecilia, Oxford Physics in the Thirteenth Century (ca. 1250–1270) (Leiden: Brill, 2000) pp. 51–66
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Trifogli, Cecilia, “Averroes’s Doctrine of Time and its Reception in the Scholastic Debate,” in Porro, P. (ed.) The Medieval Concept of Time (Leiden: Brill, 2001) 57–82
Adams, Marilyn McCord, William Ockham (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press) II: 853–99
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