Aristotelian theory of gravity

Aristotelian physics is a form of natural science described in the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE). In his work Physics, Aristotle intended to establish general principles of change that govern all natural bodies, both living and inanimate, celestial and terrestrial – including all motion, change with respect to place, change with respect to size or number, qualitative change of any kind; and "coming to be" (coming into existence, "generation") and "passing away" (no longer existing, "corruption").

To Aristotle, "physics" was a broad field that included subjects such as the philosophy of mind, sensory experience, memory, anatomy and biology. It constitutes the foundation of the thought underlying many of his works.

nature is everywhere the cause of order.

While consistent with common human experience, Aristotle's principles were not based on controlled, quantitative experiments, so, while they account for many broad features of nature, they do not 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 technology 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 as final causes 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 concepts that Aristotle believes are requisite to that analysis.

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