PHL 3305 Lecture 29

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Physics

Aristotle starts by talking about predecessors
- all prior thinkers treat contraries as principles
- in order for something to be a principle, there can't be anything that comes before it
- predecessors used some principles according to reason, others according to sensation
Talking about "physics" prior to the study of any natural science
In particular, about change
- within a substance (accidental change)
- "motion" of a substance, how it breaks down and is formed into something else (substantial change)

change always occurs between contraries along a spectrum
- white changes to non-white, but not just any non-white, but somewhere along the color spectrum
- also applies to composite objects as well

How many principles are there?
- 1: can't have contrary (pair with just one)
- infinite: being wouldn't be knowable
- 2: contraries have to act on something
- at least 3: contraries, and everything stops at substance (a subject that the contraries act on)

What is common to all changes?
- composite terms: musician = man with knowledge of music, where man and music are "simple"
- when change happens, something remains the same, and something doesn't
  - unmusical man becomes musical: the man stays the same.