Aristotle: Natural Science

Ethics for Rational Animals brings to light a novel account of akrasia, practical wisdom, and character virtue through an original and comprehensive study of the moral psychology at the basis of Aristotle's ethics. It argues that practical wisdom is a persuasive rational excellence, that virtue is a listening excellence, and that the ignorance involved in akrasia is in fact a failure of persuasion. Aristotle's moral psychology emerges from this reconstruction as a qualified intellectualism. The view is intellectualistic because it describes (...) practical wisdom as the sort of knowledge that can govern desire and action and akrasia as involving a form of ignorance. However, Aristotle's intellectualism is qualified because practical wisdom goes beyond grasping the truth about the human good, for it must also be able to convey the truth persuasively to non-rational cognition and desires. (shrink)

The Catena aurea entium of Henry of Herford is part of the work of re-elaboration of Aristotle’s natural-philosophical corpus, which characterised the European intellectual environment in the Late Middle Ages. In the central books of his encyclopaedia, Henry comments on the works of natural philosophy of Albert the Great, placing himself in continuity with the cultural project started by Albert in Cologne. The present article aims to compare the 5th book of the Catena aurea entium, which consists of a comment (...) per modum quaestionis on the Meteora of Albert the Great, with some meteorological quaestiones composed between the 13th and 15th centuries. This analysis will lead me to grasp the philosophical orientations and interpretation of Henry and also his reception of Albert the Great’s meteorology. In the 5th book, Henry introduces an extensive medical section taken from the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata, in which he applies the Galenic medical principles to meteorology. Besides, in the quaestio 105 (V 1 105), he interprets Albert through the theological-poetic explanation of ancient origins on the sacrality of the number three and an excerpt from the Liber proverbiorum. (shrink)

A puzzle about the presentation of objects located at a distance is seen to animate Aristotle's account of transparency in De Anima and De Sensu.

Although there is much scholarship on Aristotle’s account of friendship (φιλία), almost all of it has focused on inter-personal relationships between human animals. Nonetheless, in both Aristotle’s ethical and zoological writings, he documents the intra- and inter-species friendship between many kinds of animals, including between human and non-human animals. Such non-human animal friendships establish both an indirect basis for establishing moral ties between humans and non-human animals (insofar as we respect their capacity to love and befriend others) and a direct (...) basis for establishing such ties (insofar as Aristotle provides a framework for thinking about utility and pleasure friendships between human and non-human animals). My paper defends Aristotle’s limitation of inter-species friendships to only utility and pleasure friendships and responds to scholars who claim that Aristotle recognizes no moral ties between human and non-human animals. (shrink)

While Aristotle provides the crucial testimonies for the paradoxes of motion, topos, and the falling millet seed, surprisingly he shows almost no interest in the paradoxes of plurality. For Plato, by contrast, the plurality paradoxes seem to be the central paradoxes of Zeno and Simplicius is our primary source for those. This paper investigates why the plurality paradoxes are not examined by Aristotle and argues that a close look at the context in which Aristotle discusses Zeno holds the answer to (...) this question. (shrink)

Thomas Nagel argues that Aristotle identifies rationality as the ergon idion of the human being. Against Nagel, I defend a reading of Aristotle which depicts a complex human ergon. This complex identity involves desire. It is in Book X of the Nichomachean Ethics that my understanding of Aristotle's position is clinched.

Few ideas are more central to Aristotle’s thought than that of the causal purposiveness of natural things. Few ideas in the Aristotelian corpus are more controverted—whether historically, by early modern natural philosophers seeking to break with Aristotelian science or currently, by modern scholars of ancient philosophy seeking to interpret Aristotle’s physics—than what has come to be called Aristotle’s “teleology” (a term coined in the 18th century, apparently by the German philosopher Christian Wolff). In this ambitious study (derived from the author’s (...) 2003 doctoral dissertation at the University of Toronto), Monte Johnson [J.] aims at two goals: to determine both how Aristotle uses the notions of “ends” or purposes in his natural philosophy and what are the limits to Aristotle’s teleological explanations. (shrink)

Aristotle (384-322 B.C), a well know Greek philosopher, physician, scientist and politician. A variety of identifying researches have been written on him. It is therefore a considerable pride for the researcher to write something about him when even mentioning his name and his father's name is a point of prestige in the Greek Language. His name means the preferable sublimity whereas Nicomachus (his father's name) means the definable negotiator. His father's and mother's origin belongs to Asclepiade, the favorite origin in (...) Greek. Points of view regarding this figure are controversial some praise him and consider him the peak of philosophical thinker which makes humanity in general owe this genius thinker a great deal. Others believe that the effect of his thought on humanity is the reason behind the non-progress of science. Whatever ones opinion is, his thoughts have a wonderful force in stimulating and positively affecting the people's thinking. His philosophy is the greatest philosophy which the world has ever witnessed or which may ever witness., if it couldn’t solve some of the problems of philosophy, it at least, makes the world more rational than before. He is the founder of the philosophical language in describing a large number of philosophical terms which are still in use nowadays. Moreover his books and platonic dialogues are considered encyclopedias in providing a basis for philosophy even before Socrates. For theses among other reasons, I am choosing Aristotle as a subject for research and concentrating on natural philosophy. The critical side deals with the criticism of natural philosophers. In order to fully understand Aristotle, we should understand his predecessors. Their virtue is undeniable. Without them, Aristotle's and Plato's genius would never be in this ideal shape. In addition to that, they are philosophers and scientists who mixes between science, philosophy, morality and politics in a complementary form. They are a source of illumination to the human thinking in general. Without them humanity could never have got rid of mythology. This is the code of life, for many generations should pass before the rare genius could attain a prominent idea. When Tales formulates the philosophical question, where does the world come from? This is a decisive moment in human thinking similar to the coming moments, the one Parmenides, and Protagoras statement: man is the norm for all things. Pre-Socrates philosophers are all considered glowing points in drawing Aristotle's philosophy. Thus my book is entitles (Aristotle's criticism of Pre-Socratic Natural Philosophy) which means the concentration on the critical operation through which the natural side of the previous philosophers appears. The nature of the title forces me to deal with Aristotle's ideas from every point of view. Thus the book proceeds according to structure and criticism and the construction of Aristotle's philosophy. Because the title is comprehensive and limited simultaneously, I have chosen the critical subjects in the lights of the natural philosophy. I have divided the book into four chapters with fourteen sections in addition to the implemented parts included in every section purporting to cover every part of criticism looking for comprehensiveness. I have found it obligatory to mention something about Aristotle's view in criticism, in addition to a precise delimitation of nature and its subjects. This is the subject of the first chapter. The second chapter deals with the principles of natural body, i.e., the principles dealt with pre-Aristotle philosophy and then these three principles (Hyle, form ,and Non-being). After delaminating these sides, it is possible to deal with the details (Movement, Place, Time, Vacuum and Infinite) which are natural concepts for the third chapter. As a complementation to the natural sides, the chapter four deals with two topics , Universal and corruption, and theory of elements. This book, in my own opinion, is comprehensive to the majority of natural philosophers and it focuses on the argument of Aristotle's criticism to the views of natural philosophers before Socrates together with the discussion of the Aristotelian alternative from these points of view. Aristotle sometimes tends to praise the previous philosophers. This does not mean the non-conformity between what he wants to say and what they described. When he, for example, says that the previous philosophers realized the material defect in Thales idea that water is the origin of all things but Thales’ water is not like Aristotle's Hyle, it is completely different thing. Finally I have viewed the index of Arab Library, and was unable to trace a book which is especially oriented in this subject i.e. writings on Aristotle's criticism to natural philosophy before Socrates. Therefore I have been stimulated to write about a very new subject. This subject fills a gap in Arab studies. (shrink)

I present a developmental account of Aristotle’s concept of hê hylê (usually translated “the matter”), focused the earliest developments. I begin by analyzing fragments of some lost early works and a chapter of the Organon, texts which indicate that early in his career Aristotle had not yet begun to use he hylê in a technical sense. Next, I examine Physics II 3, a chapter in which Aristotle conceives of he hylê not as a kind of cause in its own right, (...) but merely as an example of the so-called “out of which” cause : the material is the cause out of which an artifact is made. Next, I examine Physics II 7, a chapter in which Aristotle names "the material" as one of the four kinds of cause in its own right. But Aristotle’s model of "the material" remains the material out of which an artifact is made. (shrink)

On Zeno Beach there are infinitely many grains of sand, each half the size of the last. Supposing Aristotle denied the possibility of Zeno Beach, did he have a good argument for the denial? Three arguments, each of ancient origin, are examined: the beach would be infinitely large; the beach would be impossible to walk across; the beach would contain a part equal to the whole, whereas parts must be lesser. It is attempted to show that none of these arguments (...) was Aristotle’s. Indeed, perhaps Aristotle’s finitism applied to magnitude only, not plurality. (shrink)

Review of: R. Polansky & W. Wians (eds.), Reading Aristotle. Argument and Exposition, Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2017, in Revue philosophique de Louvain, 117, p. 166-169.

In Metaphysics Λ.6-7 Aristotle argues that an unmoved substance causes the outermost sphere to rotate. His argument has puzzled and divided commentators from ancient Greece to the present. I offer a novel defense of Aristotle's argument by highlighting the logic of classification that Aristotle deploys. The core of Aristotle's argument is the identification of the unmoved substance on the 'table of opposites' as simple and purely actual. With this identification in place, Aristotle argues that the outermost sphere activates its capacity (...) to relocate its body by rotating because this is how it can be a simple and actual substance. But unlike traditional attempts to rehabilitate Aristotle's argument, I argue that the sphere does not rotate in order to imitate the Prime Mover. Rather, the sphere rotates because that is good for it to do, and the Prime Mover is a metaphysically necessary source of simple and actual substantial being, which the sphere acts for the sake of. (shrink)

Once upon a time in the twentieth century, it was considered good sense by some to think that Aristotle began his De anima with a series of very Aristotelian theories about the soul, and that the function of its first book was to eristically taunt his predecessors for failing to appreciate hylomorphism, or patronizingly praise them for getting the odd bit right. Jason Carter deserves our thanks for showing how wrong-headed this reading of Aristotle is. His book begins with the (...) much more sensible assumption that the review of previous δόξαι in DA I plays an important and even constitutive role for theses at the core of Aristotle's theory of soul and living things, prominent among them these two: that the soul... (shrink)

Aristotle is said to have held that any kind of actual infinity is impossible. I argue that he was a finitist (or "potentialist") about _magnitude_, but not about _plurality_. He did not deny that there are, or can be, infinitely many things in actuality. If this is right, then it has implications for Aristotle's views about the metaphysics of parts and points.

How many scientific demonstrations can a single phenomenon have? This paper argues that, according to Aristotle's theory of scientific knowledge as laid out in the Posterior Analytics, a single conclusion may be demonstrated via more than one explanatory middle term. I also argue that this model of multiple demonstration is put into practice in the biological writings. This paper thereby accomplishes two related goals: it clarifies certain relatively obscure passages of the Posterior Analytics and uses them to show how Aristotle (...) explains biological phenomena by reference to both final and material causes in the Parts of Animals. The first part of the paper explains the account of multiple demonstration present in the Posterior Analytics and distinguishes it from another kind of plural explanation rejected by Aristotle. The second part of the paper turns to the biological explanation in the Parts of Animals and shows how Aristotle's account of multiple demonstrations works in practice. The paper thus provides evidence for the claim that the ‘applied’ reasoning on display in the biological works is in harmony with the framework of the logical treatises, and thus may also shed light on questions of the unity of the Aristotelian corpus. (shrink)

The main aim of my paper is to analyse Aristotle’s theory of language in the context of his Physics I.1 and via an analysis and an interpretation of this part of his Physics I try to show that (i) the study of human language (logos) significantly falls within the competence of Aristotle’s physics (i.e. natural philosophy), (ii) we can find the results of such (physical) inquiry in Aristotle’s zoological writings, stated in the forms of the first principles, causes and elements (...) of the human speech (logos) and (iii) the analogies (Phys. 184b13-14) made by Aristotle at the very end of the first chapter make better sense if we consider them in the broader context in which Aristotle recognizes language as a complex natural phenomenon we are born into and which has to be not only biologically, but also socially developed through our lives. Hence, I aim towards a more naturalistic reading of Aristotle’s views on language. (shrink)

Despite his awareness that organisms are well suited to the habitats they are typically found in, Aristotle nowhere tries to explain this. It is unlikely that he thinks this “fit” (as I call it) between organisms and their habitats is simply a lucky coincidence, given how vehemently he rejects that as an explanation of the fit between organisms’ various body parts. But it is quite puzzling that Aristotle never explicitly addresses this, since it is a question that seemed so pressing (...) to later philosophers and biologists such as Darwin. In this paper I offer a solution to that puzzle. As I argue, the type of habitat an organism lives in is partly constitutive of its essence or nature. The reason Aristotle does not ask, for instance, why marsh-dweller birds live in marshes, is that it is simply constitutive of their nature that they do so. Given that habitat is built into a kind’s essence, the answer to such a question is obvious and the question would have seemed to him trivial. By attending to the details of his biological treatises, I show that Aristotle’s conception of a living being’s essence is much more nuanced than one can glean from his discussions in the Physics and Metaphysics alone. (shrink)

The longevity of Aristotelian natural science consists not so much in the fact that Aristotle’s solutions to puzzles were accepted by generations of philosophers, but by the fact that the presuppositions that made these puzzles look puzzling were. In what follows I consider some Neoplatonic responses to two puzzles that Aristotle poses in De Caelo Book 2, Chapter 12. Both Proclus and Simplicius rejected Aristotle’s solutions to the puzzles he posed. In one case, but not in the other, they also (...) reassessed the relative importance of the presuppositions that created the puzzle. (shrink)

Naturbegriffe beschreiben naturphilosophische Gegenstandsbereiche und fassen Resultate naturphilosophischer Diskurse zusammen. Gehört ihre Bestimmung zu den grundlegenden Aufgaben der Naturphilosophie, so stellt ihre gegenwärtige Vielfalt für die Naturphilosophie eine Herausforderung dar, Von kaum einer wirkungsgeschichtlich bedeutsamen Definition von Natur ist in den letzten Jahrzehnten behauptet worden, ihr komme keine Relevanz für den Diskurs zu. Der Beitrag zeigt Ordnungsstrukturen in der Pluralität der Verwendungsweisen auf und begründet den aktuellen Geltungsanspruch traditioneller Begriffe im Bezug auf spezifische Erfahrungsweisen. Nach einer Einführung beginne ich mit (...) der Unterscheidung von wissenschaftlicher und nichtwissenschaftlicher Naturerfahrung, beziehe auf diese Differenz die Aufgaben der Naturphilosophie und gehe dann mit einer Klassifikation von Naturbegriffen zum exemplarischen Teil über. In diesem diskutiere ich am Beispiel bestimmter Aspekte der Naturbegriffe von Aristoteles und Descartes ihre für die Gegenwart typischen Bedingungen der Verwendung in nichtwissenschaftlicher Erfahrung sowie darüber hinaus vorkommender Verwendungen. (shrink)

Der folgende Vortrag hat zwei Teile. Teil 1 hat mit dem Internet zu tun und mit neuen Entwicklungen im Bereich des so genannten „ontological engineering“. Teil 2 hat zu tun mit der kantischen Philosophie und mit neuen Versuchen, diese Philosophie mit Hilfe der Quantenphysik zu unterstützen. Diese zwei Teile sind nicht vollkommen unabhängig voneinander, aber die Verbindung zwischen den zwei Teilen wird erst im Laufe des Vortrags klar werden.

How, and why, does Earth (the element) move to the centre of Aristotle's Universe? In this paper, I argue that we cannot understand why it does so by reference merely to the nature of Earth, or the attractive force of the Centre. Rather, we have to understand the role that Earth plays in the cosmic order. Thus, in Aristotle, the behaviour of the elements is explained as one explains the function of organisms in a living organism.

Review of T. K. Johansen's book Aristotle on the sense organs. Aristotle seeks to explain the characteristics of the different sense organs by reference to the goal that they serve, that of enabling animals to perceive. A material basis is necessary for sense perception but it is an open question whether the material in question undergoes a physiological change.

Critical notice of R. Mayhew's, The Female In Aristotle's Biology.

A general article discussing philosophical issues arising in connection with Aristotle's "Generation of Animals" (Chapter from Blackwell's Companion to Aristotle).

In his questio on the motion of elements and mixed bodies in a void the Italian professor of practical medicine, Albertino Rinaldi da Salso di Piacenza (Albertinus de Rainaldis de Placentia, also known as Albertino da Piacenza), held the clearly non-Aristotelian view that an element in a void would not move instantaneously, but successively. To prove his conclusion Albertino draws to a large degree on arguments proposed by Richard Kilvington. Among the few 14th century authors who rejected Aristotle’s account of (...) motion in a vacuum Kilvington had presented the most thorough analysis of this subject. While Kilvington is known for his sophisticated argumentation and entangled style of presenting and sometimes nearly hiding his own opinions, Albertino’s treatise is better structured, and his conclusions are brought out more clearly. His disputation is an impressive testimony to the impact of Kilvington’s views of motion in a void. (shrink)

This volume offers a new edition of the original text and an Italian translation of Dante Alighieri’s Questio de aqua et terra, discussed in Verona in 1320. The introductory apparatus and the textual commentary reconstruct the historical context of the quaestio (in the light of the debates on the nature of the elements and Aristotelian cosmology), its discussions in the historiography of science and philosophy, and the fortune of the text in its editions from the sixteenth century onwards.

This essay considers three case studies of Aristotle’s use of matter, drawn from three different scientific contexts: menstrual fluid as the matter of animal generation in the Generation of Animals, the living body as matter of an organism in Aristotle’s On the Soul (De Anima), and the matter of elemental transformation in Generation and Corruption. I argue that Aristotle conceives of matter differently in these treatises (1) because of the different sorts of changes under consideration, and (2) because sometimes he (...) is considering the matter for one specific change, and sometimes the matter for all of a thing’s natural changes. My account allows me to explain some of the strange features that Aristotle ascribes to the matter for elemental transformation in Generation and Corruption II. These features were interpreted by later commentators as general features of all matter. I argue that they are a result of the specific way that Aristotle thinks about the transmutation of the elements. (shrink)

In late Renaissance medicine, the example of digestion was frequently invoked to prove the elemental composition of the human body. Food was considered as being decomposed in its first elements by the stomach, and digested into a thick juice, which was assimilated by the liver and the body parts. Such a process points to the structure of the human body into four elements that are transformed into different types of humors during several stages of “concoction”. This chapter examines the Galenic (...) interpretation of digestion expounded by the French physician Jean Fernel (1497–1558) in his Physiologia (1567). In this treatise, Fernel states the body composition into elemental portions, while stressing the role of the “innate heat” as the physiological counterpart of the body’s essence or “substantial form”. He applies this view in his account of digestion, where he states that the conversion of food follows the rule of “mixture”. This chapter aims to explore how Fernel applies his interpretation of elements and innate heat to the process of digestion, as well as his sources in Galen’s De facultatibus naturalibus, Avicenna’s Canon and Aristotle’s Meteorologica. It first examines the role of the natural soul and its “nourishing” faculties in nutrition as a physiological function. It then considers the role of elements, humors and innate heat during the “concoction” of food in the stomach, liver and veins. (shrink)

O presente trabalho visa demonstrar como a relação entre corpo e alma são indispensáveis para o viver. Para tanto, considera a tese de que o ser animado é uma substância composta de matéria e forma, que também pode ser analisada sob a perspectiva de potência e ato. Neste sentido, o trabalho inicia com a compreensão sobre o que é uma substância, qual tipo de substância é o ser vivo para, em seguida, mediante as definições de alma presentes no livro Β (...) do De Anima, perceber como se dá a relação entre corpo e alma e porque tal relação é necessária ao viver. (shrink)

A review of Helen Lang's monograph on Aristotle's physics.

This paper presents a discussion about how the necessity and teleology are present in the theory of nature in Empedocles and Aristotle. For this task we go through the fragments relate to the thought of Empedocles in the Poem From Nature as a central reference to the work The presocratic philosophers of Kirk and Raven, and the work Physics I and II of Aristotle.

This paper investigates Péter Pázmány’s theory of mixtures from his exegesis of Meteorologica IV, in the context of sixteenth-century scholarship on Aristotle’s Meteorologica. It aims to contribute to a discussion of Anneliese Maier’s thesis concerning the incompatibility between hylomorphism and the theory of elements in the Aristotelian tradition. It presents two problems: the placement of Meteorologica IV in the Jesuit cursus on physics and the conceptualization of putrefaction as a type of substantial mutation. Through an analysis of these issues, it (...) shows how sixteenth-century exegesis imposes the hylomorphic thesis onto the subject matter of meteorology and how the hylomorphic theory of substantial change can be adapted in order to accommodate the theory of elements. The case being made is that Meteorologica is a privileged place where hylomorphism and the theory of elements meet and that the late Aristotelian theory of mixtures sought to accommodate both theories of material substance. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Motivation for Matter Why does Aristotle make matter so central to his account of the natural world, making it a principle of nature and one of the four causes? Although there is considerable interest in how Aristotle conceives of matter, scholars rarely investigate why he thinks of it as fundamental to the natural world. Some simply ask why Aristotle thinks there must be matter. Other interpreters do not even agree that we should ask this question; they claim that Aristotle (...) does not give reasons for needing matter because matter is an everyday notion we need not motivate. I think that in Physics I Aristotle gives us good reasons – perhaps even compelling ones – for thinking that matter is necessary for any understanding of the natural world. We, as interpreters, can use these reasons to understand what matter is for Aristotle, making progress where scholars have offered many incompatible interpretations. The first chapter of the dissertation presents my basic account of why Aristotle needs matter and what it is. I argue that Aristotle makes matter central to his natural philosophy because it is needed in order to understand change. Specifically, in order for there to be change, there must be something whose very nature is to undergo change. This is what matter is for Aristotle: the thing whose very nature is to undergo change. Since matter is picked out by its role in change, the very same thing will be matter and other things, based on what other roles it has. Just as the same person can be a doctor and a builder, so the same person can be a doctor and matter. This chapter also highlights the strength of my account by arguing against a rival interpretation of Aristotle’s motivation for matter, according to which matter is needed so that something persists through change. The second chapter argues for my interpretation through a close reading of Aristotle’s Physics I. (shrink)

Argues that Aristotle regarded the universe, or Totality, as a single substance with form and matter, and that he regarded this substance together with the Prime Mover as a self-mover.

In this paper I investigate central temporal and spatial notions in the second part of Plato’s Parmenides and argue that also these notions, and not only the metaphysical ones usually discussed in the literature, can be understood as a response to positions and problems put on the table by Parmenides and Zeno. Of the spatial notions examined in the dialogue, I look at the problems raised for possessing location and shape, while with respect to temporal notions, I focus on the (...) discussion of ‘being in time’ and exaiphnês (the latter notion will be shown to be also an important influence for Aristotle’s Physics). In displaying a paradoxical character and taking up crucial notions from Parmenides, the second part of the Parmenides seems to display some resemblance to Zeno’s paradoxes. I will show, however, that in contrast to Zeno, the second part of Plato’s Parmenides also demonstrates Parmenides’ One to be problematic on its own terms. Furthermore, the dialogue presents not only important problems that these spatial and temporal notions seem to lead us into, but also establishes some positive features necessary to think of time and space. In this way, Plato’s Parmenides can be seen as contributing to the development of temporal and spatial conceptualisations in ancient Greek thought. (shrink)

Aristotle argues that time depends on soul to count it, but adds that motion, which makes time what it is, may be independent of soul. The claim that time depends on soul or mind implies that there is at least one measurable property of natural beings that exists because of the mind’s activity. This paper argues that for Aristotle time depends partly on soul, but more importantly on motion, which defines a continuum. This argument offers a robust metaphysics of time. (...) In contrast to modern philosophy of physics, for Aristotle the continuum of motion is prior in being to time, while time is a hybrid of the real continuum of motion and the activity of mind. (shrink)

In De interpretatione 9, Aristotle argues against the fatalist view that if statements about future contingent singular events (e.g. ‘There will be a sea battle tomorrow,’ ‘There will not be a sea battle tomorrow’) are already true or false, then the events to which those statements refer will necessarily occur or necessarily not occur. Scholars have generally held that, to refute this argument, Aristotle allows that future contingent statements are exempt from either the principle of bivalence, or the law of (...) excluded middle. This paper offers a new interpretation of Aristotle’s refutation of fatalism. According to this interpretation, each member of a pair of contradictory future contingent statements, in virtue of expressing modal necessity, is simply false. (shrink)

The present PhD dissertation aims to examine the relation between modality and change in Aristotle’s metaphysics. -/- On the one hand, Aristotle supports his modal realism (i.e., worldly objects have modal properties - potentialities and essences - that ground the ascriptions of possibility and necessity) by arguing that the rejection of modal realism makes change inexplicable, or, worse, banishes it from the realm of reality. On the other hand, the Stagirite analyses processes by means of modal notions (‘change is the (...) actuality of what is virtual insofar as it is virtual’). In other words: to grasp what change is, one has to resort to the modal idiom of potentialities, while the fact that there is change is indicative of the fact that nature is full of modal properties. -/- Aristotle’s modal and kinetic realism finds a negative in the figure of the Megaric Diodorus Kronus. The polemical situation of Greek philosophy has indeed the dialectical advantage of not opposing the Aristotelian position to a sui generis straw man. Both in its reduction of modal judgements to temporal quantifications and in its dissolution of the reality of the state-of-being-in-motion in favour of a cinematographic view of processes, the philosophical figure of reductionist antirealism embodied by Diodorus constitutes an alternative that takes the opposite view of Aristotle’s realism. -/- The present study is structured as a discussion between these two positions. In the face of Diodorus’ antirealist challenges, Aristotle articulates modal and kinetic considerations: the answers he gives to Diodorus’ puzzles thus provide valuable insight into his metaphysics. Moreover, the examination of Aristotle’s and Diodorus’ metaphysics, because of their insight and originality, will not fail to interest the philosopher concerned with the metaphysical foundations of modern physics, insofar as the entanglement between modalities and processes is nowadays at the core of mechanics (phase spaces, path integrals, etc.). (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the relationship between the now, motion, and number in Aristotle to clarify the nature of the now, and, thereby, the relationship between motion and time. Although it is clear that for Aristotle motion, and, more generally, change, are prior to time, the nature of this priority is not clear. But if time is the number of motion, then the priority of motion can be grasped by examining his theory of number. This paper aims to show that, just (...) as numbers are generated by the soul, time is not presupposed by motion, but emerges through the soul’s articulation of motion. Time is co-constituted by the soul and motion. The now is the key to understanding both the contribution of motion and soul to the being of time. The now is part of the soul’s articulation of motion, and sets the stage for an act that distinguishes a unit from its underlying motion. The now, then, sets up an abstraction by which the soul generates the temporal number from motion. Reconstructing this account of abstraction allows us to formulate more strongly Aristotle’s claim to the ontological dependence of time on motion. The paper then gives a systematic overview of the relationships between the now and number in order to address the question of whether the now might be extended. It closes with an examination of the possibility that motion depends on time, and how universal time is possible. (shrink)