Attempts to find perennial elements in Aristotle’s cosmology are doomed to failure because his distinction of sub- and supra-lunary realms no longer holds. More fruitful approaches to the contemporary importance of Aristotelian cosmology must focus on parities of reasoning rather than content. This paper highlights the striking parallels between Aristotle’s use of symmetry arguments in cosmology and instances of Noether’s First Theorem in contemporary physics. Both observe simple motion, find symmetries in that motion, argue from those symmetries to notions of (...) conservation, and then conclude to cosmological structure. These parallels reveal an enduring relevance for Aristotelian cosmology that does not depend on positing an enduring content to his cosmological claims. (shrink)

Abstract The historical evolution of the principle of relativity from Galileo to Einstein is briefly traced, and purported difficulties with Einstein's formulation of the principle are examined and dismissed. This formulation is then compared to a precise version formulated recently in the geometrical language of spacetime theories. We claim that the recent version is both logically puzzling and fails to capture a crucial physical insight contained in the earlier formulations. The implications of this claim for the modern treatment of general (...) dynamical symmetries are discussed. (shrink)