Why Aristotle?

[Alan Grayson]

When I offered my theory of a hyper-spherical universe, I was accused of being "Aristotelian". But why? My primary assumption was IF the universe had a start or beginning, that "time" must of been characterized by zero volume. My reasoning is that IF had non-zero volume, it must have begun earlier; hence, this situation wasn't its start or beginning. My prejudice, if that's what it is, is that the creation event, if there was one, couldn't have "started" without some time-requiring process. So, if there was something, rather than nothing at the beginning, the time-requiring process must have began earlier, thus contradicting the idea of a beginning with some thing already existing, say some volume of space. The logic here is sort-of a proof by contradiction. Whether you agree or not, what has this to do with Aristotle? TIA, AG

[Brent Meeker]

On 1/26/2020 8:08 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

When I offered my theory of a hyper-spherical universe, I was accused of being "Aristotelian". But why? My primary assumption was IF the universe had a start or beginning, that "time" must of been characterized by zero volume.

Exactly the sort of thing Aristotle would have taken as a logical axiom. 

My reasoning is that IF had non-zero volume, it must have begun earlier; hence, this situation wasn't its start or beginning.

Look at the Hawking-Hartle no-boundary model.  When does it start?

My prejudice, if that's what it is, is that the creation event, if there was one, couldn't have "started" without some time-requiring process.

Another reliance of an Aristotlean intuition.  Did "start or beginning" turn into "creation event"?  Isn't "creation" just sneaking in the idea of a process.

So, if there was something, rather than nothing at the beginning, the time-requiring process must have began earlier, thus contradicting the idea of a beginning with some thing already existing, say some volume of space. The logic here is sort-of a proof by contradiction. Whether you agree or not, what has this to do with Aristotle?

Because Aristotle (and other Greek philosophers) thought their intuition could impose constraints on how nature can be, and called it "logic".  

Brent

TIA, AG

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[Alan Grayson]

On Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 11:54:24 PM UTC-7, Brent wrote:

On 1/26/2020 8:08 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

When I offered my theory of a hyper-spherical universe, I was accused of being "Aristotelian". But why? My primary assumption was IF the universe had a start or beginning, that "time" must of been characterized by zero volume.

Exactly the sort of thing Aristotle would have taken as a logical axiom. 

Does that mean it's wrong?  Does Aristotle have an exclusive patent on "right thought"? AG 

My reasoning is that IF had non-zero volume, it must have begun earlier; hence, this situation wasn't its start or beginning.

Look at the Hawking-Hartle no-boundary model.  When does it start?

Hawking still claims the universe has a beginning. It could be right. It's speculative, as is my model.  Is Hawking an Aristotelian? AG 

From Wiki: Hartle and Hawking suggest that if we could travel backwards in time towards the beginning of the Universe, we would note that quite near what might otherwise have been the beginning, time gives way to space such that at first there is only space and no time. According to the Hartle–Hawking proposal, the Universe has no origin as we would understand it: the Universe was a singularity in both space and time, pre-Big Bang. However, Hawking does state "...the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago.", but that the Hartle-Hawking model is not the steady state Universe of Hoyle; it simply has no initial boundaries in time or space

My prejudice, if that's what it is, is that the creation event, if there was one, couldn't have "started" without some time-requiring process.

Another reliance of an Aristotlean intuition.  Did "start or beginning" turn into "creation event"?  Isn't "creation" just sneaking in the idea of a process.

No. I think in science we try to extrapolate from observations of the physical world. It doesn't always work, but often it does. AG 

So, if there was something, rather than nothing at the beginning, the time-requiring process must have began earlier, thus contradicting the idea of a beginning with some thing already existing, say some volume of space. The logic here is sort-of a proof by contradiction. Whether you agree or not, what has this to do with Aristotle?

Because Aristotle (and other Greek philosophers) thought their intuition could impose constraints on how nature can be, and called it "logic".  

Like Democritus and his atomic theory of matter? AG 

Brent

TIA, AG

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[Philip Thrift]

On Monday, January 27, 2020 at 1:17:14 AM UTC-6, Alan Grayson wrote:

Hawking still claims the universe has a beginning. It could be right. It's speculative, as is my model.  Is Hawking an Aristotelian? AG 

If he 'still claims', it would be via a séance.

Stephen Hawking, sadly, did have an end.

http://www.hawking.org.uk/

@philipthrift

 

[Brent Meeker]

On 1/26/2020 11:17 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 11:54:24 PM UTC-7, Brent wrote:

On 1/26/2020 8:08 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

When I offered my theory of a hyper-spherical universe, I was accused of being "Aristotelian". But why? My primary assumption was IF the universe had a start or beginning, that "time" must of been characterized by zero volume.

Exactly the sort of thing Aristotle would have taken as a logical axiom. 

Does that mean it's wrong?  Does Aristotle have an exclusive patent on "right thought"? AG 

My reasoning is that IF had non-zero volume, it must have begun earlier; hence, this situation wasn't its start or beginning.

Look at the Hawking-Hartle no-boundary model.  When does it start?

Hawking still claims the universe has a beginning. It could be right. It's speculative, as is my model.  Is Hawking an Aristotelian? AG

No, because they simply present a theory and don't argue that it must be right because their "logic" (i.e. intution) demands it.  They tried to deduce some testable consequences of their theory.

From Wiki: Hartle and Hawking suggest that if we could travel backwards in time towards the beginning of the Universe, we would note that quite near what might otherwise have been the beginning, time gives way to space such that at first there is only space and no time. According to the Hartle–Hawking proposal, the Universe has no origin as we would understand it: the Universe was a singularity in both space and time, pre-Big Bang. However, Hawking does state "...the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago.", but that the Hartle-Hawking model is not the steady state Universe of Hoyle; it simply has no initial boundaries in time or space

My prejudice, if that's what it is, is that the creation event, if there was one, couldn't have "started" without some time-requiring process.

Which is why I cited Hawking-Hartle.  Their "process" doesn't require time in the physical sense to "start", rather time starts beyond a certain amount of space.

Another reliance of an Aristotlean intuition.  Did "start or beginning" turn into "creation event"?  Isn't "creation" just sneaking in the idea of a process.

No. I think in science we try to extrapolate from observations of the physical world. It doesn't always work, but often it does. AG 

So, if there was something, rather than nothing at the beginning, the time-requiring process must have began earlier, thus contradicting the idea of a beginning with some thing already existing, say some volume of space. The logic here is sort-of a proof by contradiction. Whether you agree or not, what has this to do with Aristotle?

Because Aristotle (and other Greek philosophers) thought their intuition could impose constraints on how nature can be, and called it "logic".  

Like Democritus and his atomic theory of matter? AG

Democritus (as far as we know, because we only have references to him) presented his atomic theory as empirical speculation.  He didn't try to "prove" it by specious logic; the way Aristotle argued that there could be no vacuum.  I'm not saying Aristotle was always wrong, just that he put too much faith in his intuition.  Almost all scientist now (Bruno being an exception as a logician) think it is a fools errand to try to derive even mathematics, much less physics from logic+intuition.

Brent

Brent

[Alan Grayson]

On Monday, January 27, 2020 at 2:05:48 PM UTC-7, Brent wrote:

On 1/26/2020 11:17 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 11:54:24 PM UTC-7, Brent wrote:

On 1/26/2020 8:08 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

When I offered my theory of a hyper-spherical universe, I was accused of being "Aristotelian". But why? My primary assumption was IF the universe had a start or beginning, that "time" must of been characterized by zero volume.

Exactly the sort of thing Aristotle would have taken as a logical axiom. 

Does that mean it's wrong?  Does Aristotle have an exclusive patent on "right thought"? AG 

My reasoning is that IF had non-zero volume, it must have begun earlier; hence, this situation wasn't its start or beginning.

Look at the Hawking-Hartle no-boundary model.  When does it start?

Hawking still claims the universe has a beginning. It could be right. It's speculative, as is my model.  Is Hawking an Aristotelian? AG

No, because they simply present a theory and don't argue that it must be right because their "logic" (i.e. intution) demands it.  They tried to deduce some testable consequences of their theory.

From Wiki: Hartle and Hawking suggest that if we could travel backwards in time towards the beginning of the Universe, we would note that quite near what might otherwise have been the beginning, time gives way to space such that at first there is only space and no time. According to the Hartle–Hawking proposal, the Universe has no origin as we would understand it: the Universe was a singularity in both space and time, pre-Big Bang. However, Hawking does state "...the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago.", but that the Hartle-Hawking model is not the steady state Universe of Hoyle; it simply has no initial boundaries in time or space

My prejudice, if that's what it is, is that the creation event, if there was one, couldn't have "started" without some time-requiring process.

Which is why I cited Hawking-Hartle.  Their "process" doesn't require time in the physical sense to "start", rather time starts beyond a certain amount of space.

Is there any known physical process that occurs instantaneously? If not, then my speculation about processes requiring finite non-zero time durations is reasonable. What's UN-reasonable is to assume the opposite. AG 

Another reliance of an Aristotlean intuition.  Did "start or beginning" turn into "creation event"?  Isn't "creation" just sneaking in the idea of a process.

No. I think in science we try to extrapolate from observations of the physical world. It doesn't always work, but often it does. AG 

So, if there was something, rather than nothing at the beginning, the time-requiring process must have began earlier, thus contradicting the idea of a beginning with some thing already existing, say some volume of space. The logic here is sort-of a proof by contradiction. Whether you agree or not, what has this to do with Aristotle?

Because Aristotle (and other Greek philosophers) thought their intuition could impose constraints on how nature can be, and called it "logic".  

Like Democritus and his atomic theory of matter? AG

Democritus (as far as we know, because we only have references to him) presented his atomic theory as empirical speculation.  He didn't try to "prove" it by specious logic; the way Aristotle argued that there could be no vacuum. 

Aristotle's intuition here was correct. Think vacuum energy content of "the vacuum". AG

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 10:08:54 PM UTC-6, Alan Grayson wrote:

When I offered my theory of a hyper-spherical universe, I was accused of being "Aristotelian". But why? My primary assumption was IF the universe had a start or beginning, that "time" must of been characterized by zero volume. My reasoning is that IF had non-zero volume, it must have begun earlier; hence, this situation wasn't its start or beginning. My prejudice, if that's what it is, is that the creation event, if there was one, couldn't have "started" without some time-requiring process. So, if there was something, rather than nothing at the beginning, the time-requiring process must have began earlier, thus contradicting the idea of a beginning with some thing already existing, say some volume of space. The logic here is sort-of a proof by contradiction. Whether you agree or not, what has this to do with Aristotle? TIA, AG

There is York time τ = 4/3 Tr(K) that measures time according to the extrinisic curvature of a compact 3-manifold. This measures time according to the extrinsic time, a curvature defined by the parallel translation of a normal vector to a 3-manifold K = δN or

dN_i = (∂N_i/∂x^j)dx^j = K_{ij}dx^j, 

for K_{ij} the extrinsic curvature tensor. This time parameter has some conformal properties and is divergent for the volume of the manifold → 0. This however only works on compact 3-spaces and are not applicable to open or noncompact spaces.

LC

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Jan 2020, at 05:08, Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

When I offered my theory of a hyper-spherical universe, I was accused of being "Aristotelian". But why?

I might oversimplify all this to be clear and simple, but the main difference between Aristotle and Plato is that Aristotle believes in an ontologically primitive physical reality. He believes in a Universe (a physical universe), and his criteria of reality is in seeing, touching, measuring, observing. It has led to physicalism, i.e. the metaphysical assumption that physics is the fundamental science.

The god/non-god debate hides the original question of the greek theologians, which was about the ontological existence of the physical universe.

I did not wait Mechanism to develop doubt about this. I don’t remember having believe in”real universe out there" even one second. It does not stand the (antic) dream argument, especially when you realise that all computations are implemented in arithmetic.

Aristotle: Reality is what we see.

Plato: what we see might be the shadow of a simpler reality (mathematical, musical, theological, …).

Science is really born from that important platonic doubt. The idea that physics has to be the fundamental science is just due to the fact that the Church has institutionalised religion, and has used a lot of Aristotle metaphysics, although Judaism, Christianism and Islam have had some intense, usually short, (neo)Platonic period, and indeed those periods were peaceful, prosper and contributed a lot to science and technology. But we have fall back in Aristotle, and today, in metaphysics, Aristotelianism, or weak materialism (the belief in some primary matter) is the main current theological paradigm. It has never been my religion.

My primary assumption was IF the universe had a start or beginning, that "time" must of been characterized by zero volume. My reasoning is that IF had non-zero volume, it must have begun earlier; hence, this situation wasn't its start or beginning. My prejudice, if that's what it is, is that the creation event, if there was one, couldn't have "started" without some time-requiring process. So, if there was something, rather than nothing at the beginning, the time-requiring process must have began earlier, thus contradicting the idea of a beginning with some thing already existing, say some volume of space. The logic here is sort-of a proof by contradiction. Whether you agree or not, what has this to do with Aristotle? TIA, AG

It presupposes some physical reality, like space, time, …

I cannot explain to you why I do not believe in this, but I can prove you that the amount of mechanism needed to make sense of Darwin theory of evolution is enough to understand that the physical reality is something emergent and evolving from a non physical reality: namely elementary arithmetic (or anything Turing)-equivalent to it).

If you are patient and interested, I can prove this to you. With Digital Mechanism (an hypothesis in the cognitive science), physicalism cannot work. Even if “real”, a physical universe cannot select a computation and make it more or less conscious than another in arithmetic, nor can it influence the first person indeterminacy in arithmetic, without adding some magic abilities in matter, or invoking actual infinities, which leads to abandoning Mechanism (and Darwin, …).

Bruno

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[Brent Meeker]

On 1/28/2020 8:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Aristotle: Reality is what we see.
> Plato: what we see might be the shadow of a simpler reality
> (mathematical, musical, theological, …).
>
> Science is really born from that important platonic doubt.

Nonsense.  Religious mysticism was born from platonic doubt. Science was
already born in the school of Thales of Miletus. Aristotle at least
believed that observation was a source of knowledg; while platonists
depreacted it as illusory shadows of reality.  St Agustine made
Platonism Christian and Thomas Aquinas made Aristotleanism Christian,
and those two, with the power of the Church behind them dominated
Western intellectual thought for nine centuries, known as "The Dark
Ages" for a good reason.

Brent

[Alan Grayson]

As Nietzsche wrote in "The Will to Power", "Plato is the great viaduct of corruption." AG

[Philip Thrift]

Nietzsche referred to his own philosophy as “inverting Platonism".

@philipthrift 

[Lawrence Crowell]

In spite of the problems with Platonism and Aristotelianism I don't think they are that pernicious. Plato, who we really have a vague idea about, may have been a central man and he came up with some mathematics of the polytopes in 3-dimensions. These were the regular polytopes of the tetrahedron, which is self dual, the cube dual to the octahedron and the dodecahedron dual to the icosahedron. He was a follower of Socrates, and all we know of Socrates was written by Plato. In these writings he came up with this idea about the relationship between physical reality and the epistemic domain of mathematics. We really do not know much more and it is very likely, as in the tradition of scribes in the ancient world, much of his writings, Symposia, Euthryphro etc, have a heavy contribution from his circle of associates. It is possible that Plato is a place name for followers of Socrates and all attributed to Plato were written by the "Platonists." Much the same is probably the case with Pythagoras and his cult-like followers called the Pythagoreans. The Bible has much the same, and the various books of the Bible with names are written heavily by follower scribes writing in that name. With Aristotle there is more reason to think his writings are central to a better known figure. While Aristotle's ideas of physics are wrong in many ways, they are in some ways a bit more rational than what Plato came up with.

Some writers of the New Testament were knowledgeable of Plato and Aristotle, The Gospel of John is very Platonic and curiously the Book of Revelations attributed to John is Aristotelian. This elevated Plato and Aristotle to great heights, while Thales, Democrates etc were eclipsed. This intertwining of Plato and Aristotle with Christianity is what brought these philosophies so deeply into mysticism.

LC

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 29 Jan 2020, at 01:12, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 1/28/2020 8:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> Aristotle: Reality is what we see.
>> Plato: what we see might be the shadow of a simpler reality (mathematical, musical, theological, …).
>>
>> Science is really born from that important platonic doubt.
>
> Nonsense. Religious mysticism was born from platonic doubt. Science was already born in the school of Thales of Miletus.

Science and mysticism hang well together. I use Plato for his ideas, which are born two hundred years before Plato with Pythagorus, and led to many mathematics, like with Thales. I don’t discuss people and history, bu the ideas behind and their relations. I search what is true, naïvely enough.

> Aristotle at least believed that observation was a source of knowledg;

But that has never work, and with mechanism we get an explanation of why that cannot work. We can only measure numbers, and extrapolate possible number relation, with varied degrees of complexity, among them.

> while platonists depreacted it as illusory shadows of reality.

They ask the question, and discuss. What if they were true? They are consistent with the facts though. QM does support more mechanism than materialism which needs a brain-mind identity thesis which makes no sense, and again provably so if we assume Digital Mechanism.

> St Agustine made Platonism Christian

He made the christian saving a bit of Platonism, making them less false that some non christians. There is a bit of truth in each position: the difficulty it to get the coherent whole, and this without throwing the first person (consciousness, knowledge) under the rug.

> and Thomas Aquinas made Aristotleanism Christian,

Leading to the inconsistency, unless assuming a very weird non mechanist theory of mind that nobody has seen.

> and those two, with the power of the Church behind them dominated Western intellectual thought for nine centuries, known as "The Dark Ages" for a good reason.

The reason of the Dark Age is that the Church has separated theology from science. It is a trick by con men to get power by introducing religion in the state. The rational theologian have been persecuted ever since, and today a certain form of atheism pursue that work, and defend their faith in an ontologically primitive physical universe, without argument, nor dialog.

You just can't have Mechanism (Descartes, Darwin, Turing, …) and Materialism together. You have to chose your favorite poison (to talk like Maudlin).

Bruno




>
> Brent

>
>
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[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 Jan 2020, at 12:03, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 6:12:31 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:

On 1/28/2020 8:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Aristotle: Reality is what we see.
> Plato: what we see might be the shadow of a simpler reality
> (mathematical, musical, theological, …).
>
> Science is really born from that important platonic doubt.

Nonsense.  Religious mysticism was born from platonic doubt. Science was
already born in the school of Thales of Miletus. Aristotle at least
believed that observation was a source of knowledg; while platonists
depreacted it as illusory shadows of reality.  St Agustine made
Platonism Christian and Thomas Aquinas made Aristotleanism Christian,
and those two, with the power of the Church behind them dominated
Western intellectual thought for nine centuries, known as "The Dark
Ages" for a good reason.

In spite of the problems with Platonism and Aristotelianism I don't think they are that pernicious. Plato, who we really have a vague idea about, may have been a central man and he came up with some mathematics of the polytopes in 3-dimensions. These were the regular polytopes of the tetrahedron, which is self dual, the cube dual to the octahedron and the dodecahedron dual to the icosahedron. He was a follower of Socrates, and all we know of Socrates was written by Plato. In these writings he came up with this idea about the relationship between physical reality and the epistemic domain of mathematics. We really do not know much more and it is very likely, as in the tradition of scribes in the ancient world, much of his writings, Symposia, Euthryphro etc, have a heavy contribution from his circle of associates. It is possible that Plato is a place name for followers of Socrates and all attributed to Plato were written by the "Platonists." Much the same is probably the case with Pythagoras and his cult-like followers called the Pythagoreans. The Bible has much the same, and the various books of the Bible with names are written heavily by follower scribes writing in that name. With Aristotle there is more reason to think his writings are central to a better known figure. While Aristotle's ideas of physics are wrong in many ways, they are in some ways a bit more rational than what Plato came up with.

OK.

Some writers of the New Testament were knowledgeable of Plato and Aristotle, The Gospel of John is very Platonic and curiously the Book of Revelations attributed to John is Aristotelian. This elevated Plato and Aristotle to great heights, while Thales, Democrates etc were eclipsed. This intertwining of Plato and Aristotle with Christianity is what brought these philosophies so deeply into mysticism.

The more mystic, the less wrong they are, at least if we compare with the mathematical theology of the universal machine, that I described in detail in most of my papers.

To be sure, by Plato, I mean the Plato of the Parmenides and the Theaetetus, a bit of the Republic and the Timaeus. Plato was just a researcher, he use Socrates to make dialog.

Unlike Gerson (a scholar expert on Plato) I do not identify Plato with Socrates. And I “correct” every details through the universal machine interpretation of “reality”. As this is pure mathematics, it helps to get the coherent picture, even if some people dislike the idea that the theory of everything is just elementary arithmetic (or Turing equivalent), but this at least explains consciousness, qualia, quanta and their relations, without adding any non necessary magic. Is it true? No scientist can know. But we can test it experimentally, and QM confirms the most (annoying? Startling?) aspect of Mechanism, notably the many-histories *aspect* of reality, the quantum threshold, the quantum logics, etc.

I will make a post about how I see now the way space appears, It is not easily, I need the full 4 + 4*infinity modes of machine self-reference.

What people misses here the most is the “simple” fact that elementary arithmetic is Turing-Universal, and the existence of all halting and non halting computations, including their redundancy and relative measure, is an arithmetical reality (well above the computable part of it). The very thing that I have been asked to removed from my thesis as judged to be to much simple to figure in a thesis (which is nonsense, as in an interdisciplinary thesis: nothing is evident, and everything must be explained, and all hypotheses must be made explicit). Since then, except professional logicians (and even just among those knowing theoretical computer science), very few people seems to get this “simple” point, already made by Gödel 1931, in some footnote though. 

Bruno

LC

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[Brent Meeker]

I agree.  I carefully referred to "Platonism" and "Aristotelianism" as the schools of thought attributed to Plato and Aristotle by the scholastics; not necessarily identical to what the founders actually thought.  Plato's parable of the cave became a proof of mysticism and the power of pure thought in writings of Christian theologians.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

On 1/29/2020 9:57 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> What people misses here the most is the “simple” fact that elementary
> arithmetic is Turing-Universal, and the existence of all halting and
> non halting computations, including their redundancy and relative
> measure, is an arithmetical reality

Except "arithmetical reality" is a contradiction in terms.

Brent

[Lawrence Crowell]

Plato did write the death of Socrates and the accounts of Timaeus, Euthyphro et al and symposia. So Plato clearly had a connection with Socrates' "Academe," even if Plato really should turn out to be a fictional character, a bit like Bourbaki in mathematics. 

Gödel considered himself a Platonist. He saw the existence of true and unprovable propositions or new axioms as some sort of objective aspect to mathematics. Other just say this is a sort of relationship system for different models in mathematics. 

LC

LC

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[John Clark]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 6:03 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> While Aristotle's ideas of physics are wrong in many ways, they are in some ways a bit more rational than what Plato came up with.

Aristotle's ideas of physics, such as heavy objects always fall faster than light ones, were not just wrong they were stupid, they could easily have been disproven even with the primitive technology of his time. That didn't happen because neither Aristotle or Plato or any other ancient Greek discovered the Scientific Method. Aristotle wrote that women had fewer teeth than men, it's known that he was married, twice in fact, yet he never thought of just looking into his wife's mouth and counting.

John K Clark

[Brent Meeker]

On 1/31/2020 4:03 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 6:03 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> While Aristotle's ideas of physics are wrong in many ways, they are in some ways a bit more rational than what Plato came up with.

Aristotle's ideas of physics, such as heavy objects always fall faster than light ones, were not just wrong they were stupid, they could easily have been disproven even with the primitive technology of his time.

The funny thing is Galileo disproved it by the same kind of armchair analysis in which Aristotle and Plato indulged; while Aristotle relied on observation (bricks really to fall faster than feathers).

Brent

That didn't happen because neither Aristotle or Plato or any other ancient Greek discovered the Scientific Method. Aristotle wrote that women had fewer teeth than men, it's known that he was married, twice in fact, yet he never thought of just looking into his wife's mouth and counting.

John K Clark

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 1 Feb 2020, at 05:30, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 1/31/2020 4:03 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 6:03 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> While Aristotle's ideas of physics are wrong in many ways, they are in some ways a bit more rational than what Plato came up with.

Aristotle's ideas of physics, such as heavy objects always fall faster than light ones, were not just wrong they were stupid, they could easily have been disproven even with the primitive technology of his time.

The funny thing is Galileo disproved it by the same kind of armchair analysis in which Aristotle and Plato indulged; while Aristotle relied on observation (bricks really to fall faster than feathers).

Good point. I read a long time ago a paper, which I lost since, defending the idea that Galileo should be considered as the main inventor of thought experiences. Aristotle is the first to even look at Nature, with many plausible exceptions.

Bruno

Brent

That didn't happen because neither Aristotle or Plato or any other ancient Greek discovered the Scientific Method. Aristotle wrote that women had fewer teeth than men, it's known that he was married, twice in fact, yet he never thought of just looking into his wife's mouth and counting.

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 11:30 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> The funny thing is Galileo disproved it by the same kind of armchair analysis in which Aristotle and Plato indulged; while Aristotle relied on observation (bricks really to fall faster than feathers).

In his armchair Galileo did find a flaw in Aristotle's logic and proved he must be wrong, but more importantly he found out what was right by performing experiments with a inclined plane (experiments Aristotle could have done but didn't). Galileo discovered the Law Of Odd Numbers and that the distance a object falls is proportional to the square of the time it has been falling; there is no way he or anybody else could have deduced that from his armchair with nothing but logic.

John K Clark