Aristotle's Physics: A Physicist's Look

2013/12/14 by Carlo Rovelli, CARLO ROVELLI · 4 voices · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Mathematics · #Classical Philosophy and Thought #Historical Philosophy and Science #History and Theory of Mathematics #physics.hist-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/apa.2014.11

openalex publication_date 2015/01/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

ABSTRACT: I show that Aristotelian physics is a correct and nonintuitive approximation of Newtonian physics in the suitable domain (motion in fluids) in the same technical sense in which Newton's theory is an approximation of Einstein's theory. Aristotelian physics lasted long not because it became dogma, but because it is a very good, empirically grounded theory. This observation suggests some general considerations on intertheoretical relationships.

Cited by

• Newtons First Law Is Not a Special Case of the Second Law
• Aristotle [wikipedia]

Discussions

• Carlo Rovelli took a stab at this: arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057 [bsky, 10 points, 1 comments]
• Aristotle’s Physics: A Physicist’s Look [hn, 3 points, 0 comments]
• Theory related I like also Carlo Rovelli's article on Aristotle arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• Aristotle’s Physics: A Physicist’s Look (2014) [hn, 1 points, 0 comments]

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