Aristotle's Physics: a Physicist's Look

I feel I must defend Aristotle. At least we would need a lot more information before we can conclude that Philoponos really knew what he was talking about. Of course he was right but for this to be effective there needs to be a theory and better experiments and that is what Galileo provided. I recommend Carlo Rovelli's essay on Aristotle's Physics: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4057.pdf.

It’s actually a very reasonable approximation within a certain regime: https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057 There’s a reason people without training in sciences sometimes have the intuition that heavier things fall faster. This intuition isn’t developed in a vacuum (hah).

You may be interested in: "Aristotle's Physics: a Physicist's Look" My take is that it was hard to find a better theory, the usual explanation of scholastical dogmatism is to shallow. https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057

Aristotle said that denser things fall faster than less dense things and even gave a correct expression for their speed given the limits of his mathematics and notation. https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057

> Classical mechanics is not something sacred. It is our first serious model of physics. Just a sidenote: it is at most our second serious model. Aristotle's Physics has a bad rap, but it's "a correct and non-intuitive approximation of Newtonian physics in the suitable domain (motion in fluids), in the same technical sense in which Newton theory is an approximation of Einstein's theory". See "Aristotle's Physics: a Physicist's Look" by Carlo Rovelli (https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057).

This is an interesting take on how Aristotle's physics was more correct than he is usually given credit for: https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057

I have a lot of respect for PG, but boy, is he off track on that. Aristotle was highly specific and highly empirical. His ethics, for instance, is an elaborate study of the various ways individual go right or wrong in their decisions. His politics was based on extensive studies of the constitutions and political histories of nearly a hundred Greek states. And of course there was his biology, based on empirical studies of over a hundred different animal species. And as for his physics, according to this astounding article by Carlo Rovelli (yes, that Carlo Rovelli), his physics is accurate for the phenomena he was studying. Rovelli even converts his ideas into equations. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4057v2.pdf

Aristotle was the smartest guy around. Yes he got almost everything wrong but it took many centuries to find better theories. Carlo Rovelli: "Aristotle's Physics: a Physicist's Look" https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057

You might want to read Carlo Rovelli's paper https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057. TL;DR Aristotle's physics lasted a long time because it works in the environment in which people used it.

I'd suggest that in addition you should read at least some parts of modern translations of early scientific works starting with Aristotle. I don't mean read everything of course but try to get a sense of perspective, not everything was invented in the last hundred years. Also take a look at Carlo Rovelli's monograph: "Aristotle's Physics: a Physicist's Look" at https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057. The kind of thinking that Rovelli describes is essential to success in science

Aristotle's biology and political science were quite empirical, and are the foundations of the more modern versions. His cosmology was off track because he didn't have the instruments, like the telescope, needed to collect the needed data. His physics was sound for the particular phenomena he was trying to explain, as this article explains: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4057v2.pdf