Aristotle's Physics: A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary by W. D. Ross

Front Cover
Copyright
PREFACE
CONTENTS
BOOKS AND ARTICLES ON THE PHYSICS AND OTHER BOOKS REFERRED TO
INTRODUCTION
I. The Structure of the Physics
II. Aristotle's Natural Philosophy
The Factors of Change—Matter, Form, and Privation.
Nature as Internal Source of Change.
Aristotle's Dynamics.
The Four Causes. Chance. Necessity.
Change.
The Infinite.
Place.
The Void.
Time.
Continuity.
The Paradoxes of Zeno.
The Prime Mover.
The Development of Aristotle's Theology.
III. The Text of the Physics
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PHYSICS
ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΕΛΟΥΣ ΦΥΣΙΚΗ ΑΚΡΟΑΣΙΣ
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Η (Textus alter)
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ANALYSIS
BOOK I
1. The scope and method of the book.
2. Our inquiry is about the number and character of the first principles of nature.
Reality is not one in the way that Eliatics supposed.
3. Refutation of the Elieatics arguments.
4. Statement and examination of the options of the physicists about the principles of natural things.
5. The principles are contraries.
6. The principles are either two or three in number.
7. Our view about the number and nature of the principles.
8. The true opinion removes the difficulty felt by the ancient philosophers.
9. Further reflections on the first principles of nature.
BOOK II
A.
1. Nature and the natural.
B.
2. Distinction of the natural philosopher from the mathematician and the metaphysician.
C. The Conditions of Change.
3. The essential conditions.
4. The opinions of others about chance and spontaneity.
5. Do chance and spontaneity exist? What is chance and what are its characteristics?
6. Distinction between chance and spontaneity, and both and the essential conditions of change.
D. Explanation in Natural Philosophy.
7. The physicist should explain by means of all the four conditions of change.
8. Does nature act for and end?
9. The sense in which necessity is present in natural things.
BOOK III
A. Change.
1. The nature of change.
2. The definition of change confirmed.
3. The mover and the moved.
B. The Infinite.
4. Opinions of the early philosophers.
Main arguments for belief in the infinite.
5. Criticism of the Pythagorean and Platonci belief in a separately existing infinite.
There is no infinite sensible body.
6. That the infinite exists and how it exists.
What the infinite is.
7. The various kinds of infinite.
Which of the four causes the infinite is to be referred to.
8. Refutation of the arguments for an actual infinite.
BOOK IV
A. Place.
1. Does place exist?
Doubts about the nature of place.
2. Is place matter or form?
3. Can a thing be in itself, or a place be in a place?
4. What place is.
5. Corollaries.
B. The Void.
6. The view of others about the void.
7. What 'void' means.
Reflection of the arguments for belief in a void.
8. There is no void separate from bodies.
There is no void occupied by any body.
9. There is no void in bodies.
C. Time
10. Doubts about the existence of time.
Various opinions about the nature of time.
11. What time is. The 'now'.
12. Various attributes of time.
The things that are in time.
13. Definitions of temporal terms.
14. Further reflections about time.
BOOK V
1. Classification of movement and changes.
Classification of changes 'per se'.
2. Classification of movements 'per se'.
The motionless.
3. The meaning of 'together', 'apart', 'touching', 'intermediate', 'successive', 'contiguous', 'continuous'.
4. The unity and diversity of movements.
5. Contrariety of movement.
6. Contrariety of movement and rest.
Contrariety of natural and unnatural movement and rest.
BOOK VI
1. Every continuum consists of continuous and divisible parts.
2. Further proof that every continuum is infinitely divisible.
3. A moment is indivisible, and nothing is moved, or rest, in a moment.
4. Whatever changes is divisible.
Movement is divisible in two ways.
The time, the movement, the being-in-motion, the moving body, and the sphere of movement, are all similarly divisible.
5. Whatever has changed is, as soon as it has changed, in that to which it has changed.
Change is completed at a moment.
There is no first moment or part in the time of a change, and no part of the changing thing that changes first.
6. There is change in any part of the commensurate of any change.
Whatever changes has changed before, and whatever has changed was changing before.
7. The finitude or infinity of movement, of extension, and of the moved.
8. Of coming to rest, and of rest.
A thing that moves a certain distance precisely in a certain time is not for that time at any part of its course.
9. Refutation of Zeno's arguments against the possibility of movement.
10. That which has not parts cannot move.
Can change be infinite?
BOOK VII
1. Whatever is in movement is moved by something.
There is a first movent which is not moved by anything else.
2. The mover and the moved must be in contact.
3. All alternation pertains to sensible qualities.
4. Comparison of movements.
5. The principle of virtual velocities.
BOOK VIII
1. There always has been and always will be movement.
2. Refutation of objections to the eternity of movement.
3. There are things that are sometimes in movement, sometimes at rest.
4. Whatever is in movement is moved by something else.
5. The first movement is not moved by anything outside itself.
The first mover is immovable.
6. The immovable first mover is eternal and one.
The first mover is not moved even incidentally.
The 'primum mobile' is eternal.
7. Locomotion is the primary kind of movement.
No movement or change is continuous except locomotion.
8. Only circular movement can be continuous and infinite.
9. Circular motion is the primary kind of locomotion.
Confirmation of the above doctrines.
10. The firtst mover has no parts or magnitude, and is at the circumference of the universe.
COMMENTARY
BOOK I
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPER 4
CHAPER 5
CHAPER 6
CHAPER 7
CHAPER 8
CHAPER 9
BOOK II
CHAPER 1
CHAPER 2
CHAPER 3
CHAPER 4
CHAPER 5
CHAPER 6
CHAPER 7
CHAPER 8
CHAPER 9
BOOK III
CHAPER 1
CHAPER 2
CHAPER 3
CHAPER 4
CHAPER 5
CHAPER 6
CHAPER 7
CHAPER 8
BOOK IV
CHAPER 1
CHAPER 2
CHAPER 3
CHAPER 4
CHAPER 5
CHAPER 6
CHAPER 7
CHAPER 8
CHAPER 9
CHAPER 10
CHAPER 11
CHAPER 12
CHAPER 13
CHAPER 14
BOOK V
CHAPER 1
CHAPER 2
CHAPER 3
CHAPER 4
CHAPER 5
CHAPER 6
BOOK VI
CHAPER 1
CHAPER 2
CHAPER 3
CHAPER 4
CHAPER 5
CHAPER 6
CHAPER 7
CHAPER 8
CHAPER 9
CHAPER 10
BOOK VII
CHAPER 1
CHAPER 2
CHAPER 3
CHAPER 4
CHAPER 5
BOOK VIII
CHAPER 1
CHAPER 2
CHAPER 3
CHAPER 4
CHAPER 5
CHAPER 6
CHAPER 7
CHAPER 8
CHAPER 9
CHAPER 10
Second Version of VII. 1-3
CHAPER 1
CHAPER 2
CHAPER 3
INDEXES
INDEX VERBORUM
INDEX TO THE INDRODUCTION AND COMMENTARY