This week I read a selection from books 7 and 8 of Aristotle's Physics. One thing I found interesting was how Aristotle talked about change, and how he said that weight is basically an upward or downward tendency. It is important to read texts like this because it tells us about what some of the first philosophers thought about the subjects we learn about in school.
According to Aristotle, fiery particles naturally move upwards and earthy particles tend to move downwards. Therefore, downwards would be an unnatural direction of movement for something fiery, and upwards would be an unnatural direction of movement for earthy particles.
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Something can be potentially light in one situation and potentially heavy in another situation. This is because of a number of reasons, such as gravity, mass, or, in Aristotle's words, upward or downward tendencies. An example of fluctuating weight would be a pool of water - with the force of gravity acting on it, it remains pulled downward, but if the force of gravity was lessened or removed, it would float upwards.
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When Aristotle spoke of fire and earth having natural movements, I think he is offering an explanation based on principles and causes. He mentioned that they are "forcibly moved by something," which could be a cause, and also says that natural tendencies are caused only by what they already possess in potential, which could be seen as a cause from the fire or earth itself.
Overall, this text was very interesting, because it was intriguing to see a philosopher from such a long time ago thought about the topics he wrote about, and how that related to things like gravity, mass, and density.
To better understand the text, our class put together actions for each paragraph in the excerpt we read, and the complete video can be found below:
