Physics

by Aristotle, Daniel W. Graham

Overview

The Physics is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the Metaphysics, De Anima, and forthcoming De Caelo and On Coming to Be and Passing Away. Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works.

Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198240921
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	04/01/1999
Series:	Clarendon Aristotle Series
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

C. D. C. Reeve is Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. His recent books include Action, Contemplation, and Happiness: An Essay on Aristotle (2012), Blindness and Reorientation: Problems in Plato's Republic (2012), and Aristotle on Practical Wisdom:Nicomachean Ethics Book VI (2013). He has translated Plato's Cratylus (1997), Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito (2002), Republic (2004), and Meno (2006), as well as Aristotle's Politics (2017), Nicomachean Ethics (2014), Metaphysics (2016), and De Anima (2017).

Table of Contents

BOOK I

1. The scope and method of this book.
2. The problem: the number and character of the first principles of nature.
     185a 20. Reality is not one in the way that Parmenides and Melissus supposed.
3. Refutation of their arguments.
4. Statement and examination of the opinions of the natural philosophers.
5. The principles are contraries.
6. The principles are two, or three, in number.
7. The number and nature of the principles.
8. The true opinion removes the difficulty felt by the early 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 between both and the essential conditions of change.
D. Proof in natural philosophy.
  7. The physicist demonstrates by means of the four conditions of change.
  8. Does nature act for an end?
  9. The sense in which necessity is present in natural things.

BOOK III

A. Motion.
  1, 2. The nature of motion.
  3. The mover and the moved.
B. The infinite.
  4. Opinions of the early philosophers.
       203b 15. Main arguments for belief in the infinite.
  5. Criticism of the Pythagorean and Platonic belief in a separately existing infinite.
        204a 34. There is no infinite sensible body.
  6. That the infinite exists and how it exists. 
       206b 33. What the infinite is.
  7. The various kinds of infinite.
       207b 34. Which of the four conditions of change the infinite is to be referred to.
  8. Refutation of the arguments for an actual infinite.

BOOK IV

A. Place.
  1. Does place exist?
       209a 2. 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 views of others about the void.
  7. What ‘void’ means.
       214a 16. Refutation of the arguments for belief in the void.
  8. There is no void separate from bodies.
       216a 26. There is no void occupied by any body.
  9. There is no void in bodies.
C. Time.
  10. Doubts about the existence of time.
        218a 31. Various opinions about the nature of time.
  11. What time is.
         219b 9. The ‘now.’
  12. Various attributes of time.
         220b 32. The things that are in time.
  13. Definitions of temporal terms.
  14. Further reflections about time.

BOOK V

1. Classification of movements and changes.
     224b 35. Classification of changes per se.
2. Classification of movements per se. 
     226b 10. The unmovable.
3. The meaning of ‘together,’ ‘apart,’ ‘touch,’ ‘intermediate,’ ‘successive,’ ‘contiguous,’ ‘continuous.’
4. The unity and diversity of movements.
5. Contrariety of movement.
6. Contrariety of movement and rest.
     230a 18. Contrariety of natural and unnatural movement or rest.

BOOK VI

1, 2. Every continuum consists of continuous and divisible parts.
3. A moment is indivisible and nothing is moved, or rests, in a moment.
4. Whatever is moved is divisible.
     234b 21. Classification of movement.
     235a 13. The time, the movement, the being-in-motion, the moving body, and the sphere of 
     movement, are all similarly divided.
5. Whatever has changed is, as soon as it has changed, in that to which it has changed.
     235b 32. That in which (directly) it has changed is indivisible.
     236a 7. In change there is a last but no first element.
6. In whatever time a thing changes (directly), it changes in any part of that time.
     236b 32. Whatever changes has changed before, and whatever has changed, before was changing.
7. The finitude or infinity of movement, of extension, and of the moved.
8. Of coming to rest, and of rest.
     239a 23. A thing that is moved in any time directly is in no part of that time in a part of the space 
     through which it moves.
9. Refutation of the arguments against the possibility of movement.
10. That which has not parts cannot move.
      241a 26. Can change be infinite?

BOOK VII

1. Whatever is moved is moved by something.
     242a 19. There is a first movent which is not moved by anything else.
2. The movent and the moved are together.
3. All alteration pertains to sensible qualities.
4. Comparison of movements.
5. Proportion of movements.

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 movent is not moved by anything outside itself.
     257a 31. The first movent is immovable.
6. The immovable first movent is eternal and one.
     259a 20. The first movent is not moved even incidentally.
     259b 32. The primum mobile is eternal.
7. Locomotion is the primary kind of movement.
     261a 28. No movement or change is continuous except locomotion.
8. Only circular movement can be continuous and infinite.
9. Circular movement is the primary kind of locomotion.
     265a 27. Confirmation of the above doctrines.
10. The first movent has no parts nor magnitude, and is at the circumference of the world.

Editorial Reviews

"Exceptionally well done. Fine orientation to the work. Excellent set of references."—Brian Dybowski, College of Santa Fe

"Excellent translation—useful for contemporary students with no grasp of Greek and little patience with archais English."—Morton Schagrin, SUNY Fredonia

"This is a very good book. It is clearly written, yet at the same time it is still of high scholarly value."—Stephen Joseph, Framingham State College

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