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Re: history question



I think if you read Aristotle carefully you will find that his intention
in his Physics is not the same as ours when we speak of doing
physics...but that is not the topic for this list.

cheers,

joeOn Fri, 30 Nov 2001,
John S. Denker wrote:

At 06:01 PM 11/30/01 -0500, Joseph Bellina wrote:
I think you may find
that Aristotle's notion of what physics was isn't the same sort of thing
that we now mean by physics...

Of course it's not exactly the same, and we can
agree that Aristotle got many things bizarrely wrong.
But that is not the same as saying that his subject
matter area shouldn't be called physics.

Newton made mistakes, too, but that doesn't mean that
his subject matter area shouldn't be called physics.

If you actually read what Aristotle had to say, e.g.
the opening words of
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.7.vii.html
it seems pretty clear that he is treating essentially the
same subject matter as Newton's laws of motion.

The word "physics" is obviously a Greek word, so when
somebody asked about the history of the usage of the word,
I don't think I was out of line to mention the Greek usage.
It is certainly not a coincidence that we use this ancient
word in its current meaning.

The field has progressed a bit during the last 2400 years
(as we might have expected!) but there is a recognizable
continuity in the meaning of the word "physics" during
this entire time.


Joseph J. Bellina, Jr. 219-284-4662
Associate Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556