Ancient Physics - Plato and Aristotle

Does ancient physics, dating from ~400 bc, have anything to tell modern science?

All we have from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are writings, but they must have used diagrams of some sort. What would they have done given access to modern computer graphics?

The images [click on them for larger versions] are from a presentation I gave at the Philosophy Club here in The Villages, FL today. You can download the narrated PowerPoint slide show, click on: Part 1 and Part 2.



Here is a brief summary:

Plato's Analogy of the Divided Line

In The Republic, Book VI, Plato divides a line unequally. The first section is analogized to the Physical World and the second to the Intelligible World. Then, by the same proportions, he sub-divides each section. He analogizes the first segment, AB, to Shadows and Reflections of physical things; BC to the Physical Things themselves, CD to Mathematical Resoning, and DE to Philosophical Reasoning. Although Plato does not mention it, later commentators noticed that, by the given construction, it turns out that segment BC (Physical Things) is exactly the same length as CD (Mathematical Reasoning). What could that imply? I go into greater detail in the PowerPoint presentation.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave

Plato, in The Republic, Book VII, see first image above, imagines prisoners who spend their entire lives in a cave, looking at two-dimensional shadows on a wall. The prisoners give names to the shadows, learn to predict sequences, and speculate on their origin and meanings. They come up with the equivalent of religions, sciences and philosophies. Then, one prisoner is released into the real three-dimensional world and learns about physical reality. She returns to the cave but is unable to convince the prisoners of the reality she knows as truth. They make fun of her as a crazy philosopher.

Putting the Analogy of the Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave together, the prisoners represent a low level of knowledge and understanding, represented as line segment AB. The prisoner released from the cave is at level BC, like ourselves. Those of us who have learned mathematical reasoning are not only out of the cave, but are at a higher level, CD. Finally, the philosophers among us, who understand the Idea of Forms and the Good and so on, are at level DE.

My question is, "Are WE really out of the cave yet?" Perhaps, if, as string theory postulates, there are actually 10 or 11 dimensions, those of us who perceive 3D + time are only about 10% better off than the prisoners in the cave, limited to 2D + time! In the PowerPoint presentation, I speculate on the possible equivalence of time and space.



Aristotle's Five Elements

Aristotle, like most of the ancients, believed there were only five elements: Aether, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. Indeed, according to him, (see his Meteorology, Book I and his Physics, Book I) there is really only the Aether, the quintessence, the All. Fire, Air, Earth, and Water exist potentially in each other, and all can be resolved into the Aether. This is not far from Spinoza's belief that there is only the Universal Substance, and all things that seem as different as material and spirit are merely different aspects of that Universal.

How ridiculous is this? Well, not so ridiculous as the PowerPoint Show explains.

The names of Fire, Air, Water, and Earth in the image are ambigrams, which read the same right-side-up and upside-down. They are featured in the famous book and movie, Angels and Demons.

Read more detail about Aristotle's Five Elements at my Google Knol.

Ira Glickstein

Illuminati Ambigrams - Angels Demons

When I posted Aristotle's Physics back in April, I did not know the first four elements (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water) figured in the main plot line in Dan Brown's book Angels & Demons. I saw the movie this week and immediately updated my charts to show the ambigrams (words that read the same upside down) used in the movie for the four elements.

The first four figures are exactly the same, just rotated such that a different element is at the top in each case.

The final two figures show the title of the book and movie "Angels & Demons" and the name of the organization, the "Illuminati" that supposedly has murdered the Pope and threatens to blow up the Vatican.

Ira Glickstein

Aristotle's Physics - the Four Causes

Joel posted Is PowerPoint Anti-Intellectual? last month in which he claimed:

"If Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had had PowerPoint available, there might not have been any western philosophy handed down to us."

I replied:

"I'm not sure what Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle would have done with PowerPoint. I guess Socrates would have avoided it. Plato would have used it grudgingly, but Aristotle -OH! ARISTOTLE- he would have been (almost) as good as me!"

Well. that remark has cost me dozens of hours during which I have been researching Aristotle's books on Physics and Meteorology and building the PowerPoint charts I think he would have created had they been available in his time, some 2300 years ago. In particular, I tried to explain Aristotle's view of the Five Elements (Aether, Air, Fire, Earth, and Water) as well as his take on the Four Causes (Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final).

MY KNOLS ON THE FIVE ELEMENTS AND THE FOUR CAUSES

Once I made the PowerPoint charts I decided to go the extra step and use them to construct two new Google Knols. The first Knol, on the Five Elements was published last month, along with a related Topic on this Blog. The other Knol, on the Four Causes, is now available for your amazement.

Like me, you may find philosophy hard to understand. As my PhD advisor (Howard Pattee) told me, philosophers make simple things complex, using a language specially created for that purpose!

You may have heard about Aristotle's four causes: Material Cause, Formal Cause, Efficient Cause and Final Cause. I couldn't understand how the words "Formal" and Efficient" applied to causes - and neither would Aristotle if he lived today.

When we say, for example, "the housing crisis caused the stock market to dive" or "investors dumped their stocks because they wanted to preserve their capital" we imply a more or less direct relationship between the cause and the event or action. The Greek word for "cause" is "aition" and it is understood in a much wider sense, including both the immediate, direct causes as well as explanitory factors.

Thus what philosophers now call the Formal Cause should be understood as the form or pattern, the essence or archetype, that explains something. What they call the Efficient Cause is what we would call the direct or immediate cause of some event.

SIMPLE EXAMPLE OF THE FOUR CAUSES



I'll start with a simple, concrete example - how do building materials such as stone and wood end up becoming a house and furniture? What are all the causes and explanitory factors?





The chart at the head of this Topic shows how the Four Causes play into each other to accomplish this transformation.





The four charts that follow trace the effect of each of these causes in a step-by-step manner. See the Knol (Four Causes) for additional detail, verbatim quotations from Aristotle, and more.





In the Knol I also get into what Aristotle called spontaneity and chance as well as the fact he understood something like evolution and natural selection 2000 years before Charles Darwin - a feact Darwin himself acknowledges!

Ira Glickstein

Aristotle's Physics - the Five Elements

Joel posted Is PowerPoint Anti-Intellectual? earlier this month in which he claimed:

"If Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had had PowerPoint available, there might not have been any western philosophy handed down to us."

I replied:

"I'm not sure what Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle would have done with PowerPoint. I guess Socrates would have avoided it. Plato would have used it grudgingly, but Aristotle -OH! ARISTOTLE- he would have been (almost) as good as me!"

Well. that remark has cost me dozens of hours during which I have been researching Aristotle's books on Physics and Meteorology and building the PowerPoint charts I think he would have created had they been available in his time, some 2300 years ago. In particular, I tried to explain Aristotle's view of the Five Elements (Aether, Air, Fire, Earth, and Water) as well as his take on the Four Causes (Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final).

MY KNOL ON THE FIVE ELEMENTS

Once I made the PowerPoint charts I decided to go the extra step and use them to construct two new Google Knols. The first, on the Five Elements was published today and another, on the Four Causes, is under construction and will follow soon.

Like me, you may find philosophy hard to understand. As my PhD advisor (Howard Pattee) told me, philosophers make simple things complex, using a language specially created for that purpose!

You have undoubtedly heard about "the five elements" of the ancient philosophers. I couldn't understand how the ancients thought Fire was a basic element, or that the essence of Air was wet or of Water cold. It turns out they were not using these words according to the literal, narrow scientific meanings we employ. They were thinking about what we would now call the qualities of "energy" and "fluidity". They used Air, Fire, Water, and Earth as examples of things that had a lot or a little energy and/or fluidity.

Modern scientists dismiss the concept of Aether out of hand. However, the idea of a non-material substrate is important if we want to understand what the most intelligent and well-informed humans of two millenia ago were thinking. (If modern string theory, which says there are ten or eleven dimensions of which humans may comprehend only four, holds up to scientific examination, it may turn out that the six or seven "tightly curled up" dimensions we humans cannot comprehend might be what the ancients called the Aether!)

The graphic that appears at the head of this posting is the first chart and there are two others described in the Knol:

Have a look at the Five Elements Knol and please comment on it!

Ira Glickstein