To the modern reader, Aristotle's views on astronomy, as presented in Metaphysics, Physics, De Caelo (On the Heavens) and Simplicius' Commentary, will most likely seem very bizarre, as they are based more on a priori philosophical speculation than empirical observation. Although Aristotle acknowledged the importance of "scientific" astronomy - the study of the positions, distances and motions of the stars - he nevertheless treated astronomy in the abstract, linking it to his overall philosophical world picture. As a result, the modern distinction between physics and metaphysics is not present in Aristotle, and in order to fully appreciate him we must try to abandon this pre-conception. Aristotle argued that the universe is spherical and finite. Spherical, because that is the most perfect shape; finite, because it has a center, viz. the center of the earth, and a body with a center cannot be infinite. He believed that the earth, too, is a sphere. It is relatively small compared to the stars, and in contrast to the celestial bodies, always at rest. For one of his proofs of this latter point, he referred to an empirically testable fact: if the earth were in motion, an observer on it would see the fixed stars as moving, just as he now observes the planets as moving, that is from a stationary earth. However, since this is not the case, the earth must be at rest. To prove that the earth is a sphere, he produced the argument that all earthly substances move towards the center, and thus would eventually have to form a sphere. He also used evidence based on observation. If the earth were not spherical, lunar eclipses would not show segments with a curved outline. Furthermore, when one travels northward or southward, one does not see the same stars at night, nor do they occupy the same positions in the sky. (De Caelo, Book II, chapter 14) That the celestial bodies must also be spherical in shape, can be determined by observation. In the case of the stars, Aristotle argued that they would have to be spherical, as this shape, which is the most perfect, allows them to retain their positions. (De Caelo, Book II, chapter 11) By Aristotle's time, Empedocles' view that there are four basic elements - earth, air, fire and water - had been generally accepted. Aristotle, however, in addition to this, postulated a fifth element called aether, which he believed to be the main constituent of the celestial bodies.
Each single cigarette contains over 4,000 harmful and deadly chemicals encases in them, including the most well-known substance, nicotine, which is highly addictive. As stated by Quit-Line 3,793 people died from smoking in Australia in 2010. This number included the deaths of 8 children and 27 adults after being continually exposed to second hand smoke. The main cancer caused by smoking and second hand smoke is lung cancer. However, as stated by Australian Government site, Tobacco in Australia smoking can also cause other types of serious and potentially life-threatening illnesses such as Oesophageal cancer, Parkinson’s disease, heart diseases, and peripheral vascular disease. Tobacco in Australia has also stated that smoking can lead to low birthweight in newborns with 12 newborns dying of this in 2005. Most of these conditions have a very high death rate, take for example, around 30% of all known cases of heart disease in citizens under 60 are due to smoking states the Victorian Quit-Line. Many of the health conditions brought about through smoking are untreatable, resulting in high death rates which could’ve have been avoided if smoking was banned in Australia. Not only does a person’s choice to smoke their risk of getting these horrific diseases, but their choice can also put the lives of the people around them at
Janie does so by choosing her new found love with Joe of the security that Logan provides. Hurston demonstrates Janie's new found ‘independence’ by the immediate marriage of Joe and Janie. Janie mistakenly chooses the pursuit of love over her pursuit of happiness and by doing so gave her independence to Joe, a man who believes a woman is a mere object; a doll. By choosing love over her own happiness Janie silences her voice. The realization of Janie's new reality is first realized when Joe states, “...nah wife don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no speech-makin’. Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home()" Joe is undermining Janie, cutting short any chance for Janie to make herself heard. Joe continues to hide Janie away from society keeping her dependent and voiceless. As Janie matures, she continues to be submissive to her husband, “He wanted her submission and he’d keep on fighting until he felt he had it. So gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush (71).” Though Janie ‘learned to hush’, and suppress herself, Janie still urges for her voice. When the opportunity came for Janie to reclaim her voice, "But Ah ain’t goin’ outa here and Ah ain’t gointuh hush. Naw, you gointuh listen tuh me one time befo’ you die. Have yo’ way all yo’ life, trample and mash down and then die ruther than tuh let yo’self heah ‘bout
In 1866, the Civil Rights Bill was proposed in Congress. At the time, it was referred to as, “one of the most important bills ever presented to the House for its action.” (Foner 603). The Civil Rights Bill stated that each person born in the USA would be a citizen. It also proposed equality in the eyes of the law and would prohibit individual states from formulating legislature similar to the Black Codes. The ratification of the Civil Rights Bill would make it virtually illegal to discriminate against any person based on their race. In essence, the bill would enhance upon the Thirteenth Amendment that only abolished slavery; it did not make the African Americans equal to whites in the eyes of the law. In response to the bill, Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill. He claimed that blacks should not be citizens and that Congress was trying to infringe on the States’ rights with the bill. Johnson strongly opposed large aspects of the Reconstruction due to his stubbornness and bigoted tendencies. As an immediate result of the executive action, Congress voted to override the veto and make the Civil Rights Bill law in
In 1543 Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish Canon, published “On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs”. The popular view is that Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun. The notion is as old as the ancient Greeks however. This work was entrusted by Copernicus to Osiander, a staunch Protestant who though the book would most likely be condemned and, as a result, the book would be condemned. Osiander therefore wrote a preface to the book, in which heliocentrism was presented only as a theory which would account for the movements of the planets more simply than geocentrism did, one that was not meant to be a definitive description of the heavens--something Copernicus did not intend. The preface was unsigned, and everyone took it to be the author’s. That Copernicus believed the helioocentric theory to be a true description of reality went largely unnoticed. In addition to the preface, this was partly because he still made reassuring use of Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles; he also borrowed from Aristotle the notion that the planets must move in circles because that is the only perfect form of motion.
The craftsman and idea smith of new theories cannot claim them as fact, for in similar situations, great thinkers have claimed that the world is flat, that the planets, the sun and all the heavens revolve around the Earth, and that Asia and the East Indies lie only 1100 miles west of the European continent. All of these conceptions of reality were later proved to be false, and, indeed, now seem ridiculous to the modern scholar. Anyone who is even slightly educated knows that this planet (and, in fact, all known planets) is spherical; the Earth and the rest of the planets in this solar system revolve around the sun, which is, incidentally, a relatively minor star; and there is an entire continent between Europe and Columbus’s Asian objective, the continent, in fact, on which we live. The theories proposed by Socrates are similar. It is difficult for the modern reader to believe that there is one quintessential automobile or television set.
Through Aristotle’s specific definition of a tragic hero, it can be concluded that Oedipus is a tragic hero. Oedipus The King was written by a well-known tragic dramatist named Sophocles. This story is considered to be one of the greatest tragedies of all time. In fact, the Marjorie Barstow of the Classical Weekly says that it “fulfills the function of a tragedy, and arouses fear and pity in the highest degree” (Barstow). It is also very controversial because of the relationship that Oedipus has with his mother, although it was unknown at the time that they were related. The qualifications of a tragic hero, according to Aristotle, include coming from a royal family and falling from power due to actions that only the protagonist can take responsibility for. The main character must also have a tragic flaw, which is defined as a “weakness in character” (Gioia). There have been many protagonists in other plays that represent a tragic hero, but none exemplify Aristotle’s tragic hero traits quite as well as Oedipus does because of many reasons including his royal history, his tragic flaw, his hamartia, and his his fall from power.
He now believed and expressed publicly that the Sun was the center of the solar system, which was the Copernican theory. This had challenged Aristotle’s doctrine and the establishment of the Catholic
He did so with two points. First, he claims that acceleration of falling bodies occurs because the motion of a falling object produces heat, which makes the surrounding air hot and rarified. Aristotle believed that a rarer medium will allow an object to move through it faster, seeing that objects move faster through air than water. Since hotter air is more rare, he thought that an object would speed up as it fell, since its previous motion created a rarer medium to accelerate through. His second point involved the idea that objects had a natural tendency to go to their natural place, so objects seeked the center of the earth.
The subject which the question focuses on is the view of Aristotle’s ideal state. The distinction between hierarchy and equality is at the heart of the understanding of Aristotle’s ideal state. He claims that an ideal state ought to be arranged to maximise the happiness of its citizens. So happiness together with political action is the telos of human life. This end can be reached by living a better ethical life. However, he endorses hierarchy over equality. On one hand we have the equality which benefits everyone; on the other hand we have the distinction of classes meant in terms of diversities and differences where the middle one appears to be the means through which the state is balanced. Furthermore what is clear for Aristotle is that there is a notion of natural inequality which can be evidently seen with the argument of slavery by nature and the role of women in society. Thence, in this paper I argue that Aristotle’s ideal state is a place of hierarchy rather than equality. This essay will focus on several reasons why we can define Aristotle’s ideal state as a hierarchical structure. These reasons are mainly: the exclusiveness of groups in the society, the division of classes, and the concept of inferiority of slaves and women. To do so, the paper has been divided into four parts, which will show, through direct quotations from the text and then with my personal opinion linked with several arguments and counterarguments, how hierarchy is more relevant in Aristotle’s view of society. The first part analyses the importance in a state of ruling and being ruled in a cyclical way, in opposition to the exclusion of groups from power. The second part focuses on the divisions of classes and their double possible interpretation. The...
Courageous and admirable with noble qualities defines a heroine. In Aristotle’s Poetics he describes a tragic hero as a character who is larger than life and through fate and a flaw they destroy themselves. Additionally, Aristotle states excessive pride is the hubris of a tragic hero. The hero is very self-involved; they are blind to their surroundings and commit a tragic action. A tragedy describes a story that evokes sadness and awe, something larger than life. Furthermore, a tragedy of a play results in the destruction of a hero, evoking catharsis and feelings of pity and fear among the audience. Aristotle states, "It should, moreover, imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation." (18) For a tragedy to arouse fear, the audience believes similar fate might happen to them and the sight of the suffering of others arouses pity. A tragedy's plot includes peripeteia, anagnorisis, hamartia and catharsis. Using Aristotle’s criteria, both characters in Oedipus The King and The Medea share similar qualities that define a tragic hero such as being of noble birth, having excessive pride, and making poor choices. They both gain recognition through their downfall and the audience feels pity and fear.
Before he attracts any grand conclusions, he begins with the thought of substance, of that there ar 3 kinds: changeable and spoilable (e.g., plants and animals), changeable and eternal (e.g., heavenly bodies), and changeless. If all substances ar spoilable, then final destruction of everything is inevitable. however Aristotle asserts 2 imperishable entities: motion and time. If time were created, then there should are no time before the creation, however the terribly construct of "before" necessitates the construct of your time. On the opposite hand, as he argued in his works of physical science, the sole continuous motion should be circular.
Much to the dismay of the Church, two astronomers Galileo and Kepler had the audacity to challenge the authorities by suggesting that the sun-not the earth-was at the center of the universe. The church had a stronghold on the way the spiritual and physical world worked, so these discoveries only added to the Church’s resistance to their aims. Their discoveries came only after Kepler and Galileo began to question ancient theories about how the world functioned. These ancient truths were widely held but were inconsistent with the new observations that they had made. Kepler had discovered the laws of planetary motion which suggested that the planet would move in elliptical orbits, while Galileo followed with his discovery of the principle of inertia. Galileo concluded his finding b...
In our sciences, it was believed that the earth was flat. However, this was indeed invalid due to the mountains, canyons and other elevated surfaces our earth provides. However, if one evened out the elevation, there would be left with flatness. The flat earth theory made it that the surface doesn't deviate from flatness at all, but that its curvature is 0 to the mile. To be sure that this flat-earth theory was indeed invalid, Greek Philosopher Aristotle obtained significant reasons that the theory was void. He first analyzed the direction of certain stars. Some stars disappear beyond the Southern Hemisphere as an individual travels north. As one travels south, the stars vanish beyond the Northern Hemisphere. Also, the earth’s shadow on the moon is in the shape of an arc of a circle during a lunar eclipse. Lastly, the earth flows downward into an inevitable center. This deterred the idea that the earth was flat. Aristotle observed that due to the movement of solid matter to a common center, the earth was undoubtedly spherical. Even after a century after Aristotle, Eratosthenes note...
Although Aristotle grew up under the ideas of Plato, through time he began to develop his own theories and views about philosophical thoughts (Aristotle Biography, 2015). Aristotle believed that in order to understand the natural world to the fullest, one must use each of the five senses, all of which we use to this day. Aristotle also had his own views of the world, especially the astronomy of it. He believed the earth was at the center of the universe and the remaining planets, only 5 known at the time, were circling around it (Worldview of Ancient Greece - Socrates, Plato & Aristotle, n.d.). We know now that his views on this matter are not taught and the planets revolve around the
To understand Aristotle’s overall theory of motion you must first understand his classification of matter. Aristotle believed that all matter consist of one of the five elements, earth, water, air, fire, and aether (Fowler). Each element had a place it belonged, with the most complex being aether which was heavenly bodies. Each of these elements had to be paired with an opposite which consist of, hot, cold, wet and dry. He then used these elements and opposites to describe all things on Earth and in our known universe. Each element had a natural resting place, for instance, water had a natural resting place between earth and air. This logic was then used to justify how and why lakes and streams exist, water runs downhill, but sits on top of earth. Another example of this is, since wood is composed mostly of air and so it floats on water.