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2 results

  • 1 - Conceptual Foundations

  • Barbara M. Sattler, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany
  • Book:
    The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought
    Published online:
    28 September 2020
    Print publication:
    08 October 2020, pp 17-79

  • Summary

    This chapter gives an overview of the problems raised by the concept of motion in the period investigated – specifically, its apparent integration of Being and non-Being, and its combination of Time and Space. It then discusses the central notions employed in the present project: the criteria or standards established for philosophical inquiry (the principles of non-contradiction and of sufficient reason, and a criterion termed “rational admissibility”) and the roles of logic and mathematics in establishing natural philosophy. This chapter lays out broad outlines, systematic and historical, of the issues to be discussed in detail in the ensuing chapters, each of which will deal with one thinker or one school. Thus this opening chapter will serve as a first orientation for the project as well as a reservoir for consultation if questions concerning the basic concepts employed arise during the reading of the whole book.

The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought
  • Foundations in Logic, Method, and Mathematics
  • Barbara M. Sattler
  • Published online:
    28 September 2020
    Print publication:
    08 October 2020
  • This book examines the birth of the scientific understanding of motion. It investigates which logical tools and methodological principles had to be in place to give a consistent account of motion, and which mathematical notions were introduced to gain control over conceptual problems of motion. It shows how the idea of motion raised two fundamental problems in the 5th and 4th century BCE: bringing together being and non-being, and bringing together time and space. The first problem leads to the exclusion of motion from the realm of rational investigation in Parmenides, the second to Zeno's paradoxes of motion. Methodological and logical developments reacting to these puzzles are shown to be present implicitly in the atomists, and explicitly in Plato who also employs mathematical structures to make motion intelligible. With Aristotle we finally see the first outline of the fundamental framework with which we conceptualise motion today.