On 28 January 2014 11:09, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 1/27/2014 1:52 PM, LizR wrote: > > On 28 January 2014 06:46, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> > You seem to take the Aristotelian (naturalist, materialist, >>> physicalist) theology for granted. >>> >> >> I've said more than once that Aristotle was the worst physicist who >> ever lived, he certainly caused the most damage to the field. >> >> Bruno is using Aristotle to mean "materialist", since Aristotle was > apparently the person who started physics on the materialism route. So > "taking Aristotle for granted" just means "taking materialism for granted". > If you think Aristotle was a bad physicist, then perhaps you shouldn't do > that (assuming you do). > > Democritus was arguably more "materialist" than Aristotle. He argued > that everything was made of few kinds of atoms and that they moved in > random "swerves" that allowed them to collide and interact. Aristotle > argued there were different substances and that they had teleological > tendencies to be in their proper place. >
Ah yes, he is the originator of "atoms and the void," I think? He had atoms with hooks on that could connect together, iirc, which isn't THAT far from the truth. I think using "Aristotle" may have more to it that just materialism. I think it's probably a whole outlook, which worked fairly well for 2000 years or so, but some think has now run into trouble (Tegmark for example, compares Aristotle and Plato, and favours the latter with his "mathematical universe hypothesis".) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
