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Darrera modificació: 2026-04-21
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Paparazzo, Emiliano, "Aristotle's reduction of the elements to properties in Meteor. IV and the biological writings", Technai, 16 [=The harmony of the elements: philosophical and technical perspectives from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, I] (2025), 21-39.
- Resum
- The paper tries to shed light on Aristotle's transition from his ‘canonical' view on the sublunary elements found in GC ii to the one found in Meteo. IV and the biological writings. In GC II, the simple bodies earth, water, air, and fire are presented as a material substrate qualified by one member of each of the two pairs of opposites hot-cold and dry-moist (although each element possesses a chief property). This structure allows them to change into one another by replacing one or both properties, and these mutual transformations are in turn at the basis of any process of generation and corruption taking place in the sublunary region. On the other hand, in Meteor. IV and the biological works, where generation and, more generally, change of observable everyday bodies are discussed, Aristotle resorts to a different perspective : here, (1) the elements are no longer said to change into one another, (2) it is the elemental properties that play the leading role in the explanation, (3) water is described as chiefly moist (whereas in GC ii it is presented as chiefly cold), (4) the cold is equally distributed among earth and water, (5) earth is reduced to the dry, water to the cold, and fire to the hot. The aim of the paper is to show that such doctrinal change ultimately depends on the change of the field of inquiry: as Aristotle's focus shifts from the elements to uniform and non-uniform bodies, he resorts to the elemental properties as proximate material and efficient causes, as they are the simplest perceptible entities actually belonging to a body. Finally, the paper addresses the issue of (6) the puzzling status of elemental air in Meteor. IV and the biological works, which tends to fade into the background, as Aristotle mostly resorts to earth, water, and fire alone.
- Matèries
- Aristòtil
Història natural
- URL
- https://www.libraweb.net/articoli3.php?chiave=20251 ...
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