Did Aristotle Fail in Physics? Part 5

Premise B: Jaki criticizes Aristotle's "On the Heavens."

I want to get to the bottom of Jaki’s contention that Aristotelian physics “failed” because it concentrates on the wholeness of substances. I wrote about how much I struggled with this idea while writing my thesis on the elements and again in this post, “Are You Infected with Materialism?” Just when I get my head around the top-down view of nature instead of my chemistry-brained bottom-up view, I go back, read Jaki, and realize he thought the top-down view was one of the reasons Aristotle failed in physics. Aaarghh! This Stacy is back.

In case you’re just now joining, here’s the argument again from Part 1:

Premise A—>An organismic world view causes a failure in physics. (Part 2, 3)
Premise B—>Aristotle held an organismic world view. (Part 4, 5)
Therefore, Aristotle failed in physics.

This post continues examination of Premise B with respect to Jaki’s commentary on Aristotle’s On the Heavens (De Caelo). Jaki gives a detailed analysis of Aristotle in Relevance of Physics (1966) pages 14-22.…