Question # 4: Explain why Aristotle is known as the commonsense philosopher.
Aristotle, a Greek Philosopher, student of Plato, and teacher of Alexander the Great, was born in 384BC and lived to be some 60 years old at his time of death. During his time on earth, many of his writings covered such topics of physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Aristotle is by far known as one of the most important figures in western philosophy. His works is one of the earliest known forms of the study of logic. Since he had a conception of speed and temperature but, relatively no quantitative understanding of mass, velocity, force and temperature, his basis is largely remains qualitative. With the lack of complete understanding of the four items listed above, I believe that his beliefs were more so that of commonsense.
Commonsense by virtue is “sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts”. Aristotle believed that common sense is an actual power of inner sensation. External senses such as color for sight, hearing for sound etc., are united and joined in ways that allow one to sense the substance in which various attributed inhere. An example of Aristotle’s senses and beliefs, are that the earth is stationary that lies in the center of the universe and that the stars are a “fixed’ object that move in an orbit around the earth.
Aristotle had 8 premises of why the earth does not move. 1) Local motion, the way natural objects move, is motion that is either circular, in a straight line, or a combination of the two. 2) The Earth is a natural object. 3) If the Earth moves, it moves in one of the ways described in premise one. 4) The fixed stars are special objects. 5) The fixed stars are observed to move across the sky but are also observed to have unchanging positions relative to one another. 6) In our ordinary experience, when we as persons move in relation to objects that are in fixed position relative to one another, we see that the objects shift their apparent position relative to one another. 7) If the Earth moved, we should be able to observe the fixed stars shift in relation to one another as the Earth moves and changes its position relative to those fixed stars. 8) When we observe the fixed stars, we observe that they do not shift in relation to one another. Although the eight premises of why the earth does not move did seem valid in Aristotle’s time, it wasn’t until sometime in the 16th century that mathematic proved that Aristotle’s early commonsense beliefs were wrong thus making Aristotle a “commonsense” philosopher.
The Essay on Aristotle Earth Lines Books
Aristotle was born in Stagira, located in northern Greece, in 384 B. C. He died in Chalcis, on the Aegean island of Euboea, in 322 B. C. Aristotle's father had been court physician to the Macedonian king Amyntas II. Aristotle lost both of his parents when he was child, and was brought up by a friend of the family. Aristotle wrote 170 books, 47 of which still exist more than two thousand years ...
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[ 1 ]. Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster Inc. Concise Dictionary, Springfield Massachusetts: 1998
