Outline and Definitions from Aristotle’s Physics
Defintions
- Matter (I)- That out of which something comes to be and which persists in the result
- Nature (II) – an intrinsic principle of motion and rest which belongs to the thing essentially((a part of the very constitution of the thing)) and primarily((the differentiae peculiar to the species)) and not as a concomitant attribute((its a freakish thing)).
- Causes (II) – that on which something depends for its coming to be, intrinsically or extrinsically.
- Chance (II) – to identify needs to be 1) rare 2) in genus of thing for an end, 3) not reached that end 4) luck is to a human.
- Necessity (II) – found in the material, the end is only hypothetical. Accidental adjunct to two lines of causality, in which each follows out its proper order and in neither of which is the meeting essentially included.
- Motion (III) – the realisation of what exists potentially((To the extent that a potency in the physical world is fulfilled, the corresponding motion is over)) insofar as it exists potentially((without this second use of potential, the phrase would refer to the term of the motion rather than the motion itself))
- Infinite (III) – if we can always take a part outside what has already been taken((continuous quantity, for instance a line, is always undivided but divisible, and in a corresponding way, the number of things in the order of discrete quantity is always actually finite but potentially infinite))
- Place (IV.1-5) – the innermost((sometimes called the first surface, that is, first surface outside of the body itself…where the water in a glass would touch, or where your foot presses down the ground.)) motionless boundary of what contains.
- Void (IV.6-10) – Place with nothing in it, space((internal extension)) is mathematical.
- Time((the present (day, hour, second etc, includes a portion, more or less great, of both the past and the future.)) (IV.10-14) – the measure of motion((since motion is a continuous quantity, it is the best means of determining time. we recognize the prior and the posterior by numbering them, saying that one is the first and the other second)) according to before and after.((priority and posteriority here do not mean temporal priority and posteriority, for they would then beg the question; they mean rather spatial or geometrical priority and posteriority. A demonstration follows: Since that which is numbered according to prior and posterior in motion is measured by time, and since the mobile, as the subject of motion, is numbered according to the prior and posterior in motion, then the mobile, as the subject of motion is measured by time.))
- (10)
- Essential, Accidental,