Corpus evidence — top 10 passages

Most-relevant passages from the entire indexed corpus (67,286 paragraph chunks across YouTube transcripts, PubMed, arXiv, archive.org, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, OpenAlex, and more) ranked by semantic similarity (bge-small-en-v1.5).

1. 01 · yt0.848

   This is the real behavior of physical stuff in the universe. So Aristotle says, "I know what's going on. Motion is an unnatural state of being. There are natural ways for things in the universe to be places that things want to be in forms of motion that places and things want to have. And if you just let something go and don't disturb it, it will just sit there. It will not move. Motion requires an impetus, a mover. Something needs to be pushing it." This illustration stolen from the internet. The dog is not actually moving the car. You see the dog there, right? If you look very closely, there…

   yt/rqezWO5Yba8-sean-carrol-the-big-picture-on-the-origins-of-life-meaning-a/transcript.txt

2. 02 · yt0.837

   For everything that happens, there is a cause or reason why. And again it's not crazy. In our everyday experience, that is kind of what we see. Things do not just happen. The book is not going to see just fly off into air. There seems to be reasons why things happen. If the book moves, it's because I moved it. And for Aristotle and for many other people, this metaphysical claim that things that happen do so because something causes them to happen, influenced their ideas about physics. So for Aristotle, if things are moving, it implies that something is moving them. There is a reason why things…

   yt/x26a-ztpQs8-the-big-picture-sean-carroll-talks-at-google/transcript.txt

3. 03 · blog0.794

   Taken together, these considerations imply that we have a complete account of the physical domain once we have a thorough description of what is natural to the entities in that domain, together with a specification of all the circumstances in which they operate. [ 41 ] Bk. 8 of the Physics argues for the additional thesis that for each motion, whether natural or contrary to nature, there needs to exist a mover. [ 42 ] In cases of forced motion, movers are present in a conspicuous way. This need not be so, however, in cases of natural motion. Apart from the cases where the nature of the entity …

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/aristotle-s-natural-philosophy.md

4. 04 · blog0.792

   When he submits that there is no motion besides the categories ( Physics 3.1, at 200b32–201a3), he does not assign motions to the categories of action and passion. After mentioning that the entities in the categories come in oppositions, Aristotle claims a few lines later (at 201a8–9) that there are as many kinds of motion and change as there are kinds of being. This means that motions are grouped here with the entities of the category where they effect change. [ 9 ] Nevertheless, when making this claim, Aristotle speaks about four kinds of motion and change only—those in substance, in quality…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/aristotle-s-natural-philosophy.md

5. 05 · blog0.788

   In the natural realm, all processes of generation and corruption consist in motion—for instance the movement from potential to actual existence—and occurs through motion. All natural changes depend on the movements of the celestial spheres, which in turn depend on the mover of the outermost sphere, the Prime Mover ( Tiqqun n.30: 29, n.39: 62). Beyond this well-known Aristotelian conception of the Prime Mover as the ultimate cause of motion, Albalag seeks to establish the idea of the creator, without compromising his faithfulness to Aristotelian principles. To this end, he argues that the very …

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/isaac-albalag.md

6. 06 · blog0.782

   Were there no separate forms—entities such as the unmoved mover at the pinnacle of the cosmos—which are without matter and are not part of the physical world, physics would be what Aristotle calls first philosophy ( Metaphysics 6.1, 1026a27–31). As there are such separate entities, physics is dependent on these, and is only a second philosophy ( Metaphysics 7.11, 1037a14f). Nevertheless, the interaction between these two “philosophies” is not completely exhausted by the causal influence exerted on the world by the supra-physical entities—the prime movers as it turns out. Aristotle’s metaphysic…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/aristotle-s-natural-philosophy.md

7. 07 · blog0.779

   With this argument Aristotle can establish an eternal chain of motions and refute those who hold that there could have been a previous stationary state of the universe. Such an eternal chain, Aristotle argues, needs to rely on a cause which guarantees its persistence: if each of the constitutive processes in the causally connected web were of finite duration, for every one of them it can be the case that it is not present in the world, indeed, at some later time it will not be present any longer. But then the whole causally connected series of events, Aristotle claims, would also be contingent…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/aristotle-s-natural-philosophy.md

8. 08 · blog0.777

   This implies that even though we may answer the question as to why the elements move to their natural places—the light bodies up and the heavy ones down—by an appeal to their respective natures as causes (“that it is simply their nature to move somewhere, [ 43 ] and this is what it is to be light and to be heavy,” Physics 8.4, 255b13–17), we do not thereby specify their moving causes. Their thrust being in a single direction, the elements cannot circumvent even rather simple obstacles they may encounter on their way (a sealed container can retain air under water, the roof stays put pressing do…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/aristotle-s-natural-philosophy.md

9. 09 · blog0.775

   (In particular the Sun’s course along the ecliptic is responsible for many sublunar changes, the cycle of the seasons being foremost among them.) Whether these circular motions require external movers, and ultimately, whether the universe is causally closed or needs some external causal influence for its preservation, depends on the status of these revolutions. In this regard the very first thing to establish is that they cannot be constrained motions. [ 45 ] But natural motions are also in need of movers, as Physics 8.4 argues. This does not apply only to the natural motions of living beings,…

   blog/plato-stanford-edu/aristotle-s-natural-philosophy.md

10. 10 · blog0.773

    Since any change or motion requires two elements, the agent or mover and the patient or movable, Aristotle raises the question whether motion is in the mover or the movable ( Phys. III.3). Averroes gives following explanation: the mover acts in so far as it is form, that is to say, in so far as it is in actuality, and the movable is moved in so far as it is in potentiality, therefore the motion “becomes the same perfection of both of them” (LC 92H TC18). Nevertheless, they are two kinds of perfection and Aristotle saw here a dialectical difficulty ( aporía logikē , Phys. III.3, 202a21) with wh…

    blog/plato-stanford-edu/ibn-rushd-s-natural-philosophy.md