Any Aristotle Fans out There?

[slickpoppa]

Anyone? His Nichomachean Ethics is probably my favorite work of philosophy, although it does have its flaws.

[kitaristi0]

I wouldn't call myself a fan, but i always preferred him over Plato.

[David Sklansky]

He thought that a moving body would slow down even if there was nothing causing that to happen. Not Ready called him one of the three or four smartest people who ever lived. If Aristotle in fact did think this, he wasn't in the top thousand. (Neither was Leibniz by the way if it is true he thought eleven had the same probability as twelve for two dice.) Some types of mistakes almost guarantee that a guy can't be that smart.

[BZ_Zorro]

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He thought that a moving body would slow down even if there was nothing causing that to happen.

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I'm interested in hearing why that's an unreasonable belief for 2000 years ago.

Agree with the two dice thing(??) though, didn't know about that.

[JoshuaD]

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He thought that a moving body would slow down even if there was nothing causing that to happen. Not Ready called him one of the three or four smartest people who ever lived. If Aristotle in fact did think this, he wasn't in the top thousand. (Neither was Leibniz by the way if it is true he thought eleven had the same probability as twelve for two dice.) Some types of mistakes almost guarantee that a guy can't be that smart.

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You're assuming a ton of knowlege that simply didn't exist back then.

[David Sklansky]

Its an unreasonable belief, for someone who is supposed to be real smart. I guarantee that neither Einstein nor Newton would have thought that if they lived back then.

[fnord_too]

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Its an unreasonable belief, for someone who is supposed to be real smart. I guarantee that neither Einstein nor Newton would have thought that if they lived back then.

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This is wild speculation. There are two big assumptions you are making:
1. That smart people don't make mistakes
2. That Aristotle's beliefs are unreasonable. The concept of friction really wasn't there AFAIK. The belief that all things came to rest was not that crazy, kind of like Newton not taking relativity into account with his theory of gravity was not that crazy, or Einstein not taking whatever discoveries we make over the next several centuries into account was not that crazy.

If you want to bust Aristotle for something, bust him for believing heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones, since that can be contradicted by observation. (Though, again, our old friend friction has some impact here, but that is splitting hairs.)

It is my understanding that Aristotle was more of a mathematician. His bent was working with givens and deriving things.

I cannot say where he ranks in history's smartest people, I don't even have an acceptable definition of intelligence nor have I studied him. I would tend to aggree on insufficient data and definition that he is not in the top 1000, but making that statement based on the fact that he thought the natural state of matter was rest is silly.

[David Sklansky]

I didn't say his idea was unreasonable. And if he hadn't actually written about the concept I could give him air. But he actually THOUGHT about it and still got it wrong. All he had to do was notice a few things (dense things slow down slower, he doesn't feel his movemment much on a steadily galloping horse) and see where that logically leads and he would have realized that there is no difference between stationary objects and moving unaccelerating objects. Incredibly smart people would realize these things. Newton certainly would have even back then.
And your comment about Newton missing relativety is wrong, because he did not know the results of the Michaelson Morley experiment.

As for smart people not making mistakes, the fact is that when they are incredibly smart and have thought about something hard enough to merit putting it on paper, their mistakes are so much rarer than less smart people that when confronted with a mistake like this, Baye's Theorem tells us that the much more plausible explanation is that he wasn't incredibly brilliant rather than he was and made a very rare error.

[fnord_too]

Michaelson Morley disproved ether, not realy germane to relativity. Planetary orbit observations are what showed our understanding of gravity was not quite accurate IIRC.

As to the other bit, saying that the natural state of an object is rest does not imply in any way that all things come to rest in the same manner.

One other point, AFAIK, Einstein published one of his major theories with (cancelling) math errors, does that lower him in your book?


(Because I like arguing...)
The thing with Bayes theorem is that depending on how you assign prior probabilities, you can get different results. I think what you mean in that bit is Occam's Razor, not Baye's Theorem. The former is definitely a heuristic, but without the math, you don't really have the latter. Some other things to consider: errors in writings are quite different at different points in history. Today, it is very easy to work things out and edit and re-edit. In Artistotle's day, that was not the case. (Technically, I don't think he "put it on paper" which is less of a nit than it sounds like, because the mechanics of scribing and editing were pretty arduous back then AFAIK.)

Do not underestimate the value of being able to noodle on paper. I am out of my element with Aristotle and the technology of the day, but I do know the ability just easily write things down and work through thoughts on paper is huge. Think about working out some complex EV calculations in the sand, like Archimides would have had to.

[David Sklansky]

"Michaelson Morley disproved ether, not realy germane to relativity"

It is my understanding that they also showed the speed of light was constant. Newton could not have been expected to know that.

"As to the other bit, saying that the natural state of an object is rest does not imply in any way that all things come to rest in the same manner."

Not sure what you are saying here. What I am saying is that a smart guy should realize that moving objects will keep moving unless there is something to stop it. I wouldn't be surprised if that was in fact known or at least suspected by some of the scientists of his day.

By the way, I agree that if he thought heavier objects fell faster than light ones, aside from air friction, that really did make him a moron, even if he was too lazy to do an experiment. Thought experiments would suffice. Imagine two metal balls falling side by side. As they are falling attach them with a string. That will make them fall faster? Alternatively imagine a hollow metal ball and an equally weighted smaller solid ball falling at the same speed. Now put the smaller ball inside the bigger one. Again it is obvious the falling speed doesn't change though the new object is twice as heavy. Sure you have to be clever to think this way . But supposedly that's what Aristole was. I'm sure Thales, Appolonious, and of course Euclid and Archimedes could run rings around him.

"One other point, AFAIK, Einstein published one of his major theories with (cancelling) math errors, does that lower him in your book?"

That's ridiculous. I'm talking CONCEPTUAL errors here. The fact is that of all the historical supposedly smart people, the only inexcusable errors that I personally know about are Aristotle's and Leibniz's. Perhaps Kronecker should be faulted for not anticipating Russell paradoxes. Careless errors or understandable errors, given the circumstances, are a different thing entirely.