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Aristotle and the Unmoved Mover

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  • 4 weeks later...

What do you want to know? I can only offer a summary of Aristotle's ideas until you tell ask for something more specific:

Aristotle observed that there are bodies in motion and asked the question "what set these bodies in motion?" He deduced that there had to have been an "unmoved mover", that is, something that caused the first ever movement without having moved itself. When first trying to understand this concept, many people make the mistake of imagining stationary, motionless bodies; one of the bodies moves, which causes a chain reaction. Likely, the flaw in their interpretation is that they never address what causes the first movement. The only way to avoid an infinite chain of events (a body moves which causes another body to move, but the movement of the first body was caused by another moving body, which makes it the first moving body, but it was moved by something, so on and so forth until you go insane), Aristotle reasoned that there has to have been something that caused the first movement, without moving.

Edited by Alexandros
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