Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

Wisdom comes from rejecting the imperfect representations
of the forms—material things—and embracing the immaterial
forms—the perfect, unchanging ideas of things.
Like Plato, Aristotle was a teleological thinker. For him, reality
strives toward a goal, a perfect, unchanging state. Aristotle also
put forth a version of Plato’s forms: All things are part of a
where Plato put these idealized essences in a world of their own,
separated from our world, Aristotle held that they are simply part
of the soul of each thing; they are the thing’s potentiality trying to
become actualized.
This essentialism served as the basis for Aristotle’s theories
of chemistry and physics. For Aristotle, all material things are
Each of these four elements has an essence that includes a natural
place, the place in the universe where it was meant to be.
When Aristotle said that earth is at the center of the universe,
he was not making an astronomical claim that the planet Earth
is at the center of space. Rather, he was simply making the true
claim that dirt falls straight down.
The Greeks knew that the Earth is round. If dirt goes straight
down no matter where you are when you drop it, then it is
always moving toward the middle of the sphere. When Aristotle
said that earth is at the center of the universe, he meant that soil
will seek its natural resting place and will remain there; that
place is at the center of the universe.
Water, too, moves straight down, but water’s place is not at the
center; instead, it sits on top of dirt. Thus, the natural place for
water is in a sphere around the natural place of earth. Air, in
place above the sphere of air.
13