Aristotle on the Heavens
VI
Books IX 25 - 71 & X
XXV
There cannot be more than one world. Since the existence of
a world implies the existence of a transcendent being to move it, a plurality
of worlds would entail a plurality of transcendent movers, which is an impossibility.
Page 2
Body is defined as a species of the continuous.
Page 24
According to Simplicius, it was believed that the astronomical
records of the Egyptians went back for 630,000 years, and those of the
Babylonians for 1,440,000.
In Chapter VII Aristotle argues that the body of the world in not infinite.
In Chapter VIII he argues that there cannot be more than one world.
He says that a thing that did not move would not be a body at all. πâѵ σŵμα αίσθητòѵ ëχϵι ...
Page 78
The elements move more quickly as they approach their natural places.
Page 87
ouranos : is world, heavens or sky.
Page 93
aeon is the total time which circumscribes the length of life of every creature, and which cannot in nature be exceeded.
Ch. XII, Page 127
The impossibility of anything that was once eternal
afterwards being destroyed, or anything once non-existent afterwards being
eternal, may also be seen from less general and more scientific arguments.
Things which are destructible or generated are all subject to change. Change
takes place by means of contraries, and physical bodies are destroyed by the agency
of the same elements of which they are composed.
Ch. VII, page 180
The notion was widely held in antiquity that bodies moving through
air became heated by it.
Cf. Lucretius
vi. 178: plumbea vero glans etiam longo cursu volvenda liquescit.
(A leaden ball in whirling through a long course even melts)
Ch IV, Page 293
As the triangle is the elementary plane figure to which all
plane figures can be reduced, so the pyramid is the elementary solid.
Ch V, Page 303
The elements, then, are neither infinite in number nor
reducible to one, and must therefore be (a) a plurality but (b) a limited
number.
