Aristotelian Physics On Modern Science

Humans have always been naturally curious. Why are we here? How did life start? What happened at the beginning of time? How does everything work? These are seminal questions that plagued our ancestors and currently plague us. Answering seemingly impossible questions is the role of science, specifically physics, in humanity. At the forefront of the quest to understand everything was Aristotelian physics. While in the future Aristotelian physics would turn out to be completely incorrect, his original ideas and theories were critical for developing modern science as we know it today. However, it was not until humanity accepted the flaws in Aristotelian physics that science made any progress toward finally understanding the universe. While Aristotelian physics was completely wrong in a multitude of ways, it was still needed to form a basis of the modern method of discovery. Furthermore, the majority of theories in the history of science are incorrect at first. Historically, this has been the method of progress in the sciences. From Newton’s theory of Gravitation and Statistical Mechanics to General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. This cycle of theorizing and rejecting is a necessity to the modern scientific method, a very successful error correcting system. Therefore, both Aristotelian physics and the divorce of Aristotelian physics from science were necessary for humanity to make progress in the sciences. Negative results are still results nonetheless.

Theorizing and hypothesizing are at the heart of the scientific method and are imperative to the progression of science. Understanding how the universe works additionally entails understanding how the universe does not work. Amongst Aristotelian physics were the original theories...

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...ill ever be made.

On the edge of theoretical physics is the study of String Theory, a theory first proposed in the middle of the twentieth century. String Theory was very prominent among the physics community in the late twentieth century, and many physicists were working on experiments and proofs to solidify the theory. However, half a century later and String Theory remains unproven and unverified. Just like Aristotle’s theories, if String Theory results in inaccurate predictions of the universe, it will also need to be eliminated from science in order for science to more fully progress. In order for humanity to further its understanding of nature, it must first establish a theory, realize its errors, and retheorize until a point is reached where no discontinuities exist between the theory and the universe. This will always be true, and still resonates today.