Iulia Magui

Alexia Neagoe

Giulia Roșu

Darius Bîtea

Bogdan Horoba

Time & Cosmos to Aristotle

Time

Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compare the duration of events or the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change of quantities in material reality or in the conscious experience. Time is often referred to as a fourth dimension, along with three spatial dimensions.

Time has long been an important subject of study in religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a manner applicable to all fields without circularity has consistently eluded scholars. Nevertheless, diverse fields such as business, industry, sports, the sciences, and the performing arts all incorporate some notion of time into their respective measuring systems. Time in physics is operationally defined as "what a clock reads"

Cosmos

Cosmos often simply means "universe". But the word is generally used to suggest an orderly or harmonious universe, as it was originally used by Pythagoras in the 6th century B.C. Thus, a religious mystic may help put us in touch with the cosmos, and so may a physicist. The same is often true of the adjective cosmic: Cosmic rays (really particles rather than rays) bombard us from outer space, but cosmic questions come from human attempts to find order in the universe.

Aristotle

Aristotle, who lived from 384 to 322 BC, believed the Earth was round. He thought Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun, Moon, planets, and all the fixed stars revolved around it. Aristotle's ideas were widely accepted by the Greeks of his time. The exception, a century later, was Aristarchus, one of the earliest believers in a heliocentric or sun-centered universe. In the 100s BC, Hipparchus, the most important Greek astronomer of his time, calculated the comparative brightness of as many as 1,000 different stars. He also calculated the Moon's distance from the Earth.

Aristotle

The Elements in Aristotle's Cosmic Model

In Aristotle's Cosmology, each of these four elements (earth, water, fire and air) had a weight. Earth was the heaviest, water less so, and air and fire the lightest. According to Aristotle the lighter substances moved away from the centre of the universe and the heaver elements settled into the centre. While these elements attempted to sort themselves out, to achieve this order, most of experience involved mixed entities.

While we have seen earth, fire, air and water, everything else in the world in this system was understood as a mixture of these elements. In this perspective, transition and change in our world resulted from the mixing of the elements. For Aristotle the terrestrial is a place of birth and death, based in these elements. The heavens are a separate realm governed by their own rules.

The difference between material and substance

One of Aristotle’s most influential works is the Nicomachean Ethics, where he presents a theory of happiness that is still relevant today, over 2,300 years later. The key question Aristotle seeks to answer in these lectures is “What is the ultimate purpose of human existence?” What is that end or goal for which we should direct all of our activities? Everywhere we see people seeking pleasure, wealth, and a good reputation. But while each of these has some value, none of them can occupy the place of the chief good for which humanity should aim. To be an ultimate end, an act must be self-sufficient and final, “that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1097a30-34), and it must be attainable by man. Aristotle claims that nearly everyone would agree that happiness is the end which meets all these requirements. It is easy enough to see that we desire money, pleasure, and honor only because we believe that these goods will make us happy. It seems that all other goods are a means towards obtaining happiness, while happiness is always an end in itself.

How did Aristotle help the humanity ?

According to Aristotle, the being of any individual thing is primarily defined by what it is, i.e. by its substance. Substance is both essence (form) and substratum (matter), and may combine form and matter. Substance constitutes the reality of individual things. The substance of each individual thing is the particular nature of that thing. The substance of each individual thing is that which does not belong to other individual things, while the universal (principle or element) of an individual thing is that which belongs to many individual things.

​

Aristotle explains that there are four kinds of causes of things: 1. the substance or essence of a thing (the formal cause), 2. the matter and subject of a thing (the material cause), 3. the source of 'motion' or change in a thing (the efficient cause), and 4. the purpose for which a thing has being (the final cause).

Quotes

“The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.”

“Happiness is a state of activity.”