Mechanika arystotelesowska a współczesna fizyka. Na tropach ciągłości wewnętrznej logiki rozwoju nauki

Abstract

An analysis of two different reconstructions of Aristotelian mechanics in the language of contemporary physics reveals interesting aspects of the historical development of physics: (1) there exists a structural invariant in all physical representations of reality in the form of the Cartesian product and (2) all intertheoretical transitions to date, at each stage of unification, have occurred in accordance with the correspondence principle. This means that the historical development of physics can be regarded as rational in the sense that subsequent theories become ever more general and Aristotelian mechanics can be treated as a natural forerunner of Newtonian mechanics and, by extension, Einstein’s relativity theory.