INSTITUTO TECNOLÓGICO Y DE ESTUDIOS SUPERIORES DE MONTERREY

CAMPUS ESTADO DE MÉXICO

José Mendoza Martínez

1164486
The Beginnings of Western Science I Gpo.__
Prof. Salvador E. Venegas-Andraca
23 February 2011

The physics of the sublunar Region this is the title of the chapter 12 which in my personal
opinion had became one of the most interesting chapters cause in it topics like movement
Kinematics, velocity etc take place and the author had put them together to gave us an idea of
what did all this topic or meaning came from.

They start with some of the Aristotle's work on the lecture, it said that Aristotle’s medieval
followers thought that all objects in terrestrial realm are composites of form and matter as
Aristotle do, but medieval followers add to this meaning something that looks important
cause they identified two kinds of form, instead of one. One of them associated with essential
properties, the other with incidental properties.

Also the chapter talks about combinations and mixtures and it said that Aristotle were able
to distinguish between both concepts and when all ingredients came into a homogeneous
compound in which the original natures disappear they called it ‘mixture’. And with this a new
current came out, and they were the minimist. They said that the properties will be in the
minimum part if the body, it doesn’t matter how small or big the piece is, because always would
be the same substance.

With this we can gave us an idea that in that time some kind of new research was coming up,
and we can finally see this with Alchemy, which was the study of the experimentation in which
something were meant to be transformed into precious metal, specially gold.
It is widely agreed by historians that alchemy had Greek origins, what is important about
alchemy is that demands confirmation or disconfirmation of alchemy theory by contrived
chemical experimentation, and with this we can see that the pseudo-science (Alchemy) may
have a powerful contribution to the “new” science of the seventeenth century.

And finally the books started talking about physic concepts and the firsts ones that take place on
the book, are Change and Motion.
As we can see in the book there was 2 different opinions about motion one,forma fluens, said
that motion is not a thing separate from the moving body, but simply the moving body and
its successive places; the other, fluxus formae, said that motion is some thing inherent in the
moving body.

And with all this kind of information and new concepts, it became necessary to put in some
mathematical language this information.
And with this, some important concepts were develop. Autolycus of Pitane after Aristotle
works on this and he defined a uniform motion, which is the one in which equal distances
are traversed in equal times. Also the Meronians distinguished between uniform motion and
nonuniform and gave us a definition of what is acceleration: a motion is uniformly accelerated if
its velocity increases by equal increments in equal units of time.
For the fourteenth century mathematicians, followed that all qualities should submit to a similar
analysis, processing both a quantity and an intensity, and this two concepts were use in Velocity
and acceleration, also in Motion.
After dealing with how move is describe mathematically they start wondering how it is produce?.
Aristotle said that move is made by a mover.
After reading and extend lecture about kinematics we finally reach the final chapter which is
the ‘Legacy of the Ancient and Medieval Science’, As we may know and also something that
in the book we can notice is that Christianity arrested the normal development of the physical
sciences, there was created an atmosphere in which the germs of physical sciences could
hardly grow.
But we don’t necessary have to see Christianity as bad at all, cause thanks of that, we could
have one of the biggest and prestigious Universities of the world which is Oxford.
We, now, need to see the difference between methodological theory form methodological
practice, and to define the word experiment. And after understanding this concepts we can
easily see that people like Ptolemy has do experimental observation, cause, he used some
astronomical instruments in order to confirm his hypothesis.
And this experimental science became popular and necessary, so it continued through the pass
of time to our days.
And we can finally say that the cientific revolution took place within an ideologically rich human
enviroment, it had ideologically rich historical foundations and with those foundations came
continuities.