Week 1 Course Material

Course Slides and Readings

Before the first session, please read:

• "Aristotle's account of substance," section 2.2 of the entry "Substance" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Link to text here.

• "Motion," section 2 of the entry "Aristotle's Natural Philosophy," in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Link to text here.

Further Reading

Optional reading:

• Book I, Parts 7-9 of Aristotle's Physics. Link to text here. (NB difficult!)

Assignment

After the first session, write 300-500 words in response to one of the following:

1. Describe in your own words, and using your own examples, the difference between the speculative sciences of physics, mathematics, and metaphysics.

2. Differentiate Aristotle's doctrine of substance and accidents from Democritus's understanding of being and change.

3. Describe how Aristotle's understanding of universal differs from Plato's doctrine of the Forms/Ideas.

4. Outline every possible combination of substance/accident and particular/universal, giving example statements of subject and predicate.