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Article: Nature and inertia.(Essay)
- Article from:
- The Review of Metaphysics
- Article date:
- December 1, 2008
- Author:
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NEWTON'S FIRST LAW OF MOTION, also known as the principle of inertia, says "Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed." (1) I will argue that inertia is an inherent principle and that inertia and Newton's First Law are in this way natural in the Aristotelian sense. Indeed, many difficulties concerning inertia and the First Law of Motion may be resolved by understanding them through an Aristotelian conception of nature.
However, philosophers from different traditions have argued that the principle of inertia treats a body as if it had no ...