Aristotelian natural philosophy

If there was a scientific revolution in the seventeenth century, the tradition that it aimed to turn over and replace, was that of medieval Aristotelian science. In order to better understand the innovations of early modern science, therefore, Han Thomas Adriaenssen in this video outlines some of the key concepts of Aristotelian science, or natural philosophy.

In particular, the Aristotelian notion of form is introduced by looking at the way in which a medieval thinker such as Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) would analyse such natural phenomena as the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly.