Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 30 No. 3, 2010.
Original scientific paper
Petrić’s Objections to Aristotle’s Notion of the Continuum
Ivica Martinović
; Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The second book of Pancosmia provides full insight into Petrić’s view of the continuum or de divisibilitate quantitatis, offering us many details on Petrić’s futile strategy in refuting Aristotle’s notions of the continuum and the potential infinite. In his objections to Aristotle, Petrić implicitly points the major contributions of Aristotle’s doctrine of continuum, but also submits his own solutions such as the idea of the minimal indivisible line. Although his solutions failed to bring him the results as brilliant as those of Aristotle with the notion of the continuum in the interpretation of nature and mathematics, within his polemic with Aristotle, Petrić comes forward with new questions dealing with the calculus of infinite quantities and genealogy of science.
Keywords
Aristotle; Frane Petrić; continuum; the potential infinite; the postulate of divisibility; minimal indivisible line; calculus of infinite quantities; genealogy of science; geometry; arithmetic
Hrčak ID:
63003
URI
Publication date:
25.10.2010.
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