Abstract
In Book VII of the Physics, Aristotle famously maintains that “everything that is in motion must be moved by something.”1 This serves as a crucial premise in his argument for an Unmoved Mover. Aquinas’s related First Way of arguing for the existence of God rests on a variation of the premise, to the effect that “whatever is in motion is moved by another.”2 Let us call this the “principle of motion.”3 Newton’s First Law states that “every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.”4 Call this the “principle of inertia.”
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References
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Feser, E. (2013). Motion in Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein. In: Feser, E. (eds) Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137367907_12
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