Maimaeus Wits Maimonides Summary

Moses Maimonides, in his Guide for the Perplexed written between 1137 and 1190, concerns Aristotle’s natural philosophy and the astronomers’ conflicting truths. Around the twelfth century, most were a devoted Aristotelian, and educated people knew that stars in the celestial realm only had one motion, to revolve in a spherical motion around the centre of the universe . What Maimonides notes however, is that Aristotelian physics could not infer the existence of epicycles and eccentric circles. However, to make accurate calculations about the stars, one must assume the existence of epicycles and eccentric circles. This passage is highly significant because it marks the distinction between natural science and astronomy, and shows the prevailing views of most astronomers around this time. Maimonides writes …show more content…
360 B.C.E is a cosmogony that concerns the nature of the physical world. Plato asks whether the cosmos is eternal, or if it has come into being. He concludes that because it is tangible and physical, and perceptible to the senses, that must be a product of rational purposive and beneficent agency, the handiwork of what Plato calls the Demiurge. The Demiurge did not create forms, nor matter, he merely imitates the unchanging and eternal model of the world of forms, thus the world that we perceive is only an imperfect replica of the world of forms. Order is imposed upon a pre-existent chaos to generate the cosmos. This echoes many ideas from Hesiod’s Theogony, evidencing the intermingling of ‘mythological’ and ‘philosophical’ thought, and may have had a large influence on Plato’s writings. The historical significance of this passage from the Timaeus, is that it is representative of the shift away from mythical thinking which is gradually superseded by rational thought, something we often give credit to the Pre-Socratics for doing first. Thus, the Timaeus does not really mark a break from the past, but perhaps reinforces one already