Aristotle's Prime Mover

The concept prime mover is a monotheistic concept developed by the philosopher and polytheist by the name of Aristotle. The prime mover concept goes into depths trying to explain the primary cause of all the movement in the universe. In his work Metaphysics, the Greek philosopher Aristotle truly believed that everything had several different explanations for its existence and that the cause of a thing can be understood in four different ways. In this paper, we will go into great depths in trying to understand and critically evaluate Aristotle’s argument for his concept of Prime Mover. There are many logical qualities his concept possesses however there are various weaknesses and holes in his theory; we will look at these throughout this paper. …show more content…
Matters without its characteristics and uniqueness cannot exist by itself anymore, but we can still conceptualize it as pure potentiality. For example, if we go to a pregnant woman’s MRI and look into her stomach and see an embryo, we automatically see its potential of that embryo being a human being just like us. Because every potential something (emrbyo) is an actual something (human being), then bare matter can no longer exist by itself. However, Aristotle believes that it is the potentiality of that bare matter itself in every individual substance in which ensures permissibility that individual substance change and evolve. All change consists of a dominant substance which goes through a change losing one characteristic while in the process gaining another. That being said, if the dominant substance loses the important property then it has no potential to be what it was supposed to be in the first place. For example, if the embryo loses a heart somehow, the embryo will die and can no longer gain that potential of being a human being without that main feature. But, if the primary substance evolves but preserves the unique identity, then the property that changed must be accidental and was not a big deal …show more content…
He speaks about materials being eternal and immovable kinds of substances. His argument as highlighted above being that the substances are the first beings and there was no previous life. If these substances are perishable, it means that everything is. However, not everything in the whole universe can be perishable due to the fact that this would deter any motion from happening. Having no motion would then take away the concept of time. This cannot be true as there must be continuous motion in the world in order for it to be in a constant state of change. The only motion, that can be everlastingly continuous is in a circle. Aristotle believes that all substances must be pure and made out of matter however if this were true, time and motion would cease the first motion. Although, some substances and objects are pure actualities, some are eternal and without