The Unmoved Mover
By, Afua Serwah Osei-Bonsu
In Istvan Bodnar’s, “Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy,” the unmoved mover refers to celestial bodies and the long debate that was upon early thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle in terms of their motion or revolution-what moves and what are agents of their movement. The unmoved mover describes a preoccupation of a specific time period that desired to decode the movements of planets and celestial bodies. Aristotle went further than most, writing eight volumes of “Physics” books and another book “De Caelo” or “On the Heavens.” Bodnar’s examination of Aristotle cited the “suns motion along an elliptic course,.. sublunary changes and rotating seasons.” The unmoved mover is said to be a “supra physical entity,” and serve as the “efficient cause of the motions of the Universe.” The unmoved mover could in fact be suggestive of a “super computer” as the “supra physical entity” that keeps all in rotation. Bodnar’s essay says there is no “accidental mover.” Perhaps a good theory would be around a spaceship model, a super computer, and nuclear energy.
References:
(All quotes extracted from the below essay)
Bodnar, Istvan, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), .