Abstract

According to Aristotle, those who seek mathematical principles of sensible things are looking in entirely the wrong place. But despite his strong opposition to mathematized metaphysics, Aristotle does not outright reject mathematical explanation of the natural world. In fact, he argues that mathematics does explain certain sensible phenomena, that the natural world has many mathematical patterns and features, and that this is often not mere coincidence. That he devotes two books of his Metaphysics to shoring up the boundary between mathematics and metaphysics indicates that this issue is crucially important to him. Yet it receives little systematic scholarly discussion. I take up the issue by examining Aristotle’s treatment of the sensible phenomena that have mathematical explanations. This examination shows that—and why—on his view, mathematics explains many things about the natural world, but not the most fundamental things.