This contribution focuses on Aristotle’s account of place as it is developed in Physics 4, 1–5, a difficult text which has proved to be both influential and a source of problems and discussions in the ancient and medieval Aristotelian tradition. The article starts out by briefly positioning this account within the Corpus Aristotelicum, within the later ancient and medieval Aristotelian tradition, and within the tradition of theories of place and space in general. It goes on to examine the argument of (...) Phys. 4, 1–5, showing that proper attention to Aristotle’s dialectical procedure is crucial for a correct understanding and evaluation of the various claims that we find scattered throughout his text. It then zooms in on the most important questions, problems and loose ends with which Aristotle’s theory confronted his commentators : the puzzling arguments for the rejection of the rival conception of place as an independent three-dimensional extension ; the supposed role of Aristotelian places in the explanation of motion; the supposed role of Aristotelian natural places in the explanation of natural motion; the problem of the required immobility of Aristotelian places; and the problem of the emplacement of the heavens. (shrink)

Thought experiments play an important epistemic, rhetorical and didactic function in Galileo’s dialogues. In some cases, Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio agree about what would happen in an imaginary scenario and try to understand whether the predicted outcome is compatible with their respective theoretical assumptions. There are, however, also situations in which the predictions of the three interlocutors turn out to be theory-laden. Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio not only disagree about what would happen, but they reject each other’s solutions as question-begging (...) and somtimes even dismiss each other’s thought experiments as misleading or nonsensical. (shrink)