Overview

Prior to the seventeenth century, many of the most fundamental problems of physics concerned difficulties associated with local motion—changes in place or position. Medieval attempts to explain how and why such changes took place were developed within an Aristotelian framework. These efforts progressively undermined and eventually led to the rejection of certain tenets of Aristotle's (384-322 B.C.) doctrine of motion. They also culminated in what many consider the single most important contribution of medieval scholars to physics—the mean speed theorem.

Background

Aristotle dichotomized the universe into a terrestrial or sublunar region, encompassing Earth and extending to the sphere of the Moon, and a celestial or supralunar region, extending from the sphere of the Moon to the fixed stars. All matter in the terrestrial region was thought to be...