What is Aristotle’s Fallacy and its Importance?
Do you know what a fallacy is? Fallacy means a general kind of appeal or we can say it as a category of argument that looks a lot like a decent perceptive. But we may not find it as convincing.
We need to take into consideration these three points to make our search easier about fallacy:
We should consider fallacies as kinds of arguments.
Fallacies may be invalid or not worthy.
Somebody can claim the argument which can make sense in certain aspects.
The fallacy is a kind of statement that satisfies controversies which is sometimes not possible to solve or state the argument as correct in front of others.
What is Aristotle Fallacy?
In our day-to-day life, we observe many objects and living things in motion. The non-living objects are the only objects that we can set into motion.
Assume that you set a football or a toy car in motion on the plane surface by some external force.
Can you say what happens with those objects? Does it require an external force to stay in motion?
The answer is very simple. This article will provide you with sure information regarding Aristotle’s fallacy laws of motion.
Aristotle Fallacy Explained
In the above paragraph, some questions were asked about football or a toy car. We will discuss the toy that needs an external force to continue to stay in motion. Once you put your hands out of the car, it will stop gradually.
For football, it is also the same. When we roll a football on a lawn or any smooth surface, it comes to rest gradually. We can also set them into motion when we put the external force again.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle observed some practical incidents and made a conclusion that to keep an object in a state of uniform motion, an external force is required. This statement is depicted as Aristotle’s fallacy.
Aristotle Law of Motion
Aristotle made a statement on the laws of motion. According to him, an object stays in the state of uniform motion by the application of an external force. The object should move on with force without stopping.
The laws of motion from Newton denied the Aristotle fallacy. According to him, an object that is in motion should stop gradually without any external force. The force is necessary for the object to be in motion.
When you roll a ball, it stops at some point due to the lack of external force to keep it in continuous motion. However, many forces are applied to the ball, such as frictional force, the force of the wind, and so forth. These forces can make it stop after some time.
Different Kinds of Fallacies
There are many fallacies that destabilize the reasonable strength of the argument. Fallacy means which is logically incorrect. The conversions of humans can have fallacies. Fallacies have numerous forms. This is why they are hard to classify.
Still, the fallacies are classified into two categories, such as:
Structure or formal fallacies
Content or informal fallacies
The formal fallacies are of three types, such as:
Quantification fallacies
Formal syllogistic fallacies
Propositional fallacies
The informal fallacies are of five types such as:
Improper premise
Faulty generalizations
Questionable cause
Relevance fallacies
Red herring fallacies
Logical Fallacies
Logical fallacies are the kind of fallacies that are not easy to spot. You can’t judge someone’s perspective in every case. When someone is speaking loudly, or sneaking into daily meetings, or uttering whispery words, makes it difficult to understand.
Fallacies can help you understand these kinds of phenomena. It is very significant to know about fallacies before going to any debate. Fallacies assist you to stand confidently against any claims or arguments. It is witnessed that there are fifteen common fallacies seen among humans; they are:
The Appeal to Authority Fallacy
The Straw Man Fallacy
The Bandwagon Fallacy
The Hasty Generalization Fallacy
The False Dilemma Fallacy"
The Correlation/Causation Fallacy
The Slothful Induction Fallacy
The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy
The Anecdotal Evidence Fallacy
The Burden of Proof Fallacy
The Middle Ground Fallacy
The "No True Scotsman" Fallacy
The Personal Incredulity Fallacy
The Fallacy Fallacy
The Tu quoque Fallacy
Aristotle Fallacies Examples
We can’t keep an object in uniform motion even though we apply external force continuously. As we have discussed, to roll the ball or move the toy car, requires external force. After the release of the external force, it will stop.
The motion vanished due to the act of another force known as friction. The frictional force always applies in a direction opposite to the external force. The wheels of the toy car touch the floor so that the frictional force generated from the surface helps to eliminate the motion.
What is the need for an External Force to keep a Body in a Steady-State?
There is always a requirement to apply an external force on an object to change the motion of the object, that is, to stop a moving object or to move a stationary object. For example, consider a moving automobile that comes to a stop. The moving car stops because of the presence of an external force on the object, that is, frictional force.
The frictional force is experienced by a car because of the contact of the car with the floor. Therefore, the friction force is applied in the direction opposite to the direction in which the car is moving. Therefore, by applying the force in the direction of the moving car, we actually overcome the frictional force so that the car is continuously in the state of moving.
In the absence of frictional force, there would have been no need to apply any force to keep the automobile in the moving state. Therefore, we can state that in absence of an external force on any object, the moving car will continue to move in the same direction for an indefinite period of time. This concept was misunderstood by Aristotle because he made his conclusions on the basis of his personal experiences, and therefore, this is known as Aristotle’s fallacy because of his erroneous concepts.
Thus, opposing forces are naturally always present in the real world and thus, an external force is always required to overcome these opposing forces of the natural world.
Aristotle Fallacies: at a Glance
According to the theory of Aristotle, an external force is required to keep a moving object in a state of uniform motion.
Since the theory of Aristotle was framed by considering just one side of the motion.
He also wasn't able to explain how a moving object comes to rest. This introduced the world to the concept of friction used as an opposing external force.
FAQs on Aristotle Fallacy
1. Is it Necessary to Use an External Force to Retain a Body in Uniform Motion?
The answer is a big No!
For a body to retain its uniform motion, the body will not require any external force to act upon it, that is, the body in a state of motion will remain in the state of motion until and unless there is no force applied to stop the object. Therefore, an external force will be required to bring a moving body to rest and not to keep a moving body in its state of motion. The body will only be in motion in a straight path or stay at rest when no external force acts upon it. Newton's first law of motion clearly explains this phenomenon.
2. Who Put Forward the Moment of Inertia?
Sir Isaac Newton gave the concept of the moment of inertia. He said about the motion or the rest of an object with proper explanation and application. He also gave three laws of motion and stated their phenomenon with real-life examples. Galileo Galilei studied the horizontal motion of the earth and on that basis, he formulated the law of inertia. These laws were later generalized by Rene Descartes. Earlier before the studies of Galileo, it was considered that all horizontal motions require a direct cause, but later on, after the experiments of Galileo, it was concluded that a body in motion remains in the state of motion until and unless any force is applied on it to bring it to rest.
3. What Causes Inertia in a Body?
Everybody possesses inertia as they are under the influence of the gravitational force of the earth. The influence of gravitational force either opposes the rise or helps in the fall of an object. This states that whether a body is at rest or in motion, it is in inertia. Resistance is the major cause of inertia because inertia is a form of resistance due to which any object whether stationary or moving tends to remain in that state until there is an external force applied on the object to change its state of motion.
4. Explain the Characteristics of Uniform Motion.
Let’s consider circular motion. An athlete who is running in a circular track should change the velocity as the direction is changing. We can say that he is running at a constant speed. But when a body revolves around a circular path or moves forward in a straight path with constant velocity, it is said to be in uniform motion. The following are the main features of uniform motion:
The magnitude of displacement equals the actual distance covered by the object in a uniform motion along a straight line.
The instantaneous velocity and the average velocity are equal at all times because velocity remains constant at each instant in a uniform motion.
5. What are the different kinds of fallacies known?
Fallacies denote something that is logically erroneous. These errors can be in the structure or the content that is divided into two broad categories, that is, formal fallacies (refer to fallacies of structure) and informal fallacies (refer to the content fallacies). The formal fallacies include quantification errors, fallacies in propositions, and syllogistic fallacies. The informal fallacies include incorrect premise, generalization with flaws, fallacies of relevance and red herring, and the cause of concern. Therefore, these are two types of fallacies that are prevalent in today’s time.