sâmbătă, 6 noiembrie 2010

Dynamis

/ text adunat de Răzvan Supuran

In philosophy, Potentiality and Actuality are principles of an important dichotomy used extensively by Aristotle to analyze motion, causality, human ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics and work on the human psyche.

The concept of potentiality, in this context, generally refers to any "possibility" that a thing can be said to have. Aristotle did not consider all possibilities the same and emphasized the importance of those which will tend to become real of their own accord whenever the conditions are right and nothing stops them. Actuality, in contrast to potentiality, is the motion, change or activity which represents an exercise or fulfillment of a possibility, when a possibility becomes real in the fullest sense.

This dichotomy, in modified forms, remained very important into the middle ages, influencing the development of medieval theology in several ways. Going further into modern times, while the understanding of nature (and deity) implied by the dichotomy lost importance, the terminology has found new uses, developing indirectly from the old. This is most obvious in words like "energy" and "dynamic", but also in examples such as the biological concept of an "entelechy".

(text apărut în MEŢERIAŞII I/07)

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