Travis Fife

Philosophy 100C
Short Galileo Assignment
Galileos theory of heat presumes a theory of sensory perception that goes directly
against an Aristotelian account. For Aristotelians, sensory perception involves receiving a
substantial form that is contained in the thing you are sensing. One example from Suarez is the
cooling down of water. Suarez explains the coldness in the Aristotelian view as existing as an
inner principle in the water. When all extrinsic factors are removed, perhaps sunlight heating the
ocean, there is a natural tendency for the water to cool down rather than stay hot. Suarez explains
this as the form of coldness existing within the water, which causes water to return to its normal
temperature.
This has important implications for Aristotelian physics change is seen as the shift from
potentiality to actuality (and actuality to potentiality) given the substantial forms being received
by the perceiver. This means that for something to change from cold to hot, something must have
the privation of hot within it in the first place. This point will be important for understanding the
challenge that Galileo forwards our ability to track change in the world is contingent on there
being substantial forms for us to receive. In this view many forms of perception cannot be
reduced to a purely physical explanation because there has to exist something external to the
sensations themselves that cause the sensation. And its this last point that the remainder of this
paper will focus on. Ultimately, we should understand Galileos theory of heat as a challenge to
the Aristotelian theory of perception that some sensations are irreducible to a physical
explanation. Or put differently, Galileo challenges the Aristotelian idea that heats existence is
dependent on our sensing it rather than existing as a form within something.
To understand how Galileo challenges the Aristotelian picture laid out above, its first
necessary to understand why he thinks heat cannot be a real phenomenon. Galileos idea is that
heat is simply a word we use to represent our sensation of a particular type of physical activity.
To understand this, consider a person rubbing two sticks together to start a fire. As you create
friction between the two sticks Galileo would say that the molecules that make up the stick start
to move quickly. If they move quickly enough, then a fire will start and you can feel the heat
radiate from it. But, for Galileo this is not the actualizing of a form like we saw in Suarez and the
Aristotelians; heat is not in the fire like it would be if Galileo thought we were receiving a form
of heat in perceiving it. Instead, the fire is constituted by small fire particles moving very
quickly. Heat, in this view, is simply the sensations we feel when we encounter the particles
moving very quickly. So, when I move my hand across a campfire Im not feeling heat
necessarily. Heat is simply a word to describe how the rapidly moving particles impact the skin
of your hand.
This is representative of Galileos larger view on sensation. He says that things like taste,
sensation, and odor also function similarly to heat they are only words to refer to the sensation
of certain physical conditions. They dont exist as forms in the world like they do in Aristotle.
And its easy to see how this is a challenge to Aristotelian physics if heat only refers to the
sensations caused by molecules in motion, then its existence is contingent on the observer. That
is to say that if I did not wave my hand through the fire to be affected by the moving fire
particles there would be nothing I could call heat. Clearly this is not something the Aristotelians
would accept in giving an account of change in the world. If the form of heat exists within, for
example, a campfire, then heat exists as something in the world whether or not the flame burns
someone.
Ultimately, Galileo and Aristotles disagreement is not about what sort of things are hot
or cold, but rather how we can reduce the phenomena to a purely physical explanation. The
Aristotelians think that there is a form of heat necessary to explain what we feel when we sense
something as hot. Alternatively, Galileo thinks that heat only serves to describe how the physical
process of molecules in motion affects a person in a positive or negative way. Without a person
there to feel the molecules moving at a certain speed, theres nothing we could describe as heat.