"He was forced to seek for some continuous external motor to account for continuous motion; "the pulses of the moved air" was the first cause which presented itself, and was accepted at once. Whereas had he (and succeeding philosophers) steadily conceived the so-called Law of Inertia—that is to say, the transcendental Law of Causation, that every change demands a cause,—he would have perceived that continuous motion was motion unchanged—would have perceived that no external cause was needed for such continuity, but was only needed to arrest, deflect, accelerate, in a word change the motion. The pulses of air might thus have been conceived as retarding the motion, deflecting it, or accelerating it—and by Verification he would have ascertained which of these conceptions was correct. But in no sense could the pulses of air have been conceived as causing the simple continuance of motion, since continuance implied that there was nothing to cause change."
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on Physics, Book IV.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aristotle%3A_a_Chapter_from_the_History_of_Science
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Aristotle: a Chapter from the History of Science
Aristotle: a Chapter from the History of Science, including Analyses of Aristotle's Scientific Writings was written by George Henry Lewes and published in 1864.
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