ABSTRACT
To make the great strides that it has in the last few centuries, physics had first to break free of the Aristotelian tradition. For Aristotle physical explanations include a purposive or teleological component. Things strive to attain their ends and ultimately, on the cosmological level, the activities of the world are to be explained in terms of things loving, and therefore attempting to imitate, the activity of the unmoved mover who, unaware of what he is elsewhere stirring up, calmly goes on thinking his own thoughts.
