ABSTRACT
This chapter exemplifies the dialectical contrast chiefly in the earlier seventeenth-century theory of material atomism, the theories of Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, the pre-critical Kant, Aristotle, and Whitehead. It focuses on fundamental issues and problems of the philosophy of nature as they face us today. The classic exemplification of this is Aristotle's inquiry into the fundamental issues and problems of the philosophy of nature which constitutes his book known as the Physics. What is exemplified in Aristotle, therefore, is a dialectical process of the contrast of theories, the basic problems and issues being brought out and clarified in the process of that dialectic. The development of scientific thought itself has the consequence of throwing open that entire arena of inquiry. As in the seventeenth century, the 'philosophy of nature' must not only be brought into the forefront, but the recognition of its intrinsic relevance to and need by the scientific enterprise must be restored.
