ABSTRACT
At the core of the Aristotelian conception of nature is the theory of actuality and potentiality, developed in response to Parmenides’s denial of the reality of change. According to a common construal of relativity theory, the universe is a four-dimensional block from which real change, and thus the actualization of potential, is absent. As Karl Popper noted, Einstein thus appears to recapitulate Parmenides. And it might also seem that he has thereby empirically refuted the Aristotelian conception of nature. However, relativity by itself does no such thing. It could do so only if conjoined with a certain understanding of its underlying metaphysics. Yet, the metaphysical questions raised by relativity are many and difficult, and various alternative answers to those questions are defensible. Short of settling these questions, relativity cannot be said to have established any metaphysical conclusion at all, anti-Aristotelian or otherwise. Thus, relativity does not pose any special scientific problem for the Aristotelian. It is rather a metaphysical tangle that is everyone’s problem.
