On the Historical Relationship between Aristotle’s Mechanics and Newton’s Mechanics

Recently, it has been claimed that Aristotle’s mechanics is a special case of Newton’s mechanics, adequate for speeds tending to zero (Grygiel 2020). I show in the article that this claim does not stand up to closer scrutiny. But there is a peculiar historical relationship between the two theories. Attempts to reconcile the tenets of Aristotelian mechanics with the results of everyday observations by Greek, Arabic, and Latin commentators led to the addition of the theory of impetus to this mechanics. The theory of impetus, in conjunction with the basic principles of Aristotle’s physics, led to conclusions that shattered the system’s coherence. In the seventeenth century, some of these conclusions were elevated to the rank of independent principles, and after being separated from their sources, they gave rise to the research program of Newtonian mechanics