Aither is a double-blind peer review, Open Access online academic journal. It is indexed at ERIH+ and Scopus. It is published by the Faculty of Arts of the Palacký University in Olomouc in cooperation with the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It comes out twice a year. Every second issue is international and contains foreign-language articles (mainly in English, but also in German and French). The journal is registered under the number ISSN 1803-7860.

Aither 33/2025:4-23 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2025.004

Pozadí Aristotelových argumentů pro kulový tvar Země

Radim Kočandrle
Západočeská univerzita v Plzni

In On the Heavens, Aristotle argues for the notion of a spherical Earth. Crucially, he uses the theory of natural places, in particular the explanation of why heavy bodies fall. This, however, rests on the assumption of a sphere of fixed stars: all parts of the earthy element move towards its centre, gradually forming a spherical Earth. Empirical arguments play merely a supporting role. The goal of this article is to show that Aristotle develops an earlier spherical conception of the universe, which he supplements with the principles of his physics. The spherical concept of the universe is found already in Plato, who uses an argument about the stable position of the Earth in the centre of heaven that is attested also in the thoughts of Parmenides. Moreover, according to Eudemus, some thinkers viewed Parmenides’s Being (likened to the sphere) as the heaven. One can thus suppose that the conception of a heavenly sphere was originally based on Parmenides’s concept of Being interpreted in the cosmological sense as a unity of all there is. Parmenides could then derive the spherical shape of the Earth from the heavenly sphere by analogy.

Received: November 18, 2024; Revised: March 7, 2025; Accepted: April 30, 2025; Published: December 31, 2025  Show citation

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Kočandrle, R. (2025). Pozadí Aristotelových argumentů pro kulový tvar Země. Aither, 17(33), 4-23. doi: 10.5507/aither.2025.004
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