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Single Idea 273

[filed under theme 27. Natural Reality / E. Cosmology / 3. The Beginning ]

Full Idea

Motion is transmitted to innumerable things, and this must spring from some initial principle, which must be the change effected by self-generated motion.

Gist of Idea

Movement is transmitted through everything, and it must have started with self-generated motion

Source

Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 895a)

Book Ref

Plato: 'The Laws', ed/tr. Saunders,Trevor J [Penguin 1970], p.424


The 10 ideas with the same theme [first moment of the universe]:

Movement is transmitted through everything, and it must have started with self-generated motion [Plato]
If the prime origin is destroyed, it will not come into being again out of anything [Plato]
If the cosmos is an object of perception then it must be continually changing [Plato]
Everyone agrees that the world had a beginning, but thinkers disagree over whether it will end [Aristotle]
Even if the world is caused by fate, mind and nature are still prior causes [Aristotle]
Something which both moves and is moved is intermediate, so it follows that there must be an unmoved mover [Aristotle]
The first mover is necessary, and because it is necessary it is good [Aristotle]
Heaven and earth must be created, because they are subject to change [Augustine]
The universe is precisely 13.72 billion years old [Krauss]
Scholastic authors agree that matter was created by God, out of nothing [Pasnau]