Time and the Stars: two examples of multifocal approach in Aristotle’s works on physics

The multifocal approach operates in Aristotle on at least two levels: a first level concerns the different points of view that can be applied, and consequently the different meanings that can be ascribed, to the same reality. On a second level it works in a deeper and more radical way, for it lays out several explanatory schemes that allow the same reality to be described very differently and thus gain elements that enrich one's knowledge of the object, without denying what has already been acquired at another level of explanation. The use of this multifocal approach, at one level, is markedly evident in Aristotle's discussion over time and the now (Physics, IV, 4-13), in which, as we shall see, the multiplicity of meanings and considerations embraces the now, time and the definition given by Aristotle. A second and more radical use of the multifocal approach occurs when Aristotle, as well as adding the number of meanings, goes so far even as to multiply the explanatory paradigms before a given reality, reaching conclusions that may be seen as bordering on contradiction. The question of the animation of the stars and the cosmos actually brings to the fore such a use of the multifocal approach, showing the actual implementation of two fundamentally different explanatory systems: a physical and metaphysical one.