“The attitude of Aristotelian physics toward lawfulness takes a new direction. So long as lawfulness remained limited to such processes as occurred repeatedly in the same way, it is evident, not only that the young physics still lacked the courage to extend the principle to all physical phenomena, but also that the concept of lawfulness still had a fundamentally historic, a temporally particular, significance. Stress was laid not upon the “general validity” which modem physics understands by lawfulness, but upon the events in the historically given world which displayed the required stability. The highest degree of lawfulness, beyond mere frequency, was characterized by the idea of the always eternal.”

— Kurt Lewin

Source: 1930s, The conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of thought in contemporary psychology, 1931, p. 147.

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Kurt Lewin 48

German-American psychologist 1890–1947

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