Rav Avraham Abulafia wrote that hidden in the first forty chapters of the Guide of the Rambam is contained the secret of the redemption.
This includes the introduction. There the Rambam equates the work of Creation and the Divine Chariot with the Physics and Metaphysics of the Greeks.
And he repeats this theme in the Mishna Torah. That is in the first four chapters he gives a brief review of the chemistry and physics and metaphysics of Aristotle. [He does not say that that is all in those first four chapters. rather he says those chapters relate to that subject matter.] And he calls it "Pardes." Then in laws of learning Torah he says to divide the learning into three parts, written Law, Oral law and Gemara. Then he adds the subjects included in the Pardes (according to how he defined Pardes) are in the category of Gemara.
So to the Rambam, learning Physics is in the category of learning Torah. You have to draw the holiness in by being attached to God as you do the learning. And you have to get in the habit of it. As Aristotle says "Virtue is habit". You have to get to the point that if you have not learned Physics an Mathematics one day that you feel empty. You feel you have missed out on a little bit of truth.
[This you can see in Ibn Pakuda and the Maalot Hamidot. My impression is that this was a wide spread belief among the Medieval authorities --but not the Ramban (Nachmanides) or others of that school--like the Rashba.
[Honestly I can not see what the Rambam was thinking about Aristotle's Metaphysics. Maybe he actually meant to include Plato and Plotinus? And furthermore there seems to be some kind of tension in the Metaphysics about if as Marc Cohen wrote a few years ago in his article in the Stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy.
This includes the introduction. There the Rambam equates the work of Creation and the Divine Chariot with the Physics and Metaphysics of the Greeks.
And he repeats this theme in the Mishna Torah. That is in the first four chapters he gives a brief review of the chemistry and physics and metaphysics of Aristotle. [He does not say that that is all in those first four chapters. rather he says those chapters relate to that subject matter.] And he calls it "Pardes." Then in laws of learning Torah he says to divide the learning into three parts, written Law, Oral law and Gemara. Then he adds the subjects included in the Pardes (according to how he defined Pardes) are in the category of Gemara.
So to the Rambam, learning Physics is in the category of learning Torah. You have to draw the holiness in by being attached to God as you do the learning. And you have to get in the habit of it. As Aristotle says "Virtue is habit". You have to get to the point that if you have not learned Physics an Mathematics one day that you feel empty. You feel you have missed out on a little bit of truth.
[This you can see in Ibn Pakuda and the Maalot Hamidot. My impression is that this was a wide spread belief among the Medieval authorities --but not the Ramban (Nachmanides) or others of that school--like the Rashba.
[Honestly I can not see what the Rambam was thinking about Aristotle's Metaphysics. Maybe he actually meant to include Plato and Plotinus? And furthermore there seems to be some kind of tension in the Metaphysics about if as Marc Cohen wrote a few years ago in his article in the Stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy.
