Aristotle

384-322 b.c.e.

Philosopher and scientist

Sources

Significance. Aristotle is one of the greatest intellectual figures in history. More than any other ancient Greek thinker, he helped define Western rationalism and scientific methodology. In fact, until the end of the seventeenth century, Western intellectual culture was labeled Aristotelian. His greatest achievements were in the study of formal logic and pioneering the field of zoology, in which his theories were not replaced until the 1800s.

Student and Teacher. Born in 384 b.c.e. at Stagira, a small coastal town in northern Greece, Aristotle grew up in an environment that offered him many rich opportunities to observe and think about the natural world. His father, Nicomachus, was court physician to Amyntas II, king of Macedonia. His later interest in biology has often been attributed to his father’s influence upon him. At the age of seventeen, Aristotle went to Athens to study under the famous Plato, with whom he stayed for the next twenty years. After Plato’s death in 348 or 347, Aristotle spent some years in the islands of the eastern Aegean, apparently studying and collecting specimens of plant and animal life. He was then invited back to the royal court of Macedon to serve as tutor to the young prince Alexander, known to later ages as Alexander the Great. In 335, Aristotle returned to Athens and there established an institute called the Lyceum, where he worked and taught until his death in 322.

Works. The interests of Aristotle were vast, and he wrote on many subjects, including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, literary theory, logic, physics, political theory, psychology, metaphysics, rhetoric, and zoology. Most of his extant works are edited compilations of lectures he delivered at the Lyceum. Among his major works written before 335 b.c.e. are On the Heavens, History of Animals, Parts of Animals, Physics, Progression of Animals, and On Sophistical Refutations. His major works written after 335 b.c.e. include Categories, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On the Soul, Poetics, Politics, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, and Rhetoric.

Sources

D. J. Allan, The Philosophy of Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).

Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).

Malcolm Schofield Barnes and Richard Sorabji, eds., Articles on Aristotle, 3 volumes (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977).

Harold Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and the Academy (New York: Russell & Russell, 1944).

John Ferguson, Aristotle (New York: Twayne, 1972).

Felix Grayeff, Aristotle and His School (London: Duckworth, 1974).

Werner Jaeger, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development, second edition, translated by Richard Robinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948).