![]() ![]() Wörner, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001 1 LifeĪristotle remains the most influential philosopher of antiquity apart from Plato. Aristotle was quite explicit about how different areas of science were to be related to, and distinguished from, one another and about the extent to which there was a common scientific logic and method. Nearly all begin with serious critical discussion of previous views on the subject being investigated, followed by a fresh approach to the subject using Aristotle's own philosophical categories and methods. They also reflect a certain view of philosophical method. For the most part, what survives are treatises written in a distinctively lean, unadorned, didactic style above all else, these treatises stress rigorous argument. Only a very few fragments of these works exist. Ancient testimony relates that Aristotle wrote a number of dialogues that rivaled Plato's, both philosophically and stylistically. These works cover a remarkable range of subjects, from literary theory and rhetoric, through ethics and politics, to scientific studies of meteorology, cosmology, physics, zoology, psychology, and, finally, philosophical investigations that modern scholars classify as logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, many different manuscript editions were found, and modern printed editions are in turn based on modern editorial line-by-line choices about which of these manuscripts to trust. ![]() There is some reason to believe that these manuscripts are based on a Roman editor's reorganization of Aristotle's writings in the 1st century BC. The corpus of Aristotle that survives today is based primarily on manuscripts that go back only to the 10th through 14th centuries AD. In that year, Alexander of Macedon died and, with anti-Macedonian feelings running high, Aristotle left Athens to live in Euboea, the birthplace of his mother. Aristotle remained at the head of this “school” until 323 BC. His philosophical distance from Plato was now great, and he and Theophrastus founded a rival group of scholars who spent their time in a public sanctuary known as the Lyceum. But by 335, Aristotle had returned to Athens, now firmly under the control of his former student. This association was briefly interrupted when, in 343, Philip II of Macedon asked Aristotle to tutor his son Alexander. Between the two of them, they originated the science of biology, Aristotle carrying out the first systematic scientific investigation of animals, Theophrastus doing the same for plants. Aristotle soon moved on to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos off the coast of Asia Minor, perhaps because he had heard of a young man with similar interests in natural science, for he there met and befriended his philosophical soul mate Theophrastus. At the invitation of Hermias, a tyrant with connections to the Academy, Aristotle and other Academics founded a philosophical circle in Assos, a small town under Hermias' control in Asia Minor. Aristotle may well have studied some medicine with his father, but there is no evidence to support this conjecture.Īristotle's long association with Plato and the Academy ended on Plato's death in 367, by which time Aristotle had doubtless begun to develop his own distinctive philosophical ideas, including his passion for the study of nature. Nothing reliable is known about Aristotle's early childhood, but he was sent to Athens at the age of 17 and began a 20-year involvement with the philosophical and mathematical community gathered around Plato in the Academy. Nicomachus was physician to King Amyntas of Macedon, and Phaestis was of a wealthy family from the island of Euboea. Lennox, in Encyclopedia of Social Measurement, 2005 Life and WorkĪristotle was born to Nicomachus and Phaestis of Stagira, a small town on the northern Aegean coast, in 384 BC. ![]()
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