Aristotle (/rsttl/;

[1]
Greek: [aristotls], Aristotls; 384 322 BCE)
[2]
was a
Greek philosopher and scientist born in Stagirus, northern Greece, in 384 BCE. His father,
Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, whereafter Proxenus of Atarneus became his
guardian.
[3]
At eighteen, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of
thirty-seven (c. 347 BCE). His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology,
zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics,
politics and government and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy.
Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip of Macedonia, tutored
Alexander the Great between 356 and 323 BCE. According to the Encyclopdia Britannica,
"Aristotle was the first genuine scientist in history. ... Every scientist is in his debt."
[citation needed]

Teaching Alexander the Great gave Aristotle many opportunities and an abundance of supplies.
He established a library in the Lyceum which aided in the production of many of his hundreds of
books. The fact that Aristotle was a pupil of Plato contributed to his former views of Platonism,
but, following Plato's death, Aristotle immersed himself in empirical studies and shifted from
Platonism to empiricism.
[4]
He believed all peoples' concepts and all of their knowledge was
ultimately based on perception. Aristotle's views on natural sciences represent the groundwork
underlying many of his works.
Aristotle's views on physical science profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. Their influence
extended into the Renaissance and were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and
theories such as classical mechanics. Some of Aristotle's zoological observations were not
confirmed or refuted until the 19th century.
[examples needed]
His works contain the earliest known
formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic.
In metaphysics, Aristotelianism profoundly influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophical and
theological thought during the Middle Ages and continues to influence Christian theology,
especially the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was well known among
medieval Muslim intellectuals and revered as "The First Teacher" (Arabic: ).
His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue
ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study
today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues Cicero described his
literary style as "a river of gold"
[5]
it is thought that only around a third of his original output
has survived.
[6]

Contents
1 Life
2 Thought
o 2.1 Logic
2.1.1 History
2.1.2 Analytics and the Organon
o 2.2 Aristotle's epistemology
o 2.3 Geology
o 2.4 Physics
2.4.1 Five elements
2.4.2 Motion
2.4.3 Causality, the four causes
2.4.4 Optics
2.4.5 Chance and spontaneity
o 2.5 Metaphysics
2.5.1 Substance, potentiality and actuality
2.5.2 Universals and particulars
o 2.6 Biology and medicine
2.6.1 Empirical research program
2.6.2 Classification of living things
2.6.3 Successor: Theophrastus
2.6.4 Influence on Hellenistic medicine
o 2.7 Psychology
2.7.1 Memory
2.7.1.1 Recollection
o 2.8 Practical philosophy
2.8.1 Ethics
2.8.2 Politics
2.8.3 Rhetoric and poetics
o 2.9 Views on women
3 Loss and preservation of his works
4 Legacy
o 4.1 Later Greek philosophers
o 4.2 Influence on Byzantine scholars
o 4.3 Influence on Islamic theologians
o 4.4 Influence on Western Christian theologians
o 4.5 Post-Enlightenment thinkers
5 List of works
6 Eponym
7 See also
8 Notes and references
9 Further reading
10 External links
Life
Aristotle, whose name means "the best purpose",
[7]
was born in 384 BCE in Stagira, Chalcidice,
about 55 km (34 miles) east of modern-day Thessaloniki.
[8]
His father Nicomachus was the
personal physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Although there is little information on
Aristotle's childhood, he probably spent some time within the Macedonian palace, making his
first connections with the Macedonian monarchy.
[9]

At about the age of eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Plato's
Academy. He remained there for nearly twenty years before leaving Athens in 348/47 BCE. The
traditional story about his departure records that he was disappointed with the Academy's
direction after control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus, although it is possible that he feared
anti-Macedonian sentiments and left before Plato had died.
[10]
Aristotle and Plato's compatibility
has been a strongly debated topic. Recently, Harold Cherniss summarized Aristotle's Platonism
from the standpoint of classicist Werner Jaeger, stating that: "Jaeger, in whose eyes Plato's
philosophy was the "matter" out of which the newer and higher form of Aristotle's thought
proceeded by a gradual but steady and undeviating development (Aristotles, p. 11), pronounced
the "old controversy", whether or not Aristotle understood Plato, to be "absolut verstandnislos".
Yet this did not prevent Leisegang
[who?]
from reasserting that Aristotle's own pattern of thinking
was incompatible with a proper understanding of Plato."
[11][12]
Contrary to Leisegang's
sympathies, Jaeger was sympathetic to a compatible reading of Aristotle and Plato.
Aristotle then accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia
Minor. There, he traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they
researched the botany and zoology of the island. Aristotle married Pythias, either Hermias's
adoptive daughter or niece. She bore him a daughter, whom they also named Pythias. Soon after
Hermias' death, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son
Alexander in 343 BCE.
[13]

With the Prior Analytics, Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal logic,
[21]
and his
conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th century advances in
mathematical logic.
[22]
Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that Aristotle's theory of logic
completely accounted for the core of deductive inference.
History
Aristotle "says that 'on the subject of reasoning' he 'had nothing else on an earlier date to speak
of'".
[23]
However, Plato reports that syntax was devised before him, by Prodicus of Ceos, who
was concerned by the correct use of words. Logic seems to have emerged from dialectics; the
earlier philosophers made frequent use of concepts like reductio ad absurdum in their
discussions, but never truly understood the logical implications. Even Plato had difficulties with
logic; although he had a reasonable conception of a deductive system, he could never actually
construct one, thus he relied instead on his dialectic.
[24]

Plato believed that deduction would simply follow from premises, hence he focused on
maintaining solid premises so that the conclusion would logically follow. Consequently, Plato
realized that a method for obtaining conclusions would be most beneficial. He never succeeded
in devising such a method, but his best attempt was published in his book Sophist, where he
introduced his division method.
[25]

Analytics and the Organon
Main article: Organon
What we today call Aristotelian logic, Aristotle himself would have labeled "analytics". The term
"logic" he reserved to mean dialectics. Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original
form, because it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of
Aristotle were compiled into six books in about the early 1st century CE:
1. Categories
2. On Interpretation
3. Prior Analytics
4. Posterior Analytics
5. Topics
6. On Sophistical Refutations
The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this
list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the analysis of
simple terms in the Categories, the analysis of propositions and their elementary relations in On
Interpretation, to the study of more complex forms, namely, syllogisms (in the Analytics) and
dialectics (in the Topics and Sophistical Refutations). The first three treatises form the core of the
logical theory stricto sensu: the grammar of the language of logic and the correct rules of
reasoning. There is one volume of Aristotle's concerning logic not found in the Organon, namely
the fourth book of Metaphysics.
[24]