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Posted by Webmaster on September 20 2004, 03:36 PM
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Aristotle was a student of Plato who at first followed his master’s teachings only in time to develop radically new ideas that would form the basis of modern science. Throughout his life Aristotle would have interactions with the so called “savages” from the north the Macedonians, the most famous being Philip II and his son Alexander.
Aristotle was born in a small town near the Macedonian border; no one was quite what lay ahead for him. Aristotle was born in the town of Stageria on the coast of the Chalcidike (also Chalcidice) Peninsula near the border with the Kingdom of Macedon in 384 B.C. Aristotle’s father, Nicomachus was the court physician and close advisor to the King of Macedon, Amyntas II. Not much is known of Aristotle’s mother, Phaistis except perhaps that her birthplace, Euboa was also to be her son’s final resting place at the end of his life. In 370 B.C. Amyntas II died and his sons fought and quarreled with one another over who shall succeed their father. Nicomachus died about the same time and Proxenus husband of Aristotle’s sister Arimneste assumed guardianship over Aristotle and moved the family south to Athens to escape the dangerous political climate of the Macedonian court. In 367 B.C. Proxenus possibly concerned about what education Aristotle should receive had him sent to the Academy where he would stay until the death of Plato in 347 B.C. Aristotle rose through the ranks of the Academy quickly and he was a prize student to many of the teachers there, it is debatable whether or not Aristotle ever met Plato face to face though we do know that Plato did consider Aristotle as his successor as headmaster. By the time that Plato was nearing the end of his long life Aristotle had published a number of works (unfortunately these works are lost to us) and as a result had begun to drift away from Platonic teaching forming his own philosophy. When Plato died in 347 B.C. his nephew, Speusippus became the new headmaster and Aristotle hurt and angry left the Academy without so much as announcement about it, he had no idea what he was going to do or where he was going to go.
Following his departure from Athens Aristotle traveled aimlessly before finally settling down in the lands of a friend. From 347 to 343 Aristotle wandered about the Mediterranean area looking for a place to go, finally a year after leaving in 346 a friend of his named Hermeas invited him to come to his kingdom in Asia Minor. Aristotle stayed there for three years; he even married the king’s niece, Pythias. This was not to last unfortunately for in 343 the forces of the Persian Empire overwhelmed Hermeas’ forces and he was killed as a result. Aristotle had luckily managed to leave Asia Minor before this happened and went to live on the isle of Mytilene where lived for a short time. One day as Aristotle was studying the local fauna and flora as the story goes a messenger arrived saying that Philip II of Macedon wanted to see Aristotle. As it turned out Philip had remembered the service that Nicomachus had given to his father Amyntas and as a result Philip believed that was only right that his son, the thirteen year old Prince Alexander should be tutored by a family friend. So thus Philip II decreed that Aristotle should be his son’s tutor. Aristotle found Alexander to be an eager learner and he believed that Alexander was destined for great things. In 336 B.C. Philip was assassinated and Alexander assumed the throne, with his tutoring days at an end Aristotle left for Athens where he founded his own school to teach his philosophy, this school was called the Lyceum which taught not only philosophy but biology as well. The Lyceum was built using funds supplied by Alexander and was built along the lines of the school Aristotle had founded while on Mytilene to study biology and other sciences which were starting to become more important then philosophy to Aristotle. Over the next thirteen years Aristotle continued to work on refining his ideas in both the fields of philosophy and science writing many books on both subjects. In 323 B.C. Alexander unexpectedly died of fever in Babylon and in Athens the pro-Macedonian government was overthrown and charges of impiety and corruption of the youth was leveled at Aristotle, these were the exact same charges brought against Socrates years earlier, Aristotle following this left Athens saying: “The Athenians might not have another opportunity of sinning against philosophy as they have already done in the person of Socrates”. Aristotle fled north eventually arriving on the isle of Euboa where he died of an unknown stomach illness in 322 B.C. at the age of sixty-two.
Aristotle has left behind an impressive group of works for future generations to study and learn; unfortunately a great deal of work is lost to us. When Aristotle died his works fell into the hands of his friend Theophrastus who locked them up in a vault where they stayed until the Romans discovered it in 86 B.C. It was clear to many that Aristotle’s philosophy and other ideas would prove different from Plato’s in many ways. Aristotle did not like very much Plato’s Theory of Forms; in fact he thought his teacher was confused about what he was talking about. Aristotle believed that the ideas or forms that Plato talked about were really just concepts made by humans after seeing a lot of a specific object. What Aristotle believed to be correct was that all living things are the way they are because of the characteristics of that object’s species. Aristotle was at a lost however to explain what controlled these characteristics .Today we know that characteristics are controlled by DNA. Throughout his life Aristotle looked at everything under the light of scientific logic and reason in which he would take something and examine it. The object was put through series of tests to determine its place in each of the following classifications: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action and passion. Substance was the most important of these and it is divided into two sections, the first being what is the substance of the object and second what is the substance of the object’s species. After putting the object through all of these tests and having determined the classifications of the object you arrive at the truth. Today we call this the scientific method. Aristotle applied the method to everything he could interact with, indeed even some things he couldn’t and in process wrote a wealth of knowledge on what he discovered; most of these have been lost to us. A lot of what Aristotle wrote was lost over time and while some books survive they are mostly lecture notes written by either Aristotle himself or a student of his, the complete works we have are such books as Politics in which Aristotle explains some of his political opinions and two ethical books Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics however parts of these books don’t make sense. Other books are scientific in nature such as Categories.
Aristotle had undeniable impact on history as we see by looking at science. Aristotle was one of first philosophers to dive into the realm of natural philosophy or science partly because Socrates and Plato viewed it inferior to moral and ethic philosophy. The Lyceum, the school Aristotle built lasted about as long as the Academy did. Aristotelian thought did not become popular until the later Renaissance and it really hit its stride in the Enlightment. Since then science as made leaps and bounds in many fields and many scientists say they owe it all to Aristotle: the first scientist. |
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