Aristotle | Biography, Contributions, & Facts | Britannica.com - 0 views
-
Aristotle, Greek Aristoteles, (born 384 bce, Stagira, Chalcidice, Greece—died 322, Chalcis, Euboea), ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of Western history.
-
He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy.
- ...24 more annotations...
-
including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, political theory, psychology, and zoology.
-
Within the Academy, however, relations seem to have remained cordial. Aristotle always acknowledged a great debt to Plato; he took a large part of his philosophical agenda from Plato, and his teaching is more often a modification than a repudiation of Plato’s doctrines.
-
Many of Plato’s later dialogues date from these decades, and they may reflect Aristotle’s contributions to philosophical debate at the Academy.
-
It is possible that two of Aristotle’s surviving works on logic and disputation, the Topics and the Sophistical Refutations, belong to this early period.
-
During Aristotle’s residence at the Academy, King Philip II of Macedonia (reigned 359–336 bce) waged war on a number of Greek city-states.
-
His writings in ethics and political theory as well as in metaphysics and the philosophy of science continue to be studied,
-
While in Assus and during the subsequent few years when he lived in the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, Aristotle carried out extensive scientific research, particularly in zoology and marine biology.
-
When Plato died about 348, his nephew Speusippus became head of the Academy, and Aristotle left Athens.
-
The myriad items of information about the anatomy, diet, habitat, modes of copulation, and reproductive systems of mammals, reptiles, fish, and insects are a melange of minute investigation and vestiges of superstition.
-
In 343 or 342 Aristotle was summoned by Philip II to the Macedonian capital at Pella to act as tutor to Philip’s 13-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great.
-
By 326 Alexander had made himself master of an empire that stretched from the Danube to the Indus and included Libya and Egypt.
-
Most of Aristotle’s surviving works, with the exception of the zoological treatises, probably belong to this second Athenian sojourn.
-
Aristotle’s works, though not as polished as Plato’s, are systematic in a way that Plato’s never were.
-
When Alexander died in 323, democratic Athens became uncomfortable for Macedonians, even those who were anti-imperialist.
-
Aristotle’s writings fall into two groups: those that were published by him but are now almost entirely lost, and those that were not intended for publication but were collected and preserved by others.
-
Time cannot be composed of indivisible moments, because between any two moments there is always a period of time.
-
Motion (kinesis) was for Aristotle a broad term, encompassing changes in several different categories.
-
For Aristotle, extension, motion, and time are three fundamental continua in an intimate and ordered relation to each other.