Aristotle
From Encyclopædia
[edit] LIFE
Aristotle was born in 384 BC in Stagira in northern Greece. His father, Nicomachus, was a physician with close connections to the Macedonian court, connections that were maintained by Aristotle and by his school even after his death. It may have been his father's influence that gave Aristotle a strong interest in anatomy and the structure of living things in general, and that helped him develop a remarkable talent for observation.In 367, Aristotle went to Athens to join Plato's academy, first as a student, then as a teacher. Plato had gathered around him a group of outstanding men who worked in a wide variety of subjects, ranging from medicine and biology to mathematics and astronomy. They shared no common doctrine but were united by the systematic effort to organize human knowledge on a firm theoretical basis and expand it in all directions. This effort, more than anything else, characterizes Aristotle's own work.It was also part of the academy's program to train young men for a political career and to provide advice to rulers. Thus, after Plato's death, Aristotle joined (347) the court of Hermias of Atarneus, and later went (343) to the court of Philip II of Macedonia, where he became tutor to the young Alexander the Great. In 335, Aristotle returned to Athens to found his own school, the lyceum, or Peripatus. Whereas the academy had become rather narrow in its interests since Plato's death, the Peripatus under Aristotle and his successor, THEOPHRASTUS, pursued a wider range of subjects than the academy ever had. In particular, prominence was given to the detailed study of nature. After the death of Alexander the Great in 323, anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens rose, and Aristotle retired to Chalcis, where he died the following year.
[edit] WRITINGS
All Aristotle's writings for a larger audience, mainly dialogues, have been lost except for some fragments. What remains are treatises apparently meant for use within the school. These form the so-called Corpus Aristotelicum. In addition, there survives a mutilated version of his Constitution of Athens, some letters of doubtful authenticity, and some poems, including an elegy on Plato.The Corpus Aristotelicum can be traced back to the 2d century AD. An earlier edition is said to have been prepared by Andronicus of Rhodes in the 1st century BC, but this is doubtful. In what form Aristotle's treatises were available before the 1st century BC is a matter of controversy. The texts of the treatises raise serious problems. Some of them so clearly contain later thought and language that they cannot possibly be by Aristotle; others are of doubtful authenticity. Even such clearly authentic writings as the Metaphysics show the work of later editors. Many texts show signs of addition and revision, and it is difficult to determine which of these were made by Aristotle himself. Attempts have been made--without much success--to reconstruct the original form of a text, to distinguish the different levels of revision it has undergone, and to associate these levels with phases in Aristotle's thought.Underlying the order of the treatises in the Corpus is the traditional division of philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics. Two sets of Aristotelian writings do not easily fit this scheme, the Metaphysics, and the Rhetoric and the Poetics. These are appended to the physical and the ethical writings, respectively. Thus the following classification of Aristotle's writings is observed: (1) Logical writings--Categories, On Interpretation, Prior and Posterior Analytics, Topics, Sophistical Refutations; (2) Physical writings--physics, On Generation and Corruption, On the Heavens, Meteorologica, On the soul, Parva Naturalia, History of Animals, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals, Motion of Animals; (3) Metaphysics; (4) Ethical writings--Nicomachean ethics, Eudemean ethics, Magna Moralia, Politics; (5) Rhetoric, Poetics.THOUGHTLogicLogic, the theory of formal truth and validity, originated in reflections on the practice of DIALECTIC, the kind of debate found in Plato's dialogues. Dialogue was regarded as the appropriate form for philosophical arguments, and hence the acquisition of dialectical skill was regarded as crucial for students of philosophy. Aristotle's first great achievement was probably a handbook, now entitled Topics and Sophistical Refutations, in which he provided the first general analysis of dialectic and formulated rules for success in this kind of argument. Clearly, dialectical argument does not by itself lead either to incontestably true conclusions or to scientific knowledge. Dialectical method aims to ensure that premises are plausible and that arguments are valid. In the Prior and Posterior Analytics Aristotle tried to work out which kind of premises are needed to gain scientific knowledge and which formal conditions an argument must satisfy to be incon?estably valid (see LOGIC). According to the Posterior Analytics, the ultimate premises or principles of a science are necessary truths. Human knowledge of these truths is based on experience; it is not itself a matter of experience, however, but rather of reason. When a subject is sufficiently familiar, its governing principles become evident to reason. Deduction from these principles provides not only the knowledge that something is true, but also the reasons why it is true. For Aristotle, both are required for scientific knowledge.Aristotle's ideal of a science as a deductive system based on evident axioms had a considerable influence on the history of science. In the Prior Analytics he examines the conditions an argument must satisfy in order to be incontestably valid. Because he is primarily concerned with the arguments whose propositions are scientific, and because he only regards general categorical propositions as scientific, his theory applies only to a small class of logically valid arguments, the so-called categorical syllogismS. Aristotle proceeds by specifying certain parts of an argument, or moods, that axiomatically count as valid. Any argument that can be transformed into an axiomatically valid argument must also be valid.Natural SciencesThe natural sciences are concerned with natural objects that are characterized by the fact that they are subject to change. Change is therefore the basic phenomenon with which physics has to deal. Hence Aristotle's work in physics is devoted to an analysis of change and a discussion of its presuppositions. According to Aristotle every change involves three factors: (1) a feature or form that exists as a result of change; (2) the earlier absence of this form; and (3) the matter that was always there but which, as a result of the change, is now characterized by the form in question. In the case of a statue the three factors are the form of the statue; its previous lack of form; and the material from which it was made.Aristotle ties the notions of matter and form to other notions. Thus he explains that if matter becomes an F the matter is F potentially (that is, is capable of being an F), whereas the form is the actuality in virtue of which it is now an actual F. Matter and form are the material and the formal cause, respectively, of what comes to be. A cause is a factor, and a true statement about that factor helps to explain the being of what is caused. Aristotle distinguishes four kinds of causes. If a house comes into being, its efficient cause is the builder, its formal cause the structure by virtue of which it is a house, its material cause the matter that has received this structure, and its final cause the end or purpose for which houses exist, namely the protection of people and property. Because motion, due to its continuity, has no end, presupposes a location, seems to presuppose a void, and takes time, Aristotle also discusses these notions in detail. He denies the existence of a void and considers the continuity of motion at length. Finally, he argues that there would be no motion at all unless there is first a force of movement that is itself unmoved--namely God.The form of an object helps to account for its behavior. Aristotle calls the forms of living things "souls," which are of three kinds: vegetative (plants), sensitive (animals), or rational (human beings). Because Aristotle believed that the soul is merely a set of defining features, he did not regard the body and the soul as two separate entities that mysteriously combine to form an organism. Hence it is not clear what he had in mind when he described an active intellect whose activity is presupposed by the activity of the human mind and that is supposed to be able to exist independently of the body.