Aristotle (; "Aristotélēs", ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of philosophy, and the Aristotelian tradition. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. It was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Introduction
Aristotle
Aristotle | Introduction
He  was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He was a Greek philosopher and polymath He was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece
where is the solar system located in our galaxy
user
The Solar System, is located in the Milky Way's galactic habitable zone.
assistant
what is the milky way?
user
It is the galaxy that contains our Solar System.
assistant
can you tell me the names of the stars that form a part of this galaxy?
user
The Milky Way may contain ten billion white dwarfs, a billion neutron stars, and a hundred million stellar black holes.
assistant
can this galaxy be seen from earth in the northern hemisphere?
user
The Milky Way is visible from Earth as a hazy band of white light, some 30° wide, arching across the night sky.  As viewed from Earth, the visible region of the Milky Way's galactic plane occupies an area of the sky that includes 30 constellations.
assistant
how would you describe its size?
user
The Milky Way is the second-largest galaxy in the Local Group with its stellar disk approximately in diameter and, on average, approximately thick. The Milky Way is approximately 890 billion times the mass of the Sun.
assistant
name the structural parts of this.
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
assistant
what is the estimated age of this galaxy?
user
Several individual stars have been found in the Milky Way's halo with measured ages very close to the 13.80-billion-year age of the Universe.
assistant
what are the names of the intellects who studied and observed this cluster of stars?
user
Aristotle, Anaxagoras, Democritus
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what is the professional background of the first person mentioned?
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On the other hand, concerning the active intellect, like Alexander and Plotinus, he saw this as a transcendent being existing above and outside man. Differently from Alexander, he did not equate this being with the first cause of the Universe itself, but something lower. However he equated it with Plato's Idea of the Good.
Nous | Themistius
Although it cannot be excluded that this was the same person, it appears more probable that this Aristotle was a son or a relative of the dialectician.
Aristotle the Dialectician | Introduction
The business of the friends was not merely education in existing knowledge. As is expressed in the first few paragraphs of "Physics", they were interested in discovering the principles, or elements of the knowledge, which was an entirely new goal in Greek education. This research was divided into specific "fields" (methodoi). First they collected written works representing the existing knowledge. Subsequently, they collected field data through interviews and specimen-hunting. Aristotle is the first known scientist to have sent out field workers, and to have sent them with military expeditions. Alexander's ethnic and political intelligence gathering as a friend of the school was certainly of greatest value in his ultimate goal, to create a new, multi-cultural world empire.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Research at the Lyceum
The work contained the biographies of a great many ancient figures, including orators, poets, historians, and philosophers. It contained the earliest known biography of Aristotle, as well as philosophers such as Pythagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Democritus, Zeno, Socrates, Plato, Antisthenes, Diogenes, Stilpo, Epicurus, Theophrastus, Heraclides, Demetrius Phalereus, and Chrysippus. The work has been lost, but many later "Lives" extensively quote it.
Hermippus of Smyrna | Introduction
Greek Christian scribes played a crucial role in the preservation of Aristotle by copying all the extant Greek language manuscripts of the corpus. The first Greek Christians to comment extensively on Aristotle were Philoponus, Elias, and David in the sixth century, and Stephen of Alexandria in the early seventh century. John Philoponus stands out for having attempted a fundamental critique of Aristotle's views on the eternity of the world, movement, and other elements of Aristotelian thought. Philoponus questioned Aristotle's teaching of physics, noting its flaws and introducing the theory of impetus to explain his observations. After a hiatus of several centuries, formal commentary by Eustratius and Michael of Ephesus reappeared in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, apparently sponsored by Anna Comnena.
Aristotle | On Byzantine scholars
Alexamenus of Teos () was, according to Aristotle in his dialogue "On Poets", the first person who wrote Socratic dialogues before the time of Plato. An Aristotelian papyrus from Oxyrhynchus claims that this is merely malicious gossip by Aristotle.
Alexamenus of Teos | Introduction
Aristarchus of Samos (; , "Aristarkhos ho Samios"; c. 310 – c. 230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it. He was influenced by Philolaus of Croton, but Aristarchus identified the "central fire" with the Sun, and he put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun. Like Anaxagoras before him, he suspected that the stars were just other bodies like the Sun, albeit farther away from Earth. His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy.
Aristarchus of Samos | Introduction
Around the time that "The Clouds" was produced, Democritus at Abdera was developing an atomistic theory of the cosmos and Hippocrates at Cos was establishing an empirical and science-like approach to medicine. Anaxagoras, whose works were studied by Socrates, was living in Athens when Aristophanes was a youth. Anaxagoras enjoyed the patronage of influential figures such as Pericles, but oligarchic elements also had political advocates and Anaxagoras was charged with impiety and expelled from Athens around 437 BC. The battle of ideas had led to some unlikely friendships that cut across personal and class differences, such as between the socially alert Pericles and the unworldly Anaxagoras, and between the handsome aristocrat, Alcibiades, and the ugly plebeian, Socrates.
The Clouds | Historical background
Aristotle, in his biology initially believed the heart to be the seat of intelligence, and saw the brain as a cooling mechanism for the blood. He reasoned that humans are more rational than the beasts because, among other reasons, they have a larger brain to cool their hot-bloodedness. Aristotle did describe the meninges and distinguished between the cerebrum and cerebellum. Herophilus of Chalcedon in the fourth and third centuries BC distinguished the cerebrum and the cerebellum, and provided the first clear description of the ventricles; and with Erasistratus of Ceos experimented on living brains. Their works are now mostly lost, and we know about their achievements due mostly to secondary sources.
Human brain | Early history
The lecturer asks the audience to imagine how mysterious the stars must have seemed to ancient people, and then demonstrates, using the star projector, how people invented constellations in an effort to make sense of the randomly scattered stars. In accelerated time, we see the complex motions of the sun, moon, and planets. The scene dissolves to ancient Alexandria, Egypt. We see the Great Library and the Pharos Lighthouse. In a courtyard, next to a pool surrounded by torches, we see the 2nd Century astronomer Claudius Ptolemy adjusting an armillary sphere to chart star positions. Behind Ptolemy is a small table on which rests a scroll.
Centered in the Universe | Synopsis
Pomponazzi claimed the right to study Aristotle for himself, and devoted himself to the "De anima" with the view of showing that Thomas Aquinas had entirely misconceived the Aristotelian theory of the active and the passive intellect.
Pietro Pomponazzi | Biography
The Quaestiones are contained in an octavo notebook, currently in the Cambridge University Library, which was Newton's basic notebook in which he set down in 1661 his readings in the required curriculum in Cambridge and his later readings in mechanical philosophy. He entered notes from both ends. The initial notes, in Greek, were on Aristotle's logic at one end and his ethics, at the other. But following this, he drew a line across the page, below which appears his first notes on the new natural philosophy of his day— a compendium of limits on the radii of stars as determined by Galileo and Auzout.
Quaestiones quaedam philosophicae | Introduction
The first person to use a telescope to observe the night sky and record his observations was the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei in 1609. When he turned the telescope toward some of the nebulous patches recorded by Ptolemy, he found they were not a single star, but groupings of many stars. For Praesepe, he found more than 40 stars. Where previously observers had noted only 6–7 stars in the Pleiades, he found almost 50. In his 1610 treatise "Sidereus Nuncius", Galileo Galilei wrote, "the galaxy is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters." Influenced by Galileo's work, the Sicilian astronomer Giovanni Hodierna became possibly the first astronomer to use a telescope to find previously undiscovered open clusters.
Open cluster | Historical observations
The secondary literature on Aristotle is vast. The following is only a small selection.
Aristotle | Further reading
He was also a diligent and skillful observer, and busied himself not only with astronomical subjects, such as the double stars, the satellites of Jupiter and the measurement of the polar and equatorial diameters of the sun, but also with biological studies of the circulation of the sap in plants, the fructification of plants, infusoria etc. He was the first to observe the pollen tube.
Giovanni Battista Amici | Introduction
"Aristyllus was an early astronomer in the school of Alexandria. Little is known about him. He made astronomical observations during the first half of the third century BCE, and was probably a pupil of Timocharis." "Aristyllus and Timocharis are usually considered to have compiled the first true catalog of the fixed stars, in which stars are identified by numerical measurements of their positions." "Aristyllus, a Greek astronomer, who appears to have lived about B.C. 233. He wrote a work on the fixed stars (τηρήσις ἀπλανῶν), which was used by Hipparchus and Ptolemy, and he is undoubtedly one of the two persons of this name who wrote commentaries on Aratus."
Aristyllus | Sources
While discussing his "new science", now associated with the social sciences, Ibn Khaldūn states that no other author before him, as far as he was aware, had written about it. However, he was aware that much knowledge of the past had been lost, and thus he was open to the possibility that someone might have anticipated him but that their work had not survived: Ibn Khaldūn characterized Aristotle as "the First Teacher", for his having "improved the methods of logic and systematized its problems and details".
Muqaddimah | Assessment of various civilizations
The idea of a single, universal intellect associated with all human knowledge had been proposed by philosophers before Averroes. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) proposes a "maker intellect" which enables thinking by making things intelligible, much like light allows seeing by making things visible. Plotinus (d. 270), whose works were well known in the Islamic world, proposed that human beings gained knowledge through their relation to a divine intellect. Muslim philosophers Al-Farabi (d. 951) and Avicenna (also known as Ibn Sina, d. 1037) further develop this theory and call it the "agent intellect", which gives forms to matter and facilitates human knowledge.
Averroes's theory of the unity of the intellect | Background
The arguments of this group should be identified with Group IV of the Hippocratic Corpus. The first medical philosopher of the school of Croton was Alcmaeon of Croton. Alcmaeon argued that the maintenance of good health required a balance of the powers of moist and dry, cold and hot, bitter and sweet. Sickness arises when there is an imbalance within the human organism caused by the predominance of one power over another. In the Agrigentum school of thought Empedocles hypothesized that the universe consisted of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. On the basis of these four elements he sought to account for the origin of matter.
On Ancient Medicine | Hippocratic Corpus: origins
Ammonius quotes also an opinion of Boethus concerning the study of the works of Aristotle, viz. that the student should begin with the Physics, whereas Andronicus had maintained that the beginning should be made with the Logic writings of Aristotle. According to Giovanni Reale, in "The Schools of the Imperial Age", Boethus believed that ‘substance’ was ‘matter’ – that it was the composite of being, and not the individual form of being. Thus “form falls outside of the category of substance and enters into the scope of other categories”. The significance of this is that individuality is not only how we understand and interpret reality, but is actually the basic nature of that reality.
Boethus of Sidon | Biography
In the first chapter, Hawking discusses the history of astronomical studies, including the ideas of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Aristotle, unlike many other people of his time, thought that the Earth was round. He came to this conclusion by observing lunar eclipses, which he thought were caused by the Earth's round shadow, and also by observing an increase in altitude of the North Star from the perspective of observers situated further to the north. Aristotle also thought that the Sun and stars went around the Earth in perfect circles, because of "mystical reasons". Second-century Greek astronomer Ptolemy also pondered the positions of the Sun and stars in the Universe and made a planetary model that described Aristotle's thinking in more detail.
A Brief History of Time | Chapter 1: Our Picture of the Universe
Aristarchus of Samos (; , "Aristarkhos"; c. 310 – c. 230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it (see Solar system). He was influenced by Philolaus of Croton, but he identified the "central fire" with the Sun, and put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun. His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy.
Scaphe | Inventor
In astronomy, Aristotle refuted Democritus's claim that the Milky Way was made up of "those stars which are shaded by the earth from the sun's rays," pointing out correctly that if "the size of the sun is greater than that of the earth and the distance of the stars from the earth many times greater than that of the sun, then... the sun shines on all the stars and the earth screens none of them."
Aristotle | Astronomy
In book VIII of his "Physics," Aristotle examines the notions of change or motion, and attempts to show by a challenging argument, that the mere supposition of a 'before' and an 'after', requires a "first principle". He argues that in the beginning, if the cosmos had come to be, its first motion would lack an antecedent state, and as Parmenides said, "nothing comes from nothing". The cosmological argument, later attributed to Aristotle, thereby draws the conclusion that God exists. However, if the cosmos had a beginning, Aristotle argued, it would require an efficient first cause, a notion that Aristotle took to demonstrate a critical flaw.
Unmoved mover | First cause
Schiaparelli was a scholar of the history of classical astronomy. He was the first to realize that the concentric spheres of Eudoxus of Cnidus and Callippus, unlike those used by many astronomers of later times, were not to be taken as material objects, but only as part of an algorithm similar to the modern Fourier series.
Giovanni Schiaparelli | Astronomy and history of science
The Islamic philosophers al-Farabi (c.872–c.950) and Avicenna (c.980–1037), following Plotinus, maintained that Aristotle's movers, called intelligences, came into being through a series of emanations beginning with God. A first intelligence emanated from God, and from the first intelligence emanated a sphere, its soul, and a second intelligence. The process continued down through the celestial spheres until the sphere of the Moon, its soul, and a final intelligence. They considered that each sphere was moved continually by its soul, seeking to emulate the perfection of its intelligence. Avicenna maintained that besides an intelligence and its soul, each sphere was also moved by a natural inclination ("mayl").
Dynamics of the celestial spheres | Islamic interpreters
Afterwards Cleostratus marked the signes therein, and namely those first of Aries and Sagitarius. As for the Sphere it selfe, Atlas devised long before." Pliny also was writing in a way similar to his contemporaries in that a sound argument had to be based on past knowledge or the accomplishments of past thinkers.
Cleostratus | Introduction
Aristotle was the first person to study biology systematically, and biology forms a large part of his writings. He spent two years observing and describing the zoology of Lesbos and the surrounding seas, including in particular the Pyrrha lagoon in the centre of Lesbos. His data in "History of Animals", "Generation of Animals", "Movement of Animals", and "Parts of Animals" are assembled from his own observations, statements given by people with specialized knowledge such as beekeepers and fishermen, and less accurate accounts provided by travellers from overseas. His apparent emphasis on animals rather than plants is a historical accident: his works on botany have been lost, but two books on plants by his pupil Theophrastus have survived.
Aristotle | Empirical research
Previous scholars had noted that ancient texts refer to an "Aristotle" as a teacher of Alexander of Aphrodisias, and, unaware of any 2nd-century philosophers by that name, had emended the name to "Aristocles". If Moraux's theory is correct, and Aristotle of Mytilene was Alexander's teacher, then his philosophical views are represented in a passage of Alexander's "On Intellect" dealing with the doctrine of "the external intellect".
Aristotle of Mytilene | Introduction
Plotinus (204/5–270) was the founder of Neo-Platonism. In the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Plotinus and Proclus, the first principle became even more elevated as a radical unity, which was presented as an unknowable Absolute. For Plotinus, "the One" is the first principle, from which everything else emanates. He took it from Plato's writings, identifying the Good of the "Republic", as the cause of the other Forms, with "the One" of the first hypothesis of the second part of the "Parmenides". For Plotinus, "the One" precedes the Forms, and "is beyond Mind and indeed beyond Being." From "the One" comes the Intellect, which contains all the Forms.
Apophatic theology | Plotinus
Aristotle, however, believed the heart was the center of intelligence and that the brain regulated the amount of heat from the heart. This view was generally accepted until the Roman physician Galen, a follower of Hippocrates and physician to Roman gladiators, observed that his patients lost their mental faculties when they had sustained damage to their brains.
Neuroscience | History
In what he called "first philosophy" or metaphysics, Aristotle "did" intend a theological correspondence between the prime mover and deity (presumably Zeus); functionally, however, he provided an explanation for the apparent motion of the "fixed stars" (now understood as the daily rotation of the Earth). According to his theses, immaterial unmoved movers are eternal unchangeable beings that constantly think about thinking, but being immaterial, they are incapable of interacting with the cosmos and have no knowledge of what transpires therein. From an "aspiration or desire", the celestial spheres, "imitate" that purely intellectual activity as best they can, by uniform circular motion.
Cosmological argument | History
Aristarchus of Samos published work on how to determine the sizes and distances of the Sun and the Moon, and Eratosthenes used this work to figure the size of the Earth. Hipparchus later discovered the precession of the Earth. Advances in astronomy and in optical systems in the 19th century resulted in the first observation of an asteroid (1 Ceres) in 1801, and the discovery of Neptune in 1846. In 1925, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin determined that stars were composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. She was dissuaded by astronomer Henry Norris Russell from publishing this finding in her Ph.D.thesis because of the widely held belief that stars had the same composition as the Earth.
History of science | Astronomy
He was able to devote considerable time in the observation of comets and variable stars. He discovered several comets and investigated the cause of the brightness change of the variable star Mira. He is credited with being the first to observe the Nova 1670 Vulpeculae, the first ordinary nova discovered in modern times.
Anthelme Voituret | Career
Other scholars disagree with this hypothesis. There is an unrelated, otherwise unknown Arignotus mentioned in Aeschines's speech "Against Timarchus".
Arignotus | Introduction
Alexander of Aphrodisias was a Peripatetic (Aristotelian) and his "On the Soul" (referred to as "De anima" in its traditional Latin title), explained that by his interpretation of Aristotle, potential intellect in man, that which has no nature but receives one from the active intellect, is material, and also called the "material intellect" ("nous hulikos") and it is inseparable from the body, being "only a disposition" of it. He argued strongly against the doctrine of immortality. On the other hand, he identified the active intellect ("nous poietikos"), through whose agency the potential intellect in man becomes actual, not with anything from within people, but with the divine creator itself.
Nous | Alexander of Aphrodisias
Aristarchus () was the name of at least two people of classical antiquity known to be physicians:
Aristarchus (physician) | Introduction
The first named Greek philosopher, according to Aristotle, is Thales of Miletus, early 6th century BCE. He made use of purely physical explanations to explain the phenomena of the world rather than the mythological and divine explanations of tradition. He is thought to have posited water as the single underlying principle (or "Arche in later Aristotelian terminology) of the material world". His fellow, but younger Miletians, Anaximander and Anaximenes, also posited monistic underlying principles, namely apeiron (the indefinite or boundless) and air respectively. Another school was the Eleatics, in southern Italy. The group was founded in the early fifth century BCE by Parmenides, and included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos.
Metaphysics | Pre-Socratic Greece
Largely ignored in ancient Athens, Democritus is said to have been disliked so much by Plato that the latter wished all of his books burned. He was nevertheless well known to his fellow northern-born philosopher Aristotle, and was the teacher of Protagoras. Many consider Democritus to be the "father of modern science". None of his writings have survived; only fragments are known from his vast body of work.
Democritus | Introduction
The Aristotle Mountains in Antarctica are named after Aristotle. He was the first person known to conjecture, in his book "Meteorology", the existence of a landmass in the southern high-latitude region and called it "Antarctica". Aristoteles is a crater on the Moon bearing the classical form of Aristotle's name.
Aristotle | Eponyms
Anaximenes believed that the sky was a dome, and day and night are caused by celestial bodies being carried North until they are no longer seen. There is evidence that suggests Anaximenes may have been the first person to distinguish between planets and fixed stars.
Anaximenes of Miletus | The origin of the Cosmos
Benedetti critiqued those anatomists who trusted in the authorities more than their own experience: “Aristotle has had so much authority for so many centuries that even those things which [physicians] have not seen they will affirm to exist, even without experiment.” Benedetti valued personal observation over blind trust in the authorities and even, shockingly for the time, corrected Aristotle. “Aristotle believes that the nerves first arise from the heart… but almost all of them (as is more evidently established) are perceived to originate in large part from the brain….” Medieval scholars preferred to trust the authorities over their own observations, while this new generation of anatomists increasingly valued the experience over theory.
Alessandro Benedetti | Introduction
Another philosopher, Anaxagoras (5th century BCE), claimed that the Sun was "a fiery mass, larger than the Peloponnese"; a charge of impiety was brought against him, and he was forced to flee Athens. The first fully materialistic philosophy was produced by the atomists Leucippus and Democritus (5th century BCE), who attempted to explain the formation and development of the world in terms of the chance movements of atoms moving in infinite space. Euripides (480–406 BCE), in his play "Bellerophon", had the eponymous main character say: “Doth some one say that there be gods above? There are not; no, there are not.
History of atheism | Presocratic philosophy
Terence Irwin writes:
First principle | Aristotle's contribution
In his "first philosophy", later called the "Metaphysics", (or “after the Physics”), Aristotle discusses the meaning of being. He refers to the unmoved movers (hyperagents), and assigns one to each movement in the heavens and tasks future astronomers with correlating the estimated 47 to 55 motions of the Eudoxan planetary model with the most current and accurate observations. According to Aristotle, each unmoved mover continuously contemplates its own contemplation; the planets and stars, which have their source of motion within themselves (by virtue of aether, Aristotle's fifth element) aspire to emulate the uniform circular motion of their particular mover. Thus captivated, their tireless performance is entirely the result of their own desire.
Aristotelian theology | "Metaphysics"
Hipparchus ranked his stars in a very simple way. He listed the brightest stars as ""of the first magnitude"", which meant "the biggest." Stars less bright Hipparchus called ""of the second magnitude"", or second biggest. The faintest stars visible to the naked eye he called ""of the sixth magnitude"".
First-magnitude star | Hipparchus
Thales of Miletus, regarded by Aristotle as the first philosopher, held that all things arise from a single material substance, water. It is not because he gave a cosmogony that John Burnet calls him the "first man of science," but because he gave a naturalistic explanation of the cosmos and supported it with reasons. According to tradition, Thales was able to predict an eclipse and taught the Egyptians how to measure the height of the pyramids. Thales inspired the Milesian school of philosophy and was followed by Anaximander, who argued that the substratum or "arche" could not be water or any of the classical elements but was instead something "unlimited" or "indefinite" (in Greek, the "apeiron").
Ancient Greek philosophy | Milesian school
He was born at the village of Cuts, Picardy; his father was a farmer. He gained admission at age twelve (thus about 1527) to the Collège de Navarre, working as a servant. A reaction against scholasticism was in full tide, at a transitional time for Aristotelianism. On the occasion of receiving his M.A. degree in 1536, Ramus allegedly took as his thesis "Quaecumque ab Aristotele dicta essent, commentitia esse" ("Everything that Aristotle has said is false"), which Walter J. Ong paraphrases as follows: According to Ong this kind of spectacular thesis was in fact routine at the time. Even so, Ong raises questions as to whether Ramus actually ever delivered this thesis.
Petrus Ramus | Early life
Besides Hesiod's "Works and Days" and Zarathushtra's Gathas, Plato gives the earliest surviving account of a natural theology. In the "Timaeus", written , we read: "We must first investigate concerning [the whole Cosmos] that primary question which has to be investigated at the outset in every case, — namely, whether it has always existed, having no beginning or generation, or whether it has come into existence, having begun from some beginning." In the "Laws", in answer to the question as to what arguments justify faith in the gods, Plato affirms: "One is our dogma about the soul...the other is our dogma concerning the ordering of the motion of the stars".
Natural theology | Ancient Greece
Aristotle argued that Democritus was wrong to attempt to reduce all things to mere necessity, because doing so neglects the aim, order, and "final cause", which brings about these necessary conditions: In "Physics", using eternal forms as his model, Aristotle rejects Plato's assumption that the universe was created by an intelligent designer. For Aristotle, natural ends are produced by "natures" (principles of change internal to living things), and natures, Aristotle argued, do not deliberate: These Platonic and Aristotelian arguments ran counter to those presented earlier by Democritus and later by Lucretius, both of whom were supporters of what is now often called accidentalism:
Teleology | Aristotelian
He was the first of his intellectual circle to raise the philosophy of Plato above that of Aristotle and to teach philosophy as a professor. Surpassing Photius in intellect and wit, he lacks that scholar's dignity and solidity of character. A restless brilliance characterized his life and literary activity. At first a lawyer, then a professor; now a monk, now a court official; he ended his career the prime minister. He was equally adroit and many-sided in his literary work; in harmony with the polished, pliant nature of the courtier is his elegant Platonic style of his letters and speeches.
Byzantine literature | Encyclopedists and essayists
It said that Aristarchus had a remarkable memory and was completely indifferent as to his external appearance.
Aristarchus of Samothrace | Introduction
The Peripatetic axiom is: "Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses" (Latin: ""Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu""). It is found in Thomas Aquinas's "De veritate, q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19". Aquinas adopted this principle from the Peripatetic school of Greek philosophy, established by Aristotle. Aquinas argued that the existence of God could be proved by reasoning from sense data. He used a variation on the Aristotelian notion of the "active intellect" ("intellectus agens") which he interpreted as the ability to abstract universal meanings from particular empirical data.
Peripatetic axiom | Introduction
There is a man by the same name mentioned in Aristotle's "Politics" who overthrew the democracy at Cyme, but nothing is known of this event, nor can it be said with any degree of certainty that they are the same man. Aristotle mentions a Thrasymachus again in his "Sophistical Refutations", where he credits him with a pivotal role in the development of rhetorical theory. Quoting the W. A. Pickard-Cambridge text: "For it may be that in everything, as the saying is 'the first start is the main part'... This is in fact what has happened in regard to rhetorical speeches and to practically all the other arts: for those who discovered the beginnings of them advanced them in all only a little way, whereas the celebrities of to-day are the heirs (so to speak) of a long succession of men who have advanced them bit by bit, and so have developed them to their present form, Tisias coming next after the first founders, then Thrasymachus after Tisias, and Theodorus next to him, while several people have made their several contributions to it: and therefore it is not to be wondered at that the art has attained considerable dimensions." Dillon and Gergel are cautious not to read this as stating that this makes Thrasymachus a student of Tisias, just as it does not make Theodorus a student of Thrasymachus.
Thrasymachus | Life, date, and career
Augustin Sesmat was a French mathematician and logician. He was professor of history and criticism of science at the Institut Catholique de Paris in the 1930s. He was probably the first person to discover the logical hexagon, thus solving a problem posed by Aristotle.
Augustin Sesmat | Introduction
This sort of intellect [which is like light in the way it makes potential things work as what they are] is separate, as well as being without attributes and unmixed, since it is by its thinghood a being-at-work ["energeia"], for what acts is always distinguished in stature above what is acted upon, as a governing source is above the material it works on. Knowledge ["epistēmē"], in its being-at-work, is the same as the thing it knows, and while knowledge in potency comes first in time in any one knower, in the whole of things it does not take precedence even in time.
Nous | Aristotle
Plotinus in writing his "Enneads" around AD 250 recorded that "philosophy at a very early age investigated the number and character of the existents ... some found ten, others less ... to some the genera were the first principles, to others only a generic classification of existents". He realised that some categories were reducible to others saying "why are not Beauty, Goodness and the virtues, Knowledge and Intelligence included among the primary genera?" He concluded that such transcendental categories and even the categories of Aristotle were in some way posterior to the three Eleatic categories first recorded in Plato's dialogue "Parmenides" and which comprised the following three coupled terms: Plotinus called these "the hearth of reality" deriving from them not only the three categories of Quantity, Motion and Quality but also what came to be known as "the three moments of the Neoplatonic world process": Plotinus likened the three to the centre, the radii and the circumference of a circle, and clearly thought that the principles underlying the categories were the first principles of creation.
Category of being | Plotinus
Astronomers like Hipparchus (c. 190 – c. 120 BCE) built upon the measurements of the Babylonian astronomers before him, to measure the precession of the Earth. Pliny reports that Hipparchus produced the first systematic star catalog after he observed a new star (it is uncertain whether this was a nova or a comet) and wished to preserve astronomical record of the stars, so that other new stars could be discovered. It has recently been claimed that a celestial globe based on Hipparchus's star catalog sits atop the broad shoulders of a large 2nd-century Roman statue known as the Farnese Atlas.
History of science in classical antiquity | Hipparchus
The ancient people who are considered the first "scientists" may have thought of themselves as "natural philosophers", as practitioners of a skilled profession (for example, physicians), or as followers of a religious tradition (for example, temple healers). The earliest Greek philosophers, known as the pre-Socratics, provided competing answers to the question found in the myths of their neighbours: "How did the ordered cosmos in which we live come to be?" The pre-Socratic philosopher Thales, dubbed the "father of science", was the first to postulate non-supernatural explanations for natural phenomena such as lightning and earthquakes. Pythagoras of Samos founded the Pythagorean school, which investigated mathematics for its own sake, and was the first to postulate that the Earth is spherical in shape.
History of science in early cultures | Greco-Roman world
For example, a stone has in its nature the potentiality of falling to the earth and it will do so, and actualize this natural tendency, if nothing is in the way. Aristotle analyzed thinking in the same way. For him, the possibility of understanding rests on the relationship between intellect and sense perception. Aristotle's remarks on the concept of what came to be called the "active intellect" and "passive intellect" (along with various other terms) are amongst "the most intensely studied sentences in the history of philosophy". The terms are derived from a single passage in Aristotle's "De Anima", Book III.
Nous | Aristotle
There is some debate about who was the first person to assert that the Earth is spherical in shape, with the credit going either to Parmenides or Pythagoras. Anaxagoras was able to demonstrate that the profile of the Earth was circular by explaining eclipses. However, he still believed that the Earth was a flat disk, as did many of his contemporaries. One of the first estimates of the radius of the Earth was made by Eratosthenes. The first rigorous system of latitude and longitude lines is credited to Hipparchus. He employed a sexagesimal system that was derived from Babylonian mathematics.
Geography | History
Aristotle is credited as the first person to write about the "wisdom of the crowd" in his work titled "Politics". According to Aristotle, "it is possible that the many, though not individually good men, yet when they come together may be better, not individually but collectively, than those who are so, just as public dinners to which many contribute are better than those supplied at one man's cost". The classic wisdom-of-the-crowds finding involves point estimation of a continuous quantity. At a 1906 country fair in Plymouth, 800 people participated in a contest to estimate the weight of a slaughtered and dressed ox.
Wisdom of the crowd | Examples
Commentaries on Aristotle refers to the great mass of literature produced, especially in the ancient and medieval world, to explain and clarify the works of Aristotle. The pupils of Aristotle were the first to comment on his writings, a tradition which was continued by the Peripatetic school throughout the Hellenistic period and the Roman era. The Neoplatonists of the late Roman empire wrote many commentaries on Aristotle, attempting to incorporate him into their philosophy. Although Ancient Greek commentaries are considered the most useful, commentaries continued to be written by the Christian scholars of the Byzantine Empire and by the many Islamic philosophers and Western scholastics who had inherited his texts.
Commentaries on Aristotle | Introduction
Aristotle was the first person to study biology systematically. He spent two years observing and describing the zoology of Lesbos and the surrounding seas, including in particular the Pyrrha lagoon in the centre of Lesbos. His data are assembled from his own observations, statements given by people with specialised knowledge such as beekeepers and fishermen, and less accurate accounts provided by travellers from overseas. His observations on catfish, electric fish ("Torpedo") and angler fish are detailed, as is his writing on cephalopods including the octopus, cuttlefish and paper nautilus. His claim that the octopus had a hectocotyl arm which was perhaps used in sexual reproduction was widely disbelieved, until its rediscovery in the 19th century.
Aristotle's biology | Empirical research
This leads to the question of what types of first principles, or starting points of reasoning, are available for someone seeking to come to true conclusions. In Greek, "first principles" are "archai", "starting points", and the faculty used to perceive them is sometimes referred to in Aristotle and Plato as "nous" which was close in meaning to "awareness" or "consciousness". Empiricism (sometimes associated with Aristotle but more correctly associated with British philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume, as well as their ancient equivalents such as Democritus) asserts that sensory impressions are the only available starting points for reasoning and attempting to attain truth.
Reason | Reason versus truth, and "first principles"
To distinguish these groups, he called them "giant" and "dwarf" stars. The following year he began studying star clusters; large groupings of stars that are co-located at approximately the same distance. He published the first plots of color versus luminosity for these stars. These plots showed a prominent and continuous sequence of stars, which he named the Main Sequence. At Princeton University, Henry Norris Russell was following a similar course of research. He was studying the relationship between the spectral classification of stars and their actual brightness as corrected for distance—their absolute magnitude. For this purpose he used a set of stars that had reliable parallaxes and many of which had been categorized at Harvard.
Main sequence | History
The ancients assumed the literal truth of stars attached to a celestial sphere, revolving about the Earth in one day, and a fixed Earth. The Eudoxan planetary model, on which the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic models were based, was the first geometric explanation for the "wandering" of the classical planets. The outermost of these "crystal spheres" was thought to carry the fixed stars. Eudoxus used 27 concentric spherical solids to answer Plato's challenge: "By the assumption of what uniform and orderly motions can the apparent motions of the planets be accounted for?"
Celestial sphere | History
Dante also sees Saladin, a Muslim military leader known for his battle against the Crusaders, as well as his generous, chivalrous, and merciful conduct. Dante next encounters a group of philosophers, including Aristotle with Socrates and Plato at his side, as well as Democritus, "Diogenes" (either Diogenes the Cynic or Diogenes of Apollonia), Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, and "Zeno" (either Zeno of Elea or Zeno of Citium). He sees the scientist Dioscorides, the mythical Greek poets Orpheus and Linus, and Roman statesmen Marcus Tullius Cicero and Seneca. Dante sees the Alexandrian geometer Euclid and Ptolemy, the Alexandrian astronomer and geographer, as well as the physicians Hippocrates and Galen.
Inferno (Dante) | First Circle (Limbo)
The modern Greek name is also anglicized "Aristotelis"; the French form is "Aristote":
Aristotle (disambiguation) | People with the given name
Early in Classical Greece, knowledge that the Earth is spherical ("round") was common. Around 240 BCE, as the result of a seminal experiment, Eratosthenes (276–194 BCE) accurately estimated its circumference. In contrast to Aristotle's geocentric views, Aristarchus of Samos (; c.310 – c.230 BCE) presented an explicit argument for a heliocentric model of the Solar system, i.e. for placing the Sun, not the Earth, at its centre. Seleucus of Seleucia, a follower of Aristarchus' heliocentric theory, stated that the Earth rotated around its own axis, which, in turn, revolved around the Sun. Though the arguments he used were lost, Plutarch stated that Seleucus was the first to prove the heliocentric system through reasoning.
History of physics | Ancient Greece
At the head of his system, Iamblichus placed the transcendent incommunicable "One", the "monad", whose first principle is intellect, "nous". Immediately after the absolute One, lamblichus introduced a second superexistent "One" to stand between it and 'the many' as the producer of intellect, or soul, "psyche". This is the initial "dyad". The first and highest One ("nous"), which Plotinus represented under the three stages of (objective) being, (subjective) life, and (realized) intellect, is distinguished by Iamblichus into spheres of intelligible and intellective, the latter sphere being the domain of thought, the former of the objects of thought. These three entities, the "psyche", and the "nous" split into the intelligible and the intellective, form a "triad".
Iamblichus | Iamblichus' cosmology
Astronomers like Hipparchus () built upon the measurements of the Babylonian astronomers before him, to measure the precession of the Earth. Pliny reports that Hipparchus produced the first systematic star catalog after he observed a new star (it is uncertain whether this was a nova or a comet) and wished to preserve astronomical record of the stars, so that other new stars could be discovered. It has recently been claimed that a celestial globe based on Hipparchus' star catalog sits atop the broad shoulders of a large 2nd-century Roman statue known as the Farnese Atlas. Another astronomer, Aristarchos of Samos, developed a heliocentric system.
Hellenistic period | Sciences
Anaxarchus (; ; ) was a Greek philosopher of the school of Democritus. Together with Pyrrho, he accompanied Alexander the Great into Asia. The reports of his philosophical views suggest that he was a forerunner of Pyrrhonism. Aelian writes that he was called Eudaemonicus or "Happy Man"().
Anaxarchus | Introduction
The argument from intelligent design appears to have begun with Socrates, although the concept of a cosmic intelligence is older and David Sedley has argued that Socrates was developing an older idea, citing Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, born about 500 BC, as a possible earlier proponent. The proposal that the order of nature showed evidence of having its own human-like "intelligence" goes back to the origins of Greek natural philosophy and science, and its attention to the orderliness of nature, often with special reference to the revolving of the heavens. Anaxagoras is the first person who is definitely known to have explained such a concept using the word ""nous"" (which is the original Greek term that leads to modern English "intelligence" via its Latin and French translations).
Teleological argument | Socrates and the pre-Socratics
Besides these four, the manuscript is complete. The work contains 39 miniatures, including some of the first artistic depictions on paper of the Greek constellations. The artist has made no effort to place the stars correctly according to their positions in the sky so the images cannot be considered true star charts.
Leiden Aratea | Introduction
Moreover, the Faculty of Philosophy was expanded by integrating the Institutes of Foreign Languages (English, French, German and Italian).
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki | First stage (1926–1950)
The pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in cosmology; the nature and origin of the universe, while rejecting mythical answers to such questions. They were specifically interested in the "arche" (the cause or first principle) of the world. The first recognized philosopher, Thales of Miletus (born ca. 625 BCE in Ionia) identified water as the arche (claiming "all is water"). His use of observation and reason to derive this conclusion is the reason for distinguishing him as the first philosopher. Thales' student Anaximander claimed that the "arche" was the "apeiron", the infinite. Following both Thales and Anaximander, Anaximenes of Miletus claimed that air was the most suitable candidate.Pythagoras (born ca.
Western philosophy | Pre-Socratic period
Anaximander (; "Anaximandros"; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia (in modern-day Turkey). He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales. He succeeded Thales and became the second master of that school where he counted Anaximenes and, arguably, Pythagoras amongst his pupils. Little of his life and work is known today. According to available historical documents, he is the first philosopher known to have written down his studies, although only one fragment of his work remains. Fragmentary testimonies found in documents after his death provide a portrait of the man.
Anaximander | Introduction
When these different shapes of atoms come to us, they stimulate our senses according to their shape, and our sensual impressions arise from those stimulations. The second sort of knowledge, the "legitimate" one, can be achieved through the intellect, in other words, all the sense data from the "bastard" must be elaborated through reasoning. In this way one can get away from the false perception of the "bastard" knowledge and grasp the truth through inductive reasoning. After taking into account the sense impressions, one can examine the causes of the appearances, draw conclusions about the laws that govern the appearances, and discover the causality (αἰτιολογία, "aetiologia") by which they are related.
Democritus | Epistemology
Shapley persuaded Payne to write a doctoral dissertation, and so in 1925 she became the first person to earn a PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe College of Harvard University. Her thesis title was "Stellar Atmospheres; A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars". Payne was able to accurately relate the spectral classes of stars to their actual temperatures by applying the ionization theory developed by Indian physicist Meghnad Saha. She showed that the great variation in stellar absorption lines was due to differing amounts of ionization at different temperatures, not to different amounts of elements.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin | Doctoral thesis
In the Early Modern period, scientists such as William Harvey in England and Galileo Galilei in Italy reacted against the theories of Aristotle and other classical era thinkers like Galen, establishing new theories based to some degree on observation and experiment. Harvey demonstrated the circulation of the blood, establishing that the heart functioned as a pump rather than being the seat of the soul and the controller of the body's heat, as Aristotle thought. Galileo used more doubtful arguments to displace Aristotle's physics, proposing that bodies all fall at the same speed whatever their weight.
Aristotle | On Early Modern scientists
The Greek writer and teacher Aristotle (384–322 BC) had much to say on a broad range of subjects, including biology, anatomy, psychology, physics, meteorology, zoology, poetics, rhetoric, logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and political thought. He was among the first writers to describe how to classify material by subject, the first step in writing an encyclopedia. Aristotle wrote to help his students follow his teaching, so his corpus did not much resemble an encyclopedia during his lifetime. Long after his death, commentators filled in the gaps, reordered his works, and put his writing in a systematic form. Catalogs of his work were produced by Andronicus in the first century and by Ptolemy in the second century.
Encyclopedism | Aristotle
Ibn al-Nadim reports a dialogue between Aristotle and Ostanes, the Persian alchemist of Achaemenid era, which is in Jabirian corpus under the title of Kitab Musahhaha Aristutalis. Ruska had suggested that the Sasanian medical schools played an important role in the spread of interest in alchemy. He emphasizes the long history of alchemy, "whose origin is Arius ... the first man who applied the "first" experiment on the [philosopher's] stone... and he declares that man possesses the ability to imitate the workings of Nature" (Nasr, Seyyed Hussein, "Science and Civilization of Islam").
Jabir ibn Hayyan | People
He wrote on the basis of first-hand observation, supported by ancient sources, notably Dioscorides.
Johannes van Heeck | Early career
This immaterial form of activity must be intellectual in nature and it cannot be contingent upon sensory perception if it is to remain uniform; therefore eternal substance must think only of thinking itself and exist outside the starry sphere, where even the notion of place is undefined for Aristotle. Their influence on lesser beings is purely the result of an "aspiration or desire", and each aetheric celestial sphere emulates one of the unmoved movers, as best it can, by uniform circular motion. The first heaven, the outmost sphere of fixed stars, is moved by a desire to emulate the prime mover (first cause), in relation to whom, the subordinate movers suffer an accidental dependency.
Unmoved mover | Aristotle's theology
Aristotle was one of the first people to record any geological observations. He stated that geological change was too slow to be observed in one person's lifetime. The geologist Charles Lyell noted that Aristotle described such change, including "lakes that had dried up" and "deserts that had become watered by rivers", giving as examples the growth of the Nile delta since the time of Homer, and "the upheaving of one of the Aeolian islands, previous to a volcanic eruption."'
Aristotle | Geology
The only aspect of his philosophical views which are known is that he did not make the first principle of reality the "One" beyond intellect and being as Plotinus did, but rather the first principle was the supreme intellect and primary being, which suggests that his views were that of traditional Middle Platonism, rather than the Neoplatonism of Plotinus.
Origen the Pagan | Introduction
Themistius, another influential commentator on this matter, understood Aristotle differently, stating that the passive or material intellect does "not employ a bodily organ for its activity, is wholly unmixed with the body, impassive, and separate [from matter]". This means the human potential intellect, and not only the active intellect, is an incorporeal substance, or a disposition of incorporeal substance. For Themistius, the human soul becomes immortal "as soon as the active intellect intertwines with it at the outset of human thought". This understanding of the intellect was also very influential for Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, and "virtually all Islamic and Jewish philosophers".
Nous | Themistius
Archelaus was a philosopher of the Ionian School, called "Physicus" from having been the first to teach natural philosophy at Athens. This statement of Diogenes Laërtius, is contradicted by Clement of Alexandria, but the two may be reconciled by supposing that Archelaus was the first Athenian who did so. According to Simplicius, who probably got his information from Theophrastus, Archelaus was a native of Athens, even though Diogenes Laërtius says he was born in Miletus. He was the son of Apollodorus, or as some say, of Mydon, Midon, or Myson; was a pupil of Anaxagoras; and is said to have taught at Lampsacus before he established himself at Athens.
Archelaus (philosopher) | Life
For Aristotle, directly observable things are real; ideas (or as he called them, forms) only exist as they express themselves in matter, such as in living things, or in the mind of an observer or artisan.
History of science in classical antiquity | Plato and Aristotle
During his travels, according to Diogenes Laërtius, he became acquainted with the Chaldean magi. "Ostanes", one of the magi accompanying Xerxes, was also said to have taught him. After returning to his native land he occupied himself with natural philosophy. He traveled throughout Greece to acquire a better knowledge of its cultures. He mentions many Greek philosophers in his writings, and his wealth enabled him to purchase their writings. Leucippus, the founder of atomism, was the greatest influence upon him. He also praises Anaxagoras. Diogenes Laertius says that he was friends with Hippocrates, and he quotes Demetrius saying: "It would seem that he also went to Athens and was not anxious to be recognized, because he despised fame, and that while he knew of Socrates, he was not known to Socrates, his words being, `I came to Athens and no one knew me.'" Aristotle placed him among the pre-Socratic natural philosophers.
Democritus | Life
Apollodorus () was a Greek grammarian from Cumae, who was said to have been the first person that was given the titles of grammarian and critic. According to Pliny, his fame was so great that he was honored by the Amphictyonic council of the Greeks.
Apollodorus of Cumae | Introduction
Aristotle, in his "On the Soul" believes that human intellect at first is just a receptive faculty. This receptive capacity becomes actual by receiving the forms of things. It seems that Farabi for the first time in his book Treatise on Reason ( Risala fi'l-aql) renders the hierarchy of intellect following his theory on intellection. There Farabi tried to distinguish six meanings of Aql. The fifth intellect among them is very important. Farabi took notice to elaborate this kind of Aql in correct. Fifth reason itself divided to four stages, wherepotential Aql is the first stage. Other stages include actual intellect, acquired intellect and finally active intellect.
Aql Bil Quwwah | Historical background
Cicero equally praises his works. Vitruvius observes that if his fame was less than his contemporaries, it was the fault of fortune rather than a lack of talent. Among his students were his young brother Ariston, his son Aristides of Thebes, and Philoxenus of Eretria.
Nicomachus of Thebes | Introduction
It was first recognized as a globular cluster by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop in 1826, who described it as a "beautiful globe of stars very gradually and moderately compressed to the centre".
Omega Centauri | Observation history
For the Aristotelian, knowledge of the universals is not obtained from a supernatural source. It is obtained from experience by means of active intellect.
Aristotle's theory of universals | Introduction
The line of the Aristotelian commentators was continued to the later ages of the Byzantine Empire. In the 12th century Anna Comnena organised a group of scholars which included the commentators Michael of Ephesus, and Eustratius of Nicaea who employed himself upon the dialectic and moral treatises, and whom she does not hesitate to elevate above the Stoics and Platonists for his talent in philosophical discussions. Nicephorus Blemmydes wrote logical and physical epitomes for the use of John III Doukas Vatatzes; George Pachymeres composed an epitome of the philosophy of Aristotle, and a compendium of his logic: Theodore Metochites, who was famous in his time for his eloquence and his learning, has left a paraphrase of the books of Aristotle on "Physics", "On the Soul", "On the Heavens", etc.
Commentaries on Aristotle | Byzantine commentators
Aristotle was the first to call them "physiologoi" or "physikoi" ("physicists", after "physis", "nature") and differentiate them from the earlier "theologoi" (theologians), or "mythologoi" (story tellers and bards) who attributed these phenomena to various gods. Diogenes Laërtius divides the "physiologoi" into two groups: Ionian, led by Anaximander, and Italiote, led by Pythagoras.
Pre-Socratic philosophy | Overview
After Theophrastus, though interest in Aristotle's ideas survived, they were generally taken unquestioningly. It is not until the age of Alexandria under the Ptolemies that advances in biology resumed. The first medical teacher at Alexandria, Herophilus of Chalcedon, corrected Aristotle, placing intelligence in the brain, and connected the nervous system to motion and sensation. Herophilus also distinguished between veins and arteries, noting that the latter pulse while the former do not.
Aristotle's biology | On Hellenistic medicine
Consequently, William was one of the first theologians to be influenced by Aristotle. His "Summa Aurea" shows a debt still to Peter Lombard, and it advances the ontological argument, but it also shows novelty and an intellectual awareness and insistence on the physical that had not been seen earlier. "Summa Aurea" influenced John of Treviso.
William of Auxerre | Introduction