Aristotle (/ˈærɪˌstɒtəl/;[1] Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotélēs, pronounced [aristotélɛːs]; 384–322 BCE) was

an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning
the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology and the arts. As the
founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the
wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of
modern science.

Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during
the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought
up by a guardian. At 17 or 18 he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there till the age of
37 (c. 347 BCE). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of
Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the
Lyceum which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.

Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of
his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex
synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry
have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical
discussion.

Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical
science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not
replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were
developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian
theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic
Church.

Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval
Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante called him "the
master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were
studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic
continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, though always influential, gained
renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.

Life
In general, the details of Aristotle's life are not well-established. The biographies written in ancient
times are often speculative and historians only agree on a few salient points.[A]

Aristotle was born in 384 BC[B] in Stagira, Chalcidice,[2] about 55 km (34 miles) east of modern-
day Thessaloniki.[3][4] His father, Nicomachus, was the personal physician to King Amyntas of
Macedon. While he was young, Aristotle learned about biology and medical information, which was
taught by his father.[5] Both of Aristotle's parents died when he was about thirteen, and Proxenus of
Atarneus became his guardian.[6] Although little information about Aristotle's childhood has survived,
he probably spent some time within the Macedonian palace, making his first connections with
the Macedonian monarchy.[7]
 School of Aristotle in Mieza, Macedonia, Greece.
At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Plato's
Academy.[8] He probably experienced the Eleusinian Mysteries as he wrote when describing the
sights one viewed at the Eleusinian Mysteries, "to experience is to learn" [παθείν μαθεĩν].[9] Aristotle
remained in Athens for nearly twenty years before leaving 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 the anti-Macedonian sentiments in
Athens at that time and left before Plato died.[10] Aristotle then accompanied Xenocrates to the court
of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. After the death of Hermias, Aristotle travelled with
his pupil Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and
zoology of the island and its sheltered lagoon. While in Lesbos, Aristotle married Pythias, either
Hermias's adoptive daughter or niece. They had a daughter, whom they also named Pythias. In 343
BCE, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander.[11][12]

"Aristotle tutoring Alexander" by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal Academy of Macedon. During Aristotle's time in the
Macedonian court, he gave lessons not only to Alexander but also to two other future
kings: Ptolemy and Cassander.[13] Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and
Aristotle's own attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he
counsels Alexander to be "a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the
former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants".[13] By
335 BCE, Aristotle had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as the Lyceum.
Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias
died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira. They had a son whom Aristotle named
after his father, Nicomachus. If the Suda – an uncritical compilation from the Middle Ages – is
accurate, he may also have had an erômenos, Palaephatus of Abydus.[14]
 Portrait bust of Aristotle; an Imperial Roman (1st or 2nd century CE)
copy of a lost bronze sculpture made by Lysippos.
This period in Athens, between 335 and 323 BCE, is when Aristotle is believed to have composed
many of his works.[12] He wrote many dialogues, of which only fragments have survived. Those works
that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part, intended for widespread
publication; they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his students. His most important
treatises include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul and Poetics.
Aristotle studied and made significant contributions to "logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics,
biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance, and theatre."[15]

Near the end of his life, Alexander and Aristotle became estranged over Alexander's relationship
with Persia and Persians. A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected Aristotle of playing a role in
Alexander's death, but the only evidence of this is an unlikely claim made some six years after the
death.[16] Following Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens was rekindled. In
322 BCE, Demophilus and Eurymedon the Hierophant reportedly denounced Aristotle for impiety,
[17]
prompting him to flee to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, on Euboea, at which occasion he
was said to have stated: "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy"[18][19][20] – a
reference to Athens's trial and execution of Socrates. He died in Chalcis, Euboea[2][21][15] of natural
causes later that same year, having named his student Antipater as his chief executor and leaving
a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.[22]

Theoretical philosophy
Logic
Main article: Term logic
Further information: Non-Aristotelian logic
With the Prior Analytics, Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal logic,[23] and his
conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th-century advances in mathematical
logic.[24] Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that with Aristotle logic reached its completion.[25]

Organon
Main article: Organon
One of Aristotle's types of syllogism[C]

In
In words In equations[E]
terms[D]
 All men are mortal. MaP

All Greeks are men. SaM

∴ All Greeks are mortal. S a P

What is today called Aristotelian logic with its types of syllogism (methods of logical argument),
[26]
Aristotle himself would have labelled "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 a set of six books
called the Organon around 40 BCE by Andronicus of Rhodes or others among his followers.[28] The
books are:

1. Categories
2. On Interpretation
3. Prior Analytics
4. Posterior Analytics
5. Topics
6. On Sophistical Refutations

Plato (left) and Aristotle in Raphael's 1509 fresco, The School of

Athens. Aristotle holds his Nicomachean Ethics and gestures to the earth, representing his view
in immanent realism, whilst Plato gestures to the heavens, indicating his Theory of Forms, and
holds his Timaeus. [29][30]

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)[31][32] 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.
The Rhetoric is not conventionally included, but it states that it relies on the Topics.[33]

Metaphysics
Main article: Metaphysics (Aristotle)
The word "metaphysics" appears to have been coined by the first century CE editor who assembled
various small selections of Aristotle's works to the treatise we know by the name Metaphysics.
[34]
Aristotle called it "first philosophy", and distinguished it from mathematics and natural science
(physics) as the contemplative (theoretikē) philosophy which is "theological" and studies the divine.
He wrote in his Metaphysics (1026a16):

if there were no other independent things besides the composite natural ones, the study of nature
would be the primary kind of knowledge; but if there is some motionless independent thing, the
knowledge of this precedes it and is first philosophy, and it is universal in just this way, because it is
first. And it belongs to this sort of philosophy to study being as being, both what it is and what
belongs to it just by virtue of being.[35]
Substance
Further information: Hylomorphism
Aristotle examines the concepts of substance (ousia) and essence (to ti ên einai, "the what it was to
be") in his Metaphysics (Book VII), and he concludes that a particular substance is a combination of
both matter and form, a philosophical theory called hylomorphism. In Book VIII, he distinguishes the
matter of the substance as the substratum, or the stuff of which it is composed. For example, the
matter of a house is the bricks, stones, timbers, etc., or whatever constitutes the potential house,
while the form of the substance is the actual house, namely 'covering for bodies and chattels' or any
other differentia that let us define something as a house. The formula that gives the components is
the account of the matter, and the formula that gives the differentia is the account of the form.[36][34]

Immanent realism
Main article: Aristotle's theory of universals

Plato's forms exist as universals, like the

ideal form of an apple. For Aristotle, both matter and form belong to the individual thing
(hylomorphism).
Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle's philosophy aims at the universal. Aristotle's ontology places the
universal (katholou) in particulars (kath' hekaston), things in the world, whereas for Plato the
universal is a separately existing form which actual things imitate. For Aristotle, "form" is still
what phenomena are based on, but is "instantiated" in a particular substance.[34]

Plato argued that all things have a universal form, which could be either a property or a relation to
other things. When one looks at an apple, for example, one sees an apple, and one can also
analyse a form of an apple. In this distinction, there is a particular apple and a universal form of an
apple. Moreover, one can place an apple next to a book, so that one can speak of both the book and
apple as being next to each other. Plato argued that there are some universal forms that are not a
part of particular things. For example, it is possible that there is no particular good in existence, but
"good" is still a proper universal form. Aristotle disagreed with Plato on this point, arguing that all
universals are instantiated at some period of time, and that there are no universals that are
unattached to existing things. In addition, Aristotle disagreed with Plato about the location of
universals. Where Plato spoke of the forms as existing separately from the things that participate in
them, Aristotle maintained that universals exist within each thing on which each universal is
predicated. So, according to Aristotle, the form of apple exists within each apple, rather than in the
world of the forms.[34][37]

Potentiality and actuality

Concerning the nature of change (kinesis) and its causes, as he outlines in his Physics and On
Generation and Corruption (319b–320a), he distinguishes coming-to-be (genesis, also translated as
'generation') from:

1. growth and diminution, which is change in quantity;

2. locomotion, which is change in space; and
3. alteration, which is change in quality.

Aristotle argued that a capability like playing the flute could

be acquired – the potential made actual – by learning.
Coming-to-be is a change where the substrate of the thing that has undergone the change has itself
changed. In that particular change he introduces the concept of potentiality (dynamis) and actuality
(entelecheia) in association with the matter and the form. Referring to potentiality, this is what a thing
is capable of doing or being acted upon if the conditions are right and it is not prevented by
something else. For example, the seed of a plant in the soil is potentially (dynamei) a plant, and if it
is not prevented by something, it will become a plant. Potentially beings can either 'act' (poiein) or
'be acted upon' (paschein), which can be either innate or learned. For example, the eyes possess
the potentiality of sight (innate – being acted upon), while the capability of playing the flute can be
possessed by learning (exercise – acting). Actuality is the fulfilment of the end of the potentiality.
Because the end (telos) is the principle of every change, and potentiality exists for the sake of the
end, actuality, accordingly, is the end. Referring then to the previous example, it can be said that an
actuality is when a plant does one of the activities that plants do.[34]

For that for the sake of which (to hou heneka) a thing is, is its principle, and the becoming is for the
sake of the end; and the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is
acquired. For animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they
may see.[38]
In summary, the matter used to make a house has potentiality to be a house and both the activity of
building and the form of the final house are actualities, which is also a final cause or end. Then
Aristotle proceeds and concludes that the actuality is prior to potentiality in formula, in time and in
substantiality. With this definition of the particular substance (i.e., matter and form), Aristotle tries to
solve the problem of the unity of the beings, for example, "what is it that makes a man one"? Since,
according to Plato there are two Ideas: animal and biped, how then is man a unity? However,
according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same.[34]
[39]

Epistemology
Aristotle's immanent realism means his epistemology is based on the study of things that exist or
happen in the world, and rises to knowledge of the universal, whereas for Plato epistemology begins
with knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) and descends to knowledge of particular imitations of
these.[33] Aristotle uses induction from examples alongside deduction, whereas Plato relies on
deduction from a priori principles.[33]

Natural philosophy
Aristotle's "natural philosophy" spans a wide range of natural phenomena including those now
covered by physics, biology and other natural sciences.[40] In Aristotle's terminology, "natural
philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the natural world, and includes
fields that would be regarded today as physics, biology and other natural sciences. Aristotle's work
encompassed virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry. Aristotle makes philosophy in the broad sense
coextensive with reasoning, which he also would describe as "science". However, his use of the
term science carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific method". For
Aristotle, "all science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical" (Metaphysics 1025b25). His
practical science includes ethics and politics; his poetical science means the study of fine arts
including poetry; his theoretical science covers physics, mathematics and metaphysics.[40]

Physics

The four classical elements (fire, air, water, earth)

of Empedocles and Aristotle illustrated with a burning log. The log releases all four elements as
it is destroyed.
Main article: Aristotelian physics
Five elements
Main article: Classical element
In his On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle related each of the four elements proposed earlier
by Empedocles, earth, water, air, and fire, to two of the four sensible qualities, hot, cold, wet, and
dry. In the Empedoclean scheme, all matter was made of the four elements, in differing proportions.
Aristotle's scheme added the heavenly aether, the divine substance of the heavenly spheres, stars
and planets.[41]

Aristotle's elements[41]

Elemen Modern state

Hot/Cold Wet/Dry Motion
t of matter

Earth Cold Dry Down Solid

Water Cold Wet Down Liquid

Air Hot Wet Up Gas

Fire Hot Dry Up Plasma

Circular
(divine
Aether — (in Vacuum
substance)
heavens)

Motion
Further information: History of classical mechanics
Aristotle describes two kinds of motion: "violent" or "unnatural motion", such as that of a thrown
stone, in the Physics (254b10), and "natural motion", such as of a falling object, in On the
Heavens (300a20). In violent motion, as soon as the agent stops causing it, the motion stops also: in
other words, the natural state of an object is to be at rest,[42][F] since Aristotle does not address friction.
[43]
With this understanding, it can be observed that, as Aristotle stated, heavy objects (on the ground,
say) require more force to make them move; and objects pushed with greater force move faster.[44]
[G]
This would imply the equation[44]

,
incorrect in modern physics.[44]

Natural motion depends on the element concerned: the aether naturally moves in a circle around
the heavens,[H] while the 4 Empedoclean elements move vertically up (like fire, as is observed) or
down (like earth) towards their natural resting places.[45][43][I]
 Aristotle's laws of motion. In Physics he
states that objects fall at a speed proportional to their weight and inversely proportional to
the density of the fluid they are immersed in. This is a correct approximation for objects in
[43]

Earth's gravitational field moving in air or water. [45]

In the Physics (215a25), Aristotle effectively states a quantitative law, that the speed, v, of a
falling body is proportional (say, with constant c) to its weight, W, and inversely proportional to
the density,[J] ρ, of the fluid in which it is falling:;[45][43]

Aristotle implies that in a vacuum the speed of fall would become infinite, and concludes
from this apparent absurdity that a vacuum is not possible.[45][43] Opinions have varied on
whether Aristotle intended to state quantitative laws. Henri Carteron held the "extreme
view"[43] that Aristotle's concept of force was basically qualitative,[46] but other authors reject
this.[43]

Archimedes corrected Aristotle's theory that bodies move towards their natural resting
places; metal boats can float if they displace enough water; floating depends in Archimedes'
scheme on the mass and volume of the object, not, as Aristotle thought, its elementary
composition.[45]

Aristotle's writings on motion remained influential until the Early Modern period. John
Philoponus (in Late antiquity) and Galileo (in Early modern period) are said to have shown
by experiment that Aristotle's claim that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is
incorrect.[40] A contrary opinion is given by Carlo Rovelli, who argues that Aristotle's physics
of motion is correct within its domain of validity, that of objects in the Earth's gravitational
field immersed in a fluid such as air. In this system, heavy bodies in steady fall indeed travel
faster than light ones (whether friction is ignored, or not[45]), and they do fall more slowly in a
denser medium.[44][K]

Newton's "forced" motion corresponds to Aristotle's "violent" motion with its external agent,
but Aristotle's assumption that the agent's effect stops immediately it stops acting (e.g., the
ball leaves the thrower's hand) has awkward consequences: he has to suppose that
surrounding fluid helps to push the ball along to make it continue to rise even though the
hand is no longer acting on it, resulting in the Medieval theory of impetus.[45]
Four causes
Main article: Four causes

Aristotle argued by analogy with

woodwork that a thing takes its form from four causes: in the case of a table, the wood
used (material cause), its design (formal cause), the tools and techniques used (efficient
cause), and its decorative or practical purpose (final cause). [47]

Aristotle suggested that the reason for anything coming about can be attributed to four
different types of simultaneously active factors. His term aitia is traditionally translated as
"cause", but it does not always refer to temporal sequence; it might be better translated as
"explanation", but the traditional rendering will be employed here.[48][49]

 Material cause describes the material out of which something is composed.

Thus the material cause of a table is wood. It is not about action. It does not
mean that one domino knocks over another domino.[48]
 The formal cause is its form, i.e., the arrangement of that matter. It tells one
what a thing is, that a thing is determined by the definition, form, pattern,
essence, whole, synthesis or archetype. It embraces the account of causes in
terms of fundamental principles or general laws, as the whole (i.e.,
macrostructure) is the cause of its parts, a relationship known as the whole-part
causation. Plainly put, the formal cause is the idea in the mind of the sculptor
that brings the sculpture into being. A simple example of the formal cause is the
mental image or idea that allows an artist, architect, or engineer to create a
drawing.[48]
 The efficient cause is "the primary source", or that from which the change under