1ARISTOTLEA POWER-POINT IN SUPPORT OF A LECTURE FOR EDF 4450 BY G.D. ALBEAR, M.A. GENERATED FROM: S. MARC COHEN’S INTRODUCTION TO ARISTOTLE FOUND AT: http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/433/arintro.htmARISTOTLE• Aristotle was born of a well-to-do family in the Macedonian town of Stagira in 384 B.C. • His father, Nicomachus, was a physician who died when Aristotle was young. • In 367, when Aristotle was seventeen, his uncle, Proxenus, sent him to Athens to study at Plato’s Academy. • There he remained, first as a pupil, later as an associate, for the next twenty years.2ARISTOTLE• When Plato died in 347, the Academy came under the control of his nephew Speusippus, who favored mathematical aspects of Platonism that Aristotle, who was more interested in biology, found uncongenial. • Perhaps for this reason - but more likely because of growing anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens - Aristotle decided to leave. ARISTOTLE• He accepted the invitation of Hermeias, his friend and a former fellow student in the Academy, to join his philosophical circle on the coast of Asia Minor in Assos, where Hermeias (a former slave) had become ruler.• Aristotle remained there for three years. During this period he married Hermeias’s niece, Pythias, with whom he had a daughter, also named Pythias.3ARISTOTLE• In 345, Aristotle moved to Mytilene, on the nearby island of Lesbos, where he joined another former Academic, Theophrastus, who was a native of the island. • Theophrastus, at first Aristotle’s pupil and then his closest colleague, remained associated with him until Aristotle’s death. • While they were on Lesbos the biological research of Aristotle and Theophrastus flourished.ARISTOTLE• In 343, Philip of Macedon invited Aristotle to his court to serve as tutor to his son Alexander, then thirteen years old. • What instruction Aristotle gave to the young man who was to become Alexander the Great is not known, but it seems likely that Aristotle’s own interest in politics increased during his stay at the Macedonian court. • In 340 Alexander was appointed regent for his father and his studies with Aristotle ended.4ARISTOTLE• In 335, after the death of Philip, Aristotle returned to Athens for his second long sojourn.• Just outside the city he rented some buildings and established his own school, the Lyceum, where he lectured, wrote, and discussed philosophy with his pupils and associates. • Under his direction, they carried out research on biological and other philosophical and scientific topics. – Theophrastus worked on botany – Aristoxenus on music– Eudemus wrote a history of mathematics and astronomy– Meno of medicine, and – Theophrastus of physics, cosmology, and psychology • In addition, Aristotle and his group produced a monumental account of the constitutions of 158 Greek city-states - an account Aristotle draws on in his own Politics. ARISTOTLE• While he was in Athens, Aristotle’s wife Pythias died. • He subsequently began a union with a woman named Herpyllis, like Aristotle a native of Stagira. • Although they apparently never married, they had a son, whom they named Nicomachus, after Aristotle’s father. • Aristotle’s work during his twelve or thirteen years at the Lyceum was prodigious. • Most of his surviving works were probably written during this period.5ARISTOTLE• But when Alexander died in 323, Athens once again became a hostile environment for a Macedonian, and Aristotle was accused of impiety (the same charge that had been leveled against both Anaxagoras and Socrates).• Leaving the Lyceum in the hands of Theophrastus, Aristotle fled northward to the Macedonian stronghold of Chalcis (his mother’s birthplace); he is said to have remarked that he would “not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy.”• Removed from the cultural center of Athens, he lamented his isolation and died in 322 at the age of sixty-two.ARISTOTLE• Of Aristotle’s writings, only about one fifth to one quarter have survived. • Still, the great variety of subjects that they cover provides a good indication of the range and depth of his interests. • The notorious difficulty these writings pose for the contemporary reader is in part explained by the nature of the works themselves. • Far from being polished pieces of prose intended for publication, they are for the most part working papers and lecture notes, terse and compressed often to the point of unintelligibility. – (Ancient sources tell us that in his published works - now lost - Aristotle displayed an exemplary literary style, and there are occasional glimpses of it in the surviving works.)6ARISTOTLE• Aristotle was above all driven by a desire for knowledge and understanding in every possible realm.• But his philosophical and scientific interests are rooted in thenatural world – - About one quarter of the surviving works deal with topics in biology. • This he combined with an unshakeable confidence in the ability of the human mind, aided by the system of deductive logic he invented and by close and detailed observation of natural phenomena, to comprehend the fundamental nature of objective reality. ARISTOTLE• Aristotle did not suppose that he was the first person to attempt this task. • He was a keen student of the writings of his scientific and philosophical predecessors. – The influence of Plato’s thought is apparent throughout Aristotle’s works, even where he disagrees with his teacher most. • He pays a great deal of attention to the Presocratics, seldom agreeing with them, but often crediting them with important (albeit usually partial) insights.• His typical approach to a subject is to review its history and then, making what use he can of the received opinions, to set out his own account. • Often his position is a kind of compromise that incorporates thebest features while avoiding the excesses of rival schemes that are too extreme.7ARISTOTLE• All of the sciences can be divided into three branches: – Theoretical, practical, and productive• Whereas practical sciences, such as ethics and politics, are concerned with human action, and productive sciences with making things, theoretical sciences, such as theology, mathematics, and the natural sciences, aim at truth and are pursued for their own sake– Aristotle was unique in pursuing all three•His Rhetoric and Poetics, which provide the foundation for the study of speech and