Hello everyone, next, I will devote a series to the thought of the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle. I have been preparing this series for a while, because it is true that Aristotle is too important, Aristotle is the most important philosopher in the history of Western philosophy, not even one of them. Aristotle is not only the true pioneer of Western philosophy, but also an encyclopedic scientist, he has made great contributions to many disciplines, and even the pioneer of many disciplines, he is known as the "father of biology" and "father of logic".
Scientist Hawking once said: The birth of science and the birth of civilization, I am afraid that a considerable part of the credit is attributed to Aristotle, among all scientists, Aristotle occupies the most proportion of credit. Aristotle is so important, but many people's memories of Aristotle may still be stuck in middle school physics textbooks, Galileo stood on the Leaning Tower of Pisa and did an experiment in which two lead balls landed at the same time, which proved that Aristotle's idea that "two objects of equal volume fall faster" is wrong.
In today's view, many of Aristotle's theories have been proven wrong, such as his belief that the earth is the center of the universe; The earth and celestial bodies are composed of different substances, the earth's materials are composed of four elements: water, air, fire and earth, and celestial bodies are composed of the fifth element "ether"; He also pointed out that white is the purest light, and that the other colors of light we see, light that changes for some reason, are impure, a view that was later falsified by Newton. Even Aristotle made the erroneous idea that women's teeth are inherently two fewer than men's.
Hearing this, you may think, just such a person full of fallacies, why do we need to learn from him? The answer is not whether he came to the right conclusions, but whether his way of thinking is a valuable legacy. Philosophy is known as the crown of human wisdom, the brightest pearl, and Aristotle pioneered the discipline of "philosophy", so to understand philosophy, especially Western philosophy, Aristotle must not jump over. Before systematically introducing Aristotle's thought, let's take a brief look at Aristotle's life, as usual.
Aristotle was born in the Greek colony of Thrace in 384 BC, his father was the court physician of the Macedonian king at the time, and his family conditions were good, at least at that time middle class. Aristotle studied under Plato at the age of 17 for 20 years, and in the Academy of Plato, Aristotle was known as the "spirit of the school" for his outstanding performance, and did not leave until Plato's death. Because of the influence of Plato, Aristotle developed a strong interest in philosophy, and at the same time was influenced by his father, and also liked to study biology and other natural sciences.
Two years after Plato's death, Aristotle remained in Athens, because the new head of Plato's academy at the time favored the mathematical tendencies of Plato's philosophy, which disgusted Aristotle, and began to travel around the world. But some people say that it was because after Plato's death, he did not pass the position of head of the academy to Aristotle, which led to his departure. In 343 AD, at the age of 42, Aristotle was hired by King Philip II of Macedon to serve as Alexander's teacher, and was influenced by Aristotle, who respected and respected both knowledge and science.
At the time of Philip II's death in 335 BC, Aristotle returned to Athens and established his own school, the Lycion Academy, during which he lectured and compiled his writings based on his students' study notes, most of his works on philosophy and the natural sciences were completed during this period. Interestingly, when lecturing, Aristotle liked to wander through the corridors and gardens, so Aristotle's philosophy is also called "philosophy of leisure", or "philosophy of strolling".
At the same time, because Aristotle had served as Alexander the Great's teacher, Aristotle not only received preferential treatment from the local people and showed outstanding political status, but also received a lot of money and land and material support from Alexander the Great and various bureaucrats. But after Alexander's death, because of Aristotle's relationship with Alexander, he was accused of ungodliness, and fled to Garsis for refuge, and the year after his flight, in 322 BC, Aristotle died of a stomach disease at the age of 63.
Okay, so let's talk about his scientific achievements. As we mentioned earlier, he was an encyclopedic scientist, and you may have noticed that when we talked about Plato and Socrates, we used the terms "thinker and philosopher", not "scientist". And Aristotle was called a scientist. They differ in the interpretation of the "source of knowledge", which Plato once asserted "cannot be the source of knowledge".
Knowledge precedes experience and feeling. For example, 1+1=2, which does not depend on any of our feelings and experiences, in Plato's eyes, we exist in a perfect and ideal world. The rules by which the universe operates are perfect; The matter of the universe is made up of perfect geometric particles; All stars follow a unified orbit. In short, we already know all the knowledge and laws of everything in the universe, and all our observations and experiences are just to prove this theory.
His student Aristotle, on the contrary, opposed his teacher Plato's "theory of ideas", proposing that knowledge comes from experience and common sense. Plato was an idealist, while Aristotle was an empiricist. Aristotle famously said about their differences: I love my teacher, and I love the truth even more. Aristotle focused on practice, observation, feeling and experience, and believed that true knowledge could only be gained in this way. For example, Aristotle studied animals very carefully, and in his book "Zoologia", he classified more than 500 species of animals and plants, and conducted anatomical studies of at least 50 kinds of animals. He also recorded many observations about various animals and divided them into invertebrates and vertebrates. In astronomy, Aristotle also observed that not all celestial bodies orbit in a unified orbit, such as Mars operating in the exact opposite way to other celestial bodies.
In short, Aristotle believed that knowledge comes from experience and common sense, and this method of acquiring knowledge, based on observation and practice, is the scientific research method we commonly use today. Aristotle subverted Plato's understanding of the perfection of the world and proposed a scientific method of acquiring knowledge, which is Aristotle's greatest contribution to human science, so we call it the great scientist.
In addition, in logic, Aristotle founded the important subdiscipline of formal logic, and he proposed syllogistic formal logic, which was later developed into the classical deductive method. For example, the famous syllogistic reasoning: the main premise is that people will die. The small premise is that Socrates is human. So the conclusion: Socrates will also die. This logical reasoning method based on universal laws and deducing individual conclusions played a crucial role in the later development of science. For example, later the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid, the famous father of geometry, applied this reasoning idea to the study of geometry. Euclid was the first to use Aristotle's syllogistic deduction method to construct a body of knowledge and scientific research and development methods, and his geometry is a rigorous deductive system, deriving various theorems from several axioms, and then using these theorems to solve practical problems.
But compared with physics, biology and logic, Aristotle's real contribution to greatness is to create philosophy, so what Aristotle's philosophy is about, we will start with his most classic book "Metaphysics" in the next issue. That's all for today's content, if you like my content, please like the favorites and follow me, we'll see you in the next issue.