Aristotle's Work In Biology example essay topic

Aristotle With the possible exception of Plato, Aristotle is the most influential philosopher in the history of logical thought. Logic into this century was basically Aristotelian logic. Aristotle dominated the study of the natural sciences until modern times. Aristotle, in some aspect, was the founder of biology; Charles Darwin considered him as the most important contributor to the subject. Aristotle's Poetic, the first work of literary notice, had a string influence on the theory and practice of modern drama.

Aristotle's great influence is due to the fact that he seemed to offer a system, which although lacked in certain respects, was as a whole matchless in its extent. Aristotle was born in 384 BC in Stagira in northern Greece. His father, Nicomachus, was a physician with close connections to the Macedonian court. In 367, Aristotle went to Athens to join Plato's Academy, first as a student then, a teacher. Plato had gathered around him a group of outstanding men who shared no common belief but who were united by the exact effort to organize human knowledge on a firm theoretical basis and expand it in all directions.

This effort identified Aristotle's own work. It was also part of the Academy's program to train young men for a political career and to provide advice to rulers. After Plato's death, Aristotle joined the court of Her mias of Atarneus in 347, and later went to the court of Philip II of Macedonian, where he became the tutor of Alexander the Great. In 335, Aristotle returned to Athens to found his own school, the Lyceum.

The Lyceum under Aristotle pursued a wider range of subjects than the Academy ever had. The detail study of nature became very popular among the students. After the death of Alexander the Great in 323, anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens rose, and Aristotle retried to Chalcis, where he died the following year. The natural sciences are concerned with natural objects that are characterized by the fact that they are subject to change. Change is the basic phenomenon with physics has to deal. So Aristotle's work in physics is devoted to a breakdown of the change and a discussion of his hypothesis.

Matter and form are the material and the formal cause of what comes to be. Aristotle categorizes four kinds of causes. If a house comes into being, its efficient cause is the builder. Its formal cause is the structure by virtue of which it is a house. Its material cause is the matter that has received this structure, and its final cause is the end or purpose for which houses exist. In other words the protection of people and property.

The form of an object helps clear up its behavior. Aristotle calls the forms of living things "souls", which are of three kinds: plants, animals, or human beings. Because Aristotle believed that the soul is merely a set of determined features, he didn't regard the body and the soul as two separate individuals that mysteriously combine to from an organism. Most of Aristotle's work in biology was devoted to zoology. In Aristotle's study of biology the belief of teleology was important. This belief, that their final ends or purposes determine the form of natural objects, has frequently been misunderstood as a statement that there is universe designed in nature.

Aristotle simply demands that the structure and the behavior of things also have to be understood as contributing to their individual being and functions. While sciences deal with certain kinds of beings, metaphysic is about beings and things like that. According to Aristotle there is no thing such as a mere being. To be is always to be a substance, a member of some other basic category.

Substances are prior to non-substance because substances determine qualities. Therefore, an account of beings is an account of substances. Aristotle thought this way because of how he lived his live. He wanted to prove everything like a true biologist. To understand substances, one must consider spiritual substantial forms, like God.

Only then can humans can humans understand what it is to be a substance, and what it is to exist. Aristotle's study of metaphysics became in part theological. Aristotle's idea of science as a reasonable system based on his influence of the history of science and his own sayings were by his great teacher, Plato. Only after the teachings of Plato, Aristotle was only a listener. Then it was his turn to say something. That something stood in for the next thousands of years.

No scientist dared even test his theories. What Aristotle said was edged in stone (literally). This is why Aristotle is such a key player in the history of biology and even science..