A S ⇒ A
Aristotle (355 – 322 BCE)
Aristotele ̄s; born 384 BCE in Stageira, son of
N, a Macedonian court physician;
joined P’ Academy in Athens at age 17 and
stayed until Plato’s death in 348/7 BCE; left Athens
for the Troas and Lesbos (perhaps in association
with fellow Academician T); was
tutor to Alexander the Great (343–340); returned to
Athens and founded the Lyceum (ca 335); fled
anti-Macedonian Athens after Alexander’s death
(323); died in Khalkis (322). Aristotle is the most
influential observer and recorder, philosopher and
systematizer of antiquity. Though his most volu-
minous contribution was in biology, he is best
known for his physical theory, dominant in the
Middle Ages and overturned only in the early mod-
ern period. This article treats the contents and con-
tribution of his treatises in systematic order.
Aristotle’s physical treatises (originally lecture
notes and catalogues edited and rearranged) form a
hierarchical unity of discrete but related disciplines subject to a variety of methods. Aristotle
divides rational thought, according to its object, into theoretical, practical and productive
areas (Metaphysics 6.1 [1025b25]). Theoria is further divided into physics, mathematics and
theology depending on the materiality and changeability of its subjects. The three domains
remain closely related: physics studies embodied form subject to change, theology provides
the final cause of physics, and mathematics is the study of unchanging quantity inhering in
physical substance.
Aristotle’s natural science arises from Greek speculative philosophy. P denied
the possibility of change (since what is not cannot be), and E, A,
and D, among others, responded by reducing genesis and alteration to the less
problematic locomotion (all change is the movement of elements, homoeomeries or atoms).
Aristotle starts from these problems, and his discussion assumes a philosophical and deduct-
ive rather than empirical tone.
Nature is “the principle of change and rest in a thing”: what makes a thing act and react
the way it does (Physics 2.1 [192b13–15]). Not only is the nature of earth to fall to the center
of the universe; plants and animals also have their own complex internal sources of change
governing growth and behavior. Though each complex and simple nature is a principle of
change, complex natures subsume simple natures hierarchically: the nature of complex
bodies cannot be reduced to the nature of their constituent elements like a clockwork
mechanism.
The Physics begins with the most general conditions of change: an unchanging substrate
(matter) upon which a change (locomotion, genesis and destruction, growth and decay,
alteration) occurs from privation to form. Parmenide ̄s’ problem is solved: we can deny
ex nihilo genesis while accounting for change and motion, and without reducing all change to
Aristotle © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
ARISTOTLE