The Life and History of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was born in 384 b.c. in the small town of Stagira on the northeast coast of Thrace. His father was the physician to the king of Macedonia. It could be that Aristotle's great interest in biology and sci ence in general was nurtured in his early childhood as it was the custom, according to Galen, for families in the guild of the Asclepiadae to train their sons in the art of dissection. When he was seventeen years old, Aristotle went to Athens to enroll in Plato's Academy, where he spent the next twenty years as a pupil and a member. At the Academy, Aristotle had the reputation of being the "reader" and "the mind of the school." He was profoundly influenced by Plato's thought and personality even though eventually he was to break away from Plato's philosophy in order to formulate his own version of certain philosophical problems. Still, while at the Academy, he wrote many dialogues in a Platonic style, which his contemporaries praised for the "golden stream" of their eloquence. He even reaffirmed, in his Eudemus, the very doctrine so central to Plato's thought, the doctrine of the Forms, or Ideas, which he later criticized so severely. There is no way now to reconstruct with exactness just when Aristotle's thought diverged from Plato's. Plato's own thought, it must be remembered, was in process of change while Aristotle was at the Academy. Indeed, it is usually said that Aristotle studied with Plato during Plato's "later" period, a time when Plato's interests had shifted toward mathematics, method, and natural science. During this time, also, specialists in various sciences, such as medicine, anthropology, and archeology, came to the Academy. This meant that Aristotle was exposed to a vast array of empirical facts, which, because of his temperament, he found useful for research and for his mode of formulating scientific concepts. It may be, therefore, that the intellectual atmosphere of the Academy marked by some of Plato's latest dominant
Aristotle was born in 384 b.c. in the small town of Stagira on the northeast coast of Thrace. His father was the physician to the king of Macedonia. It could be that Aristotle's great interest in biology and sci ence in general was nurtured in his early childhood as it was the custom, according to Galen, for families in the guild of the Asclepiadae to train their sons in the art of dissection. When he was seventeen years old, Aristotle went to Athens to enroll in Plato's Academy, where he spent the next twenty years as a pupil and a member. At the Academy, Aristotle had the reputation of being the "reader" and "the mind of the school." He was profoundly influenced by Plato's thought and personality even though eventually he was to break away from Plato's philosophy in order to formulate his own version of certain philosophical problems. Still, while at the Academy, he wrote many dialogues in a Platonic style, which his contemporaries praised for the "golden stream" of their eloquence. He even reaffirmed, in his Eudemus, the very doctrine so central to Plato's thought, the doctrine of the Forms, or Ideas, which he later criticized so severely. There is no way now to reconstruct with exactness just when Aristotle's thought diverged from Plato's. Plato's own thought, it must be remembered, was in process of change while Aristotle was at the Academy. Indeed, it is usually said that Aristotle studied with Plato during Plato's "later" period, a time when Plato's interests had shifted toward mathematics, method, and natural science. During this time, also, specialists in various sciences, such as medicine, anthropology, and archeology, came to the Academy. This meant that Aristotle was exposed to a vast array of empirical facts, which, because of his temperament, he found useful for research and for his mode of formulating scientific concepts. It may be, therefore, that the intellectual atmosphere of the Academy marked by some of Plato's latest dominant