The Influence of Aristotle

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Aristotle is considered by many to be The Fountainhead of modern scientific thinking. The forces that influenced Aristotle, is perhaps better understood on a historic basis has been laid. The Greek thinkers around 600 BC, began to interrupt the world around them as governed by anything other than his many personifications of gods and they took in a naturalistic way of thinking, which in turn was to the early science. This may have been sparked by their enthusiasm for travel abroad, which may have made them skeptical of their traditions.2

Thales (ca. 640-546 BC) of Miletus is regarded to have been the founder of natural philosophy, and believed that all things come from water, and that the Earth floats on water. From the time of Thales on, did philosophers to seek "... the fundamental things that remain the same through all the changes in nature: when water freezes into ice or evaporate into steam, when a log burns to ash, which gives smoke, when a plant grows, blooms, then dies and decays. "1 The scholars before Aristotle had "begun to assume that nature behaves in a constant and uniform manner, and had tried to find a universal substance which underlay all changes." 2

Aristotle adopted Empedocles system of four elements, earth, water, air and fire. Aristotle promoted this concept by postulating that their order would be established natural and settles in layers, if undisturbed, "Earth falls through the water, and water through the air. Air bubbles up through the water, and flames rise through the air." 3 It was Aristotle, in part, with his theory of movement that influenced Isaac Newton. Aristotle viewed the movement of planets and the motion of bodies as two separate questions, while Isaac Newton saw them as a universal force ...

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..., the man was on his to be transformed from a superstitious and believe in magic, shamanism, dreams, and polytheism to a man in a position to seek answers through scientific means.20 Today we can credit for the Aristotle introduction of science, logic, and institutions of higher education.

Works Cited

Barnes, Jonathon. The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Barrett, William. Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy. New York: Doubleday, 1985.

McKeon, Richard P. Introduction to Aristotle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

Meadows, Arthur J. The Great Scientists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Peters, F.E. Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam. New York: New York University Press, 1968.

Ramzy, Ishak. The Freudian Paradigm. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Inc. Publishers, 1977.

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