The Obituary of Aristotle - Science

“What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do”

Aristotle was born in the town of Stageira, on the peninsula of Chalcidice in 384 BCE. Aristotle was widowed when his wife Pythias passed away in 355 BCE. After his wife died, Aristotle built a school in Athens called the “Lyceum”. For the next several years, Aristotle studied almost every subject possible of the time, and made major contributions to most of them. In 322 BCE Aristotle passed away in Euboea of natural causes.

Aristotle argued with what most philosophers thought about matter. He believed that matter was continuous, and no matter how small the portion of matter, it remains uniform in composition.

Because Aristotle studied so many subjects, he had many ideas about these subjects. One of these ideas was the classification of animals. He divided animals into two classes; those with blood and those without blood (or blood that wasn’t red). We today based our classification system on Aristotle’s ideas

Aristotle also had views on meteorology. He worked out the hydrologic cycle, as he put it “Now the sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth” We use this same theory when we look at the study of weather.

Aristotle put his two passions, philosophy and science, together, resulting in something that no other thinker had done before him. Aristotle had studied at the Academy in Athens under the teachings of Plato. Aristotle studied and questioned what others had simply accepted. He not only answered the questions but questioned the answers.