Sources Card

1)  Hakim, Joy.  The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way.  New York: Smithsonian, 2004.

2) Concise Dictionary of Scientific Biography.  New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2000.

3) The Grolier Library of Science Biographies.  Vol. 1.  Danbury: Grolier Educational, 1997.

4) Whitfield, Peter.  The History of Science: Islamic and Western Medieval Science. Vol. 2.  Danbury: Grolier, 2003. 

Life Information

Source #1

• Aristotle born 384 B.C.E.
• When born, Greece was in the middle of period of mass creativity (known as classic period)
• During period, major advancements in Greek art, architecture, literature, and philosophy set new standards of beauty and excellence in culture

Life/Education Information

Source #1

• Born in Stagira, Greece (northern city; mountainous peninsula; near Aegean Sea)
•  Fortunate to go to good school where he studied the work of Thales and Pythagoras
• At 18 yrs. old, went to Athens, to study at the academy under the greatest philopsher, Plato

Life/Education Information

Source #1

• Plato (Aristotle's teacher) did not think beauty, truth, or clarity could be found on Earth, so he taught his students to dtudy mathematics and the stars. 
• Plato discovered patterns and order in the world
• Plato taught his students to strive for perfection
• Plato greatly influenced Aristotle's thinking

Life/Education Information

Source #1

• Aristotle was Plato's best student at the Academy
• Plato called him, "the intelligence of the school."
• Aristotle was a bit different from Plato because he was more realistic and much more interested in the everday world around him, where as Plato was obsessed with perfection

Life Information

Source #1

• Others think Aristotle was influenced by father; his father was a doctor
• Doctor's consider problems one at a time and Aristotle was famous for his well-organized, practical mind
• He became a famous scientist

Life Information

Source #1

• After Plato died, Aristotle was asked by King Phillip to tutor his son, Prince Alexander, who later became "Alexander the Great."
• Aristotle is said to have influenced Alexander the Great

Life Information

Source #1

• Aristotle did not limit himself to one subject, he considered everything possible- poetry, art, music, math, warfare, ethics, religion, and science
• He made lists of everything he could find in nature, and then organized, analyzed, and connected that knowledge-this is what made him a great scientist

Biology

Source #1

• A. considered world's first biologist
• Dissected hundreds of specimens and wrote about what he saw
• Many people thought he was wasting his time by studying animals and not humans- A. said that there is something wonderful in all natural things

Biology

Source #1

• Alexander the Great (A.'s student), sent men around the Greek world to collect animals for Aristotle to study
• Aristotle put animals in world's first zoo
• Gave A. access to animals no one had ever seen together before

Astronomy

Source #1

• A.'s ideas were mostly wrong when it came to astronomy
• He thought heaven and earth were part of different realms following different law of nature (today we know that's not so)

Astronomy

Source #1

• Although A.'s ideas were later proven incorrect, he gets a lot of credit for creating theories and attempting to explain and classify everything known
• This is an enormous accomplishment because it set a base for modern science today

Biology

Source #2

• A.'s main goal was to identify the formal groups of animals and to explain their function as a part of nature
• A.'s admitted that classifying animals was difficult
• He emphasized that the heart was the center of the cardiovascular system and that the heart was extremely important to living life

Biology

Source #2

• A. did not put much importance of the role of the brain and the nervous system
• Some of A's. data came from dissection, a lot came from casual observation of animals

Cosmology

Source #3

• Accepted that Earth was the center of the universe with the planets and fixed stars moving around it
• Believed the earth was round
• Believed that earth, water, fire, and air were the 4 elements that composed matter

Cosmology

Source #3

• Said Earth and the Heavens were two different spheres with two different laws
• He thought that the Heavens were regular and unchanged, where as Earth was full of change and decay

Cosmology

Source #4

• Plato believed that the universe was homogeneous (composed all of the same material); Aristotle did not
• Aristotle broke the cosmos into 2 main regions (region below the Moon that included Earth and the area above the moon)

Cosmology

Source #4

• A. thought the region below the moon was full of change, where movement occured in all directions, and where things were born and decayed
• A. thought that above the moon no change had ever been seen to occur, the only form of motion was circular

Astronomy

Source #4

• A. thought the universe was finite(had an end), where as religion described it as infinite (having no end)
• A. believed that there were many different celestial spheres

Sources Card (cont.)

5) Whitfield, Peter.  The History of Science: Science in Ancient Civilizations.  Vol. 1.  Danbury: Grolier, 2003.

6)  Kraut, Richard, "Aristotle's Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/aristotle-ethics/>.

Physics

Source #5

• A. believed that of the 4 elements, earth was the heaviest, and its natural place at the center.
• Next comes water, and then the two lighter elements, air and fire

Physics

Source #5

• A. did not believe in the theory of atomism; A. thought that all substances could be broken down into "minima," which are minute building blocks of nature

Physics

Source #5

• A. analyzed physical forces
• He argued that objects must be sustained in flight by a material force, a kind of vortex in the air, which when exhausted, allows the object to fall
• A. thought a heavier object would fall to the ground faster than a lighter one--this became a dogma of physics until is was disproved by experiement many, many centuries later

Cosmology

Source #5

• The heavens were eternal and unchanging and could not be composed of the same four elements as the Earth, but of a fifth element, called ether

Physics

Source #5

• A. thought all things consisted first of matter and second of form
• Matter was a neutral, material base common to all things in the world; but form was what gave individuality
• realized that all matter has been organized by inner laws into meaningful structures, and that soome of these structures relate to each other in groups

Physics

Source #5

• A.'s teaching that all motion is caused was at first accepted
• It meant that anything that was moving must have a force that is constantly acting on it
• Some forces and motions are natural, a heavy body falls, while others are forced or impressed, like the throwing of a spear 

Physics

Source #5

• A. argued that a spear in flight is still acted on by movement of the surrounding medium
• A vortex has been set up that keeps the spear moving, and when it is exhausted, it falls

Ethics

Source #6

• A. said that what we need in order to live well is proper appreciation of: friendship, pleasure, virtue, honor, and wealth and to know how they fit together as a whole

Ethics

Source #6

• A. said that a person's best course of action is always supported by reasons
• A person's upbringing (how you were raised) and habits contribute to making good decisions

Ethics

Source #6

• A. believed that practical wisdom cannot be gained by just learning general rules
• Only through practice and the use of  emotional and social skills can one understand the well-being suitable for each occassion

Ethics

Source #6

• A. argues that a happy life must include pleasure
• Friendship along with pleasure helps someone to be more virtuous