Talk:Aristotle

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Relationship with Alexander

I think that the claim that Aristotle was Alexander's teacher is pure legend. The actual historical evidence is mighty slim. I suggest including something to that effect. For discussion on this see Ingemar During, _Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, 1957, 284-8, and W. W. Tarn, _Alexander the Great_, vol. II, 1948, 399-449. When Aristotle went to Mieza, he was pretty much an unknown except for his father's occupational connection to Philip. Moreover, Aristotle never mentions Alexander anywhere, and Philip only once. And Alexander's supposed letters to Aristotle are all fakes.Garbopash (talk) 20:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood Düring and are probably just repeating Düring's approving reference to Tarn, because if you actually read those pages of Tarn you will see that Tarn unambiguously accepts the indubitable historical fact that Aristotle was Alexander's tutor. Seach Tarn on Google Books for "tutor" for a couple of clear examples. The intention of Düring's reference is to recommend Tarn's interpretation of how exactly Alexander's career and thinking were influenced by certain political ideas of his tutor Aristotle ("He was soaked in Aristotle's ideas," Tarn, p. 436). Bottom line, neither Düring nor Tarn doubts "the claim that Aristotle was Alexander's teacher"; Düring implies pretty clearly on p. 287 that Aristotle won this position through his family's connections. Of course Düring is not equally credulous of every detail in every ancient source he brings together in AABT, and he prefers Tarn's critical interpretation to some of the unreliable primary sources (this is what he means by "The truth...differs somewhat from the legends")—but that is not the same as dismissing the relationship wholesale, which I've never heard of any historian doing. Wareh (talk) 15:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

cosmology, plenum, elements and motion

I am by no means an expert on Aristotle but I noticed that there is no mention here concerning some of his theories about cosmology, plenum (and void), the five elements, and the various motions that the elements adhere to. I would think that these things would be worth mentioning but I am ill-suited to fill it in myself. Just a suggestion.

Body & Soul

Im not very knowledgable about Aristotle (or wikipedia, for that matter!), but perhaps it would be useful to have a section for Aristotle’s concept of the soul and its relation to the body? There is a bit squeezed into the "Aristotle's ethics" part, but there is more that could be discussed...

Biology

A section on Aristotle's work in Biology would be useful, mainly because his theories were important for the development first of creationism and then of evolutionary theory: basically his grouping of the world into animal, vegetable and mineral, and his development of the scale of nature. Could even be a subheading under metaphysics as they are both based on causality. Anyone up to the task, or should I try it? Davidhc

Comment on the Topics in the beggining of the article

There is this small sentence in the beggining of the article that seems quite odd: He also achieved a "grounding" of dialectic in the Topics by allowing interlocutors to begin from commonly held beliefs (Endoxa); his goal being non-contradiction rather than Truth. First, it's false. Second, it's completelfy out of place; this is a discussion that pertains to the section about logic. Any comments? Bhvilar

Aristotle, the name

The name Aristoteles actually means "the best end", aristo meaning best (as aristocracy) and teles most probably derivating from telos, the "end" Aristotle talks about in many of his works. I was wondering about including this in the first line, right after his name. Bhvilar

Logic

I believe we could improve the section about logic. The "History" part is ok, and I don't really know anything about the topic to make comments on it. I believe, though, that the section called "Analytics and Organon" should be renamed "The Logical Treatises". Also, I think we should supress the word "aristotelian" in the sentence What we call today Aristotelian logic, Aristotle himself would have labelled analytics, for it just confuses: wouldn't Aristotle label as analytics any other philosophy of this kind? After listing the books of the Organon, we could mention that this corpus is called Organon.

Then, we could include a paragraph about syllogisms and another about dialetics, but not go to much into details, since this is the subject of the article about the Organon. Bhvilar

Who is his Father?

Aristotle was born in Stagira, on the peninsula of Chalcidice in 384 BC. His father, Poomus, was court physician to King Amyntas III of Macedon. It is believed that Aristotle's ancestors held this position under various kings of the Macedon. He did not go to school, instead he was taught by his father. His father's medical knowledge was perhaps the inspiration for Aristotle's later interest in natural phenomena.

Little is known about his mother, Phaestis, who died early in Aristotle's life. His father Nicomachus died when Aristotle was ten, making him an orphan. Then he was placed under the guardianship of his uncle, Proxenus of Atarneus, who also took over his education. He gave Aristotle significant instruction in Greek, rhetoric, and poetry (O'Connor et al., 2004). Aristotle went to Athens at the age of 18, and attended Plato's school for young Greek aristocracy (the Academy). Aristotle quickly became Plato's favorite student.

This article keeps changing. Who is Aristotle's father? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.173.173.96 (talk • contribs)

Indeed, Aristotle's father was Nicomachus. However, more importantly, the story of Aristotle being tutor to Alexander has very little historical support. I think that this fact deserves mention.Garbopash (talk) 21:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It is not a fact that Aristotle's position as Alexander's tutor is historically dubious. Please see my comment on this page as Talk:Aristotle#Relationship_with_Alexander. Wareh (talk) 16:45, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Influences

I am, indeed, but a eleven-year old. However, I am a bit knoledgeable. I have noticed that in the article, there is no mention of what his influences where. Although you may be able to glean that information from the article through carful scanning, but it would be good to have it made clear what some of his major influences were. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.82.213.74 (talk) 01:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Poetics...

deserves more than a single passing reference. His theory on tragedy is pretty influential, for example. Ifnkovhg 09:13, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

You're quite right. Have you seen the article Poetics (Aristotle)? I've made a new section that links to it more prominently and may serve as a stimulus to provide a better short account here. Wareh (talk) 20:46, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I've renamed the section you created to Aesthetics to match the other subsections; and I've tried to build the section out a little. If someone can add information about Rhetoric that would be helpful - I don't really have references, and the book's own article was weak on information as well. Also, I would appreciate if someone could clean up my references by adding Bekker numbers; I tried to copy what is out there, but I don't know how to find the line numbers. Soldarnal (talk) 06:06, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

That's a valuable addition, and I think the reference to Poetics by chapter numbers is adequate. I changed the section name back; matching in appearance isn't as important as avoiding the term for the modern branch of philosophy which doesn't really suggest what a reader will find in Aristotle's works (and seems to say too much about how they are related to each other), so I'm thinking the actual titles of the works are the only fair labels. Wareh (talk) 06:05, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Reference Needed

"it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost. They were lost and rediscovered several times, and it is believed that only about one fifth of the original works have survived." Dolsson5 (talk) 04:32, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Which city state?

Would someone add which city state he came from, just as an extra detail? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.217.50.56 (talk) 03:02, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

That's given in the first section of "Life": Aristotle was born in Stageira, Chalcidice... Wareh (talk) 18:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Aristotle's Ideas

I have read a little bit of Aristotle, unfortunately, and like many others I personally think his writing is a fraudulent bunch of crap. Beckman is merely the last in a line of respected figures to publically take this point of view, earlier authors with the same opinion include Galileo. While Aristotle's writings on science are now completely discredited, he still has authority in some fields where human beings are not as enlightened. But even in those fields, his authority diminishes with every passing century.

The reason, in my opinion, is because all his writings are not really academic contributions, but sort-of summaries of common-sense wisdom and platitudes of the time, stuff that everybody just knows. Stuff that you have the impression is backed up by experiments or observations, but cannot possibly be because some of it is just so blatently false and the rest so vacuous. The style is ponderous and imperious, and conveys the impression upon a superficial reading that one is confronted with a superior mind, whatever that means, but whatever it is it is a property of an aristocrat. But a close reading shows there is no significant idea. This is in contrast to scientific contemporaries, like Democritus and Archimedes, a comparison Beckman makes in his book by laying two pages side by side with "Archimedian science" on one half and "Aristotelian blather" on the other side. If Aristotle's writings were not so influential even today, this would be less of a problem. But there are still people who take this stuff seriously, but they are not everybody.Likebox (talk) 00:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems you're taking great pains to make clear that (1) you are not particularly well-informed ("I have read a little bit...unfortunately," but you are ready to pronounce about "all his writings"), (2) you do not yourself possess the detached point of view appropriate to an encyclopedia ("personally...you have the impression...conveys the impression upon a superficial reading..."). No one thinks Aristotelian science is cutting-edge, and the article steers well away from any risk of implying it. On the other hand, basic facts about Aristotelian science (for example, the accuracy of his observations about the embryology of some fishes, not equaled by zoologists until quite recent times) are utterly irreconcilable with this shallow dismissal of a "bloviator." Moreover, the article makes plain that Aristotle's contributions have been most influential in other departments of philosophy (metaphysics, ethics). Your dismissal of these areas of philosophical inquiry ("fields where human beings are not as enlightened") casts serious doubts on your ability to edit the encyclopedia's treatment of them objectively: do you really think we will have a more scholarly encyclopedia if every metaphysician's article whines, "But metaphysics is a bunch of bloviation anyway, so who cares about this part of Leibniz' life work?" Wareh (talk) 15:49, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Of course I am taking pains to inform you that I have not read that much of Aristotle, that's just intellectual honesty. I read "The Nichmachean Ethics" and sections of "Physics" and skimmed the stuff in the "great books" series. I can't read it that much because it is so painful to read--- I hate it. But this is not about me, nor should it be. I was just trying to state my prejudices upfront, so that they are not secret. What needs to be mentioned is that there is a large community of people who share these views--- their respect for Aristotle is zero or less than zero, and a notable representative should be mentioned in any paragraph that expresses the point of view: "Some believe that Aristotle's writings are the most siginificant ever produced by one man". Really, some others believe it is a load of crap.Likebox (talk) 23:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It really isn't just Beckman that expresses this point of view. The other author that I read personally is Galileo. But it's hard to mention Galileo because he's so long ago, and I can't find everybody. Since I am not familiar with zebrafish embryology, I can't comment on that, but in other fields I can try to judge Aristotle's contribution:

In logic: Aristotle is claimed to have produced a system of logic. But he placed great weight on propositions of the form (A implies B) and variants, which allow you to produce sentence B given sentence A. It is clear that he placed "A implies B" at the heart of his logical system, and that this is the main idea. These are called tautologies in modern logic, and they are important, but you can generate all of them using Boolean algebra in an automatic way, so they aren't the most important thing--- they are not the main routine. The main routine is the one that generates new propositions of the form (forall x A(x) implies B(x)) from speculative calculations involving a new variable x that you introduce and make assumptions about, then draw conclusions about. Once you reach the conclusions, you know that they follow from the assumptions, and you can write (forall x Assumptions(x) implies Conclusions(x)). This hypothesis generation is really the heart of the matter, so that any logical system that does not include something equivalent to this (like Aristotle's) is nothing more than a compendium of tautologies, and is really not a logical system but, sorry to say, pompous bloviation about trivialities. In Euclid, this hypothesis generation method is used implicitly and Aristotle could have checked his logical system by trying to formalize Euclid, but he doesn't.

In science: Aristotle's claims are readily disproved by experiments available at the time. I don't want to dwell on this, because it is so well accepted that Aristotle was bloviating here.

In biology: This is the heart of the matter, because Aristotle started with biology and made his biological observations the center of his philosophy. The main idea, as I gather it, is that the classification of flower morphology is in classes, like "multi-petal" and "long tube" and these classes have subclasses like "multi-petal round" and "multipetal pointy" and "multipetal overlapping" and so on (I'm making up the classes, I don't know flowers). This is made into a principle by Aristotle: forms can vary within a class subject to limited rules of variation but never outside of certain predefined limits. Classes have subclasses, but the subclasses never step over the bounds set by the parent class. This structure is called a tree, and it is one particular type of data structure. He doesn't look for an explanation for why natural forms are a tree structure, because it seems to him that this type of structure is "natural" and "automatic", and does not require explanation. This leads to the political ideas of heirarchy, and the notion that human beings are naturally made into "masters" "slaves" "philosophers" etc. amd that variation within the class is possible but not crossing boundaries from class to class.

It is here that Aristotle's ideas are most pernicious. The explanation of the class-subclass-subsubclass structure of biology is that all the organisms have evolved from a common ancestor, and the date of the last common ancestor defines the branching structure of the tree. This explanation had to wait until Lamarck and Darwin to penetrate into academia. His idea that tree order is the only order conceivable is just false, and the notion that it is particularly natural is belied by examples of objects which have overlapping class structure, like the "nearness" of points which are scattered in a plane. His social ideas are repugnant not just to the modern ear, but to any Democrat, even an ancient one, but they have the effect of endearing him to any authoritarian power structure.

His ideas are never clearly expressed, and it is difficult to know exactly what he is saying. I am making a guess based upon secondary sources and what I could make out from translated primary sources. I don't think that these criticisms have a place in the article. But the fact that many people hold these views is notable.Likebox (talk) 00:49, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you please explain what you mean when you say that "it's hard to mention Galileo because he's so long ago"? Aquinas, Chaucer, Cicero, and Dante are mentioned, though all predate Galileo. Anyway, this is a textbook case case of undue weight. The majority opinion is easily substantiated by Aquianas, Chaucer, Cicero, Dante, Nietzche, and Rand, among other prominant voices on Aristotle. Whereas, despite your insistance that there is a "large community of people" who hold the minority opinion that Aristotle is a "load of crap", Galileo and Petr Beckman constitute so small a minorty that the opinion does not belong in Wikipedia. Soldarnal (talk) 06:06, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you're right, but I don't think it's that small a minority. After a few minutes search I found the following references:

1. Bennedetti (dismissing projectile theory)--- [1]
2. Cherniss (dismissing reports on Plato's thought)--- [2]
3. Russo (on science)--- [3]
4. Betrand Russell (on logic) --- [4]

In addition to Galileo an Beckman, that's quite a few outright dismissals of this guy.Likebox (talk) 06:45, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not in favor of avoiding a responsible & balanced survey of criticism of Aristotle. But we need to seek the truly most notable and substantial critiques. Unfortunately, the list provided above involves cherry-picking of the worst sort: for example, #2, Harold F. Cherniss, certainly had important criticisms of how Aristotle's statements about his predecessors must be understood in the context of his exposition of his own philosophical ideas in his own terms, but the idea that he dismissed Aristotle as a thinker is unfounded & not useful for improving the encyclopedia. To choose just one example from the rest of Likebox's critique—logic—this seems to mistake the whole concept of the history of philosophy. Yes, much of what's most important in Aristotelian logic might seem like obvious features of Boolean algebra to you. But does it occur to you that Aristotle was the first person in recorded human history to work out many of those now-routine-Boolean-principles in some form? Please, read Jan Łukasiewicz's Aristotle’s Syllogistic from the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic, and then come back to us with a report on the insignificance of Aristotle's contributions in the history of logic. But the bottom line here is, you "hate" Aristotle. I don't edit articles on anything I hate, because it would be irresponsible and NPOV, and I remain very dubious that this article will be improved by cherry-picked denunciations culled from the Googleable world to justify a hatred. I'd like to clarify that my position may be different from Soldarnal's; I don't think it's the encyclopedia's job to offer "the majority opinion." But what we seem to agree about is that these changes are not balanced with the kind of historical-survey perspective of important critical contributions to the subject that this article is going to need, in order to have a well-grounded section exploring criticisms of Aristotle. Wareh (talk) 15:06, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I know I'm not the most competent when discussing these things--- I have a limited background and many prejudices, as I have tried to make clear. It is best if someone else could write something about this. I added one sentence because I thought this other point of view is neglected in favor of a pro-Aristotle slant. I don't know any more about the positions of the people I quoted than the mostly superficial stuff I found online. Of them, only Bertrand Russell seems to dismiss Aristotle as a thinker in a comprehensive way, and he is the only source I actually cited.

The problem as I see it with Aristotle's contribution to logic is the selection problem of studying ancient documents. When you see a discussion of syllogisms that looks novel, it might be because Aristotle was the first to talk about syllogisms, or it might be that Aristotle was taking ideas that were "floating around" in the mathematical community and putting them down on paper for the first time in a philosophical context. I know that this sort of thing happens today, philosophers vulturizing old physics and mathematics literature for ideas. I can't say for sure which happened, whether Aristotle actually was the first to discuss syllogisms or whether there is lost mathematical work that discusses syllogisms in a way that was inaccessible to less mathematical philosophers of the time. Its hard to evaluate for a non-classicist. But I can tell you that from looking at how he writes, it is hard to imagine he came up with anything particularly interesting, other than noting that "A implies B" implies B if you know A, which was a trivial statement even then.

I read the logic yesterday to see if I was giving it a fair shake, and again, I got so irritated by what seemed to me to be the senseless bloviation that I didn't get far, but I will try again. I hope someone more authoritative than me can put in a sentence to represent the anti-Aristotle POV because the POV in the article leaves out some people.Likebox (talk) 18:07, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I should clarify: I am not saying that minority opinions should be omitted from the encyclopedia. I'm just saying that Beckman and Galileo together constitute too small of a minority for their opinion - even if it is true - to appear without giving it undue weight.

As an example, the majority opinion on beauty is that it is social and subjective. In addition to this opinion, though, I would certainly expect the article to contain the thoughts of notable aesthetic philosophers such as Kant who detect an objective quality within beauty as well. I would not, however, expect to find the recent theory[5] by Scott Adams that beauty is a grand-unifying god-law, because even if he is serious and even if his idea is true, he is not a prominent thinker on the subject.

Uh, surely you aren't suggesting that Galileo and Russell aren't prominent thinkers on the relevant subjects (natural philosophy and logic respectively)? I agree Beckmann isn't notable enough. As for the other three people Likebox mentioned, I have no idea who they are, so I wouldn't know how significant their opinions are. Ben Standeven (talk) 06:15, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Likebox - I think your four examples are a step in the right direction for establishing a notable minority opinion. It's a little odd, though, that three of the four examples you provided are characterized within the references you provided as "extreme", "exaggerated", and "biased". I know you've changed the language of your sentence by now, but I still think none of these substantiates that Aristotle was a "shameless bloviator". What might be worth noting, instead, is that others think his intellect has been overstated, especially when compared with near-contemporaries such as Archimedes. Soldarnal (talk) 18:29, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

(deindent) Just a comment--- I am not edit warring, I am just trying to adress the wording concerns. If it gets deleted again I will give up.Likebox (talk) 18:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Phyllis?

What was Aristotles relationship with Phyllis? Did she ride on him? Or is it a myth? (I know that all information is uncertain but what sources we have on this case?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.17.197.178 (talk) 07:14, 20 March 2008 (UTC)