Aristotle

Aristotle (384-322 B.C) represented an advanced paradigm at the time of his work. His epistemology contradicted his teacher Plato in a crucial manner. Both valued and emphasised reason and its use but Plato insisted that the most important truths, the objects of knowledge, must be attained through reason alone,

Aristotle on the other hand, emphasised observation, holding that the world and the mind were compatible in that understanding was possible. This may have been articulated earlier by someone else, we’ll probably never know. But it is crucial in any field of science that we believe that we can know. And for Aristotle that knowing was achieved through observing.

Most of Aristotle’s observations have been lost. His world was the world of Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great. His association with the royal Macedonian house made it necessary to move around a great deal. In the years that followed his death, most of his works were lost and much of what remains are compilations made centuries later, collections of notes and original works. As the centuries continued, translations were made and then translations of those translations. In the end very little of his original work remains now, more than 2,300 years later

So, while his observations and his deductions for those observations were very important in the development of science that was to come later, it is fragmented and what remains is full of errors. He did however bestow the early seeds of systematic investigation into natural phenomena and to that extent can be credited at least as a midwife at the birth of empirical science if not actually the founder. It is a tragic irony that his observations and opinions were to stifle the very thing he pursued for so many years.

Aristotle treated knowledge as common property, not to be held in secret. He worked in the company of others and readily spoke and wrote of this thoughts. His attitude in this prefigures one of the foundations of modern science in that he believed that one could not claim to know a subject unless capable and willing to transmit that knowledge to others. This attitude of openeness was often lacking in some of the greatest thinkiers of the 15th through the 17th century and was to cause no end of grief. Even up to this day the actual credit for some of the primary advances in science are still being debated due to a lack of coperation and openess practiced by Artistotle nearly 2,000 years earlier.

Another of his contributions, Aristotle also made the divisions in knowledge we have today, theology and physics and math, language, ethics and politics are all distinct separate fields. This too would have far reaching implications.

One of the most enduring works on the subject of cosmology was his On the heavens written about 350 B.C. Until it was seriously challenged in the early 16th century by Copernicus, amongst others, it was the considered authority on cosmology. He posited the nature of substance, the nature and manner of movement, the nature of the heavens and its eternal existence.

How much of what we have that is attributed to him is in fact what he said or wrote--regardless of whether he was the originator or he learned form others--or was simply added to his writings after his death is debatable. One of the standard works on Aristotle was that of W. W. Yaeger. His interpretations of Aristotles works included his opinions about what was added later. Yeager's summations in the classic Artistotle (1948) still receive critical analysis