He also influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Some of Aristotle's zoological observations found in his biology, such as on the hectocotyl (reproductive) arm of the octopus, were disbelieved until the 19th century. The influence of physical science extended from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.Īristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. It was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. He established a library in the Lyceum which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.

Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. At seventeen or eighteen years of age he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven ( c. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian.

He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period.

As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science. His writings cover a broad range of subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, drama, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, meteorology, geology, and government. See: List of writers influenced by Aristotle, Commentaries on Aristotle, Pseudo-AristotleĪristotle ( / ˈ ær ɪ s t ɒ t əl/ Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotélēs, pronounced 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. Averroism, Avicennism, Literary Neo-Aristotelianism, Maimonideanism, Objectivism, Peripatetics, Scholasticism ( Llullism, Neo, Scotism, Second, Thomism, etc.), additionally Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism.

Aristotle physics and metaphysics