ARISTOTLE

born 384 BC, Stagira, Chalcidice, Greece died 322, Chalcis, Euboea Greek Aristoteles ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the two greatest intellectual figures produced by the Greeks (the other being Plato). He surveyed the whole of human knowledge as it was known in the Mediterranean world in his day. More than any other thinker, Aristotle determined the orientation and the content of Western intellectual history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that through the centuries became the support and vehicle for both medieval Christian and Isla mic scholastic thought: until the end of the 17th century, Western culture was Aristotelian. Even after the intellectual revolutions of centuries to follow, Aristotelian concepts and ideas remained embedded in Western thinking. Aristotle's intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts. He worked in physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, and botany; in psychology, political theory, and ethics; in logic and metaphysics; in history, literary theory, and rhetoric. His greatest achievements were in two unrelated areas: he invented the study of formal logic, devising for it a finished system, known as Aristotelian syllogistic, that for centuries was regarded as the sum of logic; and he pioneered the study of zoology, both observational and theoretical, in which his work was not surpassed until the 19th century. Even though Aristotle's zoology is now out-of-date and his thought in the other natural sciences has long been left behind, his importance as a scientist is unparalleled. But it is now of purely historical importance: he, like other scientists of the past, is not read by his successors. As a philosopher Aristotle is equally outstanding. And here he remains more than a museum piece. Although his syllogistic is now recognized to be only a small part of formal logic, his writings in ethical and political theory as well as in metaphysics and in the philosophy of science are read and argued over by modern philosophers. Aristotle's historical importance is second to none, and his work remains a powerful component in current philosophical debate. This article deals with the man, his achievements, and the Aristotelian tradition. For treatment of Aristotelianism in the full context of Western philosophy, see philosophy, history of.