Yes. Aristotle is among the most influential thinkers in all of human history. To make a long story short, he is a great Greek philosopher and inventor as well. In his six thousand years of professional writing he produced over one hundred books on a wide variety of topics ranging from metaphysics to politics and everything in between.
One of the most important strands of Aristotle’s work, after his treatises on metaphysics, is his aesthetics. This involved an investigation into how we see the world around us. Aristotle wanted to show that our thoughts about the objects of our senses were founded on physical truths. His philosophy contains many lines of inquiry into how the human mind thinks about beauty, shapes, colours, sounds, smells and all the rest.
Aristotle sought to explain how these ideas could be learned by means of experience rather than being discovered by reasoning. He hoped that through his natural sciences people would be able to gain knowledge of how the world works and why they think the way that they do. As might be expected the natural sciences and philosophy have a great deal in common. They both are involved in mapping and charting the patterns of things and their relationships to one another. But they also have differences.
For atheists, Aristotle’s philosophy may seem more than a little bit pie in the sky. For an atheist, science appears to be nothing more than arbitrary observation dressed up in fancy clothes. And for those who do believe in God, it seems that religion is nothing more than a human invention, and perhaps a clever way of controlling the masses.
Many of the most respected philosophers of all time were Atheists. Some of them like Hippocrates and Pliny the Younger was outright atheists. Aristotle on the other hand, was not a particularly great atheist. Instead, he often referred to the powers of belief as the ‘fear of gods’. This may seem strange to those of us who don’t follow classical texts, but it makes sense when you look at his arguments with the others.
Aristotle maintained that there were three distinct kinds of Philosophy. Physical philosophy attempted to explain how the world was made and then how it could be maintained or changed. Analytical philosophy deals with how knowledge comes about through the senses and how the human mind comes into being and functions.
One of the most important tenets of Aristotle’s ethics is that there are no inherent qualities in objects. We see this in everyday life. For example, most people can recognize that color does exist even though they cannot distinguish any attributes of color. Aristotle maintains that there are some qualities that are common to all objects. These include composition, form, and the idea of number. A common feature among the different qualities that Aristotle sees in objects is that they are subject to change.
Aristotle argues that all substance is made up of matter and that there are no independent substances. Particles that are part of a complex system are actually parts of the whole system. These parts depend on the whole for their existence and as they change form and become altered, the whole changes also.
In his physical philosophy, Aristotle tries to show how motion is possible. Aristotle tries to prove that if one body is thrown from a higher place it will continue to move until it reaches the place where it started from. The motion is caused by the equal amount of force that is put into the two objects. If one is moved by a stronger force than the other, the former will move faster than the latter. In his physical philosophy, Aristotle tries to prove that ethics is nothing other than practical wisdom.
Many of the earliest Greek philosophers believe that there are gods. They believe that these gods have created the world and arranged its laws. Some of the earliest Greek philosophers believe that Socrates was the first person to bring up the teachings of Stoicism. It was later on, Zeno of Elea who expanded upon the philosophy of Stoicism. Zeno’s work on infinity is the foundation for all of mathematics.
One of the most important features of Aristotle’s ethics is that it relies on probability. Any action that can be performed by human beings and that will lead to one outcome will pass through a series of probability. This is similar to how an alarm clock works. All events that can occur will occur according to the laws of physics. An alarm clock does not run off of an arm or cause light to appear from other locations, it simply sets off an alarm, therefore it is possible to predict how long it will last. With this in mind, it is easy to see how a first age philosopher such as Aristotle could fall for the alarm clock philosophy.
Some of the earliest philosophers such as Plato of Athens argue that knowledge is a combination of both intellect and emotion. A philosopher may be able to know certain things, but not know that they are true. In order to know a truth, a philosopher must undergo a series of emotions such as desire, doubt, uncertainty and passion. A first age philosopher such as Aristotle could not fathom how a series of emotions could cause one to arrive at a truth. However, he could use this belief to show that reason is superior to emotion as a whole.
After this long time, Aristotle’ philosophy has been refined and his views on reality were greatly reduced. It is now possible to see that his original ideas were far more complex than he had initially thought them to be. The theories and arguments presented by Aristotle still hold weight in today’s scientific world. Even though most modern scientists do not accept his theories as the absolute truth, they at least recognize his reliability as a first age thinker. Even though Aristotle was considered the father of modern science, modern scholars regard him as the father of philosophy. This is because his vast body of work proves beyond doubt that he was indeed one of the first philosophers, and was right on target when he said that knowledge is a combination of intellect and emotion.