Aristotle's works:
Physics,
Organon,
Politics,
Metaphysics,
On the Soul,
Nicomachean Ethics,
Rhetoric,
Poetics
Aristotle argued against Plato's theories of knowledge.
1) The "form" of the thing is not somewhere up there, it is right here embedded in the object itself. The "form" or idea of a tree is in the tree you are viewing.
2) Against Plato's rationalism, Aristotle promoted empiricism. The senses could be trusted. Aristotle famously says, ‘nothing is found in the intellect which was not found first in the senses’ (‘Nihil est in intellectu quin prius fuerit in sensu’). The fact that our knowledge derives from experience does not mean that it ends there. A deeper understanding of the world comes from using the thinking faculty of our minds (the intellect) to bear on our sensory experience, so that we may form ideas, combine them into propositions, and then to reason on the basis that these propositions develop our knowledge still further. The mind possesses the innate power to discriminate and to assimilate information. A process altogether different to Plato’s notion of specific innate knowledge expounded in his theory of ideal forms.
For Aristotle, knowledge was attained by viewing and studying the world. He examined and cataloged an exhaustive number of plants and animals and classified them by traits. For this he is regarded as the founder of empirical science.
Aristotle was also the founder of western formal logic. His type of logic is known as syllogistic, or term, logic. It was the most used form of logic until the 19th century.
Aristotle's Metaphysics:
The Four Causes
1. Material Cause - What something consists of (is made of)
2. Formal Cause - The thing's basic makeup, or essence
3. Efficient Cause - What brings it into existence, or makes it happen
4. Final Cause - Its purpose for being (what it is for?)
Aristotle applied the Final Cause to biology, to understand the parts of a plant, was to understand how a plant functions.
Teleology: The idea that something is moving in its only possible, determined, direction in order to fulfill its "final cause."
Karl Marx: History is moving through stages towards it final and inevitable stage; communism.
Christianity: History is moving towards the Apocalypse / Final Judgement.
Hylomorphism - Change: Potentiality / Actuality
Potentiality - The possibilities in something for motion or change when conditions are right and nothing stops them.
Actuality - Refers to something being in its own type of action or at work, as all things are when they are real in the fullest sense, and not just potentially real.
For Aristotle, natural motion is the motion arising from the nature of an object (it is one of its characteristics). This motion does not require an external cause in order to occur. For example: Heavy bodies naturally move toward the center of the earth, therefore falling is a natural motion. The natural movement of the celestial bodies made of ether is circular (see the Ptolemaic planetary system) rather than a movement toward the center of the earth.
The Unmoved Mover - Aristotle's theory of reality is based largely on movement. Understanding the world involves understanding how physical objects move in location or in property (how they change; e.g. how does something change from hot to cold?). Everything is moved by something else that is moving. But at some point, there must be something that is not moved but moves to put things into motion, the originator of motion. That thing is the Unmoved Mover; the first cause of everything. The Unmoved Mover is an "active intellect." Its only activity is contemplating perfect contemplation (notice Platos' influence; the perfect idea of contemplation).
Aristotle's physics:
The Classical elements
Water, air, fire, earth and aether (or ether). Aether was an element between the planets in the heavens (there was no vacuum). Aether made planets move in circular patterns.
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