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The Four Characteristics Of Aristotle's Contribution To Science

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Aristotle is a leading figure in the ancient Greek philosophy, creating significant contributions to medicine, ethics, physics, metaphysics, zoology, biology, agriculture, dance and theatre, mathematics, and politics. He was Plato’s student who afterwards studied under Socrates. Aristotle was more empirically minded than Socrates or Plato and is widely known for rejecting Plato’s theory of forms . His findings gave modern science the inspiration it needed to advance and flourish. He studied geology, zoology, astronomy, physics, and geography. As a result of establishing his own school, he created huge contributions to science and others fields. Aristotle believed that the most effective approach to understanding nature is via close observation, …show more content…

He understood physics as the same as natural philosophy (i.e. the study of nature). His contribution to his natural philosophy is less impressive than his research work in biology, psychology, and zoology. In his natural philosophy, Aristotle included several characteristics inherited from his pre-Socratic predecessors . He adopted the point of view that the universe is made up of various combinations of the four major elements of fire, air, water, and earth. Each element is characterized by possessing a unique pair of the four basic qualities of dryness, cold, heat, and wetness: fire is dry and hot, air is wet and hot, water is wet and cold, and earth is dry and cold. Each element has a natural place in an ordered cosmos, and each component has an inherent habit of moving towards this natural place. Therefore, earthly solids naturally fall, whereas fire, if not prevented ever rises greater. Other motions of the components are possible although are …show more content…

According to Aristotle, the earth is the center of the universe, and the sun, moon, and other planets revolve around the earth. The heavenly bodies are not made of the four terrestrial elements, though are constituted of a superior fifth element (i.e. “quintessence”). Furthermore, the heavily bodies have supernatural intellects or souls that guide them in their movements through the cosmos. Even the best scientific works made by Aristotle are now historical interest. Aristotle’s cosmology made significant contribution regarding how the universe came into being. His cosmology was one of many influential ideas on the composition and configuration of the universe, and it managed to survive until the works of Galileo, Brahe, and Copernicus rendered it obsolete . His conception about the corporeal bodies being made of air, water, fire and earth suitably fitted with the humoral system that also has four states that Aristotelian cosmology borrowed from the medical concepts of the Hippocratics and

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