50 Fun Facts About Aristotle

Whose Academy in Athens did Aristotle join at around eighteen and remain at for nearly twenty years?

His teacher reportedly nicknamed him "mind of the school".

Which future conqueror did Aristotle tutor from 343 BC at the request of Philip II of Macedon?

The lessons took place at the private school of Mieza, in the gardens of the Nymphs near Pella, when the boy was thirteen.

What was the name of the school Aristotle founded in Athens?

As a metic he could not own property, so he rented the building, named for the sacred grove of Apollo Lykeios.

Why did Aristotle's school become known as "Peripatetic"?

The building also included a gymnasium; he taught and researched there for twelve years.

In which city in Chalkidiki, northern Greece, was Aristotle born in 384 BC?

It lies about 55 km east of modern Thessaloniki.

What was the profession of Aristotle's father, Nicomachus?

He belonged to the medical guild of the Asclepiadae, which probably sparked Aristotle's interest in biology.

What nickname did Plato reportedly give his star pupil Aristotle?

He nonetheless left the Academy after Plato's death, when control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus.

To whose nephew did control of the Academy pass after Plato's death, reportedly disappointing Aristotle?

Anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens may also have prompted his departure to Assos in Asia Minor.

On which island did Aristotle and a colleague carry out extensive research in botany and marine biology?

He spent two years describing the zoology of its Pyrrha lagoon and the surrounding seas.

Who was Aristotle's wife Pythias?

They had a daughter also named Pythias; after her death he took up with Herpyllis of Stagira.

What annotated gift did Aristotle give Alexander that became one of his most prized possessions?

Scholars think two lost works, On Kingship and On Behalf of the Colonies, were written for the young prince.

How did Aristotle famously counsel Alexander to treat his own people and the peoples he conquered?

His attitude towards Persia was strongly ethnocentric, and he encouraged eastern conquest.

Which two future rulers may have attended Aristotle's lectures alongside Alexander?

Both would carve kingdoms out of Alexander's empire after his death.

Roughly what fraction of Aristotle's original output has survived?

None of the survivals were intended for publication; the polished dialogues he wrote for the public are lost.

What did Aristotle reportedly say when he fled Athens in 322 BC after being denounced for impiety?

It was a pointed reference to the trial and execution of Socrates; he died of natural causes in Chalcis later that year.

Who succeeded Aristotle as head of his school and inherited his works?

The successor's History of Plants was a pioneering work of botany that gave us the words carpel and pericarp.

What is the name given to the six logical works of Aristotle compiled around 40 BC?

It runs from the Categories through the Prior and Posterior Analytics to the Sophistical Refutations.

Which of Aristotle's works is credited with the earliest systematic study of logic?

Kant said that with Aristotle logic had reached its completion; it dominated Western logic until the 19th century.

What did Aristotle himself call the discipline a later compiler labelled metaphysics?

The word "metaphysics" comes from a later compiler's title for the collection; he described it as the study of being qua being.

What is the name of Aristotle's theory that a particular substance is a combination of matter and form?

The bricks and timbers are the matter of a house; the "covering for bodies and chattels" is its form.

Which four "causes" did Aristotle distinguish to explain why something exists or changes?

The final cause, or telos, is the purpose a thing serves, such as a table's function or an animal's way of life.

What fifth element did Aristotle add to Empedocles' earth, water, air and fire?

It was the divine substance of the heavenly spheres, moving naturally in circles.

What did Aristotle conclude from his claim that a body would fall infinitely fast in empty space?

He held that a falling body's speed was proportional to its weight and inversely proportional to the density of the medium.

What did Aristotle propose was the cause of earthquakes, following Anaxagoras and Democritus?

His Meteorologica gave meteorology its name but also covered earthquakes and volcanoes.

Which of Aristotle's zoological observations was widely disbelieved until the 19th century?

He also gave accurate accounts of the electric ray, the paper nautilus and the embryology of the hound shark.

Roughly how many animal species did Aristotle distinguish, in a graded scale with man on top?

He divided them into "animals with blood" and "animals without blood", roughly vertebrates and invertebrates.

What did Aristotle do to a fertilised hen's egg in Generation of Animals?

He did not experiment in the modern sense, but he dissected and observed systematically.

Which three kinds of soul does Aristotle posit in On the Soul, all of which humans possess?

Unlike earlier Greek thinkers, but like the Egyptians, he located the rational soul in the heart.

Where, in accordance with the Egyptians, did Aristotle locate the rational soul?

He also distinguished sensation from thought, which few philosophers before him except Alcmaeon had done.

What Greek word, usually translated "happiness", did Aristotle name as the aim of all human action?

It comes from exercising the soul in accordance with reason, hitting the virtuous mean between excess and deficiency.

What is the title of Aristotle's most notable treatise on how to live well?

It is named for his father or his son, both called Nicomachus; Dante's Virgil cites it to justify the structure of Hell.

How did Aristotle famously describe man in the Politics?

He held that the city was a natural community, prior in importance to the family and the individual.

What are the three kinds of appeal a speaker can use, according to Aristotle's Rhetoric?

He also split rhetoric into three genres: epideictic, forensic and deliberative.

Which half of Aristotle's Poetics is lost?

The surviving portion says tragedy arouses pity and fear to bring about their catharsis.

Which of the six elements of tragedy did Aristotle consider its chief focus?

Characters, he argued, are merely a means of driving the story.

What term does Aristotle use in the Poetics for the "imitation" at the root of all the arts?

Epic, tragedy, comedy, painting, sculpture, music and dance all vary in it by medium, object and manner.

What title did medieval Muslim scholars give Aristotle?

Christians such as Thomas Aquinas called him simply "The Philosopher".

Which Jewish philosopher built his Guide for the Perplexed on Aristotelianism?

He adopted Aristotle from the Islamic scholars, and his work became the basis of Jewish scholastic philosophy.

How does Dante refer to Aristotle in the Divine Comedy?

Dante knew him from Latin translations and from quotations in Albertus Magnus.

How did Charles Darwin describe Linnaeus and Cuvier next to Aristotle in an 1882 letter?

Darwin regarded him as the most important contributor to biology and traced evolutionary ideas back to his summary of Empedocles.

Which philosopher claimed almost every intellectual advance began 'with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine'?

He also called Aristotle's ethics "repulsive" and his logic as antiquated as Ptolemaic astronomy.

In which Vatican fresco do Plato and Aristotle stand at the architectural vanishing point?

Rembrandt's Aristotle with a Bust of Homer is the other celebrated depiction.

Which landmass did Aristotle conjecture the existence of in his Meteorology, giving it its name?

The Aristotle Mountains in that region are named after him, as are a lunar crater and an asteroid.

Who compiled Aristotle's surviving treatises into their present form in the 1st century BC?

The papers had lain hidden at Scepsis in Asia Minor until the collector Apellicon bought them.

Aristotle's birthplace lies about 55 km east of which modern Greek city?

His father Nicomachus died when he was a child, and he was raised by a guardian before heading to Athens at 17 or 18.

Which medieval scholastic simply called Aristotle 'The Philosopher' in his Summa Theologica?

He worked from William of Moerbeke's translations, and the resulting demand drew Greek manuscripts back to the West.

Which emperor's order closed the pagan schools in 529, reshaping how Byzantines studied Aristotle?

After that, Philoponus and other Christian commentators approached Aristotle from a Christian perspective.

At which private school, set in the gardens of the Nymphs, did Aristotle teach the young Alexander?

Philip II invited him in 343/42 BC to tutor his thirteen-year-old son, a choice helped by family ties to the Macedonian court.

Why did Aristotle have to rent, rather than buy, the building where he founded his school in Athens?

As a metic he leased the Lyceum, named after the sacred grove of Apollo Lykeios.

Whose Latin translation of the Organon kept Aristotle known in the West between about AD 600 and 1100?

With ancient Greek lost in the Latin West, that translation was practically the only route to Aristotle until the 12th-century revival.