Aristotle Trivia
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97 free Aristotle trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Aristotle studied under Plato for twenty years, tutored Alexander the Great, founded the Lyceum, invented formal logic, wrote the first systematic biology, and defined tragedy, virtue and the four causes so durably that medieval scholars simply called him "The Philosopher". Only about a third of what he wrote survives, and none of it was meant for publication. This quiz covers the life, the ideas and the extraordinary influence. Easy questions ask who taught him, whom he taught and where he opened his school. Harder ones want his birthplace, the nickname Plato gave him, the gift he made Alexander, why the school was called Peripatetic, the six books of the Organon, the fifth element he added, the three appeals of his Rhetoric, the animal arm nobody believed him about until the 19th century, the reason he fled Athens and how Darwin, Dante and Aquinas each described him. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on Aristotle, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Made for philosophy and classics teachers, students and quiz hosts. Related quizzes: Ancient Greece, Philosophy and Alexander the Great.
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Q 01In Aristotle's account of virtue, courage is the mean between cowardice and which vice?
Rashness
Rashness: he taught that such virtues grow from habit, as people repeat brave acts until bravery becomes their settled character.
Q 02Which scientist is famously said to have dropped weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to disprove Aristotle on falling bodies?
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei's first biographer, Vincenzo Viviani, told the story, but many historians think the drop was only a thought experiment.
Q 03What was the name of the school Aristotle founded in Athens?
The Lyceum
The Lyceum, named for an exercise ground dedicated to Apollo Lykeios, later gave French its word lycée for a state secondary school.
Q 04Aristotle's followers were called Peripatetics, from a Greek word linked to which activity?
Walking
Walking: the name may come from the school's covered walkway, or from Aristotle's reported habit of teaching while strolling.
Q 05In which city in Chalkidiki, northern Greece, was Aristotle born in 384 BC?
Stagira
Stagira was razed by Philip II, who reportedly rebuilt it as payment for Aristotle's teaching of his son.
Q 06What was the profession of Aristotle's father?
Physician to the king of Macedon
Physician to the king of Macedon: the family was said to belong to the Asclepiads, a medical guild, which likely sparked Aristotle's interest in biology.
Q 07What name did Aristotle give to the eternal divine cause that keeps the cosmos turning?
The unmoved mover
The unmoved mover: he reasoned that the chain of motion must start with something that moves all else but is itself unmoved.
Q 08Which nephew of Plato took over the Academy after Plato's death, reportedly disappointing Aristotle?
Speusippus
Speusippus got the post, and Aristotle soon left Athens for Assos, perhaps also pushed by anti-Macedonian feeling.
Q 09On which island did Aristotle and a colleague carry out extensive research in botany and marine biology?
Lesbos
He spent two years describing the zoology of its Pyrrha lagoon and the surrounding seas.
Q 10Aristotle married Pythias, a niece or ward of which ruler who had studied at Plato's Academy?
Hermias of Atarneus
Hermias of Atarneus was later seized by the Persians and executed, and Aristotle honoured him in a hymn to virtue.
Q 11What annotated gift did Aristotle give Alexander that reportedly became one of his most prized possessions?
A copy of the Iliad
A copy of the Iliad: Alexander reportedly took Homer on campaign and, in one ancient account, slept with it under his pillow beside a dagger.
Q 12Aristotle reportedly advised Alexander to be a leader to the Greeks and what to the barbarians?
A despot
A despot: yet Alexander later adopted Persian dress and court customs to win over Persian nobles, dismaying many Macedonians.
Q 13Which two future rulers may have studied under Aristotle alongside Alexander?
Ptolemy and Cassander
Q 21Which four "causes" did Aristotle distinguish to explain why something exists or changes?
Material, formal, efficient and final
Material, formal, efficient and final: Francis Bacon later split them, leaving only material and efficient causes to physics and formal and final ones to metaphysics.
Q 22What fifth element did Aristotle add to Empedocles' earth, water, air and fire?
The heavenly aether
The heavenly aether: medieval Latin called it the 'fifth essence', which gave English the word quintessence.
Q 23What did Aristotle conclude from his claim that a body would fall infinitely fast in empty space?
Ptolemy and Cassander both became kings, and one later rumour even accused Aristotle of helping Cassander's family poison Alexander.
Q 14Most of Aristotle's surviving works are thought to be what kind of writing?
Lecture notes
Lecture notes: the polished dialogues he wrote for the public survive only in fragments.
Q 15When Aristotle fled Athens, he reportedly refused to let it 'sin twice against philosophy', recalling whose execution?
Socrates
Socrates: rather than face trial, Aristotle withdrew to his mother's family estate at Chalcis, where he died of natural causes.
Q 16Who succeeded Aristotle as head of his school and inherited his works?
Theophrastus
Theophrastus was later prosecuted for impiety too, but the case failed so badly that his accuser nearly faced punishment.
Q 17What name was later given to the collection of Aristotle's six works on logic?
The Organon
The Organon, Greek for 'tool': ancient commentators grouped the books under that name because they saw logic as an instrument for careful thinking.
Q 18Which kind of argument did Aristotle analyse, in which a conclusion follows necessarily from two premises?
The syllogism
The syllogism: Kant held that nothing significant had been added to his logic, until 19th-century logicians such as Frege moved beyond it.
Q 19What did Aristotle himself call the discipline a later compiler labelled metaphysics?
First philosophy or theology
First philosophy or theology: the later title Metaphysics most likely just meant the books placed after his Physics.
Q 20What name is given to Aristotle's view that every physical object combines what it is made of with its structure?
Hylomorphism
Hylomorphism: applying it to living things, he said asking whether soul and body are one is as needless as asking whether wax and its shape are one.
That a vacuum is impossible
That a vacuum is impossible: he also saw that in a void a moving body would never stop, and counted that as absurd too.
Q 24What did Aristotle believe caused earthquakes?
Wind trapped underground
Wind trapped underground: the theory led to the lasting folk belief that hot, calm 'earthquake weather' warns of a quake.
Q 25How did Aristotle split animals into two groups, roughly matching vertebrates and invertebrates?
With and without blood
With and without blood: his 'bloodless' insects, crustaceans and molluscs simply lacked red blood.
Q 26Which three kinds of soul does Aristotle posit in On the Soul, all of which humans possess?
Vegetative, sensitive and rational
Vegetative, sensitive and rational: Descartes later explained the first two by mechanism alone, reserving the soul for rational thought.
Q 27Where did Aristotle place the body's control centre?
In the heart
In the heart: soon after, the Alexandrian anatomist Herophilus instead regarded the brain as the centre of the nervous system.
Q 28What Greek word, usually translated "happiness", did Aristotle name as the aim of all human action?
Eudaimonia
Eudaimonia: he held it takes a complete life, since one swallow does not make a summer, nor one day a happy person.
Q 29What is the title of Aristotle's most notable treatise on how to live well?
Nicomachean Ethics
Nicomachean Ethics: in the Inferno, Dante's Virgil cites it to explain how the sins punished in Hell are ranked.
Q 30Which famous description of humans comes from Aristotle?
"By nature a political animal"
"By nature a political animal": anyone who can live without a city, he added, must be either a beast or a god.