50 free Aristotle trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 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.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Whose Academy in Athens did Aristotle join at around eighteen and remain at for nearly twenty years?
Plato's
His teacher reportedly nicknamed him "mind of the school".
Q 02Which future conqueror did Aristotle tutor from 343 BC at the request of Philip II of Macedon?
Alexander the Great
The lessons took place at the private school of Mieza, in the gardens of the Nymphs near Pella, when the boy was thirteen.
Q 03What was the name of the school Aristotle founded in Athens?
The Lyceum
As a metic he could not own property, so he rented the building, named for the sacred grove of Apollo Lykeios.
Q 04Why did Aristotle's school become known as "Peripatetic"?
It had a colonnade, or peripatos
The building also included a gymnasium; he taught and researched there for twelve years.
Q 05In which city in Chalkidiki, northern Greece, was Aristotle born in 384 BC?
Stagira
It lies about 55 km east of modern Thessaloniki.
Q 06What was the profession of Aristotle's father, Nicomachus?
Physician to the king of Macedon
He belonged to the medical guild of the Asclepiadae, which probably sparked Aristotle's interest in biology.
Q 07What nickname did Plato reportedly give his star pupil Aristotle?
"Mind of the school"
He nonetheless left the Academy after Plato's death, when control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus.
Q 08To whose nephew did control of the Academy pass after Plato's death, reportedly disappointing Aristotle?
Speusippus
Anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens may also have prompted his departure to Assos in Asia Minor.
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 10Who was Aristotle's wife Pythias?
The adoptive daughter and niece of Hermias of Atarneus
They had a daughter also named Pythias; after her death he took up with Herpyllis of Stagira.
Q 11What annotated gift did Aristotle give Alexander that became one of his most prized possessions?
A copy of the Iliad
Scholars think two lost works, On Kingship and On Behalf of the Colonies, were written for the young prince.
Q 12How did Aristotle famously counsel Alexander to treat his own people and the peoples he conquered?
Be "a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians"
His attitude towards Persia was strongly ethnocentric, and he encouraged eastern conquest.
Q 13Which two future rulers may have attended Aristotle's lectures alongside Alexander?
Q 21Which four "causes" did Aristotle distinguish to explain why something exists or changes?
Material, formal, efficient and final
The final cause, or telos, is the purpose a thing serves, such as a table's function or an animal's way of life.
Q 22What fifth element did Aristotle add to Empedocles' earth, water, air and fire?
The heavenly aether
It was the divine substance of the heavenly spheres, moving naturally in circles.
Q 23What did Aristotle conclude from his claim that a body would fall infinitely fast in empty space?
That a vacuum is impossible
Ptolemy and Cassander
Both would carve kingdoms out of Alexander's empire after his death.
Q 14Roughly what fraction of Aristotle's original output has survived?
About a third
None of the survivals were intended for publication; the polished dialogues he wrote for the public are lost.
Q 15What did Aristotle reportedly say when he fled Athens in 322 BC after being denounced for impiety?
"I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy"
It was a pointed reference to the trial and execution of Socrates; he died of natural causes in Chalcis later that year.
Q 16Who succeeded Aristotle as head of his school and inherited his works?
Theophrastus
The successor's History of Plants was a pioneering work of botany that gave us the words carpel and pericarp.
Q 17What is the name given to the six logical works of Aristotle compiled around 40 BC?
The Organon
It runs from the Categories through the Prior and Posterior Analytics to the Sophistical Refutations.
Q 18Which of Aristotle's works is credited with the earliest systematic study of logic?
Prior Analytics
Kant said that with Aristotle logic had reached its completion; it dominated Western logic until the 19th century.
Q 19What did Aristotle himself call the discipline a later compiler labelled metaphysics?
First philosophy or theology
The word "metaphysics" comes from a later compiler's title for the collection; he described it as the study of being qua being.
Q 20What is the name of Aristotle's theory that a particular substance is a combination of matter and form?
Hylomorphism
The bricks and timbers are the matter of a house; the "covering for bodies and chattels" is its form.
He held that a falling body's speed was proportional to its weight and inversely proportional to the density of the medium.
Q 24What did Aristotle propose was the cause of earthquakes, following Anaxagoras and Democritus?
Gas or vapour trapped inside the earth trying to escape
His Meteorologica gave meteorology its name but also covered earthquakes and volcanoes.
Q 25Which of Aristotle's zoological observations was widely disbelieved until the 19th century?
The hectocotyl arm of cephalopods, used in reproduction
He also gave accurate accounts of the electric ray, the paper nautilus and the embryology of the hound shark.
Q 26Roughly how many animal species did Aristotle distinguish, in a graded scale with man on top?
About 500
He divided them into "animals with blood" and "animals without blood", roughly vertebrates and invertebrates.
Q 27What did Aristotle do to a fertilised hen's egg in Generation of Animals?
Opened it to see the embryo's heart beating
He did not experiment in the modern sense, but he dissected and observed systematically.
Q 28Which three kinds of soul does Aristotle posit in On the Soul, all of which humans possess?
Vegetative, sensitive and rational
Unlike earlier Greek thinkers, but like the Egyptians, he located the rational soul in the heart.
Q 29Where, in accordance with the Egyptians, did Aristotle locate the rational soul?
In the heart
He also distinguished sensation from thought, which few philosophers before him except Alcmaeon had done.
Q 30What Greek word, usually translated "happiness", did Aristotle name as the aim of all human action?
Eudaimonia
It comes from exercising the soul in accordance with reason, hitting the virtuous mean between excess and deficiency.