Aristotle: a Chapter from the History of Science

"It eminently desirable that the growing practice of secondhand citation should be discouraged; since our native infirmity renders us all sufficiently liable to error, without our taking on ourselves the responsibility of other men's carelessness or their misrepresentations."

"It is difficult to speak of Aristotle without exaggeration: he is felt to be so mighty, and is known to be so wrong."

"The splendour of his fame perpetuates the memory of his failure, and to be just we must appreciate both."

"His intellect was piercing and comprehensive; his attainments surpassed those of every known philosopher; his influence has only been exceeded by the great founders of Religions; nevertheless, if we now estimate the product of his labours in the discovery of positive truths, it appears insignificant, when not erroneous. None of the great germinal discoveries in science are due to him, or to his disciples."

"All ancient writers, except, perhaps, Thucydides, are uncritical in their reception of facts. Even in our own critical age, as it is rashly called, we find it extremely difficult to ascertain the truth respecting celebrated persons; so powerful is the mythical tendency, and so fungus-like the rapidity with which lies are propagated."

"The ancients had not risen to the conception of what constitutes evidence; they were as credulous as children; and accepted almost any marvel which was narrated gravely."

"Often in antagonism... he is never in hostility to Plato. Indeed, in the Ethics, he complains of the necessity of attacking doctrines held by "dear friends," adding—"It is our duty to slay our own flesh and blood where the cause of Truth is at stake, especially as we are philosophers; loving both, it is our sacred duty to give the preference to Truth." It is a timidity unworthy of a noble mind to shrink from intellectual opposition as an offence against friendship, and to suppress convictions for fear of misconstruction."

"His heart was kind, as was manifest in certain acts, and is expressed in this saying, "He who has many friends has no friends," which profoundly touches the very core of the subject, and may be paired off with this other saying of his, "A friend is one soul in two bodies." When asked how we should behave towards friends, he said, "As we should wish them to behave towards us.""

"Advancing age and development, no less than the decidedly scientific bias impressed upon his studies, necessarily caused him to take up an independent position with respect to Plato, who had little taste for physical science, and whose intellect naturally withdrew from those very subjects to which his young rival was, by nature and early bias, strongly determined."

"Had it not been for Alexander's princely aid, Aristotle's enormous collections could not have been made. ...Add to this the statement of Pliny, that Alexander gave orders to his hunters, gamekeepers, fishermen, and bird-catchers to furnish the philosopher with all the material he might desire—an order which at once placed several thousand men at his service. ...But at the same time remember it is Pliny who makes the statement, and for untrustworthiness of statement he cannot easily be surpassed; so that even here an immense exaggeration may be suspected; and to sum up remember that although Aristotle must have had a large collection of materials before he could have written his work on animals, Humboldt declares that there is no trace in that work of any acquaintance with animals first known through Alexander's expedition."

"After an absence of twelve years, B.C. 355, Aristotle reappeared in Athens. He found the Academy already occupied by his friend Xenocrates; so that some other place had to be sought where he might open a school. This he found at the Lyceum...But we must not suppose, as many suppose, that this establishment was placed under the direction of Aristotle, or that he had any voice in its affairs. He simply received permission to teach in the morning and evening at the peripatos, a permission which was the more acceptable because the shady walks offered facilities to his accustomed habit of walking to and fro during the delivery of lectures. ...Aristotle was by no means singular in this practice of promenading while he taught."

"As a foreigner, a philosopher, and a friend of Macedon, he was trebly odious to the political leaders; and a pretext for accusation was raised on a ground where such pretexts are always easily raised and are always dangerous—irreligion. He was accused of blasphemy, and of paying divine honours to mortals. And who were these mortals he had honoured? His friend and his wife. ...The blameless life and lofty soul of Socrates had been no defence against the charges of Melitus; and Aristotle quitted Athens, "not to give the Athenians a second opportunity of committing a sacrilege against philosophy." ...An idle sentence of death was passed; but nature had already written that sentence in terms that were not idle. He died in the sixty-third year of his age B.C. 322."

"His will, which may be read in Diogenes Laertius tells of his thoughtful kindness. His daughter Pythias, his son Nicomachus, his adopted son Nicanor, and his concubine Herpyllis, are all duly provided for, and some of his slaves are emancipated, others rewarded."

"He is admirable for the intense urgency of his mind in seeking scientific explanations of phenomena, at a period when such explanations were novelties; and for the dominant inductive tendency which led him on all subjects to collect the facts before reasoning on them."

"Plato was the most artistic of philosophers, and, among men of great eminence, one of the worst of investigators; not, assuredly, from deficient power, but from his disastrous misconception of Method. In spite of a certain loitering diffuseness of style, and an oppressive circumstantiality in refuting trivial considerations, no one before Plato, no one since, has managed the extremely difficult art of dramatic debate on philosophic topics with such commanding success; and in consequence of this fascinating art, aided by the union of dialectical subtlety with mystical yearnings, a subtlety which seems to give a hope to mysticism, and a warrant to transcendentalism, no one has exercised a more pernicious influence on culture. The charm of the artist has immortalized the vices of the thinker."

"With Aristotle... His Method although imperfect... was not utterly wrong, but wrong only in one important particular; in direction it was wholly right. It was a Method which required development, and was not like that of Plato, one upon which rational philosophy was impossible."

"As an artist, Aristotle is simply without rank and as a writer... he is many degrees removed from excellence. ...In works like the Politics, Poetics, Ethics, and Rhetoric... ...he is intelligible, and sometimes epigrammatic, although without charm. But where more severely tasked... his composition is rambling scattered and confused. There is little illustration, and no side-lights of suggestion. The want of artistic composition renders this absence of illustration a serious defect. When a writer's composition is good there is less need of illustration... But there are few writers who understand this art; and Aristotle understood it not at all."

"Whatever may be the excellencies of Aristotle's diction (and these few moderns can pretend to appreciate), the defects of his composition are not matters of opinion, but of demonstration."

"The history of Aristotle is for many centuries the history of learning."

"Hegel and Sir W. Hamilton have done their best to impress on fluctuating public opinion the conviction that not only was Aristotle a thinker of vast power, but of present worth: not only great in his own time, but anticipating the truths of all time."

"Cuvier, Isidore St. Hilaire, De Blainville, and Johannes Müller, drawing after them crowds of obedient disciples, have spoken of his scientific works as if they were on a level with the science of our day, claiming for him some of the most curious discoveries of modern research."

"Among his modern eulogists will be found biologists, politicians, and metaphysicians, but no astronomer, no physicist, no chemist. In other words, in those sciences which have advanced to the positive stage, and in which the rigour of proof reduces Authority to its just position, his opinions are altogether disregarded; whereas in those sciences in which, from their complexity and immaturity, the influence of Authority and the delusive promises of the Subjective Method still gain acceptance, his dicta are cited as those of a puissant investigator."

"Science... begins when the forces of Nature are appreciated in their relations to each other; and in its highest flights all personal relations are merged in a grand disinterestedness."

"To measure the ground; to measure the seasons and the length of days; to cure a disease or dress a wound; to plough the soil and garner the harvest; to guide a fragile bark along a perilous coast by the aid of the Pleiades; or "sailing stars;" to know that fire burns, liquids evaporate, and metals fuse—these are among the early experiences of the race, but they are not Science. They are the preparatory materials—items of that Common Knowledge which the energy of man, as he advances to maturity developes into Science."

"Science as we now understand the word is of later birth. If its germinal origin may be traced to the early period when Observation, Induction, and Deduction were first employed, its birth must be referred to that comparatively recent period when the mind,—rejecting the primitive tendency to seek in supernatural agencies for an explanation of all external phenomena,—endeavoured, by a systematic investigation of the phenomena themselves to discover their invariable order and connection."

"The separation of Science from Knowledge was effected step by step as the Subjective Method was replaced by the Objective Method: i.e., when in each inquiry the phenomena of external nature ceased to be interpreted on premisses suggested by the analogies of human nature."

"The history of human development shows that there are three modes by which we conceive phenomena... The first of these supposes that the order and succession observed in phenomena, is due to the influence of outlying agencies—powers which are super natural, above the objects, not belonging to them. ...The attitude of mind which is based on the first of these assumptions is that which is common to all primitive theories. It characterizes what Auguste Comte names the Theological Stage in human development. On this assumption, all phenomena not of the simplest and most familiar kind are referred to the agency of invisible powers, spirits, deities, or demons. ...As this idea of will originates in the analogies of human volitions influencing human actions, the same capriciousness and variability which characterize human actions are supposed to characterize external phenomena."

"Before men could refer the changes they observed to the influence of properties inherent in the objects, a strong conviction must have arisen that the order of succession in phenomena was not variable, but fixed. Invariableness would inevitably lead to the conception of all changes being due to the relations between the various properties of objects—first, by discrediting the interference of an external will, which is essentially incalculable; next, by disclosing that there was really no need of anything but the recognized or recognizable properties of objects to account for all changes."

"Causation is now assumed to lie within, and not without, the circle of phenomena. Science, withdrawing from all speculation where it can find no adequate evidence, and where its methods are inoperative, refrains from inquiry as to ultimate causes, and says nothing respecting the mystery of creation."

"The scientific mind replaces these gods and angels by laws of nature, according to which the planets move by forces similar, and under conditions similar to those observed in all other moving bodies. ...it gets rid of the presumed variability in the agency, and leads to the careful study of the inevitable order; instead of encouraging attempts, by prayers, supplications, invocations, or the sacrifices of animal life, to persuade the inevitable order to alter its course."

"The metaphysical explanation is an obstacle, because it withdraws attention from the close scrutiny of facts, and deludes the mind with unverified, unverifiable assumptions."

"So long as diseases were conceived to be the products of supernatural agency, their cure was properly sought in invocations, sacrifices, prayers, and charms, rather than in the study of the organism, and an accurate acquaintance with the properties of objects."

"The theological, metaphysical, and scientific explanations have three different criteria, or guarantees. The guarantee of the first is sacerdotal. ...The guarantee of the second is somewhat less absolute; it admits of question, because it is based on reason, not on faith; nevertheless, any conclusion which can be logically deduced from general doctrines accepted by metaphysicians is held by them to be demonstrated. To the theologian it is enough if he can adduce a text. To the metaphysician it is enough if he can deduce his proposition from "clear and distinct ideas." The guarantee of science is in the verification of experience, direct or indirect. It distrusts the validity of à priori conclusions, or of any explanations drawn solely from general ideas of Nature's order, unless those general ideas have themselves been rigorously demonstrated to be necessities of thought, or to represent the observed order. What must be or may be has to give place to what is."

"The general doctrines of Science are never, like those of Theology and Metaphysics, conceived to be final. However firmly fixed at present, they may be shaken tomorrow by a new discovery."

"In every case Science welcomes scrutiny and scepticism; its final guarantee is conformity with fact."

"While both the metaphysicist and the physicist draw conclusions from their general doctrines, the one is contented with logical symmetry, the other demands the confrontation with fact."

"The ancient astronomers believed in the uniformity of the celestial revolutions, and in the circularity of their orbit. ...performed in perfect freedom and in periods rigorously constant ...From this assumption of uniformity, the circularity of the orbit was a necessary conclusion. The logical chain was perfect. It so completely fettered the mind as almost to bar the way against the admission of the truth. Kepler had difficulty in accepting his own discovery... Thus nothing could be more plausible considered à priori, than the ancient theory; nevertheless, no sooner were adequate means of Verification applied to the theory than the whole fabric tumbled down like a house of cards."

"The Subjective Method claims direct knowledge of the nature of things and the ultimate causes of all changes. The Objective Method by looking at things, assuming the position of simple spectator, renounces all hope of ever penetrating the mysteries of existence, of ever knowing the intimate essence of things, and only hopes to detect the invariable order of co-existence and succession. The one claims a knowledge of "noumena," the other a knowledge of the laws of phenomena."

"The superior exactness and certainty of Mathematics are due to the fact that no hypothesis is allowed to stand for more than an hypothesis; no deduction takes its place as a datum until it has been demonstrated."

"Whenever the data and the deductions have been rigorously verified, the truths of Physics and Chemistry are as certain as those of Mathematics."

""Men who desire to learn," said Aristotle, "must first learn to doubt; for science is only the solution of doubts:" an aphorism, novel in those days, in our own a truism."

"It is their [the Greeks] immortal glory to have recognized the necessity of proof; and this recognition was itself consequent upon their ceasing to interpret phenomena as the direct results of supernatural agencies."

"The mysteriousness was not denied; it was simply set aside, removed from the sphere of scientific thought. The Greek had a free, independent spirit, adventurous, rebellious, curious; and boldly doubting, sought a solution of his doubts in his own way. He refused submission to established doctrines. He would accept neither priest nor philosopher as his oracle. Without directly contradicting the priest, he boldly erected his own Academy beside the Temple."

"It was a weakness in them that they had little sympathy with that sense of the Infinite which characterizes some other eminent nations. This is visible in their Art: an Art matchless in clearness and proportion, in the beauty of arrested lines, and the repose of symmetrical simplicity; but having none of those finer issues which escape into the sublimity of Christian Art. Greek Art is a lute not an organ."

"Aristotle... seems utterly destitute of any sense of the Ineffable. There is no quality more noticeable in him than his unhesitating confidence in the adequacy of the human mind to comprehend the universe... He never seems to be visited by misgivings as to the compass of human faculty, because his unhesitating mind is destitute of awe. He has no abiding consciousness of the fact deeply impressed on other minds, that the circle of the Knowable is extremely limited; and that beyond it lies a vast mystery... impenetrable. Hence the existence of Evil is no perplexity to his soul; it is accepted as a simple fact. Instead of being troubled by it, saddened by it, he quietly explains it as the consequence of Nature not having correctly written her meaning. This mystery which has darkened so many sensitive meditative minds with anguish he considered to be only bad orthography."

"Science acquires her dignity, and her supreme power, from her noble disinterestedness. ...Use is secondary and derivative; the primary object is elucidation of the Truth. All Truth is beneficent; but her seekers desire to behold the serene splendour of her face, and not themselves to reap the benefits which spring up on her track. This attitude was first assumed by the Greeks. Their philosophers were content to seek wisdom as the one great object, without directly subordinating their search to Religion or to Use."

"The attempt to explain Nature, without reference to the gods, very generally drew on philosophers the accusation of impiety. Nor was this prejudice confined to the vulgar and unthinking; it was shared and avowed by Socrates. ...The same thought has, in all ages, roused the bitter hostility of theologians, against the scientific attitude, as one essentially irreligious."

"Science can only destroy false explanations, which it is for our welfare to have destroyed. No single truth can be shaken by Science. If in her own path she detects certain truths, these must necessarily be harmonious with all other truths. We must learn to welcome all, and to prove all."

"Other peoples amassed details of knowledge, manifested intellectual activity, invented useful arts; but it is in the Greek writers that we must seek the inauguration of the scientific epoch. It is in them that, for the first time, appears the systematic effort to ascertain the relations of things objectively, to detect the causes of all changes as inherent in the things themselves, and to reject all supernatural or outlying agencies."

"Most expositions of Aristotle's doctrines, when they have not been dictated by a spirit of virulent detraction, or unsympathetic indifference, have carefully suppressed all, or nearly all, the absurdities, and only retained what seemed plausible and consistent. But in this procedure their historical significance disappears. ...I have allowed the errors and the crudities to take their rightful place beside the plausibilities and truths; thus preserving, as far as may be, the historical colouring derived from the inherent weakness of early Science, and the individual weakness of Aristotle."