Aristotle

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), Greek philosopher, one of the most influential thinkers of the ancient world. He studied at Plato's academy in Athens in 343 B.C. and became the tutor of the young Alexander the Great. In 335 Aristotle set up his own school at the Lyceum in Athens. His works, covering a vast range of subjects, include Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, On the Heavens, Poetics, Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, and works on biology, aesthetics, rhetoric, and other subjects. Aristotle's writings reached the West through Latin translations in the 11th and 13th centuries, and had a prevailing influence on medieval and later thought. His emphasis on observation and analysis of the physical world, revolutionary for his time, underlies modern science. He developed the system of logic in use in the West until recent times.

See also: Greece, Ancient; Philosophy.