Aristotle
Aristotle was born in Stagira in northern Greece in 384 B.C. In his early years he was a student of Plato's Academy and later became a teacher there. After Plato's death in 347 BC, Aristotle moved to Assos to council Hermias. While there he met and married Hermias niece and adopted daughter, Pythias. Hermias was captured and executed in 345 BC, which took Aristotle to Pella where he tutored the young Alexander the Great. In 335 Alexander became king and Aristotle returned to Athens. There he established his own school, Lyceum. Upon the death of Alexander in 323 B.C., Aristotle retired to a family estate in Euboea. He died there the following year. (7)
Aristotle divided the sciences into theoretical, practical, and productive sciences. Theoretical science included metaphysics, or "first philosophy," physics, and mathematics. The practical sciences are ethics and politics, and the productive sciences aim to make things. He considers logic the prerequisite to all philosophy. The Prior Analytics contains his theory of syllogism or deduction, and works out all combinations of premises and conclusions. The Posterior Analytics contains the logic of science. (7) Different from his teacher Plato, Aristotle defines sciences as separate categories with different premises.
Aristotle's thought, in his work Physics, that there is a Prime Mover of things in the universe. He argues that since movement is eternal there can be no first or last change. Change therefore must be eternal. This Prime Mover is not of this earth and therefore controls everything as well as eternal life. In the Metaphysics he calls this Prime Mover "God," whose only activity is pure t ...