Aristotle: A Biography

The scientist and philosopher Aristotle was born in the Greek town of Stagiros in 384 B.C. His father, Nicomachus, was the physician to Amyntas II, the Macedonian King. Aristotle's inclination towards science can be surely attributed to the work of his father, although he did not have as deep an interest for medicine as Nicomachus. The early life of Aristotle is not too clear, besides the fact that he spent some of his childhood at the Macedonian court where his father had worked.

In 367 B.C., Aristotle joined Plato's Academy in Athens at 17 years old. He stayed there for twenty years, originally as a student, then, as a teacher, until the death of Plato in 347 B.C. Then, he traveled to Assos, in Mysia (Asia Minor). There, Aristotle married Pythias, with whom he had a son. After staying in Assos for three years, he stayed in Mytilene for two years, and then, returned to the court of the son of Amyntas II, Phillip of Macedon. There, he became the tutor of Phillip's son, who would later become Alexander the Great.

After Alexander was appointed king, Aristotle returned to Athens, where he created a school. It was known formally as the Lyceum, and informally as the Peripatetic ("walking around"), because the students followed the teacher when he walked through the garden. The school, where Aristotle carried out and organized research on many subjects, was where the first great library of antiquity was built. Alexander the Great became a patron to Aristotle. He helped to fund his work and arranged for samples of animals and plants from all over the Alexandrian empire to be given to him.

Aristotle led the school himself, until Alexander's death in 323 B.C., leaving because the anti-Macedonian party became dominant in Athens. He left his school to Theophrastus, and retired to Euboea, where he died of a gastric ailment the following year.

Aristotle produced a vast collection of writings, some 400 being attributed to him, but few have survived. His earliest writings were mostly dialogues which he created under Plato's influence at the Academy. His second group of writings were groups of historical and scientific materials. The writings that have actually survived, the last group, pertain to both works of science and of philosophy. These writings were hidden away in a cellar by Theophrastus, and not brought out again until they were edited by Andronicus in Rome in the first century B.C.