30 Great Aristotle's Inventions - Contributions

(Last Updated On: April 16, 2021)

We cant but pay our profound tribute to Aristotle’s inventions. Born in 384 B.C. in Stageira in Macedonia, Aristotle was one of the greatest contributors of all times. His father, Nicomachus, was the court physician to the king of Macedonia. Aristotle may have received extensive training and inspiration in biology and medicine from his father. We are indebted to Aristotle contribution to atomic theory, Aristotle distinguished himself as a student at Plato’s Academy in Athens during his youth. In this article, I am going to compile a short description of Aristotle’s contribution.

30 Great Aristotle’s Inventions and Contributions

Find below a synopsis of Aristotle’s inventions:

1. His areas of interest and contribution

Aristotle studied and made significant contributions to logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance, and theatre.

He had a deep interest in Main interests Biology, Zoology, Psychology, Physics, Metaphysics, Logic, Ethics, Rhetoric, Aesthetics Music, Poetry, Economics, Politics, Government.

He loved to write on subjects including metaphysics, logic, ethics, physics, biology, zoology, aesthetics, poetry, psychology, linguistics, economics, theatre, music, rhetoric, government, and politics. You may also love to read about inventions by Archimedes.

2. Empiricism

The ideological revolution of Aristotle is framed within the idea of information, based on which experimentation is the idea of fact: “There is nothing in the mind that has not been in the senses before.”

Empiricism assumes that each one philosophy or science should be based mostly on experience; that’s, in perception and insensible knowledge, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions.

3. Metaphysics

The phrase “metaphysics” seems to have been coined by the first century AD editor who assembled numerous small picks of Aristotle’s works to the treatise we all know by the title Metaphysics, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions. Aristotle is known as its “first philosophy”, and distinguished it from arithmetic and pure science (physics) because the contemplative (theoretikē) philosophy which is “theological” and researches the divine.

Change is natural and needed. Four completely different sorts of causes clarify the method of change:
Material Causes – resulting from what an object is a product of.
Formal Causes – resulting from an object’s design.
Efficient Causes – resulting from a factor’s maker
Final Causes – involving the top in the direction of which a factor is destined.

4. Epistemology

The most dependable supply of information is from the senses and direct expertise and statement. Facts take priority over theories.

5. Mathematical Objects

The account right here of Aristotle on the standing of mathematical objects will heart on 5 ideas, which Aristotle makes use of in his discussions: ‘abstraction’ or ‘taking away’ or ‘removal’ or ‘subtraction’ (aphairesis), ‘precision’ (akribeia), ‘as separated’ (hôs kekhôrismenon), ‘qua’ or ‘in the respect that’ (hêi), and ‘intelligible matter’ (noêtikê hylê).

6. The logic of the categorical syllogism

It is a process of logical deduction based on which if two premises with a standard time period that associates them are subjected to the reasoning, they result in a conclusion through which the common time period is absent.

Example

Premise 1: Plato is a man.

Premise 2: Men are mortal.

Conclusion: Plato is mortal.

This invention of Aristotle marked the history of Western logic and reasoning. Aristotle’s contribution is remarkable.

Logic: Invented the syllogism: two fundamental premises resulting in a 3rd conclusion.
There are ten fundamental classes of statements that may be made about any given thing:
1) Its substance, or kind.
2) Its qualities, traits, and attributes.
3) Its amount.
4) Its relationship to different things.
5) Its placement, or location.
6) It’s time or age.
7) Its place.
8) Its state.
9) Its actions, or what it does.
10) Its receptions, or what is completed to it.

7. Poetics

Aristotle’s Poetics c. 335 BC is the earliest surviving work of dramatic ideas and the first extant philosophical treatise to deal with the literary ideas, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions. In this textual content, Aristotle gives an account of ποιητικῆς, which refers to poetry or more actually “the poetic art,” deriving from the time period for “poet; author; maker,” ποιητής. Aristotle divides the artwork of poetry into verse drama (to incorporate comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play), lyric poetry, and epic.

Aristotle distinguishes between the genres of “poetry” in 3 ways: Matter, Subjects, Method.

He then identifies the “parts” of tragedy: Plot (mythos, hamartia), character (ethos), thought (dianoia), diction (lexis), melody (melos), and spectacle (opsis).

He has additionally defined Mimesis, Hubris, Nemesis, Anagnorisis, Peripeteia, and Catharsis.

The genres all share the performance of mimesis, or imitation of life, however, differ in three ways in which Aristotle describes:

Differences in music rhythm, concord, meter, and melody.
The difference of goodness within the characters.
The difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a narrative or performing it out.

8. Immanent realism

Like his trainer Plato, Aristotle’s philosophy goals on the common. Aristotle’s ontology locations the common (katholou) in particulars (kath’ hekaston), issues on the earth, whereas for Plato the common is an individual present type which precise issues imitate. For Aristotle, “form” continues to be what phenomena are based mostly on, however is “instantiated” in a selected substance.

9. Views on women

Aristotle’s evaluation of procreation describes an energetic, ensouling masculine ingredient bringing life to an inert, passive feminine ingredient. On this floor, proponents of feminist metaphysics have accused Aristotle of misogyny and sexism. However, Aristotle gave equal weight to ladies’ happiness as he did to males, and commented in his Rhetoric that the issues that result in happiness have to be in ladies in addition to males.

10. Ethics

The virtue of reason: Man is a rational animal.
The Golden Mean: moderation in all things.

Aristotle taught that advantage has to do with the correct performance (ergon) of a factor. An eye is simply an excellent eye in a lot as it may possibly see, as a result of the correct performance of an eye fixed is sight, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions.

Aristotle reasoned that people will need to have a perform particular to people and that this performance should be an exercise of the psuchē (soul) in accordance with motive (logos).

Aristotle recognized such an optimum exercise (the virtuous imply, between the accompanying vices of excess or deficiency of the soul because the intention of all human deliberate motion, eudaimonia, typically translated as “happiness” or generally “well being”.

To have the potential of ever being joyful in this manner essentially requires an excellent character (ēthikē aretē), usually translated as an ethical or moral advantage or excellence.

11. Substance

Aristotle examines the ideas of substance (ousia) and essence (to ti ên einai, “the what it was to be”) in his Metaphysics (Book VII), and he concludes {that a} explicit substance is a mix of each matter and type, a philosophical theory known as hylomorphism. In Book VIII, he distinguishes the matter of the substance because of the substratum, or the stuff of which it’s composed.

12. Medicine

The Four Basic Qualities: Hot, Cold, Wet, and Dry.

13. Politics

In addition to his works on ethics, which handle the person, Aristotle addressed town in his work titled Politics. Aristotle thought-about town to be a pure neighborhood.

Moreover, he thought-about town to be prior in significance to the household which in flip is previous to the person, “for the whole must of necessity be prior to the part”, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions.

He famously said that “man is by nature a political animal” and argued that humanity’s defining issue amongst others within the animal kingdom is its rationality.

Aristotle conceived of politics as being like an organism quite than like a machine and as a set of elements none of which may exist without the others.

Aristotle’s conception of town is natural, and he’s thought-about one of many first to conceive of town on this method.

14. Economics

Aristotle believed that though communal preparations could appear useful to society, and that though the public property is commonly blamed for social strife, such evils in truth come from human nature, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions.

In Politics, Aristotle gives one of many earliest accounts of the origin of cash. Money got here into use as a result of folks turned depending on each other, importing what they wanted and exporting the excess.

For the sake of comfort, folks then agreed to deal in one thing that’s intrinsically helpful and simply relevant, equivalent to iron or silver.

Aristotle gave an abstract of the performance of cash that was maybe remarkably precocious for his time.

He wrote that as a result of it’s inconceivable to find out the worth of each good by a depend on the variety of different items its value, the need arises for a single universal standard of measurement.

15. Biology

Natural historian; comparative biology, anatomy, and physiology. Aristotle contribution to psychology is remarkable even today.

Early theories of evolution and embryology.

Aristotle was the first particular person to review biology systematically, and biology kinds a big part in his writings.

He spent two years observing and describing the zoology of Lesbos and the encircling seas, together with specifically the Pyrrha lagoon within the center of Lesbos.

His knowledge in History of Animals, Generation of Animals, Movement of Animals, and Parts of Animals are assembled from his personal observations, statements given by people with specialized data equivalent to beekeepers and fishermen, and fewer correct accounts offered by travelers from abroad.

His obvious emphasis on animals quite than crops is a historic accident: his works on botany have been misplaced, however, two books on crops by his pupil Theophrastus have survived, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions.

16. Zoology

The history of zoology traces the research of the animal kingdom from historic to trendy instances, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions.

Although the idea of zoology as a single coherent subject arose a lot later, the zoological sciences emerged from pure history reaching again to the organic works of Aristotle and Galen within the ancient Greco-Roman world.

17. Scientific style

he practiced a unique fashion of science: systematically gathering knowledge, discovering patterns widespread to entire teams of animals, and inferring doable causal explanations from these.

This style is widespread in trendy biology when massive quantities of knowledge become accessible in a brand new subject, equivalent to genomics.

It doesn’t end in the same certainty as an experimental science, however it units out testable hypotheses and constructs a story clarification of what’s noticed. In this sense, Aristotle’s biology is scientific.

18. Potentiality and actuality

With regard to the change (kinesis) and its causes now, as he defines in his Physics and On Generation and Corruption 319b–320a, he distinguishes the approaching to be from:

development and diminution, which is a change in quantity;
locomotion, which is a change in the area; and
the alteration, which is a change in high quality.

Aristotle argued {that a} capability like playing the flute might be acquired – the potential made actual – by learning.

The coming to be is a change in the place nothing persists of which the resultant is a property. In that exact change, he introduces the idea of potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (entelecheia) in affiliation with the matter and the form.

19. Classification of living things

Aristotle distinguished about 500 species of animals, arranging these within the History of Animals in a graded scale of perfection, a scala naturae, with a man on the prime, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions.

His system had eleven grades of animal, from highest potential to lowest, expressed of their type at the start: the best gave dwell start to sizzling and moist creatures, the bottom laid chilly, dry mineral-like eggs. Animals got here above crops, and these in flip have been above minerals.

Aristotle’s *Scala naturae* (highest to lowest)
Group	Examples (given by Aristotle)	Blood	Legs	Souls (Rational, Sensitive, Vegetative)	Qualities (Hot-Cold, Wet–Dry)
Man	Man	with blood	2 legs	R, S, V	Hot, Wet
Live-bearing tetrapods	Cat, hare	with blood	4 legs	S, V	Hot, Wet
Cetaceans	Dolphin, whale	with blood	none	S, V	Hot, Wet
Birds	Bee-eater, nightjar	with blood	2 legs	S, V	Hot, Wet, except Dry eggs
Egg-laying tetrapods	Chameleon, crocodile	with blood	4 legs	S, V	Cold, Wet except scales, eggs
Snakes	Watersnake, Ottoman viper	with blood	none	S, V	Cold, Wet except scales, eggs
Egg-laying fishes	Sea bass, parrotfish	with blood	none	S, V	Cold, Wet, including eggs
(Among the egg-laying fishes): placental selachians	Shark, skate	with blood	none	S, V	Cold, Wet, but placenta like tetrapods
Crustaceans	Shrimp, crab	without	many legs	S, V	Cold, Wet except the shell
Cephalopods	Squid, octopus	without	tentacles	S, V	Cold, Wet
Hard-shelled animals	Cockle, trumpet snail	without	none	S, V	Cold, Dry (mineral shell)
Larva-bearing insects	Ant, cicada	without	6 legs	S, V	Cold, Dry
Spontaneously-generating	Sponges, worms	without	none	S, V	Cold, Wet or Dry, from earth
Plants	Fig	without	none	V	Cold, Dry
Minerals	Iron	without	none	none	Cold, Dry

He grouped what the trendy zoologist would name vertebrates as the warmer “animals with blood”, and beneath them the colder invertebrates as “animals without blood”.

Those with blood have been divided into the live-bearing (mammals), and the egg-laying (birds, reptiles, fish).

Those without blood have been bugs, crustacea (non-shelled – cephalopods, and shelled), and the hard-shelled molluscs (bivalves and gastropods).

He recognized that animals didn’t precisely match right into a linear scale, and famous numerous exceptions, equivalent to that sharks had a placenta just like the tetrapods.

20. Physics – Five elements

In his On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle associated every one of the 4 components proposed earlier by Empedocles, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, to 2 of the 4 smart qualities, sizzling, chilly, moist, and dry.

In the Empedoclean scheme, all matter was the product of the 4 components, in differing proportions. Aristotle’s scheme added the heavenly Aether, the divine substance of the heavenly spheres, stars, and planets.

Aristotle’s elements
Element	Hot/Cold	Wet/Dry	Motion	Modern state of matter
Earth	Cold	Dry	Down	Solid
Water	Cold	Wet	Down	Liquid
Air	Hot	Wet	Up	Gas
Fire	Hot	Dry	Up	Plasma
Aether	(divine substance)	—	Circular (in heavens)	—

21. Motion

Aristotle describes two sorts of movement: “violent” or “unnatural motion”, equivalent to that of a thrown stone, in the Physics (254b10), and “natural motion”, equivalent to a falling object, in On the Heavens (300a20), which is one of Aristotle’s inventions.

In violent movement, as quickly because the agent stops inflicting it, the movement stops additionally; in different phrases, the pure state of an object is to be at relaxation, since Aristotle doesn’t handle friction.

With this understanding, it may be noticed that, as Aristotle said, heavy objects (on the ground, say) require more force to make the transfer; and objects pushed with higher force transfer faster.

22. Optics

Aristotle describes experiments in optics utilizing a digital camera obscura in Problems, book 15. The equipment consisted of a darkish chamber with a small aperture that permits light in, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions.

With it, he noticed that no matter form he made the outlet, the solar’s picture at all times remained round.

He is additionally famous that growing the distance between the aperture and the picture floor magnified the picture.

23. Chance and spontaneity

According to Aristotle, spontaneity and likelihood are causes of some issues, distinguishable from different kinds of trigger equivalent to easy necessity.

Chance as an incidental trigger lies within the realm of accidental issues, “from what is spontaneous”.

There can also be more a particular type of likelihood, which Aristotle names “luck”, that solely applies to folks’ ethical decisions.

24. Four causes

Aristotle prompt that the rationale for something coming about could be attributed to 4 various kinds of concurrently energetic elements, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions.

His time period aitia is historically translated as “cause”, however, it doesn’t at all times seek advice from temporal sequence; it could be higher translated as “explanation”, however, the conventional rendering will likely be employed here.

Four causes are Material trigger, Formal trigger, environment-friendly trigger, last trigger.

25. Objects From Abstraction or ‘Removal’ (ta ex aphaireseôs)

Aristotle sometimes refers to mathematical objects as issues by, in, from, or by elimination (in several works Aristotle makes use of completely different expressions: ta aphairesei, ta en aphairesei, ta ex aphaireseôs, ta di’ aphaireseôs).

It can also be clear that this utilization pertains to logical discussions within the Topics of definitions the place one can communicate of including a time period or deleting a time period from an expression and seeing what one will get because of this.

Our principal process is to elucidate what this logical/psychological elimination is and the way it solves the 4 puzzles. Aristotle begins with the category of perceptible or bodily magnitudes.

26. Binomial nomenclature

Aristotle was the first to categorize residing beings based on their comparable traits.

In his book History of animals formed completely different hierarchical classifications based on their place, from the bottom to the best hierarchy. He situated people within the highest strata.

In the identical sense he devised the conference of binomial nomenclature, classifying residing organisms into two units: “gender”, to seek advice from the household; and the”species”, to determine the distinction of this organism with respect to others of its own family.

27. First scientific treatise on philosophy and psychology

Aristotle invented the concept of the soul in the West. He outlined it as the first force or power that provides rise to life, feeling, and mind.

In his book Of anima formed the concept that the soul is the abstraction that unites the human body with the thoughts.

On the precept of the relation between matter and type, for Aristotle, the human body is matter and the soul types.

28. Soul

The human soul incorporates the powers of the opposite varieties: Like the vegetative soul it may possibly develop and nourish itself; just like the delicate soul it may possibly expertise sensations and transfer domestically.

The distinctive part of the human, rational soul is its means to obtain types of different issues and to match them utilizing the nous (mind) and logos (motive).

29. Memory

Aristotle makes use of the time period ‘reminiscence’ for the precise retaining of an experience within the impression that may develop from sensation, and for the mental anxiousness that comes with the impression as a result of it’s shaped at a particular time and processing particular contents.

Memory is of the previous, prediction is of the longer term, and sensation is of the current. Retrieval of impressions can’t be carried out all of a sudden.

A transitional channel is required and situated in our previous experiences, each for our previous experience and present experience.

30. Dream

Aristotle describes sleep in On Sleep and Wakefulness. Sleep takes place on account of overuse of the senses or of digestion, so it’s vital to the body.

While an individual is asleep, the important actions, which embrace pondering, sensing, recalling, and remembering, don’t perform as they do throughout wakefulness.

Since an individual can not sense throughout sleep they can’t have the desire, which is the result of sensation.

However, the senses are capable of work throughout sleep, albeit in a different way, except they’re weary.

31. Just war theory

Aristotle typically has a beneficial opinion of war, extolling it as an opportunity for advantage and writing that “the leisure that accompanies peace” tends to make people “arrogant”. War to “avoid becoming enslaved to others” is justified as self-defense.

He writes that war “compels people to be just and temperate”, nevertheless, with a purpose to be simply “war must be chosen for the sake of peace”, which is one of Aristotle’s inventions.

30 Great Aristotle’s Inventions – Contributions | Discoveries