His use of logic is laudable but he is easy to criticize because he’s wrong in his assumptions and conclusions.
Can you cite another person who did more to establish the foundations of modern science?
Aristotle has often been called the world’s greatest thinker. He tried to span the scope of knowledge as it existed in his time. He was a logician, aesthetician, biologist, ethical theorist and the administrator of an educational institution. He wrote dozens of works not only in philosophy but also in physics, biology, meteorology, psychology and politics. He also wrote a treatise in which he systematically dealt with the various mental processes of sensation, perception and memory. Will Durant in his ‘Story of Philosophy’ calls Aristotle “The Encyclopaedia Britannica of ancient Greece”. So powerful was the domination of his intellect that he is generally acknowledged to be the father of modern science…
darkside.hubpages.com/hub/aristotle
Though Aristotle’s work in zoology was not without errors, it was the grandest biological synthesis of the time, and remained the ultimate authority for many centuries after his death. His observations on the anatomy of octopus, cuttlefish,
crustaceans
, and many other marine invertebrates are remarkably accurate, and could only have been made from first-hand experience with dissection. Aristotle described the embryological development of a chick; he distinguished whales and dolphins from fish; he described the chambered stomachs of ruminants and the social organization of bees; he noticed that some sharks give birth to live young – his books on animals are filled with such observations, some of which were not confirmed until many centuries later.
Aristotle’s classification of animals grouped together animals with similar characters into
genera (used in a much broader sense than present-day biologists use the term) and then distinguished the
species within the genera. He divided the animals into two types: those with blood, and those without blood (or at least without red blood). These distinctions correspond closely to our distinction between vertebrates and invertebrates. The blooded animals, corresponding to the
vertebrates, included five genera: viviparous quadrupeds (mammals), birds, oviparous quadrupeds (reptiles and amphibians), fishes, and whales (which Aristotle did not realize were mammals). The bloodless animals were classified as cephalopods (such as the octopus); crustaceans; insects (which included the spiders, scorpions, and centipedes, in addition to what we now define as insects); shelled animals (such as most
molluscs and
echinoderms); and “zoophytes,” or “plant-animals,” which supposedly resembled plants in their form – such as most
cnidarians.
Aristotle’s thoughts on earth sciences can be found in his treatise
Meteorology – the word today means the study of weather, but Aristotle used the word in a much broader sense, covering, as he put it, “all the affections we may call common to air and water, and the kinds and parts of the earth and the affections of its parts.” Here he discusses the nature of the earth and the oceans. He worked out the hydrologic cycle: “Now the sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth.” He discusses winds, earthquakes (which he thought were caused by underground winds), thunder, lightning, rainbows, and meteors, comets, and the Milky Way (which he thought were atmospheric phenomena). His model of Earth history contains some remarkably modern-sounding ideas:
The same parts of the earth are not always moist or dry, but they change according as rivers come into existence and dry up. And so the relation of land to sea changes too and a place does not always remain land or sea throughout all time, but where there was dry land there comes to be sea, and where there is now sea, there one day comes to be dry land. But we must suppose these changes to follow some order and cycle. The principle and cause of these changes is that the interior of the earth grows and decays, like the bodies of plants and animals. . . . But the whole vital process of the earth takes place so gradually and in periods of time which are so immense compared with the length of our life, that these changes are not observed, and before their course can be recorded from beginning to end whole nations perish and are destroyed.
ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/aristotle.html
Your criticism is based on prejudice and hopelessly unjustified.
“Reparation” is the best alternative to “ransom” because it implies the rectification of injustice, liberation from evil and the restoration of harmony. Anyone who believes the bloodstained history of the human race is not conclusive evidence of the need for intervention is unrealistic. It is highly significant that no other solution to the problem of evil is forthcoming…
