It is generally assumed that the roots of much of modern Western culture go back to ancient Greece. Not to be overlooked of course are some of the other influences such as those from the Indian sub-continent as well as China. Nevertheless the impact of ancient Greek philosophers was substantial.

Who exactly were these early thinkers. We often hear of Aristotle, Plato and his mentor, Socrates, but surely there were others. Indeed there were and they predated these folks by a number of years. For several reasons, Aristotle's ideas had a greater impact on our culture than most. It's a good idea then to look at where he got them.

To the best of our knowledge, Greeks began to think around 650 B.C. This was the time of the so-called Seven Wise Men (or Seven Sages) of Greece. Not a great deal is known about them, in fact even who they were is sometimes in doubt. However the list normally includes Bias of Priene, Chilon of Sparta, Cleobulus of Lindus, Periander of Corinth, Periander of Corinth, Pittacus of Mytilene, Solon of Athens, and Thales of Miletus.

The Greeks referred to these Wise Men as Sophists meaning "men of wisdom" although this term later became associated with an other group of "teachers" who shared a different philosophic outlook. These later Sophists popularized the ideas of various early thinkers but with a unique twist. Most of them concluded that truth and morality were essentially matters of opinion.

Because they emphasized skills useful for achieving success in life, particularly public life, these latter Sophists were popular for a time, but their elastic approach to absolute truth and morality eventually got them into trouble with the establishment. The Sophist view point was definitely not shared by Aristotle.

Part of the original Wise Men, Solon is generally considered the founder of the Athenian democracy which makes him sort of responsible for a lot of modern political theory. Another member of the group, Thales of Miletos in Asia Minor is sometimes called the founder of Greek philosophy.

Thales founded the first important school of Greek philosophy, the Ionian or Milesian school which began with his belief that water is the basic substance of all matter. Another member, Anaximander believed among other things, in an eternal substance that changes into different forms.

His most interesting notion however was that of a universe as a number of concentric cylinders, of which the outermost is the sun, the middle is the moon, and the innermost is the stars. Within these cylinders is a drum-shaped earth. The resemblance of this idea to Aristotle's belief in a Universe of concentric crystal spheres is uncanny, but more on that later.

Another member of the group, Heraclitus, introduced the concept that Anaximander's "eternal substance", the source of all forms of matter, had something to do with fire. He also believed that the entire world is in a constant state of change or flux. Then there was Anaxagoras who fled to Miletos because his ideas got him in trouble in Athens.

The folks in Athens took exception to his suggestion that heavenly bodies weren't as divine as they thought. He called the Sun a hot rock and the Moon a clump of dirt. They were not amused so they threw him in the clink. Anyway, his real contribution to modern thought had to do with an eternal intelligence or "nous" organizing atoms into all the objects we see.

If the reference to "atoms" strikes you as odd, it is. Anaxagoras was one of the first to express this rather modern concept. He was obviously not averse to radical ideas — remember that Sun and Moon thing. In his view all matter had existed originally as atoms, or molecules. These atoms, infinitely numerous and infinitesimally small, had existed from all eternity.

As exciting as this idea was, Aristotle was much more interested in the concept of the "nous" or eternal intelligence. Fifteen hundred years later this was one of the things that made Aristotle's views so readily acceptable to the Church of the middle ages as you can imagine. The atom thing didn't go away either because others like Democritus picked up on that.

Finally there was Anaximenes. He went off on a bit of a tangent suggesting that air was the primary element of the cosmos and that all things could be reduced to it. Before we write him off completely let's give him and all his fellow thinkers credit for at least trying to come up with a rational explanation for how the world works. After all there were enough people who wanted to give all the credit to the ancient gods instead.

This brings us finally, to Aristotle himself. But before we do, I want to give a brief mention to a few of his contemporaries. First there is Pythagoras who stressed the importance of form rather than physical matter. He also stressed the importance of the soul, regarding the body only as a "vessel" to house it. Now you know where that idea comes from.

I also want to make a brief reference to Democritus, who believed that the various forms of matter are caused by differences in the shape, size, position, and arrangement of component atoms. There is that word again. We'll probably revisit him when we delve into the story of Pierre Gassendi and Epicurianism.

Unless I mention them, you'll no doubt want to know about Socrates and Plato. Ironically, we know precious little about Socrates' teachings directly. In his various dialogues, Plato pretends to be Socrates asking all the deep questions that form the basis for much of his, Plato's, philosophical ramblings. From this we can infer much of Socrates' philosophical concepts as well as learning the reasons why he was sentenced to death.

For example, he described the soul not in terms of mysticism but as "that in virtue of which we are called wise or foolish, good or bad." In other words, Socrates considered the soul a combination of an individual's intelligence and character. Plato's approach of using dialogue to arrive at greater knowledge appears to have been borrowed directly from the master.

Plato's many works ranging from politics ("The Republic") to life after death ("Myth of Er") make for an interesting study in its own right but he seems to have had little impact on the writings of his star pupil, Aristotle. Plato too believed in a geo-centric universe but seems to have had little interest in hands-on science. The myth of the cave and its subsequent theory of the forms may have led to Aristotle's definition of form as a distinguishing property of objects with an independent existence.

And now About Aristotle
Aristotle, in spite of having spent twenty years in Plato's Academy, seems to have developed a very different approach to learning about the universe. He was born in 384 B.C. at Stagira, in Macedonia, the son of a physician to the royal court. He died 62 years later in 322 B.C. Much of his writing has survived only in fragments.

The best preserved are his lecture notes which outline in detail, courses on almost every branch of knowledge and art, and it is on this that most of our knowledge about him is based. Aristotle surveyed and systemized nearly all the then known branches of knowledge and provided the first ordered accounts of biology, psychology, physics, and literary theory.

In addition, he invented the field known as formal logic, pioneered zoology, and addressed virtually every major philosophical problem known during his time. Unlike Plato who had a more free-wheeling approach to learning, Aristotle tended to a more systematic and formal structure.

I suspect it was his pre-occupation with process as opposed to ideas that made him the darling of his followers. I am fully aware that offering a less than glowing tribute to one of the pillars of Western thought is pretty risky but I'll press on nonetheless. One of the problems has to do with volume.

Not only did Aristotle offer a vast amount of commentary on the world as he perceived it, his followers conspired to add even more. Among those in particular were the Scholastics that I've talked about elsewhere. You may recall that it was Albertus Magnus and his "deciple" Thomas Aquinas that really took to Aristotle's approach.

The reasons aren't all that hard to understand. Although he predated Christianity by several centuries, Aristotle was essentially inclined to be a pious follower of the religion of his peers. This frankly implies to me an eager willingness to subordinate himself and his philosophy to the status quo.

Compare this to Socrates who was forced to take his own life because of "impiety" or Anaxagoras who beat it out of Athens after he spent time in jail. To be sure Aristotle too left Athens in a hurry toward the end of his life but this was because of his Macedonian roots, not his philosphy.

One of the things that bothers me about the way his ideas were embraced so wholeheartedly by the European intellectual establishment was the fact that he got so many of his facts wrong. That might not have been a problem if these 'facts' had not become the foundation for much of the official science of the medieval church.

Unlike today, these people had the power of life and death over their subjects and were not afraid to use it. Any deviation from these accepted "truths" could easily get you killed... or worse. So what exactly were some of these wrong-headed ideas? Many of them involved Physics and Astronomy.

For example in astronomy, Aristotle proposed a finite, spherical universe, with the earth at its center. This central region was comprised of four elements: earth, air, fire, and water which were all strictly part of the imperfect earthly sphere. Earthly motion is always linear and always comes to a halt, in other words, temporal.

Notice how this fit nicely with the religious view that the earthly things are somehow second-rate. By contrast, the heavens move naturally and endlessly in a complex circular (read: perfect) motion. The heavens, therefore, must be made of a fifth, and different element, which he called aither.

As recently as the 17th century, poor Rene Descartes was still hamstrung by this bit of piffle. Who knows how much more useful his output might have been without it. It is well known that Copernicus and Galileo were both skating on thin ice when they challenged the Aristotelian notion that the nightly motion of stars across the sky was the result of stars being fixed on rotating crystalline spheres.

Finally Aristotle did nothing to improve equality among all men and women. Not only did he support the notion that women's only role in procreation was to provide an incubator, his ethics were most elitist. "Full excellence" can be realized only by the mature male adult of the upper class, not by women, or children, or barbarians (non-Greeks), or salaried "mechanics" (manual workers). All these would be denied voting rights.

I don't know about you but the more I read, the more Aristotle reminds me of a boat anchor instead of a pillar. Most historians will argue that in assessing these ancient thinkers you have to place them in the context of their time and place. That's fair enough but how is it that in so many respects he got it wrong when so many of his contemporaries were much closer to the mark.

And if he did get it wrong, why were his ideas so lovingly embraced when in fact there were much better theories to pick from. I'm not trying to re-write history but perhaps we should be a little choosier about which players we decide to lionize. With better role models maybe our science would progress much more than it often does.

I hope I have once again demonstrated how important it is to have an understanding of the factors that led up not only to the science we now posess but also to the way we approach our current scientific puzzles. One of the constant challenges facing anyone doing science is to pursue substance and not get bogged down in process.

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