Any Aristotle Fans out There?

[The once and future king]

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The problem is that he took a philosopher's approach to these issues rather than a scientist's approach.

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In 384 BC there is no such thing thing as a "scientific approach". The fact that there is one today is largely thanks to Aristotle and his Greek chums.

[maurile]

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The problem is that he took a philosopher's approach to these issues rather than a scientist's approach.

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In 384 BC there is no such thing thing as a "scientific approach". The fact that there is one today is largely thanks to Aristotle and his Greek chums.

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No, it's not thanks to Aristotle. Aristotle missed out on it.

Like I said, that doesn't mean he wasn't smart. But when people cite Aristotle as some kind of founding father of the scientific method, they are being ridiculous. He favored theorizing from his armchair over making empirical observations. That's the antithesis of the scientific method.

(Shall I point out again how that doesn't mean he wasn't smart? I'm afraid some people will miss it.)

[Triumph36]

You forget that much of Aristotle's works consist of refuting various pre-Socratics. The first book of the Physics and Metaphysics is devoted to this, if I remember correctly, and I don't think I am.

Still, to say he had 'no role' is unfair. It was his lack of method that people reacted against, and eventually won out over. Hobbes claims that most of what Aristotle said was laughable, and maybe he's right. Still, Aristotle's 'method' was better than that of the pre-Socratics (i.e. everything is air, or water), and so we can see him as part of a progression. To think that the scientific method could be devised in a vacuum is hindsight writ large - first you need people like Aristotle to get things wrong.