Aristotle was an indefatigable collector of facts -- facts zoological, astronomical, meteorological, historical, sociological.

Some of his political researches were carried out during the final period of his life when, from 335 to 322, he taught at the Lyceum in Athens; much of his biological research was done during the years of travel, between 347 and 335. There is reason to believe that his collecting activities were just as brisk during the first period of his adult life, the years between 367 and 347: that period is yet to be described. So far, we have seen Aristotle as a public figure and as a private researcher; but that is at most half the man. Aristotle, after all, is reputed to have been a philosopher, and there is nothing very philosophical about the jackdaw operations I have so far described. Indeed, one of Aristotle's ancient enemies accused him of being a mere jackdaw. Why did he turn away from exhorting the young and incur the terrible wrath and enmity both of the followers of Isocrates and of some other sophists? He must surely have implanted a great admiration for his powers, from the moment when he abandoned his proper business and was found, together with his pupil, collecting laws and innumerable constitutions and legal pleas about territory and appeals based on circumstances and everything of that sort, choosing. Aristotle died in the autumn of 322 BC. He was sixty-two and at the height of his powers: a scholar whose scientific explorations were as wide-ranging as his philosophical speculations were profound; a teacher who enchanted and inspired the brightest youth of Greece; a public figure who lived a turbulent life in a turbulent world. He bestrode antiquity like an intellectual colossus. No man before him had contributed so much to learning. No man after him might aspire to rival his achievements.

The Aristotle contribution was Aristotle's chief difference with Plato is that he rejects the separate existence of the Forms. According to Aristotle, the form or idea of humanity, for example, does not exist except in the many human beings. The many can be as like one another as you please, but they are not like some other reality separate from them all. If there are six things in the universe that are exactly alike, there is need to postulate a seventh of which they all copies. According to Aristotle, a changeable thing is brought into existence by a "moving cause", which must have the power to organise its material in the appropriate way. Aristotle has quite a bit to say about moving causes: see Metaphysics, 1013 a25 ff, in Supplement, p.118 (pause the tape while you read it); also about matter, form, and about the chain of moving causes going back to original unmoved (i.e. not in motion) movers. This is the subject matter of his Physics (Nature), one of his longest and most elaborate works. Just one more point before I leave it: According to Aristotle, Nature is eternal. It never began, it will never end, there always have been brass spheres and human beings, and fish and whatever other kinds of things there are; and there always will be. There is nothing in his philosophy corresponding to Plato's myth of creation by the demiurge - the world was never brought into existence. The neo-Platonists followed Aristotle here: the world emanates eternally from the One. Aristotle wrote books on many subject, including logic, physics, poetry, zoology, rhetoric, government, and biology. Aristotle extended Socrates and Platos critical thinking by writing a book

on logic - a central tenet of critical thinking. Aristotle epistemology logics were Aristotelian logic has principle been concerned with teaching good argument, and still taught with that end today.