Aristotle's Life and Education - Aristotle was born in 384BC in Stagira, Chalcidice, to Nicomachus, the personal physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. - Both of Aristotle's parents died when he was about thirteen, and Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. - At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy. - Aristotle studied at Plato's Academy in Athens for nearly twenty years. - After leaving Athens, Aristotle traveled to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. - In 343 BCE, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander.

Aristotle's Contributions and Works - Aristotle was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens. - His writings covered a broad range of subjects including natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. - Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. - He influenced medieval scholarship, Judeo-Islamic philosophies, Christian theology, and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. - His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic and had a significant impact on the development of modern science. - Aristotle's most important treatises include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul, and Poetics.

Aristotle's Legacy - Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship and had a lasting influence on Western philosophy. - His influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. - Aristotle's ethics gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. - He was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as The First Teacher and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply The Philosopher. - Aristotelian tradition set the groundwork for the development of modern science.

Aristotle's Metaphysics - Coined by a first-century CE editor, Aristotle called it first philosophy. - Distinguished from mathematics and natural science, metaphysics is a contemplative philosophy that studies the divine. - It studies being as being and its properties. - Aristotle examines substance and essence in his Metaphysics. - Substance is a combination of matter and form, with matter being the substratum and form being the actual substance. - Immanent realism is Aristotle's philosophy that aims at the universal, with both matter and form belonging to the individual thing.

Aristotle's Contributions to Physics, Optics, and Biology - Aristotle related the four classical elements to the sensible qualities and added the heavenly aether representing the substance of the heavenly spheres. - Aristotle's laws of motion stated that heavy objects require more force to move and objects pushed with greater force move faster. - He proposed that natural motion depends on the element, with aether moving in a circle and the four elements moving vertically. - Aristotle's theory of falling bodies stated that the speed of fall is proportional to weight and inversely proportional to the density of the fluid. - Aristotle conducted experiments in optics using a camera obscura and made observations on light and image formation. - Aristotle recognised spontaneity and chance as causes of certain events and distinguished them from other types of causes. - Aristotle was the first person to study biology systematically, describing various marine creatures and their characteristics. - His scientific style involved gathering data, discovering patterns, and inferring possible explanations, making his biology considered scientific. - Aristotle did not propose the idea of common ancestry or support the concept of survival of the fittest in relation to evolution.