Mathematician:Aristotle

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Mathematician

Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.

Frequently cited as having been the inventor of the field of study known as (classical) logic.

Phenomenally influential philosopher whose works (for better or for worse) shaped the entirety of the intellectual development of the Western world for over a millennium.

Most important from the point of view of mathematics for formulating the Principle of Non-Contradiction and the Law of the Excluded Middle.

Introduced the concept of a variable.


Nationality

Greek


History

  • Born: 384 BCE, Stagirus, Macedonia, Greece
  • Died: 322 BCE, Chalcis, Euboea, Greece


Theorems and Definitions

Definitions of concepts named for Aristotle can be found here.


Writings

Only about a third of the writings of Aristotle survive. As can be expected, those that did have been extensively studied and catalogued. The entire collection is referred to as the Corpus Aristotelicum.

A standard way of referring to them is by Bekker number, named for August Immanuel Bekker, who published a definitive version of Aristotle's works between $1831$ and $1870$.


Complete works by Bekker numbers

The following list is complete. The titles are in accordance with the standard set by the 1984 Revised Oxford Translation (The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols).

Also given are the Latin titles. Disputed works are marked by *, and ** marks a work generally agreed to be spurious.


Logic (Organon)


Physics (the study of nature)


Metaphysics


Ethics and Politics

  • (1094a) Nicomachean Ethics (or Ethica Nicomachea)
  • (1181a) Great Ethics* (Magna Moralia)
  • (1214a) Eudemian Ethics (or Ethica Eudemia)
  • (1249a) On Virtues and Vices** (or De Virtutibus et Vitiis Libellus)
  • (1252a) Politics (or Politica)
  • (1343a) Economics* (or Oeconomica)


Rhetoric and Poetics


Sources