 |
| Aristotle |
In my
biographical dictionary, 1000 great
scientists (1996) I proposed an objective quantification of the
importance of different scientists, using measures such as the number of lines
assigned to each in encyclopedias in different languages, to avoid bias in
favor of the fellow citizens. Subsequently, in an unpublished work (The Quantification of History and the Future of the West),
I applied the same procedure to various branches of human creativity: science,
philosophy, literature, fine arts, and music. In that study, six scientists
were tied with the highest score: one Greek (Aristotle) and five from the
West (Descartes, Newton, Darwin, Freud and Einstein). We can therefore say that
Aristotle was the greatest scientist of the Greco-Roman civilization.
What
scientific achievements have made it possible for Aristotle to attain this
privileged situation?
- He was the creator of physical
science. Until then there had been three fundamental
sciences, practiced by all ancient civilizations: astrology (what we now
call astronomy), medicine and mathematics. Before Aristotle, some Greek
philosophers (Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Empedocles, Plato...) had attempted
to build a theory of the world based on the existence of a few fundamental
elements, whose interactions would explain the behavior of all bodies.
Aristotle systematized it into a coherent theory, according to which there
would be five elements (earth, water, air, fire and ether), four of which
coexist on Earth and the fifth (quintessence) would form the celestial
bodies. Applied to the elements, the principle that the similar
seeks its similar would explain why stones and water thrown into
the air fall again, vapors and fire ascend, while the proper movement of
bodies composed of ether would be rotating around the Earth.
- He was the creator of biology,
having invented a well organized classification system and perfected the theory
of the three souls (where soul means the principle of life):
vegetative soul (owned by all living beings and the only one possessed by
plants), the sensitive soul (proper to animals and man) and the rational
soul (possessed just by man).
- He was the creator of logic,
an essential tool for the development of science, which remained virtually
unchanged, such as Aristotle had developed it, well into the nineteenth
century.
It may seem
surprising that I am doing now, in the twenty-first century, a panegyric of
Aristotle, whose teachings dominated world philosophy and science until the
sixteenth century. Since then, much more emphasis has been placed on his
mistakes (he had many) than on his successes (which were also many). But every
scientist has made mistakes. That is precisely what how science advances: by gradually
correcting the errors of previous scientists. Copernicus made a mistake when he
put the sun in the center of the universe. Newton, because his equations do not
explain the precession of the perihelion of Mercury. And Einstein, who insisted
on describing a static universe. Besides which, Aristotle may have an important
role to play in modern science. To give just an example, the doctoral thesis in
philosophy of physics by Francisco José Soler Gil, written in the 21st century,
is titled Aristotle in the quantum world.
Apart from
his scientific and philosophical theories, which may be more or less debatable
today, Aristotle has bequeathed us a nomenclature, without which there are
things in our daily life that would be unintelligible. I will take as an
example what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about transubstantiation
of the Eucharist:
1376 The Council of Trent
summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer
said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of
bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy
Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there
takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of
the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the
substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and
properly called transubstantiation." (DS 1642).
To
understand this one has to resort to the nomenclature invented by Aristotle,
according to which substance is what something is, while accident
is the
set of properties of that something. In the consecration of the
Eucharist the substance changes, but not the accidents. In other words, the
physical-chemical properties of bread and wine remain unchanged after
consecration, so that a physical-chemical analysis of the consecrated host
would discover no difference with bread. It is not, therefore, a scientific
statement, but an act of faith. Many atheists,
and even Protestant Christians, stumble on this point, because they do not know
Aristotle’s nomenclature, which is what the Church applies. This definition was
adopted centuries before the existence of chemistry, so that it cannot be considered
a trick to escape the advances of science.
 |
| Niccolò Machiavelli |
Finally, I
want to point out that Aristotle’s Politics
by can be applied in our days almost unchanged. In that book, for instance,
Aristotle said that democracy is the worst form of government
except all those other forms that have been tried, two millennia
before Winston Churchill. He did not say it in those words, in the same way
that the famous phrase attributed to Machiavelli (the
end justifies the means) does not appear literally in The Prince. What Aristotle did in that book
was to classify political systems into three types, each of which has a good
and a bad version:
- The government of the best person (monarchy),
whose bad version is tyranny.
- The government of the best group (aristocracy),
whose bad version is oligocracy.
- The government of everybody (democracy),
whose bad version is demagogy.
Add to this
two observations:
- Among the good political systems, the best
is monarchy, followed by aristocracy, and the least good is democracy. Among
the bad, the worst is tyranny, followed by oligocracy, and finally by
demagogy.
- A general rule: any political system, even
if it is initially good, tends spontaneously to become corrupt and transform
into its bad counterpart.
It follows
that it is better to start from the least good political system (democracy),
because when it is corrupted (which is inevitable) it will lead to the least
bad political system (demagogy).
Let someone dare to deny that all this can be seen in
our time. Everyone should read Aristotle!The same post in Spanish
Thematic Thread on Science and History: Previous Next
Thematic Thread on Philosophy and Logic: Previous Next
Manuel Alfonseca
No comments:
Post a Comment