For Aristotle, the study of nature was the search for causes. He claimed, any object has four attributes:
Matter
Form
Moving cause
Final Cause
All substances are compounds of four elements:
Earth, Water, Air, Fire
In combination of two of four opposites
Hot or cold
Wet or dry
These qualities should be “immediately apparent” through the senses
Living beings are those which have in them, a moving principle, or soul.
In plants, the function of the soul is nutrition (and reproduction)
In animals, nutrition and sensation
In humans, nutrition, sensation and intellectual activity
Happiness, the final good of humans, as activity of the soul according to virtue—and …
“All men desire naturally to know…” first sentence in metaphysics
Sensation is the lowest level of knowledge, and memory a recollection of this knowledge
empeiria: the direct and immediate experience of things
Tekhne—know how, or art/technique
The ten categories:
Substance, Quality, Quantity, Relation, Where, When, Position, Having, Action, Passion
Archai are first principles, ie things that cannot be otherwise. Some characteristics of Archai are:
True
Primary (primitive)
Immediate
Better known (more familiar){than what we derived from them]
Prior (to what we derived from them)
Explanatory (of what we derived from them)
Aristotle rejected Democritus’ atomism