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Yes, Plato is the author of the Dialogues of Socrates. My bad if my last sentence was written unclearly to seems as if Aristotle was a student of Socrates. Yet
by wutangson1 12y ago
Yes, Plato is the author of the Dialogues of Socrates. My bad if my last sentence was written unclearly to seems as if Aristotle was a student of Socrates.
Yet, I suggest going back to that same link you posted and read all of Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle defines courage and what is the only real justification for war. After reading Book II, by the time you get to Book VII, you may not think Aristotle believed people deserved to be slaves.
Also, if Aristotle is bonkers, I'd be glad to know who you think the real man/woman of science is. And I hope the answer isn't Einstein.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoThe real man/woman of science is obviously the hermaphroditic god-head at the center of creation. Any fool knows that.
- wutangson1 12y agohackneyed
- lotsofmangos 12y agoWell, I don't care if it is the same tired old response that everyone gives. It is always good to spread the word about the godhead and its holy genitalia, which in both quantity and variety are innumerable in even the largest of Cantor's series of infinite sets.
- fsloth 12y agoAs an example of Aristotle being quite useless: When I need to figure out mechanics I'd rather use Newton's mechanics than Aristotle's.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoHe's quite good for platform games.
- fsloth 12y agoBut not so much for interplanetary trajectories :)
- peterfirefly 12y agohttp://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/gait_anim.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/gait_anim.html Part 8: "The reason why snakes are limbless is first that nature makes nothing without purpose, but always regards what is the best possible for each individual, preserving the peculiar essence of each and its intended character, and secondly the principle we laid down above that no Sanguineous creature can move itself at more than four points. Granting this it is evident that Sanguineous animals like snakes, whose length is out of proportion to the rest of their dimensions, cannot possibly have limbs; for they cannot have more than four (or they would be bloodless), and if they had two or four they would be practically stationary; so slow and unprofitable would their movement necessarily be. "
- fsloth 12y agoCould you elaborate why you choose this particular bit? Aristotle's production is full of enumerations of the observable phenomena but the science as we know it today got going only after people started to figure out they actually should test the conclusions they drew from their observations and found out that Aristotle was in several places in fact not correct but merely blowing so much hot air to impress his audiences. I was not questioning the cultural merits of his legacy, but merely the practical. His political and pedagogic writings are far more interesting, IMO, as studies of the human condition. While the roots of science have several offshoots buried in greece soil the tree started to seriously bear any fruit only after Baconian inquiry was accepted by the european intelligentzia.
- peterfirefly 12y agoBecause it is part of a particularly daft bit about the number of "points" and locomotion. It is also there he insists that flies have four legs. (Yes, there is a particular insect from his area that seemingly only has four legs -- but it is still daft.)
- lotsofmangos 12y agoHe insists that specifically a mayfly, which does walk on only four of its legs, only ever using the other two to grip during mating, only has four legs, while discussing the locomotion of walking. Which seems fair. If legs are for walking, mayfly do only have four legs.
- fsloth 12y agoDownvotes :)? I would like to see you try land to the moon using Aristotle rather than the mechanics formulated by Newton...