Talk:Aristotle/Archives/2023

Origin of term "speculative"?

The first top-level heading on Aristotle's thought is entitled "Speculative philosophy." Yet, neither the article nor the child-articles linked as "Main articles" address the meaning of the term "speculative."

Its usage here, although at odds with the common English definition, largely accords with that of post-Kantian German Idealists. Yet, the etymology of the term goes back to Latin (speculatio, to observe), not Greek.

How did it come to be applied to Aristotle's logic and metaphysics? I am curious myself, and probably other readers are as well—even if it merits only a footnote. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 18:51, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Reading through the archives, the use of "Speculative Philosophy" seems to come from the suggestion of some editor in the past.

Reading through wikipedia, one is astounded at the low IQ individuals that contribute to these articles.

Needless to say, the term "speculative philosophy" is entirely inappropriate, and especially so with respect to the Organon. 184.147.248.114 (talk) 04:49, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

changed it to "Theoretical philosophy" - it's probably better to refactor the whole article into groupings that make more sense but at least "theoretical" is a division applied to Aristotle's philosophy and a Greek word. But the assumption that this was an "original" contribution by a wikipedia editor tracks with my own experience as well. - car chasm (talk) 05:20, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, no, it was not invented by a Wikipedia editor. The term "Speculative Philosophy" is a very old one, going back to Thomas Aquinas, see this for instance. I note also that there is actually a long-established Journal of Speculative Philosophy, which certainly includes Aristotle. The term therefore certainly "makes sense" and can be reliably cited. Whether we should reinstate the term or not, it is inexcusable to combine any request for a change of terminology with attacks on other editors. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:02, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

well that makes a whole lot of sense given the latin, but the idea that we should apply a thomist interpretation of aristotle *is* pretty original. The usage of the term "Speculative Philosophy" that you note tracks with the original post. and I would not call Aquinas very old at all - he lived closer to the present day then he did to Aristotle. Long enough ago not to be a reliable source, and not nearly long enough ago to be a primary one.

There's a whole bunch of people who dedicate their academic career to studying Aristotle in the modern day though - we should look there for reliable sources on how to best divide up Aristotle's philosophy rather than trying to make inferences based on modern usages. - car chasm (talk) 09:45, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Hm. The journal is modern, and the term is certainly in use among modern philosophers (whether or not it has Thomist origins), so I repeat, the term is not a Wikipedian invention, and is a proper candidate for use in the article. Whether we'd like to use it is a different question. Since by the way we don't cite headings, they are always to some extent invented, so talking about SYNTHesis is unhelpful, indeed inapplicable. Best obviously is to make headings fit their text contents with as little friction as possible, and since we don't say "speculative philosophy" anywhere else, it probably doesn't help to introduce it there. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:01, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Whether or not "speculative philosophy" is an established term is immaterial to the matter at hand since the label "speculative" does not not stand in proper contradistinction to "natural". Many of Aristotle's claims that fall under the domain of natural philosophy could be termed "speculative", while others less so. I give my assent to the contributor who suggested "theoretical philosophy", as it sits much better as a counterpart to "natural philosophy". And I apologize for the throwaway insult on matters of IQ. 184.147.248.114 (talk) 16:26, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Polymath vs scientist in lead sentence

I'm making this topic because there's been a little back and forth here and I want to let people raise objections here if they have them. I don't particularly have a strong opinion on the use of one of these words over the other in the short description, I think "philosopher" is necessary and should come first (as it's what google and others pull from) but either of the other options are fine if people want them - polymath works if we're considering an older use of the word (someone who has learned about a lot of different things) rather than someone like da Vinci, and scientist makes sense if we're looking at common usage today but might seem misleading or out of place applied to someone from Ancient Greece. I've kept polymath as the word that was there originally, and moved the list of topics covered even closer to the beginning of the article, which I think makes the interpretation clearer (addressing my own concerns with it) and also matches the guidelines in the manual of style. I've added a bit about science to the end of that paragraph because that does seem to make sense to include as well in the proper context.

I've also moved the Plato mention a bit later as it's already discussed in the following paragraph and I think that if we apply general style guidelines, each paragraph should have a discrete topic. The rest of the lead might need some maintenance as well along the same logic but I don't want to change to many things before letting people discuss it. - car chasm (talk) 20:25, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I think the current solution is not a problem, but maybe we could even use 3 words if necessary. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:43, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I think polymath is the correct term to use 1) it is Greek in origin 2) it means literally many knowledge 3) scientist is totally anachronistic in this context Thony C. (talk) 06:55, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Aristotle myth theory

Chinese nationalist historians are now starting to deny Aristotle existed at all, and they claim all works by him and other “ancient” Greeks were actually forged much later during the Renaissance. While this is undoubtedly a fringe belief, it seems to be part of a broader trend within Chinese academia these days, and might be worth a sentence or two. It reminds me of similar ideas in nationalist Russian circles, e.g. Fomenkoism. 2604:2D80:6984:3800:0:0:0:7B67 (talk) 00:27, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Not a good article

The article has deteriorated considerably in both style and content. Currently we have half a page about Aristotle's life, studies and a lot of not very primary information, not to mention gibberish ("global impact"!!!), all of which can be read by scrolling down the article. What was important and well written about method, ideas and influence has been unfairly replaced. Please restore the article to its previous form, as this was changed without consent. 2003:A:A0B:4100:E5C9:284F:979D:29A5 (talk) 18:57, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. The "global impact" wording was recently added, see a thread above; I've removed it: people should not be editing the lead without reference to the article body, as it's just a summary. I agree with you about quite a bit of the recent deletions; Aristotle's influence extends to many fields that are not today considered "philosophy", like law and biology, and the article is certainly right to discuss these. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:22, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Is there a version we should consider reverting to? (Or, use as a reference point for reworking.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:07, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

"the West"?

Near the beginning of the article, the term "the West" is used ("It was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon…"). Personally, I find it to be an imprecise and potentially even inaccurate term to use (what is included and excluded in "the West" is debatable). I could see the argument for using it, but I was wondering if anyone thinks there is a more precise replacement. Damiens the Regicide (talk) 04:05, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

The West plus the Middle East (insofar as we are talking about Islamic polymaths from the Islamic Golden Age) perhaps? That might be too wordy though. :D SpicyMemes123 (talk) 19:13, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I think it is accurate. Aristotle was not so popular in the Middle East, as opposed to Plato etc. The great Arabic Aristotelian was Averroes, who was a Spaniard. We could say Europe?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:43, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Yea, it might be better to entirely omit that part, imho.

At this point, I'm sure parts of Aristotelian philosophy has had global impact, so putting out a statement specifically limiting to some region or peeoples group doesn't make sense either, imo. Arjun G. Menon (talk · mail) 11:52, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I've updated this with the words global and world, as I feel that might be more accurate, especially with regards to someone like Aristotle. Not to mention, Aristotle's protégé Alexander created Hellenic empires that primarily reigned over the Middle East (including present-day Egypt, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, etc), and a small part of western India -- these were regions that comprised the historical spheres of Hellenic literary influence. Arjun G. Menon (talk · mail) 13:38, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Glad to see someone has already flagged this issue, I thought much the same. It seemed particularly inappropriate to describe Aristotle as "western" in the section on his influence on the medieval Islamic world: Islamic scholars saw themselves as equally rightful successors to Aristotle's legacy through the cultural interaction between what is now Greece and modern day middle east. No concept of "europe" per se existed at the time, it does not fit well as a modern descriptor of Aristotle to describe him as "western" either as the term is politically loaded and imprecise WikiLover01 (talk) 17:42, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

So you think he had an equal impact all over the world? Western is perhaps imprecise (which might in some cases be a good thing) but I think there are ways to word our text which are somewhere in between world and Europe. His influence was basically in all the old Graeco-Roman areas. For this era and topic I have seen it called the greater west.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:19, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Aristotle's theory of universals

Anti-realists keep asserting that Aristotle's theory of universals originates from Problem of universals rather than from Aristotle, and that therefore all of Aristotle's works fail WP:NPOV for being too pro-Aristotle. I cite [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aristotle%27s_theory_of_universals&action=history Aristotle's theory of

Influence

This section becomes increasingly arbitrary and trivial the closer it comes to the present, which it very much misrepresents. (Rejected in the 20th century only to be rehabilitated in the 21st? By a book published in 1981, no less!) Also, just for instance, I love Joyce, but he's a novelist. How is his opinion of Aristotle relevant? And the fact that Aristotle appeared in an, by all accounts, terrible movie in the oughts?

Is there support for seriously condensing and cutting this section back? If so, are there any suggestions for the principles upon which to proceed? Although I don't think it should be deleted entirely, multiple sources in the section lead present the endeavor of summarizing Aristotle's influence as an almost impossibly enormous task. What is included here, I think, needs to be much more focused. The transmission of his texts via Islamic scholars and Thomas Aquinas should be preserved. Possibly also how much of his work on natural philosophy has been superseded. But all the various assertions that so-and-so said he was boss, in my view, just need to go.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 18:01, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I went ahead and did one round of edits to remove anything trivial or simply wrong. I'll gladly justify any of the particulars to anyone who disagrees with any part of these sizable cuts to this section.

Some of the works in the bibliography still need to be removed. There is a script that can identify them. I'm going to find it and see if I can figure out how it works. If, however, anyone else reading already knows how to do this, please do! If it just cranks out a list, I'm perfectly willing do the second step of performing the deletions if posted here.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 18:06, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I didn't see this at the time, or would have objected strongly to the unjustified assertions, specially about modern science. The literary quotations are largely a matter of taste: they certainly name Aristotle, so their relevance is not in doubt, but given that they are primary sources (in one sense) their importance can be debated. The scientific statements are however definitely of encyclopedic interest, as they reliably discuss Aristotle's reception in that field. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:01, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Chiswick Chap,

Thanks for weighing in! I have some issues with "Modern rejection and rehabilitation", which I lay out here in more detail than my edit descriptions:

Russell's A History of Western Philosophy is notoriously unreliable. His views of Aristotle probably belong only in his own article. Or, if they are to be included here, this needs to be reframed as his position, not the report of a neutral historian. Moreover, no one writing in 1946 is qualified to generalize about the 20th century.

Russell is entitled to his view (whatever other philosophers think of it): and the mere fact that he thought Aristotle worth mentioning is relevant here. The article does not assert or imply that the 1946 source says anything about the second half of the century: that comes across as very close to WP:STRAWMAN. By "serious intellectual advance" Russell may well have meant Galileo and Harvey (say); there's no suggestion he was referring only to the 20th century (let alone the future half of it). Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:19, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I removed the sentence suggesting this. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 22:51, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

The claim that Aristotle was without major philosophical credibility in the 20th century is false. See, for instance, Kukkonen (2010), pp.76–77 (conveniently online here [1], almost certainly in violation of his contract—but he's the author, so that's on him). His influence just via phenomenology (Husserl and Heidegger) is massive—and that's to say nothing of Thomism.

Eh? The "Modern rejection and rehabilitation" section doesn't say that at all: it's making a different point. But if you want to cover his influence on philosophy, why not. If you want to add something brief from Kukkonen on those strands of philosophy, that would be fine, of course. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:19, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I've specified in the header that the topic of the section is natural science rather than philosophy. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 22:54, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

If the claim is that it is Aristotle's credibility in the natural sciences that has been revived in the 21st century (as your comment above suggests), I am concerned we might be in WP:FRINGE territory. Stronger sourcing is needed. I'd be happy to be wrong on this, but I don't think Aristotle is part of the standard science curriculum.

Let's go by what the cited sources say, rather than guessing what I or any other editor thinks, please - it's not relevant. The sources are certainly not "fringe". Nobody is remotely asserting that Aristotle is taught in school science (he certainly isn't): that feels very much like a strawman as well. Dijksterhuis, Medawar, Leroi, and Tinbergen are serious authors in their fields; Leroi and Tinbergen as practising biologists, who treated Aristotle very seriously (and even Medawar felt he had to mention him). The assertion is simply that they are instances of people who see Aristotle as important in their field. There is a deeper point, too, which the article mentions earlier: Aristotle founded biology, and his use of direct observation of animals, specifically, was foundational. The fact that Tinbergen's four questions for 20th century biology map directly to Aristotle is certainly remarkable, and readily verified. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:19, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm still pretty sure this is at minimum WP:UNDO. I've posted here in hopes of feedback from someone more knowledgeable. (No argument whatsoever, to be clear, about his historical importance.) Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 23:02, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I continue to find the reference to the 2004 Alexander (2004 film) to be odd. I don't think this would be encyclopedic even if it were well-received, which it was not[2]. Is there a specific connection to the Poetics? While I see that the reference to Hollywood is correctly sourced to Kukkonen (2010), p.77, I would like to see something stronger. It reads to me as a rhetorical flourish, not a reported fact about film scripts.

I don't remotely see why your feeling that Kukkonen's reliably-sourced mention of the film is "odd" has anything to do with this article, specially as you agree that Kukkonen is a reliable source. Editors are free to think and feel whatever they like, but it is entirely proper for an encyclopedia article to report what scholars have to say about a subject. I will note that Kukkonen did not just pull the film mention out of thin air; as the article states, the image of Aristotle tutoring Alexander is "enduring", in other words the 2004 film merely stands as a marker along the long road of that "romantic" image's history. That is not a "rhetorical flourish", and it is untrue and demeaning to imply that this is just a "fact about film scripts": it is much bigger than that. Once again, the job of the article is to report what scholars and thinkers have written about the subject, and that is what it properly does. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:19, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Kukkonen does not mention the film. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 23:04, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Also "demeaning" is overstated. Intelligent, well-meaning editors disagree all the time about what constitutes due coverage. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 23:09, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 20:50, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Um, overstated or not, I found your comment unhelpful and undue, along with your expressed desire to continue to delete cited and reviewed materials from this article.

We at least agree about Aristotle's importance in multiple domains, including biology, and that means that we require a 20th century section. If it can be beefed up, that will be a good thing, and Kukkonen is one possible source.

I also feel that your wholesale removal of the literary mentions was going much too far. Too long, possibly, but there are very few philosophers who get celebrated in verse by major poets through the ages, so something needs to be said about these literary matters through the centuries. I'm busy with holiday matters now and for the coming period, but will return to consider this after that. Thank you for advertising this discussion on the WikiProject: it will be good to get some other eyes on this. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:20, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

I think we should err on the side of caution when the discussion is about any significant deletions (at least if the article is not really terrible). I think we also need to err on the side of broad coverage in an article which potentially touches so many fields. A discussion about due balance should not turn into people arguing for more emphasis on their favourite topic. Patrick posted a warning and none of us replied. So I am not complaining about the efforts in the past, but only note my thoughts in order to consider where we go next.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:18, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Andrew Lancaster,

As to broad coverage, I of course support this. I'd add just two general points.

First, the best way I know to ensure that the coverage of an article is properly balanced – especially on a large article like this, on a topic with an overwhelmingly enormous literature – is to check it against a variety of other high-quality introductory level treatments, even if only at the level of the TOC. For, just because something has a supporting source does not mean that it belongs in a general-level article. Giving a large amount of attention to a view widely deemed marginal misrepresents the subject.

Second, material that is included needs to be contextualized so that it contributes to our understanding of the subject. The fact that James Joyce or Any Rand or Karl Marx said something about Aristotle will usually need further discussion to explain its relevance. Otherwise it's just a piece of trivia (to which future editors will surely add).

I haven't reviewed all my September edits, but these would have been the primary principles behind them.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 00:52, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

I think you have to be careful about deciding what is "marginal" too individualistically on an article which can be important to so many fields. Wikipedia does not aim at creating introductory texts, and so using texts with that aim is not to get around the need to build consensus concerning major editorial judgements. Questions of due balance are not simply questions of whether something can be sourced or not.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:26, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Andrew Lancaster,

You have my near total agreement. (Only quibble is that a top-level article like this should be accessible to a general audience and, in that sense, introductory.) In particular, an article should not include even peer-reviewed material that runs against the scholarly consensus, at least without special reason and having its (at least currently) marginal status clearly flagged (cf. WP:ONEWAY).

My primary concern has been with the claim that Aristotle has been "rehabilitated" in any meaningful way in the natural sciences. Although I would still support the section's removal, I'm not going to push for that any further myself. @Chiswick Chap has made some productive edits in response to this discussion, and I appreciate that. (Thanks!)

If anyone doesn't like my new headings, btw, by all means go ahead and change to anything similarly neutral.

Is there anything specific you're concerned about? We've gotten a bit meta, and I'm not sure what we're discussing anymore with respect to improving the article.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 22:19, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

I would like to add a comment here which is I will acknowledge largely restricted to biology and natural sciences as it is my area of expertise and the opinion here could be contrued as OR in a way as it directly ties to my own work. So take it for what you will and it should not go in the article but may help some of the decision making here.

As a taxonomist and in particular specialising in nomenclature Aristotl's influence is both profound and largely forgotten. This rests with the decision of the nomenclatural codes to begin in 1756 with Linnaeus. As such all names prior to this but used by Linn wereacredited to Linn. Linnaeus copied many names from older texts including many of Aristotle'. For example the Green Sea Turtle Chelonia mydas and the Greek Tortoise Testudo graeca are Aristotle names copied by Linn in 1756. However they are thus attributed to Linn. not Aristotle. Hence he had a profound impact that has been forgotten by science.

Another point here is that the classification system used by Biology and adhered to by the Nomenclatural Codes is based on Aristotlean Logic, ie heirarchical sets. So all Phyla are contained by a Kingdom etc. When Linn developed this nomenclatural system he was adhereing to the teachings of Aristotle when he did it. Again this shows significant influence but largely unacknowledged in the modern world. When Biological Classification is taught at University we teach it as going back to Linnaeus not to Aristotle. This is because Linn developed it for the purpose of nomenclature and applied it to a method. Aristotle never did this.

What I am getting at here is there is a lot of Aristotle's teachings in what we now accept as Biological Science, but it is the developments of Linnaeus, Darwin, Huxley and many others from that source that is credited. Should this be the case, I do not know, throughout science there are people who have taken ideas already around and then developed them to a usable product and its they who get the credit, from that point of view Biological Nomenclature is correctly applied to Linnaeus. This is a philisophical argument, how far back do you take these developments to give the credit. I for one would love to see species named byAristotle, names still used today, being acredited to Aristotle. But that cannot happen. Its not unique to Aristotle there are numerous species named by Seba also in 1735 whose names are attributed to later authors. Even Aristotle did not probably invent the names for the Green Sea Turtle, after all Chelonia mydas is just ancient Greek for Sea Turtle. It had probably been around for hundreds of years before Aristotle.

My view is Aristotle should be acknoledged from a philsophical point of view where he can be, but his influence on modern science is minimised by the developments of those that built on his ideas and developed them to fruition. Hope this makes sense to people. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 20:07, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Faendalimas,

Thanks for chiming in! My knowledge in this area is limited, but what you say syncs up with what I do know. Does the coverage at Aristotle#Biology and the child article Aristotle's biology cohere with what you know about the subject? If anything there strikes you as wrong, flagging this on the talk page would be productive—even if you do not have a source at hand to justify an immediate edit.

However, the disagreement here, as I understand it, is not about Aristotle's great influence, but about his standing in current zoological science. An earlier section header suggested a "rehabilitation" in the 21st century, and I am objecting that this is a mighty strong claim that appears to be held only by a small, non-representative group of scientists.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 21:48, 2 January 2024 (UTC)