Aristotle

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer

Full name , Aristotls 384 BC Born Stageira, Chalcidice 322 BC (age 61 or 62) Died Euboea Era Ancient philosophy Region Western philosophy Peripatetic school School Aristotelianism Physics, Metaphysics, Poetry, Main intere Theatre, Music, Rhetoric, Politics, sts Government, Ethics, Biology, Zoology Notable ide Golden mean, Reason, Logic, as Syllogism, Passion

Aristotle (Greek: , Aristotls) (384 BC 322 BC)[1] was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the 19th century.

His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold"),[2] it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have survived.[3] Life Aristotle was born in Stageira, Chalcidice, in 384 BC, about 55 km (34 mi) east of modern-day Thessaloniki.[4] His father Nicomachus was the personal physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Aristotle was trained and educated as a member of the aristocracy. At about the age of eighteen, he went to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy. Aristotle remained at the academy for nearly twenty years before quitting Athens in 348/47 BC. The traditional story about his departure reports that he was disappointed with the direction the academy took after control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus upon his death, although it is possible that he feared anti-Macedonian sentiments and left before Plato had died.[5] He then traveled with Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. While in Asia, Aristotle traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island. Aristotle married Hermias's adoptive daughter (or niece) Pythias. She bore him a daughter, whom they named Pythias. Soon after Hermias' death, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander the Great in 343 BC.[6] Early Islamic portrayal of Aristotle Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During that time he gave lessons not only to Alexander, but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander. In his Politics, Aristotle states that only one thing could justify monarchy, and that was if the virtue of the king and his family were greater than the virtue of the rest of the citizens put together.[7] Tactfully, he included the young prince and his father in that category. Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be 'a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants'.
[8]

By 335 BC he had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as the Lyceum. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stageira, who bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus. According to the Suda, he also had an eromenos, Palaephatus of Abydus.[9] It is during this period in Athens from 335 to 323 BC when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his works.[6] Aristotle wrote many dialogues, only fragments of which survived. The works that have survived are in treatise form

and were not, for the most part, intended for widespread publication, as they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his students. His most important treatises include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul) and Poetics. Aristotle not only studied almost every subject possible at the time, but made significant contributions to most of them. In physical science, Aristotle studied anatomy, astronomy, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and zoology. In philosophy, he wrote on aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, economics, psychology, rhetoric and theology. He also studied education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. His combined works constitute a virtual encyclopedia of Greek knowledge. It has been suggested that Aristotle was probably the last person to know everything there was to be known in his own time.[10] Near the end of Alexander's life, Alexander began to suspect plots against himself, and threatened Aristotle in letters. Aristotle had made no secret of his contempt for Alexander's pretense of divinity, and the king had executed Aristotle's grandnephew Callisthenes as a traitor. A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected Aristotle of playing a role in Alexander's death, but there is little evidence for this.[11] Upon Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens once again flared. Eurymedon the hierophant denounced Aristotle for not holding the gods in honor. Aristotle fled the city to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, explaining, "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy,"[12][13] a reference to Athens's prior trial and execution of Socrates. He died in Euboea of natural causes within the year (in 322 BC). Aristotle named chief executor his student Antipater and left a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.[14]

Carolus Linnaeus

A painting of Carolus Linnaeus made in 1775 by Alexander Roslin.

Carolus Linnaeus (23 May 1707 10 January 1778) was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who created the binomial nomenclature. In this system, every kind of animal and plant is given a name consisting of two Latin words, for its genus and species. This became used by biologists all over the world, and he is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". He was a good linguist, and famous in his time. He was made a noble by the Swedish king.

Bentham and Hooker

George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker - Two English taxonomists who were closely associated with the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew, England have given a detailed classification of plant kingdom, particularly the angiosperms.

They gave an outstanding system of classification of phanerogams in their Genera Plantarum which was published in three volumes between the years 1862 to 1883. It is a natural system of classification. However, it does not show the evolutionary relationship between different groups of plants, in the strict sense. Nevertheless, it is the most popular system of classification particularly for angiosperms. The popularity comes from the face that very clear key characters have been listed for each of the families. These key characters enable the students of taxonomy to easily identify and assign any angiosperm plant to its family. Bentham and Hooker have grouped advanced, seed bearing plants into a major division called Phanerogamia. This division has been divided into three classes namely: 1. Dicotyledonae 2. Gymnospermae and 3. Monocotyledoneae

Julian Huxley

Julian Huxley as Fellow of New College, Oxford 1922

Born Died Residence 22 June 1887 London 14 February 1975 (aged 87) London

Nationality British Fields Evolutionary biology Rice Institute, Oxford University, Institutions Kings College London, Zoological Society, UNESCO Alma mater Balliol College, Oxford Known for Influences Influenced Notable awards Evolutionary synthesis, Humanism, UNESCO, Conservation, Eugenics T.H. Huxley, W.G. (Piggy) Hill E.B. Ford, Gavin de Beer, Aldous Huxley Kalinga Prize, Darwin Medal, DarwinWallace Medal, Lasker Award

Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS (22 June 1887 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis. He was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London (19351942), the first Director of UNESCO, and a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund.

Huxley was well known for his presentation of science in books and articles, and on radio and television. He directed an Oscar-winning wildlife film. He was awarded UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the popularisation of science in 1953, the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society in 1956,[1] and the DarwinWallace Medal of the Linnaean Society in 1958. He was also knighted in that same year, 1958, a hundred years after Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace announced the theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1959 he received a Special Award of the Lasker Foundation in the category Planned Parenthood World Population. Huxley was a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society and its president from 19591962.

Robert Whittaker

Born Died Nationality Fields Institutions Alma mater Known for

December 27, 1920 Wichita, Kansas, U. S. A. October 20, 1980 (aged 59) Ithaca, New York, U. S. A. United States Ecology Cornell University University of Illinois gradient theory in ecology

Robert Harding Whittaker (19201980) was a distinguished American plant ecologist, active in the 1950s to the 1970s. Born in Wichita, Kansas, he obtained a B.A. at Washburn Municipal College (now Washburn University) in Topeka, Kansas, and, following military service, his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois.

He held teaching and research positions at Washington State College in Hanford, Washington, the Hanford National Laboratories (where he pioneered use of radioactive tracers in ecosystem studies), Brooklyn College, University of California-Irvine, and, finally Cornell University. Extremely productive, Whittaker was a leading proponent and developer of gradient analysis to address questions in plant community ecology. He provided strong empirical evidence against some ideas of vegetation development advocated by Frederic Clements. Whittaker was most active in the areas of plant community analysis, succession, and productivity. "During his lifetime Whittaker was a major innovator of methodologies of community analysis and a leader in marshaling field data to document patterns in the composition, productivity and diversity of land plant communities."[1] Thus Whittaker was innovative in both empirical data sampling techniques as well as synthesizing more holistic theories. He was the first to propose the five-kingdom taxonomic classification of the world's biota into the Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Monera. He also proposed the Whittaker Biome Classification, which categorized biome-types upon two abiotic factors: temperature and precipitation. Whittaker was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1974, received the Ecological Society of America's Eminent Ecologist Award in 1980, and was otherwise widely recognized and honored. He collaborated with many other ecologists including George Woodwell (Dartmouth), W. A. Niering, F. H. Bormann (Yale) and G. E. Likens (Cornell), and was particularly active in cultivating international collaborations. Ph.D. Students Ecologists completing Ph.D.s under Whittaker include Walter Westman, Robert Peet (now at University of North Carolina), Susan Bratton (now at Baylor University), Thomas Wentworth (now at North Carolina State University), Owen Sholes (now at Assumption College), Mark Wilson (now at Oregon State University), Linda Olsvig-Whittaker (now at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority) and Kerry Woods (now at Bennington College). Family Whittaker married biochemist Clara Buehl (then a coworker at Hanford Laboratories) in 1952. Their children are John Whittaker (b. 1953, now a Professor of Anthropology at Grinnell College), Paul Whittaker (b. 1955, formerly an ecologist/entomologist; now an abstract artist and photographer in Evanston, Illinois) and Carl Whittaker (b. 1957, a natural history illustrator and professional chef in Ithaca, New York). Clara was diagnosed with cancer in 1972; her health deteriorated and she died December 31, 1976. Whittaker married graduate student Linda Olsvig in 1979, but was himself diagnosed with lung cancer; he died October 20, 1980.