Aristotle

I was born in Stagira, son of Nicomachus, physician to Amyntas of Macedon. From him I learned to trust what the hand can touch and the eye can discern. At seventeen I went to Plato’s Academy in Athens and stayed two decades, honoring his search for forms while asking, again and again, what the causes are that bring a thing to be as it is.

After my teacher died, I worked under the protection of Hermias in Asia Minor and then on Lesbos. There the sea became my library: cuttlefish, dogfish, and oysters yielded their secrets; I opened bird eggs day by day to see a heart kindle and veins spread. Sense-perception, memory, and experience, so ordered, gave rise to understanding—not from oracles, but from patient looking.

Philip called me to Mieza to instruct his son Alexander. We read Homer and spoke of character, rule, and restraint. When I returned to Athens, I founded the Lyceum. We walked as we reasoned; I set down the instruments of logic, taught virtue as a mean shaped by habituation, examined constitutions with my pupils, and sought the causes—material, formal, efficient, final—by which nature can be understood.

After Alexander died, Athens turned hard against Macedon. An accusation of impiety found me; remembering Socrates, I withdrew to Chalcis, saying I would not allow the Athenians to offend twice against philosophy. I have spent my life asking for explanation suited to each subject, neither more nor less exact than the matter allows. If you would inquire with me, begin from what you see and do not rush past the causes.