Aristotle and the medieval synthesis
Aristotle brought philosophy back to the observable world, and medieval Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinkers combined his ideas with religious traditions.
Aristotle: form in things
Aristotle rejected separate Forms. For him the form of a thing exists in the thing itself, as its structure and function. He studied nature by observation and classification, and explained change with four causes: what a thing is made of, its form, what brought it about, and its purpose. A thing's purpose, or end, became central to his ethics and science.
Potential and actual
Aristotle described change as the movement from potentiality to actuality. An acorn is potentially an oak tree; growing is the process of that potential being realised. This idea let him explain how something can change while remaining the same thing, a puzzle earlier Greek thinkers struggled with.
The medieval synthesis
Philosophers such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Moses Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas preserved, debated, and extended Greek philosophy. They asked how reason relates to revealed faith, built arguments for the existence of God, and adapted Aristotle's ideas about nature and purpose. Much of Aristotle reached medieval Europe through Arabic translations and commentaries.
Flashcard
A capacity a thing has to become something else
Check your understanding
How did Aristotle's view of forms differ from Plato's?