Aristotle was more of a philosopher than an actual physical inventor. Yet some of his theories are considered as inventions for the science. Unlike the idealism of Plato, Aristotle emphasized realism and observations. He produced works and studies on various subjects such as logic, physics, psychology, natural history, ethics, meteorology, memory, sleep, and youth versus old age.Aristotle covered
. a wide range of subjects and disciplines, although one of his greatest achievements was creating a systematic treatment of correct reasoning, or logic. He developed a theory of deduction with strong principles governing correct inferences. The basis of Aristotelian reasoning is inclusion and exclusion, which is represented graphically in modern day by Venn diagrams. Aristotle's notion of a "deduction" refers to an argument that if true, causes other things to become true as as a result. A classic example is: if all A's are B's and all B's are C's, then all A's are C's. Deductive reasoning found its way into Aristotle's views on science. According to Aristotle, science explains what is less known by things that are better known.Aristotle also made advances to category theory. In one of his early works, The Categories, Aristotle claims that things fall into one of the following categories: a substance, a quantity, a quality, a relative, where, when, being in a position, having, acting upon, or being affected.One of Aristotle's more significant contributions to the world of philosophy was his Four-Causal explanatory scheme. In his work on Physics, four basic questions regarding a thing come about: what it is, what it is made of, what brought it about, and what it is for. Aristotle mentions four causes: the material cause (what makes up the object), the formal cause (the structure), the efficient cause (what caused it to exist), and the final cause (or goal). According to Aristotle, all four causes are both necessary and sufficient for adequacy in explanation of something.For more information on Aristotle, see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/. More reference links: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/ http://gkonstantinou.homestead.com/aristotle.html
