Aristotle: The Genius Who Really Wasn't

The generation after Socrates' death, his philosophies were made very popular by those who knew him, one of whom was Plato. Plato had a student named Aristotle, who is maybe the most influential person in history with his development of biological studies, logic, and psychology. Aristotle was undoubtedly a learned man and a scholar; however, there are many, myself included, who don't believe he was truly a genius.

Aristotle was very, very popular. He also had an insatiable thirst for knowledge. He was embraced by the public and religious leaders as one who expanded on Plato and Socrates. However, it is the last item in the series that causes the question of Aristotle's genius.

Aristotle seemed to have an amazing ability to look at something and explain how it worked. What has proven out later is that Aristotle seems to have compromised his principles for popularity. People wanted answers, perhaps confirmations, and he would produce them even if he didn't really know what he was talking about.

Two conclusions of Aristotle's that demonstrate his lack of genius were:

* Earth is the center of the universe, and stars were made from a 'perfect material' not found on Earth.
* The male gender in all species is larger and has more teeth.

Not only did Aristotle make these mathematical errors in his reasoning, he also accepted prestigious positions, taught for money, and fled his own fairly-certain execution only to die naturally within the year. These compromises of Socratian ethics indicate that he was in it for more than just passing knowledge on to future generations, and that he feared death.

He also added an inductive reasoning philosophy to Plato's description of Socrates' deductive methods. Starting at the beginning is a lineal thought, and served mainly to verify erroneous logic. To wit: Aristotle believed that if Earth was not the center of everything, then things in the air would be left behind as Earth flew through the sky. Inductively, he verified this by noting that birds aren't left behind in flight, ergo the Earth stays in one place.

His conclusions were the main argument against the mathemetician's Aristarchus of Namos claim a few decades later that Earth is in a solar system, rotates, and orbits the sun. Not until Copernicus, about 1,700 years later, would the genius of Aristarchus of Namos be recognized. Many of the scientific errors in the Bible can be directly attributed to Aristotle's teachings and the churches embracing of his 'verifying conclusions.'

So let's evaluate Aristotle's genius:

Was Aristotle a genius?

According to Kant's definition: Aristotle certainly appeared to be able to know that which others would need to be taught, but one would have to accept that Kant meant that a genius only needs to believe he knows what others would need to be taught. He was able to create new things. My conclusion is that according to Kant's definition, Aristotle was not a genius because he 'really didn't know that which he professed to know.'

With Schopenhauer's added definition: Aristotle appears to have put the will to live ahead of intellect. My conclusion is that he doesn't qualify according to Schopenhauer.

According to my criteria:

1. Aristotle was likely a conceptual thinker (he was entrepreneurial), but often fell prey to lineal conclusions.
2. Aristotle seemed to be able to compute math in ways common people can't, but he seemed to rely on prejudices to discount the math (i.e. he was correct in his math that if stars are the same things as our sun, then they would have to be millions of miles away.) However, he apparently didn't count the number of teeth in both genders of humans.
3. I haven't drawn a conclusion.
4. Aristotle seems to have used the creative side to consider options, but relied on his analytical side to draw many of his erroneous conclusions.
5. Aristotle's theories certainly have affected future generations, but not necessarily positively. His conclusions set astronomy back nearly 2,000 years, and modern religion is still flawed by erroneous Aristotlian presumptions.
6. He seems to have not been able to envision a million miles.
7. Aristotle appears to have understood the importance of physical laws and dynamics, but seems to have discounted some of it due to prejudices about limitations.
8. Aristotle appears to have had a misogynistic prejudice, and sought wealth and fame. When it came to death, he abandoned his principles totally.
9. Aristotle's conclusions demonstrate a blind faith that the male gender is superior to the female gender in all species, and that there are boundaries to reality.

By all three definitions, Aristotle does not seem to rate as a genius.

This is probably best verified when, in challenging Aristachrus's theory of the sun being the center of the solar system, it was popularly discounted for lacking the 'common sense' of Aristotle's conclusions!