ABSTRACT
Aristotle divided the domain of enquiry into the theoretical, practical and productive sciences. The first are concerned with obtaining truth for its own sake, something of the first importance given that 'all men by nature desire to know'; the other two – ethics and poetics, for example – with how people should, respectively, behave and produce things. The theoretical sciences, Aristotle divides into 'theology', 'physics' and mathematics. Aristotle rejected two views of substance or basic reality prevalent in his times: the doctrine that substance was some stuff, 'matter', out of which things are composed, and Plato's theory that what is truly real are immaterial Forms or Ideas of which ordinary things are both products and pale copies. For many Arab thinkers from the tenth to the thirteenth century and, from the thirteenth century on, for many Christian ones too, Aristotle was 'The Philosopher', 'the master of those who know'.
