ABSTRACT
Aristotle, whose father was physician to King Amyntas III of Macedon and who later would tutor Alexander, son of King Philip II, studied for twenty years at the Academy of Plato in Athens. Aristotle's approach to investigation and explanation in natural science clear, this chapter provides two extended examples, one from his study of animal generation, and one from his study of animal respiration. It discusses his theory of the heavens, of meteorological phenomena, and his theory of the basic material elements and the uniform bodies constituted from them. Since the 1970s, a significant number of moral philosophers, disaffected with both the utlilitarian and deontic approaches to ethics, began to recommend and mount a defence of virtue ethics, often invoking the name of Aristotle. Aristotle clearly believes that for an individual human being to achieve the final human good he must live in a well-organised and well-governed polis.
