Who Was Aristotle?

Aristotle was a philosopher who lived in Greece during the 4th century B.C. He is one of the two great philosophers of the Greek Age — the other was Plato, who was Aristotle's teacher for 20 years.

Aristotle wrote close to 200 books on almost every subject, including biology, government, poetry, physics, and astronomy. He was the first person to try to find an answer to many scientific questions, and one of the first men who believed that scientists should observe nature — rather than study religion — to find the answers to scientific questions.

Because Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander the Great, many of the philosopher's ideas were spread throughout the ancient world by Alexander's conquests.

For centuries, Aristotle was known as the greatest philosopher who ever lived, and his writing influenced almost every philosopher who lived after him.