f his broad shoulders his classmates called him Platon meaning broad and it was later shortened to Plato. He lived from 427 to 347 B.C. and was a pupil of Socrates startin gin 409 B.C. Plato started a school in Athens called the Academy, this term has been used for school ever since. His main interest was moral philosophy, he wasnt fond of natural philosophy which he thought of as an inferior and unworthy sort of knowledge. Plato believed knowledge had no practical use, it existed for the abstract good of the soul.Aristotle, who along with Plato and Socrates is considered one of the most famous ancient thinkers, lived from 384-322 B.C. He studied under Plato at the Academy starting at age 17 and stayed for 20 years, first as a student then as a teacher. After Plato died Aristotle left Athens and counseled Hermias and married his daughter, Pythias. Then he tutored a young Alexander the Great. 355 B.C. he returned to Athens and established his own school, Lyceum. Aristotle regarded the world as being made up of individuals occurring in fixed natural species. Aristotles most distinct philosophic contribution was a new theory of causality. He thought each thing or event has more than one reason explaining its existence. He proposed four explanatory causes. The material cause, matter out of which a thing is made; the efficient cause, the source of motion or change; the formal cause, which is the species, kind or type; and the final cause, the full development of an individual or the intended function of a construction or invention. Aristotle explored many fields of thought. In astronomy he proposed a finite, spherical universe, with the earth at its center. To him psychology was a study of the soul and its association with the body. In logic he developed rules for reasoning that included syllogisms. His works were lost in the West after the downfall of Rome. Until the 20th Century logic meant Aristotles logic. In the 20th...
