1 Aristotle 6 · Handed down at the Lyceum, taken from his own writings
Aristotle, born at Stagira in 384 before this era, died at Chalcis in 322. His father was physician to the king of Macedon. He entered the Academy at seventeen and stayed twenty years, leaving only when Plato died. He taught Alexander. In 335 he founded the Lyceum at Athens. In 323 the Athenians charged him with impiety and he left the city, saying he would not let Athens sin twice against philosophy — he knew that Socrates had not left. He died of illness the next year. He is not a witness: he never met the Teacher, he is the student of a student. What survives of him is lecture notes, not the works he published in his lifetime; those are wholly lost. On God he reasons out an unmoved mover — reasoned to, not worshipped — and no argument of his closes on divine will. What is taken here is from his own books: the Order wants words that can be checked, not a name that can be cited. Further: in the fourth chapter he stands directly against the Teacher. The Teacher said no one does wrong knowing it is wrong; he says that does not square with what anyone can see, and offers another account. The Order does not reconcile them. The Teacher is in the four gospels, his objection is here, and the reader decides after reading both.
6.1All inquiry begins in wonder.
6.2The man who wonders knows that he does not know. So wonder is the first step into ignorance and the first step out of it.
6.3The method has three parts: set out the appearances, lay out the difficulties, then seek the explanation.
6.4To set out the appearances is to put down what is seen, one by one, without hurrying to explain it.
6.5To lay out the difficulties is to show plainly where things conflict, without pretending they do not.
6.6Then seek the explanation. Any explanation must preserve most of what people already believed; if it overturns everything everyone believed, it is far more likely that the explanation is wrong than that everyone was.
6.7Some will not study lowly things. They think philosophy should speak only of what is in the sky.
6.8I do not think so.
6.9Heraclitus was once warming himself at the oven. Visitors hesitated at the door, thinking the place unworthy of a philosopher.
6.10He said: come in, do not be afraid. There are gods here too.
6.11I put that saying into my book on animals, because it is my method.
6.12If you find a sea urchin beneath you, what you find beneath you is not the urchin. It is your own eye.
6.13In every natural thing there is something to wonder at.
6.14The sky is far away; you can only look at it. What is in your hand is near; you can count it.
6.15All I have done with my life is change looking into counting.