Aristotle Essay

Throughout the writings of Aristotle, his satisfaction seems to stem from taking a term or idea that is quite familiar to the readers, and piecing it apart and stretching it until every facet has come to fruition. Aristotle seems to veer from Plato’s manner of Socratic Method to answer questions in the same philosophical realm. Instead, Aristotle poses these questions and then uses theory, evidence and examples to verify his hypothesis. Aristotle, together with Socrates and Plato, is one of the most important figures in all Western philosophy.
In our previous readings of Plato, Socrates inquired about the nature of things, such as piety in the dialogue of Euthyphro. Therefore, the conclusion was reached that the nature of things is their form; a form declares what a thing is. A problem that was reached in this theory, though, was that it a lot of information was not included on why things come to be. In Aristotle’s Physics he defines the nature of a thing as a principle of change: its motion and rest (327). This principle of change is that which a thing is based upon. Also, it becomes obvious that there are natures which are the properties of a thing, that in turn rely upon the definition of that thing. The form is what a thing is, for example, a candle; and matter is that which has the potential to become the form, the wax. The form is the end of the process of coming to be, while matter is that which comes to have the form. Applying this to the central idea of Aristotle’s theory: as the wax is to the candle, the soul is to the body.
Aristotle’s science of nature focuses mainly on the form of that thing. This form is separable from the matter in one’s thought, but not in one’s existence and reality. This is another area that we see Aristotle deviate from Plato's theory of forms, according to which forms are intelligible objects existing in their own right. One also does not know a thing until we grasp the why of it “which is to grasp its primary cause” (330)....