What is the history of Science? How did we take our first steps toward science, or where is the starting point of science? Since people have systematically made knowledge about the world for millennia, there’s no specific starting point. But a reasonable place to start is ancient Greece, which the cornerstone of scientific inquiry belongs to. The Greeks practice Natural philosophy, meaning “self-conscious inquiry to nature”.Few individuals have influenced the world and many of today’s thinkers, like Plato and Aristotle. Both of them contribute to the great history of Science after Socrates.
Socrates held that knowledge comes from asking questions. By constantly asking questions so that students can steadily break down a big problem into the smaller part which they can test the hypothesis against is called the Socratic method. This method provides what is wrong which narrows down the possibilities of what might be right. However, Socrates’s method inspired his greatest legacy, his student Plato, and his student’s student Aristotle. Both of them were inspired by Socratic’s method, but they arrived at some different conclusions.
Plato’s Theory of Forms asserts that all things that exist in reality are mere representations of perfect metaphysical constructs which he called the Forms. The reality is the material stuff we see and interact with daily. The Forms are abstract, perfect, unchanging concepts or ideals that transcend time and space, which exist beyond reality. “Even though the Forms are abstract, that doesn’t mean they are not real. The Forms are more ‘real’ than any individual physical objects. To Plato, it’s like the essence of all things. So, concepts like Redness, Roundness, Beauty, Justice, or Goodness are Forms. In other words, how do you know a chair is “ a chair”, that ’s because it has the chariness of chair. Individual objects like a red book, a round ball, a beautiful girl, a just action, or a good person reside in the physical realm and are simply different examples of the Forms.”(study.com) He separates the sensible world with the intelligible world because he holds that only the forms could be objects of knowledge and the ultimate truth. Plato would come up with a theory first, then try to fit data into his theory. “The intelligible truths could be known with the certainty of geometry and deductive reasoning. What could be observed of the material world, however, was by definition imperfect and deceptive, not ideal. The Platonic way of knowledge, therefore, emphasized reasoning as a method, downplaying the importance of observation.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Compare to Plato’s idealistic of abstraction, Aristotle ’s philosophy made more common sense for today’s science. His idea is based on empirical evidence: he observed the world then came up with a theory that explains it since he believes Empiricism is the starting point .“Science (epistêmê), for Aristotle, is a body of properly arranged knowledge or learning—the empirical facts, but also their ordering and display are of crucial importance.”(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Besides, Aristotle’s method also required to be systematic logical to be right.“Aristotle’s inductive-deductive method used inductions from observations to infer general principles, deductions from those principles to check against further observations, and more cycles of induction and deduction to continue the advance of knowledge.”(Wikipedia) This method is very similar to what we do today. We derived a conclusion based on observation and data to support, and by using some of our general knowledge or common sense to further observe and generate a conclusion.
Plato’s theory is based on senses and reasoning, whereas Aristotle preferred to have observation and experiment. Both of them have contributed to the great history of science, and how we think in our world today. The two theories can both generate a well fit distinctive but reasonable conclusion through a different process. But Aristotle’s theory can be convincingly applied to the modern world.