ARISTOTLE! I APOLOGIZE !
I owe Aristotle an apology.
Not that it means anything to this long deceased pupil of Plato, this famed tutor of Alexander the Great, founder of the famous Peripatetic School, iconic Greek thinker, writer, and scholar of Alexandria, Egypt, whom I had deemed a plagiarist !
That any man, be it Aristotle or whomever, could write a thousand books on different subjects in one lifetime, as he is reputed to have done, while presiding over the Great Library of Alexandria, I still find to be incomprehensible!
But, my present day, philosophical hero, Theophile Obenga, the author of AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY : THE PHARAONIC PERIOD 2780-330 B.C. (2004) honors and respects him greatly with repeated citations; as also has Plotinus, another ancient philosophical hero of mine, whose citations to Aristotle in THE ENNEADS (1991), prompted me to order at least an abridged copy Aristotle last week.
Perhaps, it was Galileo 's stellar ratification of Copernicus's overthrow of Aristotle's and of Ptolemy's geocentric view --with their now heliocentric view--that had incorrectly made Earth the center of the Universe, that reigned over 2,000 years well into the Christian Era, that had prejudiced me unduly against Aristotle as well.
My prejudice is now gone! This debt I owe to Dr. Obenga, who wrote:
"Aristotle (384-322 BC) himself referred to the authority of Egyptian astronomical science, specifically in his theory of comets and the conjunction of planets.... Comets, he said, were neither planets...nor conjunctions of planets. They were, instead, stars within the solar system of diffuse appearance, whose brilliance increased as they approached the sun ... In this scientific confrontation, Aristotle, to lend unshakable weight to his own ideas and observations, invoked the authority of the Egyptians, not that of the Babylonians."
P.156-7
Aristotle! I apologize!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aristotle_Altemps_Inv8575.jpg
Saturday, October 1, 2016
ARISTOTLE! I APOLOGIZE!
ARISTOTLE! I APOLOGIZE !
I owe Aristotle an apology.
Not that it means anything to this long deceased pupil of Plato, this famed tutor of Alexander the Great, founder of the famous Peripatetic School, iconic Greek thinker, writer, and scholar of Alexandria, Egypt, whom I had deemed a plagiarist !
That any man, be it Aristotle or whomever, could write a thousand books on different subjects in one lifetime, as he is reputed to have done, while presiding over the Great Library of Alexandria, I still find to be incomprehensible!
But, my present day, philosophical hero, Theophile Obenga, the author of AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY : THE PHARAONIC PERIOD 2780-330 B.C. (2004) honors and respects him greatly with repeated citations; as also has Plotinus, another ancient philosophical hero of mine, whose citations to Aristotle in THE ENNEADS (1991), prompted me to order at least an abridged copy Aristotle last week.
Perhaps, it was Galileo 's stellar ratification of Copernicus's overthrow of Aristotle's and of Ptolemy's geocentric view --with their now heliocentric view--that had incorrectly made Earth the center of the Universe, that reigned over 2,000 years well into the Christian Era, that had prejudiced me unduly against Aristotle as well.
My prejudice is now gone! This debt I owe to Dr. Obenga, who wrote:
"Aristotle (384-322 BC) himself referred to the authority of Egyptian astronomical science, specifically in his theory of comets and the conjunction of planets.... Comets, he said, were neither planets...nor conjunctions of planets. They were, instead, stars within the solar system of diffuse appearance, whose brilliance increased as they approached the sun ... In this scientific confrontation, Aristotle, to lend unshakable weight to his own ideas and observations, invoked the authority of the Egyptians, not that of the Babylonians."
P.156-7
Aristotle! I apologize!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aristotle_Altemps_Inv8575.jpg