400 attributed works, 25-50 surviving (extant)

Extant works divided into 5 groups and usually given Latin names:

1) Logic (Organon) reasoning and definition
    Categories
    De interetatione
    Prior Analytics
    Posterior Analytics
    Topics

2) Physics and Metaphysics
    (form and matter of reality, space, motion, and general existence)
    also included are 3 other works
    De Caelo (earth-celestial bodies interacting)
    De Generatione et corruptione (conditions of existence)
    Meteorologica (weather)

3) Historia Animalium (classification and characteristics), De Anima (soul), De Partibus Animalium (distinguishing parts of animals), Parva Naturalia (biopsychology of animals), De generatione animalium, De incessu animalium

4) Ethics and Politics

5) Rhetoric and Poetics
 

Aristotle divides sciences into 3 classes

1) Theoretical or speculative
    theological, physical, metaphysical, biopsychology

2) Practical Philosophy
    Ethics, Political Science

3) Productive Philosophy
    rhetoric, aesthetics, literary criticism

Differences between Plato and Aristotle

Plato: reconcile physical and moral phenomena with transcendental or idealized forms of nontemporal, nonspatial being.

e.g. shadows of beast on cave wall give idea of beast outside (Republic)

Aristotle: draws on experience of the senses as interpreted by the emotions and the intellect to see the universal within a particular object or state.

Reality consists not of transcendental ideas but of individual, observable phenomena and the application of the human intellect upon them.

Motion and movement cause the development of one form of existence to another and the transformation of matter.

Each object or state has potentiality of development that may be actualized (realized) in its growth over time.

Physics: (so called First Philosophy) science that has as its object the study of phenomena that are changeable, i.e. have a source of movement. Aristotle wanted to isolate a principle of causation.
Metaphysics: 10 books after (meta means after) Physics books that analyzed the First Philosophy in terms of causation.

Perhaps the fatal flaw in Aristotle's philosophy (as exposed by later philosophers such as Galileo) was that he did not fully appreciate the extent to which premises might consist of hidden, often unexamined complexities. Using Aristotle's logic, on could build with confidence from premises to a great variety of conflicting conclusions. His philosophy is deductive whereas much of modern science is inductive, i. e. generalities are made from observed particulars (facts).