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|Historical Context=Aristotle was born in Stagira, Chalkidice in central Macedonia in 384 BCE. His father was the court physician to the king of Macedonia, and his interest in the empirical study of living things is thought to derive from this source. [[CiteRef::Anagnostopoulos (2009)]] At the age of 17 or 18, he was sent to Athens to pursue a higher education at Plato's (427-347 BCE) Academy, then the premier Greek learning institution. Plato had been the student of the renown Socrates (469-399 BCE). Aristotle was an outstanding scholar and remained at the Academy for twenty years. [[CiteRef::Biography.com Editors (2017)]][[CiteRef::Shields (2016)]] When Plato died, he did not, as he expected, receive the directorship of the Academy. He returned home to Macedonia, and became a tutor to King Philip II of Macedon's son Alexander. Upon succeeding his father as king, Alexander won the appellation 'Alexander the Great' for his military conquests. [[CiteRef::Biography.com Editors (2017)]][[CiteRef::Shields (2016)]] After conquering Aristotle's former home; Athens, for Macedonia, Alexander helped him found the Lyceum there as a school and library. [[CiteRef::Shields (2016)]] The pro-Macedonian government of Athens was overthrown in 323 BCE. Because of his ties to Alexander, Aristotle was forced to flee to Chalcis on the Greek island of Euboea where he died a year later at the age of 62.

Aristotle drew on a preceding Greek tradition of inquiry which he saw as dating back to Thales of Miletus (circa 620-546 BCE) more than 150 years previously. We know of this tradition from surviving fragments of text, and its mention by subsequent authors, including, particularly, Aristotle himself. Aristotle distinguished between a group of thinkers which he called 'inquirers into nature' or ''physiologoi'' as distinct from poetical 'myth-makers'. The latter, such as the Greek poet Hesiod (circa 750-650 BCE) explained the world primarily by positing divinities who behaved like super-powerful versions of human beings, with human-like genealogies and conflicts. These gods intervened in all aspects of the world, rendering it beyond mere human understanding. By contrast, ''physiologoi'' saw the world as an ordered natural arrangement, or '''Kosmos''' potentially comprehensible to the human mind. Plato and Aristotle used the term '''philosophy''' to refer to this latter line of inquiry. Beginning in the eighteenth century this group of thinkers, who were active before, or contemporaneously with Socrates came to be referred to as the '''pre-Socratics'''. [[CiteRef::Curd (2016)]]

The pre-Socratics developed a variety of ideas about the nature of reality and cosmology. The '''Pythagorean tradition''', founded in the sixth century BCE by Phythagoras of Samos, maintained that mathematical order and harmony is the reality that underlies nature. [[CiteRef::Curd (2016)]][[CiteRef::Losee (2001)|p. 14-19]] Leucippus (5th century BCE) and Democritus (460-370 BCE) were pre-Socratic '''atomists''' (although they were actually contemporaneous with Socrates). They maintained that all things are composed of assemblages of invisibly small, solid, indivisible particles called atoms. These atoms exist within a void space and interact mechanically by contact. All things and processes in the world, they supposed, could be explained in terms of the arrangements, movements, and mechanical interactions of atoms. Although it may seem that there are colours, tastes, and smells, in reality, they supposed there are only atoms and void. They denied that any teleology exists at this fundamental level. Democritus distinguished two kinds of knowledge, that obtained from the senses, and that garnered through the understanding. Reason, applied to sensory experience in the proper way, yielded atomistic understanding. [[CiteRef::Curd (2016)]][[CiteRef::Berryman (2016b)]][[CiteRef::Berryman (2016c)]][[CiteRef::Losee (2001)|p. 24-25]][[CiteRef::Berryman (2016a)]]