The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science

by Armand Marie Leroi

He was, indeed, re-enacting, for a new generation, the origin myth of modern science; the myth in which Aristotle was the giant who had to be slain so that we could pass through the straits of philosophy to reach the open sea of scientific truth that lay beyond; the myth in which Aristotle is little more than an endlessly fecund source of empirical, theoretical and methodological error; the myth that explains his absence from the scientific pantheon next to Linnaeus, Darwin and Pasteur; the myth that explains why not one scientist in a thousand can name, much less articulate a single result from, his scientific works. I say it is a myth and, insofar as history matters at all, it is certainly a pernicious one for it omits all that we owe him. But it is a myth that has this much truth: that Aristotle’s science was the principle casualty of the Scientific Revolution. It may even be said that modern science was built on its ruins.