Diogenes Laertius, the gossiping biographer who recorded Aristotle’s looks (five centuries after his death), said, ‘In the sphere of natural science he surpassed all other philosophers in the investigation of causes, so that even the most insignificant phenomena were explained by him.’ His explanations penetrate his philosophy. There is a sense in which his philosophy is biology – in which he devised his ontology and epistemology just to explain how animals work. Ask Aristotle: what, fundamentally, exists? He would not say – as a modern biologist might – ‘go ask a physicist’; he’d point to a
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