The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science

by Armand Marie Leroi

TO ASSERT THAT ARISTOTLE was a scientist is to suppose that we can recognize one. Sociologists and philosophers have long tried to get the creature in their sights, with indifferent results, for so diverse are their activities and preoccupations that it is hard to find a definition that will embrace them all yet exclude astrologers. Scientists, who are much less exercised about definitions, simply recognize their kin but, if pressed, might offer something like ‘A scientist is someone who seeks, by systematic investigation, to understand experienced reality.’ This definition, a generous one, allows room for theoretical physicists and coleopterists and some sociologists too; and, though we may quibble about the edges, it narrows the field of human activity considerably, excluding gardeners and physicians (no systematic investigation), literary critics and philosophers (no experienced reality), as well as homeopaths and creation-‘scientists’ who fail on both counts. It includes Aristotle, whose investigations were nothing if not systematic and who was deeply committed to understanding experienced reality. To be sure, Aristotle never called himself a ‘scientist’, but he did have a term for ‘natural science’ – physikē epistēmē, literally the ‘study of nature’. And he called himself not merely a physiologos – ‘one who gives an account of nature’ – but a physikos – ‘one who understands nature’.