This is the world that Aristotle gave us: the vividly perceptible world of living things, whole and at home; the world that he enjoins us to love and understand. Aristotle wrote thousands of sentences, but one, the first of his Metaphysics, defines him: ‘All men, by nature, desire to know.’ Not all forms of knowledge, however, are equal – the best is the pure and disinterested search for the causes of the things. And, he has no doubt, searching for them is the best way to spend a life. It is a claim for the beauty and worth of science.
