128 pages • 4 hours read
Jostein GaarderA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Sophie opens her next letter to find the philosopher is not upset about her breaking in, though he regrets he will have to move without explaining why. She begins reading about Aristotle, who the philosopher describes as Greece’s last great philosopher and Europe’s first biologist. Unlike Plato, his teacher, who was engrossed in the world of ideas, Aristotle was interested in natural processes in the material world. Aristotle examined every field of science and wrote encyclopaedic notes about his findings. Aristotle was also responsible for “categorizing concepts and found[ing] the discipline of Logic as a science” (106). He refuted Plato by asserting that forms or ideas only exist because of peoples’ experiences with them, and characteristics lay within things, not outside them in a mold. Furthermore, “nothing exists in consciousness that has not first been experienced by the senses” (107); in other words, the innate ideas suggested by Plato did not exist according to Aristotle. Aristotle also believed that people do have an innate capability to reason and categorize things in logical ways. However, this reason is dependent on the senses. He went further by separating the nature of things into “form” (the sum of the parts) and “substance” (what the whole is made of).
Books & Literature
View Collection
Challenging Authority
View Collection
Coming-of-Age Journeys
View Collection
Education
View Collection
Fate
View Collection
Magical Realism
View Collection
Order & Chaos
View Collection
Philosophy, Logic, & Ethics
View Collection
Power
View Collection
Religion & Spirituality
View Collection
Science & Nature
View Collection
Sociology
View Collection
The Past
View Collection