Reflection Paper 14

Aristotle has also been a great influence on the modern western education because of his ideas of the great chain of being, four causes, etc. His idea of the great chain of being is basically our version of the “food chain.” The lower organisms are on the bottom and the higher organisms on the top. It not only is for food but can also be used for social class as well. Aristotle even gave us the concept of species and stated that “every link is occupied, and none are occupied twice.” Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace might not have theorized their ideas on evolution is Aristotle had not have thought of the great chain of being. He stated that two species have to be of different standards. That is similar to our low, middle, and high class. We have to have that balance between the classes, as unfair as it might seem. If we all had the same social class then I don’t think anyone would be able to prosper. Money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is from the upper class, it is how we function. Aristotle’s four causes is basically the primitive version of our classification system. He asked questions about the species and based on his answers he was able to classify them by their functions. Thanks to him students are able to learn an abundance of animal classifications. Aristotle gave us a raw version of Newton’s laws of motion with his unmoved mover theory. He says that something always has to be moving in order for another thing to move, and that motion never stops. This is one of the first principles that is learned in physics and influences quite a bit. Without this principle I don’t think that we would have discovered other areas in physics such as the law of inertia or kinetic movement. Even though his ideas of things that constantly move are related to physics, he also relates it to religion. He says that the movement involves an eternal mover and he relates that mover to God. Although that part of his theory is not taught in school we still however have his theory of motion. Even if it is called Newton’s laws of motion it is still Aristotle who was the originator of the inspiration.