Physics, Volume II

Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, researcher, reasoner, and writer, was born at Stagirus in 384 BCE. He was the son of Nicomachus, a physician, and Phaestis. Aristotle studied under Plato at Athens and taught there between 367–347 BCE. Subsequently, he spent three years at the court of a former pupil, Hermeias, in Asia Minor, during which time he married Pythias, one of Hermeias's relations.

After a period at Mitylene, Aristotle was appointed by King Philip of Macedon in 343–342 BCE to be the tutor of his teen-aged son, Alexander. Following Philip's death in 336 BCE, Aristotle became the head of his own school, the Lyceum at Athens, known as the "Peripatetics." Due to anti-Macedonian sentiment after Alexander's death in 323 BCE, Aristotle withdrew to Chalcis in Euboea, where he passed away in 322 BCE.

Nearly all of the works Aristotle prepared for publication have been lost; however, the invaluable works that remain are lecture materials, notes, and memoranda, some of which are spurious. They can be categorized as follows:

Practical: Nicomachean Ethics, Great Ethics (Magna Moralia), Eudemian Ethics, Politics, Oeconomica (on the good of the family), Virtues and Vices.

Logical: Categories, On Interpretation, Analytics (Prior and Posterior), On Sophistical Refutations, Topica.

Physical: Twenty-six works (some suspect) including topics such as astronomy, generation and destruction, the senses, memory, sleep, dreams, life, and facts about animals.

Metaphysics: on being as being.

On Art: Art of Rhetoric and Poetics.

Other works include the Athenian Constitution, along with other works of doubtful authorship. Additionally, there are fragments of various works such as dialogues on philosophy and literature, and treatises on rhetoric, politics, and metaphysics.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle is available in twenty-three volumes.