Aristotle Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 2

Aristotle - Essay Example Greek was the language of scholarship: it was excellent for reasoning, and since Aristotle was well brought up and educated, his language skills furnished him with the tools for analysis, calculation, interpretation, and reckoning. The Hellenistic time was when the rules of geometry were nutted out, together with the ideas for formal proof. In this area, Aristotle did a lot of thinking and discussing - which was the method of teaching of the day. Without formal rules for proving and establishing the fact, it would be impossible to formalize mathematics or science, so this was an important time in the history of mathematics. Aristotle was fundamental in establishing the ways of thinking necessary to make mathematical calculation possible, against a set of standards. Another factor that made Aristotle important is his recording of things studied, which provided evidence for those who later wrote histories of mathematics. Part of his contribution, therefore, is his perpetuating fact to enable others to read it. Fauvel and Gray, two mathematicians who did a lot of research into ancient Greek mathematics, give many extracts from Aristotle’s sources. Aristotle believed that logic must be applied to the sciences and to mathematics. ‘The sciences - at any rate the theoretical sciences - are to be axiomatised,’ he wrote. How people think mathematically is in part due to his works known as ‘Prior and Posterior Analytics’. In a simple way, this can be explained as a way to analyze, which determines the correct order in which things happen.