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REALISM
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At eighteen, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirtyseven
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His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic,
ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government –
and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy.
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The first genuine scientist in history
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Tutored Alexander the Great starting from 343 BC.
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He believed all peoples' concepts and all of their knowledge was ultimately based on
perception.
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The “Father” of Realist Philosophy
Aristotle took Plato’s Theory of Forms in a different direction:
For Aristotle:
Form: That which makes a thing what it is and not
something else.
Does not exist by itself, only in individual cases.
He spoke of “shoeness” and “appleness” and “Justice” but ONLY as
they existed in INDIVIDUAL shoes, apples, and men like Atticus Finch
Matter: Ties a thing down to a particular way of being in a
particular time and place.
LIMITS FORM into an individual instance.
Matter and Form are not separate and do not exist without one another!
Potentiality-----------------------------------------------------------Actuality
Matter
Form
A Realist believes that: the basis for
understanding reality is in the world of PHYSICAL
THINGS and our perceptions and experiences of
those THINGS.
What is REAL? The physical world, the world of things
How do we know what we know?
* 5 Senses (see, hear, taste, smell, touch)
*Correspondence: Using reason, logic, and
the scientific method to make
comparisons and deduce an
understanding of what a thing is.
What is the best way to act? Following the patterns
and structures set up in nature
Natural Law: There is an order (patterns and
regularities) to nature that can be
discovered through science
Humans’ Role:
*OBSERVERS: Using senses and
understanding of cause and effect
*SPECTATOR of the “WORLD AS MACHINE”
*metaphor
*spectator: observant and reasoning
human
*world as machine: the world is
controlled by laws that it can be made
to reveal through the scientific
method