Philosophical contemplation: Aristotle with a Bust of Homer by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1653.
Geoffrey Clements/CORBIS

Aristotle is widely considered the most important thinker in the Western philosophical tradition, and his ideas about ways to make sense of the world around us laid the groundwork for many of today’s forms of academic inquiry. For centuries, his scientific theories held sway in the minds of learned people of the day, his writings pored over and commented on by Romans, monks, and medieval scholastics.

Major research universities like Duke now offer hundreds of courses to undergraduates, yet only one in the fall of 2010 was devoted to Aristotle. Michael Ferejohn, a professor of philosophy at Duke for nearly three decades, led a class of about twenty students in a combination of lecture and discussion about Aristotle’s thoughts on topics such as the classification of animals, the nature of knowledge, how things move and change in the world, and, finally, the ultimate goal of human life. A Duke Magazine writer attended classes, spoke to students, and conducted a series of interviews with Ferejohn. These are his notes and observations:

September 1, 2010

Professor Ferejohn begins class by drawing a crude map of the Mediterranean on the board. To the far right, he draws the coastline of Asia Minor and then works his way left, making a rough outline of the Greek peninsulas and then Italy’s characteristic boot.

Ferejohn mutters a self-deprecating apology for the quality of his sketch—Italy is angled the wrong way—and then marks an important spot. On Asia Minor in what is now Turkey, Ferejohn makes an “X” to indicate the location of the ancient city of Miletus, birthplace of Western philosophy. Beginning around 600 B.C.E., a school of thinkers known as the Milesians began speculating about the origins of the universe. They, for the most part, ignored spiritual explanations and focused instead on the mechanisms by which the cosmos came to be.

One of these, Anaximander, posited that the universe began as a blob of undifferentiated material. Then, the blob began to spin, separating unlike elements and bringing like things together. Ferejohn explains how Anaximander believed that earth fell to the center, forming our planet; water surrounded that, which was in turn surrounded by air. Fire, the Ancients’ fourth and final element, formed the stars and heavenly bodies, which Anaximander believed were visible only through vents in the sky.

For the first time in this class, the students laugh—but Ferejohn counters: Anaximander’s explanations for what he observed in the world may seem strange to us, but isn’t his way of thinking familiar? Scientific even?

Aristotle, who is considered by many to be the true progenitor of science, is nonetheless best understood if examined in the context of the philosophical traditions in ancient Greece before his time, where two main strands of thought alternated in importance. The Milesians were what are called natural philosophers, and they concerned themselves with discovering the origins of the world and the elements that it was built from. Then came the first rationalists—Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Heraclitus among them—who were interested in asking questions about the nature of reality and change.

While ancient Greece began to grow and flourish, philosophy swung back to questions about nature and its component parts; the Atomists emerged and posited a theory about the microstructure of things. And finally, the first ethical philosopher, Socrates, and his famous student, Plato, turned philosophy back to questions of the mind and how to live the best possible life. Aristotle, Ferejohn tells the class, sits at the intersection of these two traditions—he is part scientist, part rationalist.