Aristotelian natural philosophy (400 BC–1100 AD)

Later Socratic and Platonic thought focused on ethics, morals and art and did not attempt an investigation of the physical world; Plato criticized pre-Socratic thinkers as materialists and anti-religionists.

Aristotle, however, a student of Plato who lived from 384 to 322 BC, paid closer attention to the natural world in his philosophy. In his History of Animals, he described the inner workings of 110 species, including the stingray, catfish and bee. He investigated chick embryos by breaking open eggs and observing them at various stages of development. Aristotle’s works were influential through the 16th century, and he is considered to be the father of biology for his pioneering work in that science. He also presented philosophies about physics, nature, and astronomy using inductive reasoning in his works Physics and Meteorology.

While Aristotle considered natural philosophy more seriously than his predecessors, he approached it as a theoretical branch of science. Still, inspired by his work, Ancient Roman philosophers of the early 1st century AD, including Lucretius, Seneca and Pliny the Elder, wrote treatises that dealt with the rules of the natural world in varying degrees of depth.

Many Ancient Roman Neoplatonists of the 3rd to the 6th centuries also adapted Aristotle’s teachings on the physical world to a philosophy that emphasized spiritualism.
Early medieval philosophers including Macrobius, Calcidius and Martianus Capella also examined the physical world, largely from a cosmological and cosmographical perspective, putting forth theories on the arrangement of celestial bodies and the heavens, which were posited as being composed of aether.

Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy continued to be translated and studied amid the rise of the Byzantine Empire and Abbasid Caliphate.

In the Byzantine Empire John Philoponus, an Alexandrian Aristotelian commentator and Christian theologian, was the first who questioned Aristotle’s teaching of physics. Unlike Aristotle who based his physics on verbal argument, Philoponus instead relied on observation, and argued for observation rather than resorting into verbal argument. He introduced the theory of impetus. John Philoponus’ criticism of Aristotelian principles of physics served as inspiration for Galileo Galilei during the Scientific Revolution.

A revival in mathematics and science took place during the time of the Abbasid Caliphate from the 9th century onward, when Muslim scholars expanded upon Greek and Indian natural philosophy. The words alcohol, algebra and zenith all have Arabic roots.