|
Aristotle is often described as the father of logic. This may be a
bit of an overstatement, as many math historians believe that some of
the ideas attributed to Aristotle were not original to him. At the very
least, Aristotle offered one of the first formal approaches to systemizing
logical thought, called propositional logic. He established logical
rules of thought that were referred to as syllogisms. For example, if
all men are living creatures, and living creatures require water for
their existence, then all men require water for their existence. Aristotle
served as the personal tutor to King Philip II's son Alexander. Following
the completion of Alexander's education, Aristotle founded his own school,
the Lyceum. Some math historians suspect that many of the ideas attributed
to Aristotle were actually first proposed by students at the Lyceum.
Most famous for his discourses on logical thought, Aristotle also wrote
on a wide range of philosophical topics, including works on politics,
ethics, and physics. Even when Aristotle wrote on these disparate topics,
he frequently integrated mathematical concepts into his writing. In
his discussions regarding the well-known Zeno's paradoxes, he offered
arguments that in some way foreshadowed many of the basic theory of
limits in calculus, some two thousand years before that topic was formulated.
|