I like to imagine what would happen if Aristotle were to be transported from ancient Greece to modern times. \u00a0I assume that after he adjusted to the changes and settled in, he would reflect on all of the marvels of modern life. I believe he would be pleased with the state of physics, although he would probably bristle at the criticism leveled against his writings. \u00a0After all, he didn’t have the benefit of all of the technology that Newton and Einstein had. \u00a0I think he would look with fascination and delight at the state of biology and medicine – subjects that occupied much of his efforts. \u00a0But I suspect that no aspect of our current times would interest him more than computer science.<\/p>\n
Aristotle is, without a doubt, one of the most prolific and influential thinkers of all time. \u00a0And perhaps, his crowning achievement is his work on logic and on the characterization of being. \u00a0He introduced the systematic study of logic and made it a central part of his philosophy. His imprint is found everywhere in Western thought.<\/p>\n
All that said, Aristotle is not an easy read. \u00a0Whether that is a consequence of his thought or some facet of how is translated remains a mystery to me. \u00a0But the examples he employs in his work on logic<\/a> in his Organon<\/a> are hard to crack. Since I think he genuinely wanted his students to understand what he was driving at, if he were here today he would rework the Organon<\/a> within the context of object-oriented programming.<\/p>\n Defining classes and providing them with attributes (member data and functions) would be a natural laboratory to demonstrate a large number of the philosophical concepts Aristotle birthed into Western thought. \u00a0The concepts of categories and the study of being and the ideas of essentials and accidentals<\/a>\u00a0have very clean distinctions in object-oriented programming.<\/p>\n It is my intention to explore these connections in the coming posts. \u00a0For now I will simply sign-off with the modest observation that every time someone plays a video game they are learning a little about how Aristotle thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"