I was surprised to see that a blog post I wrote twelve years ago about whether or not Aristotle was a genius had been viewed thousands of times. Through my neglect, the comments had attracted a lot of spam. Once I cleared them out, I was happy to see that people had definite opinions about the topic, and also about how big of an idiot I needed to be to question his genius. Few were supportive of my thoughts about him.
The blog was set up during a time when my mind was overactive. It was more for me to use as notes along the way than to produce stand-alone, evergreen articles. In that article, for example, there are references to the definitions of what makes a genius by Kant and Schopenhauer. Those definitions are contained in a post that led to the article on Aristotle.
Kant defined a genius as someone who understands what others must learn and who is able to create. Schopenhauer added those to whom intellect predominates will. Among others, that seems to add the geniuses among those Asperger would identify about a century later.
Aristotle seemed to love being regarded as the smartest person in the world. He seemed to understand what others did not know and taught them. Unfortunately, he didn't apparently understand that stars were like our sun, that the Earth revolves around the sun, and that females in some species are larger than the males and in some species the female is dominant. Unless Kant meant that a genius can create what other people need to be taught, and that teaching need not necessarily be accurate, Aristotle seems to fall short of genius on those matters.
It is easier to consider whether he meets Schopenhauer's additional criterion of placing intellect above will. Seemingly destined for the same fate as Socrates, Aristotle fled certain execution in Athens. In less than a year, he was dead from natural causes anyway. His apparent fear of death violates Socrates' claim that a philosopher cannot fear death for that is where many answers lay.
I have a different way of evaluating someone's genius than just using a statement to assess whether someone meets the standard. It is more comprehensive so it will tend to show not only whether or not a person meets the standards, but it also shows which standards were not met.
Here are the standards that people must meet to be geniuses:
1. They think conceptually rather than lineally.
2. They understand math in ways most people do not, even if they don't recognize it themselves.
3. They understand and respect how time works.
4. They are both analytical and creative in problem-solving.
5. Though theories may be flawed or shortsighted, they leave work for others to build upon.
6. They understand infinity.
7. They apply universal laws and physical dynamics to arrive at conclusions.
8. They are highly principled even though not necessarily in ways that society accepts.
9. They cannot have blind faith.
As I consider Aristotle by those standards, he meets almost all the standards, but not consistently on topics of great importance. When you consider his understanding of math, he was able to calculate that if stars were like the sun, they are millions of times further from us than the sun. However, he thought that was impossible, and concluded that stars were made of perfect matter not found on Earth. That seems to indicate that he could not imagine infinity, or that it violated some faith that the universe was limited.
Though we might excuse that if it were just a benign miscalculation, Aristotle's explanations dominated society's beliefs. Others, notably Aristarchus of Samos, calculated within years of Aristotle's death that the sun was the center of the solar system. His calculations, though, were disregarded in favor of Aristotle's explanations. One of the explanations that Aristotle had for his geocentric universe was that if Earth is moving around the sun, then birds would be left behind when they flew.
It isn't just that he calculated the distance of stars correctly and then didn't believe his conclusions. It isn't just that he did not understand gravity and inertia and the laws of motion. It is that he thought he was correct, and those errors set humankind's understanding of astronomy back about 1,700 years until Copernicus proved that Aristarchus was correct. Everything he explained about geocentrism was later proven to be inaccurate.
That isn't what Kant meant when he talked about understanding things others need to be taught. In fact, it twists it into him teaching others that which he did not understand. He did not understand it despite that he was correct in his calculation about the distance of stars because he could not fathom that distance possible. Those who later proved he was incorrect did so by accepting the calculated distances.
To his credit, that which Aristotle did well, he did off-the-charts well. He was unquestionably a conceptual thinker, and he left an immense amount of work and research for others to build upon. Though incorrect about the mind being in the heart, he was the first to try to explain the concept of the mind. His work in metaphysics, medicine, biology, and academics are so vast that it is difficult to know in which order he actually did things.
It seems, though, his conclusions often tend toward the unexplainable being explained with mystique rather than going through the more scientific process of observation and testing that he also used. When his conclusions were more scientifically based, he was much more accurate in his findings.
Some of the comments I have read that try to justify Aristotle's claim that men have more teeth than women included things like losing teeth in childbirth and maybe the wisdom teeth had not protruded. Whatever the reasoning, he did not do enough testing and observation before drawing that conclusion because it is incorrect. Teeth can be counted, and missing teeth are generally noticeable. The missing teeth can be taken into account. He didn't take them into account if he made the claim after sufficient observation to support it.
That mistake may actually have been made knowingly to subordinate women to men. If he actually did make the observation that men and women have the same number of teeth, his motive may have been misogynistic. If he made the claim without making any observation, then the claim is prejudicially misogynistic. The only thing that is not possible is that he was correct. We can only speculate as to why he was incorrect.
What we don't have to speculate about him is that he was employed as a tutor for Alexander the Great. This becomes more significant when we consider that Aristotle was Plato's student at the Academy, and Plato learned from Socrates. Socrates would often draw people to conclude that might is not right. It is written that Socrates considered contentment more important than accumulation, and he believed that people spend too much effort acquiring wealth and too little effort on cleansing their souls.
After Aristotle's tutelage, Alexander the Great went out and conquered places simply for the conquest. He was an idol of Napoleon some two-thousand years later. Napoleon went to war with Egypt just because Alexander the Great had done the same thing. So, why did Aristotle seem to reverse the thoughts of peace that Socrates is said to have emphasized? Perhaps, the answer lies in the succession at the Academy.
Plato opened the first institute of higher learning in Athens. Aristotle was not only a student, he was the top student at the Academy. Despite being the top student, Aristotle did not succeed Plato in running the school. He left the school rather than take a subordinate position and left to tutor the first great white conqueror.
I think that leads to a reasonable argument that the ideology of white supremacy began with Aristotle. He thought both slaves and women were lesser beings than men. Whatever he taught Alexander the Great, it didn't stop him from conquering people just for the conquest. His empire was not well run nor particularly strong because he had no purpose for acquiring the land and resources except to claim them as trophies.
While some of the people who commented on my article questioned my competence for challenging the genius of Aristotle, not one of them made an argument that persuaded me to change my mind. I still question the genius of Aristotle.
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Here is a link to the original blog post titled Aristotle: The Genius Who Really Wasn't.
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