14 Was Aristotle a Bad Scientist? w/ Peter Adamson (Ancient Greece Declassified Podcast)

Did you know that Aristotle is to blame for the sad state of science during the Dark Ages in Western Europe? We could have colonized Mars by now if it weren't for Aristotle's disastrously wrong scientific ideas holding back the progress of science for thousands of years. At least, that's the impression you might get from a host of popular books, blog-posts, and click-bait articles online. Meanwhile, the scholars who study philosophy and its history professionally have a very different view on Aristotle. A few years ago, a major poll was conducted among professional philosophers (by Leiter Reports) to determine who the most important western philosopher of all time was. The winner? Aristotle. So what's going on here? Can it be that Aristotle held science back for two thousand years and yet he's also the greatest western philosopher of all time? Or is one of these positions incorrect? With us today to try to answer that question is Peter Adamson. You may know him as the host of the "History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps" podcast. Adamson is professor of philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. He joins us to discuss Aristotle's contributions to philosophy, and the role that his works have played in shaping the course of human knowledge.