Like his teacher પ્લેટો, એરિસ્ટોટલ's philosophy aims at the universal. એરિસ્ટોટલ, however, found the universal in particular things, which he called the essence of things, while પ્લેટો finds that the universal exists apart from particular things, and is related to them as their prototype or exemplar. For એરિસ્ટોટલ, therefore, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while for પ્લેટો philosophic method means the descent from a knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) to a contemplation of particular imitations of these. For એરિસ્ટોટલ, "form" still refers to the unconditional basis of phenomena but is "instantiated" in a particular substance (see "Universals and particulars", below). In a certain sense, એરિસ્ટોટલ's method is both inductive and deductive, while પ્લેટો's is essentially deductive from "a priori" principles.

In એરિસ્ટોટલ's terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the natural world, and included fields that would be regarded today as ભૌતિક વિજ્ઞાન, biology and other natural sciences. In modern times, the scope of "philosophy" has become limited to more generic or abstract inquiries, such as ethics and તત્ત્વમીમાંસા, in which logic plays a major role. Today's philosophy tends to exclude empirical study of the natural world by means of the scientific method. In contrast, એરિસ્ટોટલ's philosophical endeavors encompassed virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry.

In the larger sense of the word, એરિસ્ટોટલ makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning, which he also would describe as "વિજ્ઞાન". Note, however, that his use of the term "વિજ્ઞાન" carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific method". For એરિસ્ટોટલ, "all વિજ્ઞાન("dianoia") is either practical, poetical or theoretical" ("Metaphysics" 1025b25). By practical વિજ્ઞાન, he means ethics and રાજનીતિ; by poetical વિજ્ઞાન, he means the study of poetry and the other fine arts; by theoretical વિજ્ઞાન, he means ભૌતિક વિજ્ઞાન, mathematics and તત્ત્વમીમાંસા.

If logic (or "analytics") is regarded as a study preliminary to philosophy, the divisions of Aristotelian philosophy would consist of: (1) Logic; (2) Theoretical Philosophy, including Metaphysics, Physics, Mathematics, (3) Practical Philosophy and (4) Poetical Philosophy.

In the period between his two stays in એથેન્સ, between his times at the Academy and the Lyceum, એરિસ્ટોટલ conducted most of the scientific thinking and research for which he is renowned today. In fact, most of એરિસ્ટોટલ's જીવન was devoted to the study of the objects of natural science. એરિસ્ટોટલ's તત્ત્વમીમાંસા contains observations on the nature of numbers but he made no original contributions to mathematics. He did, however, perform original research in the natural sciences, દા.ત., વનસ્પતિશાસ્ત્ર, પ્રાણીશાસ્ત્ર, ભૌતિક વિજ્ઞાન, astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, and several other sciences.

એરિસ્ટોટલ's writings on વિજ્ઞાન are largely qualitative, as opposed to quantitative. Beginning in the sixteenth century, scientists began applying mathematics to the physical sciences, and એરિસ્ટોટલ's work in this area was deemed hopelessly inadequate. His failings were largely due to the absence of concepts like mass, velocity, force and temperature. He had a conception of speed and temperature, but no quantitative understanding of them, which was partly due to the absence of basic experimental devices, like clocks and thermometers.

His writings provide an account of many scientific observations, a mixture of precocious accuracy and curious errors. દા.ત., in his "History of Animals" he claimed that human males have more teeth than females. In a similar vein, John Philoponus, and later Galileo, showed by simple experiments that એરિસ્ટોટલ's theory that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect. On the other hand, એરિસ્ટોટલrefuted Democritus's claim that the Milky Way was made up of "those stars which are shaded by the earth from the sun's rays," pointing out (correctly, even if such reasoning was bound to be dismissed for a long time) that, given "current astronomical demonstrations" that "the size of the sun is greater than that of the earth and the distance of the stars from the earth many times greater than that of the sun, then...the sun shines on all the stars and the earth screens none of them."

In places, એરિસ્ટોટલ goes too far in deriving 'laws of the universe' from simple observation and over-stretched reason. Today's scientific method assumes that such thinking without sufficient facts is ineffective, and that discerning the validity of one's hypothesis requires far more rigorous experimentation than that which એરિસ્ટોટલ used to support his laws.

એરિસ્ટોટલ also had some scientific blind spots. He posited a geocentric cosmology that we may discern in selections of the "Metaphysics", which was widely accepted up until the 1500s. From the 3rd century to the 1500s, the dominant view held that the પૃથ્વી was the center of the universe (geocentrism).

Since he was perhaps the philosopher most respected by European thinkers during and after the Renaissance, these thinkers often took એરિસ્ટોટલ's erroneous positions as given, which held back વિજ્ઞાન in this epoch. However, એરિસ્ટોટલ's scientific shortcomings should not mislead one into forgetting his great advances in the many scientific fields. For instance, he founded logic as a formal વિજ્ઞાન and created foundations to biology that were not superseded for two millennia. Moreover, he introduced the fundamental notion that nature is composed of things that change and that studying such changes can provide useful knowledge of underlying constants.


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