Thread by @EveKeneinan

I have always said:

Philosophers need to be judged by their BATTING AVERAGE.

Philosophers, even the greatest, are not infallible.

So there are TWO questions:

1 Quantity: How MUCH thinking did the philosopher do?

2 Quality: How MUCH of the that thinking was correct, or correct-adjacent?

Aristotle in Quantity: As Will Cuppy said “Aristotle probably thought more square feet than any other human being ever to live.”

So quantity = literally more than anyone else.

Aristotle in Quality: Extremely high “batting average.” Probably in the 700s or higher.

And he mostly makes errors in biology, a science he began, because he had only limited specimens and limited tools. He had no microscopes, for example.

And Aristotle is NOT DOGMATIC. He was perfectly willing to be corrected in the light of new data.

His infamous and much-derided “spontaneous generation” idea was put forward by him PROVISIONALLY. He wasn’t willing to SAY there were eggs he couldn’t see, but he does SUGGEST it.

In the Physics, Aristotle literally mentions BOTH Darwin’s idea of natural selection AND Newton’s law of inertia.

He rejects both, for fairly substantial reasons. But they are THERE.