“... immediately clear. As a systematic attempt to parse and present all extant knowledge of birds from Aristotle onwards, and to integrate those elements that could withstand modern scrutiny with original observations and research, the Ornithology set a new standard for works on the natural world. Willughby and Ray were both members of the Royal Society; they ...”

“... years in Greco-Roman culture. In Athens in the fourth century Bce, Plato spoke only of astronomia, Aristotle of astrologia; both were referring to the movements of the heavens (what we would call astronomy). In the middle of the second century CE, Ptolemy did make the distinction, separating prognostication by the stars into two categories. The prediction of ...”

“... modernist, unity is a discredited notion. It is striking how original a move this is. From Aristotle to I.A. Richards, the work of art is expected to form a coherent whole. It is not until the rise of Futurism, Constructivism, Surrealism and so on that this arbitrary diktat is really challenged. From the Dadaists to Brecht, there is an urge to ...”

“... fantasies follow a predictable pattern. Each chapter begins with some combination of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero or Augustine. As we might expect from a medieval historian, she then looks at texts from early Christian martyrs, monks, Abelard and Héloïse, the troubadours, Dante. Next she moves on to David Hume, Goethe, Byron, Casanova, before concluding ...”

“... for that. In literary criticism, the dogma that a work of art must constitute a unity runs from Aristotle to the present day, excluding all manner of vitalising conflicts and contradictions. In aesthetics as in politics, unity is something of a fetish. One reason we want to regard our life histories as all of a piece is a fear of loss and damage. To be ...”

“... freedom (or religion) at home. Then, too, there was the republicans’ preoccupation with Aristotle and their respect for his principle of distributive justice, which awards supreme power to supremely endowed individuals. Again we think of Milton, who suppressed his republican scruples and supported the Protectorate of ‘Cromwell, our chief of ...”

“... clinging, quixotically generous – emerges as an angel when one compares her with her father Aristotle, whose manipulative and potentially murderous hand lay heavy on her life. Her sycophants would have ruined her, except that the Onassis shipping empire provided her with an income of a million dollars a week; the polo-players and interior decorators ...”

“... Confucius had some effect on their actions, and that the theories and arguments of such people as Aristotle and Mo-tzu should be construed as serious attempts to discover the truth. Are these views really unfashionable? Or rather, has anyone outside the madhouse ever denied such evident truths? Well, according to Schwartz, the attack has been sustained by ...”

“... difficult and precious fragments of Heraclitus, and was the author of the suggestion that when Aristotle in his Poetics speaks of tragedy as effecting a katharsis – a cleansing or purification – of the emotions, he is employing a metaphor from medicine: in this connection, it is interesting to note that his niece Martha became the wife of Sigmund ...”

“... subject to leave to the social scientists.’ Well – OK, fellas. Vance Packard sells better than Aristotle, and we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously. But for all the wisecracking, Fussell is right to quote also, as he does, John Adams in 1805: ‘The rewards ... in this life are esteem and admiration of others – the punishments are neglect and ...”

“... intellect” would tell us about Christian charity and speak of Kant, Plato, Hegel, Aristotle, Jesus and Thomas Aquinas very enthusiastically, knowing that nine out of ten people in his audience had never heard of these philosophers.’ For Malik, culture was to be largely understood in terms of masterpieces produced (mostly) by dead white ...”

“... showed himself to be more profoundly indebted to the tradition of classicist criticism ‘from Aristotle to La Harpe’. His critical approach could be seen, against this perspective, as the raising of precisely those questions which the classicists, imprisoned within the ideology of mimesis, were incapable of framing: questions which had nevertheless ...”

“... pushes back against the idea, present in ancient philosophical thought since at least the time of Aristotle, that some human beings are naturally slavish. The enslaved are the enslaver’s kinsmen, Epictetus says, and they, too, are the offspring of Zeus; their subjugation is not justified by their supposed inferiority. The only real ‘slaves’ are those ...”

“... living in the USA, Kurt Gödel. Gödel has been plausibly described as the greatest logician since Aristotle, because his incompleteness proof, formal and final, showed that any mathematical system of an interesting complexity must generate propositions which cannot be shown within the system to be true or shown to be false. The proof blocked the programme of ...”

“... secular debates over dominion and stewardship, which began early and continue to this day. From Aristotle and the Bible, and on to Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes and others, the point was made that rational human beings, the creatures with immortal souls, were the pinnacle of creation. But if animals were always and everywhere inferior, the dilemma persisted ...”