[woodruffw]

> His philosophy of science boiled down into a sentence was basically “if you think it, it must be true.”

Aristotle didn't have a "theory of science," because he didn't have just one science: he had the practical, rhetorical, and formal sciences, each with its own first principles.

> Very little of it was actually useful legit stuff in the way we think of things today.

Besides classical logic, universals, and virtue ethics, right?

[linkmotif]

> Aristotle didn't have a "theory of science”

Well yeah, so I should have said natural science.

> Besides classical logic, universals, and virtue ethics, right?

I don’t know: I went into the Classics expecting to encounter some great stuff—what with like 1000 years of hype and all—only to be pretty underwhelmed. My takeaway was that The Church put these Greek guys on a pedestal around 1200 and everyone in Europe didn’t know better until the Renaissance. Sure they played a role in history, but I never encountered anything particularly uniquely or irreplaceable or exciting in the Greeks that you can’t find elsewhere.

[woodruffw]

Yeah, Aristotle's impact on natural science is a mixed bag. On the other hand, that's not where his influence lies these days.

Just out of curiosity, what context did you read him in? Aristotle's influence is still very much felt across philosophy: virtue ethics is one of the three major schools of contemporary ethical thought, and deductive reasoning/classical logic are what every logic class begins with.

Aristotle has definitely been put on a pedestal over the years, particularly by powers looking to associate themselves with some sense of classical Greek "greatness". However, that doesn't diminish his real contributions to philosophical (and mathematical) thought.